“Nay, ’twere worse nor that,” Timothy replied.  “That neet there was a storm at Cohen-eead the likes o’ which had niver bin seen theer afore.  There was thunner an’ leetnin’, and a gert sough o’ wind that com yowlin’ across t’ moor an’ freetened iverybody wellnigh out o’ their five senses.  Fowks wakkened up an’ said ‘twere Judgment Day, an’ T’ Man Aboon had coom to separate t’ sheep frae t’ goats.  When t’ cockleet com, t’ storm had fallen a bit, an’ fowks gat out o’ bed to see if owt had happened ’em.  Slates, and mebbe a chimley or two, had bin rived off t’ roofs, but t’ beasts were all reight i’ t’ mistals, an’ then they went up on to t’ moors to look for t’ sheep.  When they got nigh Throp’s farm, they noticed there was a gert hoil in his riggin’ big enough for a man to get through.  So they shouted to Throp, but he niver answered.  Then they oppened t’ door an’ looked in.  There was nobody i’ t’ kitchen, but t’ spinnin’-wheel were all meshed to bits and there were a smell o’ burnin’ wool.  They went all ower t’ house, but they could see nowt o’ Throp nor o’ Throp’s wife, nor o’ Throp’s wife’s chintz-cat that shoo called Nimrod, nor yet o’ Throp’s parrot that he’d taught to whistle Pop goes t’ Weazel.  They lated ’em ower t’ moors an’ along t’ beck boddom, but ‘twere all for nowt, an’ nobody i’ Cohen-eead iver set een on ’em again.”

Such was Timothy Barraclough’s story of Throp’s wife and of the terrible fate which befell her and her husband.  I spent the night at the inn, and next morning made further inquiries into the matter.  There was little more to be learnt, but I was told that farmers crossing the moors on their way home from Colne market had sometimes heard, among the rocks on the crest of the hills, the sound of a spinning-wheel; but others had laughed at this, and had said that what they had heard was only the cry of the nightjar among the bracken.  It was also rumoured that on one occasion some boys from the village had made their way into a natural cavern which ran beneath the rocks, and, after creeping some distance on hands and knees, had been startled by ghostly sounds.  What they heard was the mournful whistling of a popular air, as it were by some caged bird, and then the strain was taken up by the voices of a man and woman singing in unison: 

   Up and down the city street
      In and out the “Easel,”
   That’s the way the money goes,
      Pop goes the weazel.

“IT MUN BE SO”

I met her on her way through the path-fields to the cowshed; she was gathering, in the fading light of an October evening, the belated stars of the grass of Parnassus, and strapped to her shoulders was the “budget,” shaped to the contour of the back, and into which the milk was poured from the pails.  It was a heavy load for a girl of twelve, but she was used to it, and did not grumble.  Her father was dead, all the day-tale men had been called up, and her mother, she assured me, “was that thrang wi’ t’ hens an’ t’ cauves, shoo’d no time for milkin’ cows.”