apparently from the adjacent rocks, placed like a gravestone on the cop. The inscription is on the side facing the road:—Ravffe : Radcliffe : laide : this : stone : to : lye : for : ever : a.d. 1655."[1]
The characters (he adds) are not the raised letters so prevalent in the seventeenth century, but deeply cut in the stone. He found the farmhouse tenanted by a young woman of very respectable appearance, the daughter of the owner of the estate, who, in this romantic spot, leads almost the life of a recluse. She had no dread of supernatural visitants, having never been disturbed by ghost or hobgoblin; and her theory on the subject was pithily summed up in the declaration, "that if folks only did what was right in this world, they would have nothing to fear." The date on the stone speaks of the days of sorcery and witchcraft, and of the troubled times of Cromwell's protectorate. Tradition declares this spot to have been the scene of a cruel and barbarous murder, and it is stated that this stone was put down in order to appease the restless spirit of the deceased, which played its nightly gambols long after the body had been "hearsed in earth." A story is told of one of the former occupants of Written Stone farm, who, thinking that the stone would make a capital "buttery stone," removed it into the house and applied it to that use. The result was, that the indignant or liberated spirit would never suffer his family to rest. Whatever pots, pans, kettles, or articles of crockery were placed on the stone, were tilted
- ↑ In Baines's "Lancashire" (vol. iii. p. 383), there is a somewhat different version of this inscription:—"Rafe Ratcliffe laid this stone here to lie for ever. A.D. 1607." He adds, that this Rafe was owner of the estate. It will be seen that neither christian name nor surname nor date agrees with the text, which latter, however, we believe to be correct.
