“Poor Old Modesty”, Wilmslow

Around 1820, a heavy drinker named Percival, nicknamed “Modesty,” was walking home across Lindow when he drunkenly fell face down into a goose pond and drowned. Locals soon whispered that his ghost wandered the heath, and superstition made people afraid to speak his name after dark. An epitaph mocking his thirst was composed but never carved on his grave. Children who repeated its verses were said to run home terrified, fearing Modesty might appear.