it. This is an opinion in which the writer is confirmed by a resident gentleman of intelligence, who at his request, some years since, examined the stones in reference to this question. There is, further, every reason to suppose that, whatever may be the case as to the western and terminal chambers, this eastern one has never been cleared out to the bottom, and that it would repay the trouble of excavation, by the disclosure of the original sepulchral deposit. It is much to be desired that such an examination should be made, as might be done at no great expense and without injury to this now celebrated monument. Had the zealous antiquary, Mr. E. Martin Atkins, of Kingston Lisle, been longer spared to us, he might perhaps, with the permission of Lord Craven, and residing as he did in the immediate neighbourhood, have undertaken this examination.1 Nearly all the more remarkable sepulchral mounds of our country bear traces, when excavated, of a prior opening. They appear to have been rifled in search of treasure, in very early times, and especially perhaps during the Roman period. This, on the White Horse Hill, in the parish of Ashbury, seems not only to have been dug into, but to have been in part levelled and cleared away, and the contained chambers, or cromlechs, as they are sometimes called,

1 About the year 1810, the ground covering and surrounding the stones was planted with fir trees and beeches, forming a circular plantation, such as the people here call a "folly "—Wayland's Folly. Two years ago, the firs having died were cut down, but the exterior ring of beeches remains. The whole spot is now in a very neglected state; covered with elder-bushes, briars and nettles, which render its inspection very difficult and sadly interfere with the religio loci. It is much to be desired that the whole enclosure within the beeches should be cleared and put in order, as was done, by Lord Craven's direction, some forty years since, when, as Scott tells us, the monument itself " was cleared out and made considerably more conspicuous." It should be added to what is stated above, that the shepherds and others say, that on driving a crowbar into the ground near the "Cave," a very hollow sound is produced, and that they are satisfied there is a cavity beneath.

2 Cromlechs are probably all sepulchral monuments; but, with Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the writer thinks a broad distinction is to be drawn between the cromlech and the subterraneous chamber which has been covered with a mound, such as was this of Ashbury. "The cromlech has been confounded with the subterraneous chamber which frequently has a long covered passage leading into it; *** but this last is not properly a cromlech," (Journ. Brit. Archæol. Assoc. vol. xvi, p. 116.); though it "has received that name, as the Cromlech

exposed, and, to a great extent, thrown down. The chamber, which was allowed to retain its cap-stone, seems in early, and probably pagan, Saxon times to have received the name of Weland's Smithy. Such at least was its name in the tenth century, as is proved by a charter of Eadred, A.D. 955, in which "Weland's Smithy" (Welandes smiððan) is named in the boundaries of an estate at Compton near Ashdown, where the "smithy" is represented as situate on the west side of a wide road, or opening (geat), near the Ridge-way. It is clear, as has been observed by Mr. T. Wright, that the name of Weland's Smithy could not have been assigned to this place unless the chamber were then exposed."

A few remarks must be made on the name. This is clearly a slight corruption of the Saxon name of Weland's Smithy. The local designation for the last two centuries has been simply Wayland Smith,-not Wayland Smith's Cave, as the present generation have learned to call it. As "Wayland-Smyth " it appears in the MS. of Aubrey, as "Wayland-Smith" in the pages of Wise, and the same even in those of Gough3 and King, and in Lysons, as late as 1813. Wise offers an etymology for the name. After giving the story of the invisible smith, he proceeds as follows:-"The stones standing upon the Rudge-way, as it is called, I suppose, gave occasion to the

Du Tus, in Guernsey. Some Cromlechs stand on a platform, slightly raised above the adjacent ground, but I know of none that have been covered by a tumulus, or mound of earth, of which they form the chamber." Ibid, vol. xvii. p. 47.

1 Kemble, Cod. Diplom., No. 1172. Eádred grants "ministro suo Ælfheho eight "cassatos" at "Cumtune" (sc. Compton Beauchamp, in Berks) “juxta montem qui vocatur Æscesdun (Ash-down)." MS. Cott. Claud., B. vi., fol. 406. 2 Archæologia, vol. xxxiii., p. 268. Journal Brit. Archæol. Association, vol. xvi., p. 51.

3 Gough's Camden, 1789; 2nd Ed. 1806, vol. i,, p. 221.

+ King, Munimenta Antiqua 1799, vol. i. p. 130.

5 Lysons, Berkshire, 1813, p. 215. "A little way to the west of Uffington Castle, near the ridgeway leading over the Downs, there is a considerable tumulus, commonly called Wayland-Smith; &c. (vide ante, p. 316.) Lysons gives a small view of the chamber, showing its position with reference to the Ridgeway and to Uffington Castle.

whole being called Wayland-Smith: which is the name it was always known by to the country people." As thus explained, Sir Richard Hoare might well speak of it as "a ridiculous name given to a British monument of very high antiquity." But though the etymology of Wise is sufficiently absurd, he has preserved what appeared an idle story of the peasantry, but by which, since the time when Sir Richard Hoare and Sir Walter Scott wrote, modern research has been enabled to recover the true origin of the name. Wise says, "All the account, which the country people are able to give of it, is 'At this place lived formerly an invisible Smith, and if a traveller's Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do, than to bring the Horse to this place, with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse new shod."" This story is still laughingly told by the villagers, in almost the same words.

