The clough is not distinguished by anything special in the way of plants, though we have gathered there fine sprigs of the sweet woodruff. As a retreat, however, from the noise and bustle of the town, and the only place of the kind in that direction, it must always be precious to the lover of nature. Unfortunately, the path has of late years become very much disturbed through the falling away of the bank, the steepness of which, and the weight of the trees, unprovided with sufficient anchorage by reason of the lightness of the soil, causes continual landslips, so that now there are in many places rather dangerous declivities. Many of the trees that once stood erect upon the brows, now lie ingloriously with their heads in the brook beneath, and their roots in the air. The increase of buildings about Newton and Failsworth, and the consequent incessant raids of destroying boys, have also tended of late years to mar the place considerably; and now, in 1882, it has to be said with deep regret, that the regular Sunday resort to Boggart-hole of the lowest roughs of the neighbouring villages, leaves it for the week-day visitor tattered and torn and soiled beyond recovery. The signal, with every new season, for renewed mischief, is the opening of the golden sallow-bloom, now not a tenth in quantity of what it was even in 1850. These roughs are the thousand times more affrighting boggarts of to-day, masters, permittedly by the authorities, of a place once another Kelvin Grove,
Where the wild rose in its pride Paints the hollow dingle side, And the midnight fairies glide, Bonnie lassie, O!
We have spoken of Boggart-hole Clough in conformity with the generally current idea, namely, that in the olden time it was a haunt or habitation of "boggarts." Boggart-_hole_ is thought by some to be a mistaken and enlarged spelling of Boggart _Hall_, the appellation of a house near the head of the clough, once and for a long while of evil repute as the home of an unclean spirit. Samuel Bamford seems to favour the popular conception, probably because unwilling to disturb it, though he himself never hints at the existence in this clough of any particular uncanny inmate. The boggart of the hall was no other, it is further contended, than the "brownie" found in some shape or other all the world over, superstitions of this character being co-extensive with human nature, sometimes vulgarized, sometimes exquisitely etherialised, and taking as many forms as there are powers of fancy in the human mind. The pixies of Devonshire and Titania's "Sweet Puck" belong to the poetical line of thought; the ugly and mischievous "boggarts" to the rustic one. The entire subject has been dealt with by Harland and Wilkinson in the _Lancashire Folk-lore_. The legend is also given in the _Traditions of Lancashire_, the compiler of which would seem to have adopted an earlier version in the _Literary Gazette_ for 1825. There is yet another surmise, that "boggart" in this particular instance is a mistake for "Bowker," a family of which name is said to have once occupied the hall. Possibly. Admitting either explanation to be the true one and finally established, the received idea still goes abreast of that beautiful old tendency of the universal human heart to assign spiritual beings to every part of physical nature, the basis of all the primitive religions, and which will endure when etymology is dead. Mrs. Banks supplies yet another version, referring us to the time of Prince Charles Edward, the Pretender, one of whose unfortunate followers was constrained to hide himself in the clough, friends who were in the secret giving out, in order to hinder search by the enemy, that the place of refuge was the abode of demons.