Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/137

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94
Lancashire Pageants.

And so have flourished in this fairer clime
Successively from that to this our time,
Still offering up to our immortal powers
Sweet incense, wine, and odoriferous flowers,
While sacred Vesta, in her virgin tire,
With vows and wishes tends the hallowed fire.
Now seeing that thy majesty we see,
Greater than country gods, more good than we,
We render up to thy more powerful guard
This house. This knight is thine, he is thy ward;
For by thy helping and auspicious hand
He and his home shall ever, ever stand,
And flourish in despite of envious Fate,
And then live, like Augustus, fortunate.
And long, long mayest thou live! To which both men,
God, saints, and angels, say, "Amen, Amen!"


The Second Tutelar God begins:—

Thou greatest of mortals! [He is nonplussed.

The First God begins again:—

Dread Lord! the splendour and the glorious ray
Of thy high majesty hath stricken dumb
His weaker godhead. If that himself he come
Unto thy service straight, he will commend
These foresters, and charge them to attend
Thy pleasure in this park, and show such sport
To the chief huntsman and thy princely court
As the small circuit of this round affords,
And be more ready than he was in 's words.

This is doubtless the same pageant thus recorded in Nicholas Assheton's Journal:—"Then, about ten or eleven o'clock, a mask of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and courtiers, afore the King, in the middle round, in the garden. Some speeches; of the rest, dancing the Huckler, Tom Bedlo, and the Coup Justice of Peace." The Rev. Canon Raines, who edited the journal for the Chetham Society, observes—"These ancient and fashionable Lancashire dances have passed away and are for-