In his notes to Kenilworth, Sir Walter Scott says "it was believed that Wayland's fee was six-pence," (elsewhere he says "a silver groat,") "and that unlike other workmen he was offended if more was offered." The country people at the present time, say the fee was a penny." Another story they have of him,—" that he had a servant or apprentice, whom he one day sent down the hill, for fire to Shrivenham, five miles off; that the boy, lingering by the way, enraged Wayland, who cast a huge stone at him, when at the distance of a mile, which struck him on the heel, and left the print of his foot on the stone. The boy, it is said, sat down and cried at the spot, at a place called Odstone Farm, which to this day is known as Snivelling Corner." A stone, a Sarsen block much mutilated, is still shown by the rustics as that with which this feat was performed. A shepherd of Uffington, a neighbouring village, who wrote rhymes early in the century, on "the stories the old voke do tell," says ;If you along the Rudgeway go, About a mile for aught I know,

There Wayland's cave then you may see
Surrounded by a group of trees.

1 The story given above was taken down, by the writer, from the mouths of peasants, in the parishes of Ashbury and Compton, in the present year. It contains some particulars not given by Mr. Akerman.

They say that in this cave did dwell
A smith that was invisible;

At last he was found out, they say,
He blew up the place and vlod away.1
To Devonshire then he did go,
Full of sorrow, grief, and woe,

Never to return again;

So here I'll add the shepherd's name

Job Cork. (Ob. 1807, ætat. 67).

These tales are to be taken for what they are worth. Together, they seem to form a strangely travestied version of a well known mythical story of the North.

It was reserved for M. Depping to show that in the Wayland of Berkshire tradition is to be traced Volund or Weland the Smith, so famous in connexion with the Norse mythology, as well as in the legends of our Saxon forefathers. His story is told at great length in the Edda; and, with variations, in the Wilkina Saga: in brief it is as follows. Volund was the son of the giant Wade, who obtained from the mountain dwergr or dwarfs, the art of working metals by fire; and excelled in making arms and in all kinds of smith's work. He fell into the hands of King Nidung, in Jutland, who, to ensure his remaining at his forge, had him

1 Sir Walter Scott had perhaps heard of this part of the story. See his account of the explosion of Wayland Smith's dwelling, in the Eleventh Chapter of Kenilworth, first published in 1821. Scott calls the " cave "Wayland Smith's Forge," which is the name in the Ordnance Map, No. xxxiv, published in 1828, and was probably taken from this celebrated fiction.

2 Veland le Forgeron, &c., par G. B. Depping et Francisque Michel, Paris, 1833. M. Depping published his original essay in English, in 1822, in the New Monthly Mag., vol. iv., p. 527. The later Dissertation has been translated by Mr. S. W. Singer (Pickering, 1847, 12mo,) “Wayland Smith a Tradition of the

Middle Ages, from the French; " and from this we quote. The reader may

refer to the papers in which Mr. T. Wright has given a more condensed account of the legend; (Archæologia, 1847, vol. xxxii., p. 315; Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc. vol. xvi.); and likewise to Keightley's "Tales and Popular Traditions," (1834, p. 270.) It was the publication of Kenilworth which, as he himself avows, led to that of M. Depping's Essay; and also to the remarks on the legend of Wayland, by Price, in his introduction to "Warton's History of English Poetry," in 1824. The writer is not aware whether Grimm or the Danish writers, who wrote on the story of Volund at an earlier date, have taken any notice of the Berkshire story, but he concludes that they were not aware of its existence.

hamstrung and the tendons of his feet cut; he avenged himself by killing the king's two sons and outraging his daughter, and finally flew away, with wings of his own construction, into Seeland.

In the earliest Anglo-Saxon poems, there are traces of the same wonderful smith,-Weland. In Beowulf, he is named as the maker of the precious breastplate of the hero.

If the war take me,

Send back to Higelac,

The best of war-coverings,

That which guardeth my breast:

It is the work of Weland. (Beow. VI., v. 898.)

In the poetical version of Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Boethius, it is said:

Who knows now the bones

Of the wise Weland,

Under what barrow

They are concealed ?

At a later period, the 14th century, in the English romance of "Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild," Rimnild gives to Horn a sword named the king of swords, or Bitterfer, which she tells him "Weland wrought," and that "better sword never bare knight.”

A very similar legend to that current in Berkshire still prevails near Osnaburgh, in Lower Saxony, (Hanover); and it can hardly be doubted that this story and that of the Berkshire Wayland own a common origin. In a mountain cavern dwelt an invisible smith, who was said to rest by day and labour at night, for the benefit of his earthly brethren. Latterly, he confined his labours to the shoeing of horses. In front of the cavern was a stake fixed in the ground, to which the country people tied the horses they wished to have shod; but it was also necessary for them not to neglect to lay the usual fee for the labour on a large stone which was to be found on the spot. The Hiller, for so the smith was called, would never be seen by any one, nor would he be disturbed in his cavern.

All these legends respecting Weland are with great probability supposed to have a common source with those which refer to the Vulcan (Hephaestus) and the Dædalus of the Greeks. "Vulcan,"