valuable consideration; but the term is more particularly used to describe a mode of conveyance of lands. The disabilities under which a feudal owner very frequently lay gave rise to the practice of conveying land by other methods than that of feoffment with livery of seisin, that is, a handing over of the feudal possession. That of “bargain and sale” was one. Where a man bargained and sold his land to another for pecuniary consideration, which might be merely nominal, and need not necessarily be actually paid, equity held the bargainer to be seised of the land to the use of the bargainee. The Statute of Uses (1535), by converting the bargainee’s interest into a legal estate, had an effect contrary to the intention of its framers. It made bargain and sale an easy means of secret or private conveyance, a policy to which the law was opposed. To remedy this defect, a statute (called the Statute of Enrolments) was passed in the same year, which provided that every conveyance by bargain and sale of freehold lands should be enrolled in a court of record or with the custos rotulorum of the county within six months of its date. The Statute of Enrolments applied only to estates of inheritance or for life, so that a bargain and sale of an estate for years might be made without enrolment. This in turn was the foundation of another mode of conveyance, namely, lease and release, which took the place of the deed of bargain and sale, so far as regards freehold. Bargain and sale of copyhold estates, which operates at common law, is still a mode of conveyance in England in the case of a sale by executors, where a testator has directed a sale of his estate to be made, instead of devising it to trustees upon trust to sell.
See also Conveyancing.
BARGE (Med. Lat. barca, possibly connected with Lat. baris, Gr. βᾶρις, a boat used on the Nile), formerly a small sailing vessel, but now generally a flat-bottomed boat used for carrying goods on inland navigations. On canals barges are usually towed, but are sometimes fitted with some kind of engine; the men in charge of them are known as bargees. On tidal rivers barges are often provided with masts and sails (“sailing barges”), or in default of being towed, they drift with the current, guided by a long oar or oars (“dumb-barges”). Barges used for unloading, or loading, the cargo of ships in harbours are sometimes called “lighters” (from the verb “to light” = to relieve of a load). A state barge was a heavy, often highly ornamented vessel used for carrying passengers on occasions of state ceremonials. The college barges at Oxford are houseboats moored in the river for the use of members of the college rowing clubs. In New England the word barge frequently means a vehicle, usually covered, with seats down the side, used for picnic parties or the conveyance of passengers to or from piers or railway stations.
BARGEBOARD (probably from Med. Lat. bargus, or barcus, a scaffold, and not from the now obsolete synonym “vergeboard”), the boards fastened to the projecting gables of a roof to give strength to the same and to mask or hide the horizontal timbers of the roof to which they were attached. Bargeboards are sometimes moulded only or carved, but as a rule the lower edges were cusped and had tracery in the spandrels besides being otherwise elaborated. The richest example is one at Ockwells in Berkshire, England, which is moulded and carved as if it were intended for internal work.
BARGHEST, Barguest or Bargest, the name given in the north of England, especially in Yorkshire, to a monstrous goblin-dog with huge teeth and claws. The spectre-hound under various names is familiar in folk-lore. The Demon of Tedworth, the Black Dog of Winchester and the Padfoot of Wakefield all shared the characteristics of the Barghest of York. In Wales its counterpart was Gwyllgi, “the Dog of Darkness,” a frightful apparition of a mastiff with baleful breath and blazing red eyes. In Lancashire the spectre-hound is called Trash or Striker. In Cambridgeshire and on the Norfolk coast it is known as Shuck or Shock. In the Isle of Man it is styled Mauthe Doog. It is mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in “The Lay of the Last Minstrel”—
“For he was speechless, ghastly, wan
Like him of whom the story ran
Who spoke the spectre hound in Man.”
A Welsh variant is the Cwn Annwn, or “dogs of hell.” The barghest was essentially a nocturnal spectre, and its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. Its Welsh form is confined to the sea-coast parishes, and on the Norfolk coast the creature is supposed to be amphibious, coming out of the sea by night and travelling about the lonely lanes. The derivation of the word barghest is disputed. “Ghost” in the north of England is pronounced “guest,” and the name is thought to be burh-ghest, “town-ghost.” Others explain it as German Berg-geist, “mountain demon,” or Bar-geist, “bear-demon,” in allusion to its alleged appearance at times as a bear. The barghest has a kinsman in the Rongeur d’Os of Norman folklore. A belief in the spectre-hound still lingers in the wild parts of the north country of England, and in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, nurses frighten children with its name.
See Wirt Sikes, British Goblins (1880); Notes and Queries, first series, ii. 51; Joseph Ritson, Fairy Tales (Lond. 1831), p. 58; Lancashire Folklore (1867); Joseph Lucas, Studies in Nidderdale (Pateley Bridge, 1882).
BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS (1788–1845), English humourist, better known by his nom de plume of Thomas Ingoldsby, was born at Canterbury on the 6th of December 1788. At seven years of age he lost his father, who left him a small estate, part of which was the manor of Tappington, so frequently mentioned in the Legends. At nine he was sent to St Paul’s school, but his studies were interrupted by an accident which shattered his arm and partially crippled it for life. Thus deprived of the power of bodily activity, he became a great reader and diligent student. In 1807 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, intending at first to study for the profession of the law. Circumstances, however, induced him to change his mind and to enter the church. In 1813 he was ordained and took a country curacy; he married in the following year, and in 1821 removed to London on obtaining the appointment of minor canon of St Paul’s cathedral. Three years later he became one of the priests in ordinary of the King’s Chapel Royal, and was appointed to a city living. In 1826 he first contributed to Blackwood’s Magazine; and on the establishment of Bentley’s Miscellany in 1837 he began to furnish the series of grotesque metrical tales known as The Ingoldsby Legends. These became very popular, were published in a collected form and have since passed through numerous editions. In variety and whimsicality of rhymes these verses have hardly a rival since the days of Hudibras. But beneath this obvious popular quality there lies a store of solid antiquarian learning, the fruit of patient enthusiastic research, in out-of-the-way old books, which few readers who laugh over his pages detect. His life was grave, dignified and highly honoured. His sound judgment and his kind heart made him the trusted counsellor, the valued friend and the frequent peacemaker; and he was intolerant of all that was mean and base and false. In politics he was a Tory of the old school; yet he was the lifelong friend of the liberal Sydney Smith, whom in many respects he singularly resembled. Theodore Hook was one of his most intimate friends. Barham was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review and the Literary Gazette; he wrote articles for Gorton’s Biographical Dictionary; and a novel, My Cousin Nicholas (1834). He retained vigour and freshness of heart and mind to the last, and his last verses (“As I laye a-thynkynge”) show no signs of decay. He died in London after a long, painful illness, on the 17th of June 1845.
A short memoir, by his son, was prefixed to a new edition of Ingoldsby in 1847, and a fuller Life and Letters, from the same hand, was published in 2 vols. in 1870.
BAR HARBOR, a well-known summer resort of Hancock county, Maine, U.S.A., an unincorporated village, in the township of Eden, on Frenchman’s Bay, on the E. side of Mount Desert Island, about 45 m. S.E. of Bangor. Pop. of the township (1900) 4379; (1910) 4441; of the village (1910), about 2000, greatly increased during the summer season. Bar Harbor is served by the Maine Central railway and by steamship lines to New York, Boston, Portland and other ports. The summer climate is cool, usually too cool for sea-bathing, but there is a
