bedstead was left behind when e Court took its final departure, as a most appropriate gift to the citizens of the town in which a royal accouchement had taken place. I may be guilty of a little innocent cooking of facts in the explanation I have given of this interesting local tradition, but I am wholly unconscious of any disposition to do so, and I fearlessly stake my reputation as an antiquarian (which I am not) upon the issue. At any rate, here we have a local oral tradition that has outrun all written records, and has nothing but the word of mouth of the most ignorant members of the community to support it, and yet when this tradition is evoked it retains, even to-day, the character and force of statutory law. The fact that not one of the "gentry" of Cricklade, so far as I know, had ever heard of this tradition is very remarkable, but is in perfect character with the unconscious methods by which these country traditions are perpetuated from generation to generation.

But I have now to relate a still more remarkable example of the secret manner, conscious or unconscious, in which these traditions are held and passed on by the peasants. I told my story of the royal grant in favor of the citizens of Cricklade to Mr. Charles Beadon, of "Upcott," in the adjoining parish of Latton, and he quickly gave me a Roland for my Oliver. I give Mr. Beadon's story substantially as he told it to me. A few years ago a laborer was working in Mr. Beadon's garden under his immediate supervision, and à propos of nothing that he can remember this man remarked that a certain stream near by, called the "Lertoll Stream," was good for the eyes, and that people used to carry this water away to bathe their eyes with. This was all the rustic knew, and therefore was all he would say.

A more intelligent and romantic individual would have garnished this simple story with a border of some

kind.

But poor Hodge had not the wit to do that, and, without adding or subtracting he passed on the tradition just as his forebears had done all these centuries. Mr. Beadon is a native of the village, and his uncle, the late Canon Beadon, was for fifty-three years the vicar of this parish, and yet this was the first time that any member of the family had ever heard of such a ridiculous superstition, and he naturally gave it little or no thought. A year or so after this trifling incident, the present vicar of the parish came in to see Mr. Beadon, and asked him if he had ever heard anything about a spring behind the "Oak Barn," called the "Lertoll Well," from which the stream of that name is supposed to flow, and if there was any tradition in the parish that this water was good for the eyes. The vicar said he asked these questions because he had just received a letter from the Bishop of Bristol inquiring if he had ever come upon such a tradition in the parish. Mr. Beadon then made known for the first time the story of the agricultural laborer, and this peasant was the humble instrument of enabling the Bishop-who is a wellknow antiquarian scholar, to trace the story of the "oak tree"-under which St. Augustine held his famous conference with the native British clergy--to this "Oak Barn." Here the historical "oak tree" once stood, and from under its branches a spring of water issued, with which the saint healed the blind. The historical incident known to the bishop and scholar gave the fact of the conference, the oak tree, and the reported healing; the oral tradition furnished by the rustic identified the place, and confirmed, in a most unintentional and ingenuous manner, the whole story of the famous conference. So that the Oak Barn in the parish of Down Ampney, not more than two miles from where I write, has now been with reasonable probability identified with St.

Augustine's "oak tree," through the casual word of a peasant dropped between the intervals of digging in Mr. Beadon's garden. But to me the most interesting part of this remarkable story is the amazing fact that Mr. Beadon's family have lived not one mile distant from the "Oak Barn" for at least sixty years, and still he had never heard of this tradition concerning the healing qualities of the "Lertoll Stream," and yet it has been passing from mouth to mouth among the humble and ignorant folk of this parish for thirteen centuries. The Venerable Bede mentions in his account of St. Augustine's conference with the native British clergy the circumstance that after the conference the saint healed a man's eyes by prayer, and-tradition adds-by bathing them with water from a spring hard by. I cannot at the moment verify this very free quotation from Bede, but I think it is substantially correct, and I leave it thus.

I spent six months as the locum tenens of a remote Norfolk country parish. My next-door neighbor, a widow lady, had married into one of the few yeoman families who still live on their own land. This was a very ancient family. My neighbor and I became very good friends, and held almost daily converse with each other.

"How is it," I asked her one day. "that the villagers never by any chance pronounce your name as you do?"

"It is sheer stupidity mixed with stubbornness," she replied.

"But have they always pronounced your name wrongly, for they seem to spell it correctly?"

"Yes; they have always persisted in spelling it one way and pronouncing it another. But the Norfolk villager is noted for his rude and ignorant independence, as it is called."

But I did not feel so sure that this would account for a habit of speech among the peasantry which was both

universal and immemorial, so far as I could learn, and I thought it a matter worth investigating. I asked several villagers why they did not pronounce this lady's name as she did, and as it was spelt. But they could give no answer, the only reply being that their fathers and mothers had always pronounced the name as they did. So I did not get very far in my investigation, till one day, in passing through a village some eight miles distant, I found that it bore the name of my yeoman family. This at once arrested my progress, and, dismounting, and giving my horse a rest, I spent several hours walking about talking with the villagers. I found that they all pronounced the name just as our own village folk did, and that in spite of the spelling to the contrary. I became very much interested, and I asked to see the church records. But this was rather difficult, as the incumbent was absent. However, I finally induced the clerk to show me the books. The records of this parish went back to the fifteenth century, and I discovered that the name I was in search of was spelt first one way and then the other, till I came to the seventeenth century-my examination went backward from the nineteenth-when it was uniformly spelt as the village folk now pronounced it. This was indeed a most important discovery, and proved in a striking manner that the peasant folk had perpetuated by word of mouth the correct original name of this ancient family, whilst the family itself had lost it. This I regard as a very remarkable instance of the purity and persistence of oral tradition in the very face of the incorrect written word, proving, as I have always held, that tradition is more trustworthy than history so called.

On my return home I greeted my neighbor by her correct traditional name, and remarked that the villagers were not so stupid, but were perhaps

even more stubborn than she had suspected. She was greatly interested in the results of my antiquarian research, but pretended not to be convinced, and always smiled when I greeted her as I did ever after-by the correct ancient family name.

Not many months ago, during a somewhat heated discussion in the smokeroom of a West End club, the following old saw was given as a perfect example of false logic: "Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands." But I contended that on the contrary this was an example both of good logic and the persistency and value of oral tradition. My intervention in the discussion was laughed at by a room full of university men, many of whom were well-known authors; and I stood there for some ten minutes quite alone contending against this brilliant company of Britons.

"But he laughs best who laughs last," and I stuck to my thesis, intimating, as politely as I could, that it was pure ignorance which caused their merriment. I then gave the following account of this classic example of false logic: When the encroachment of the shoals called the Goodwin Sands began to be dangerous to navigation, there was some sort of a commission appointed to investigate the matter, and if possible to ascertain the cause. Many expert witnesses had been heard when a common sailor took the stand and said he had always understood that Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands. Of course, he was laughed at for his pains by the wise and learned commission, and his testimony has served to amuse the knowing ones for many generations. But a little knowledge of the local tradition of Tenterden confirms the testimony of the poor ignorant sailor and turns the laugh at last upon the commission. A sum of money had been left by an enterprising citizen of the parish of Tenterden

to keep the Goodwin Sands from encroaching upon the Channel. This money was honestly applied for some time, how long is not known, and the shoals were kept clear. But the time came when these funds were diverted from their rightful purpose, and were misapplied for the erection of a steeple on the parish church. The sands were thus left to accumulate, and hence the very truthful, as well as logical, saying of the people that Tenterden steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands. Here we have a perfect bit of logic, containing a very interesting and valuable historical incident, wrapped up in a traditional nutshell-which has been handed on from generation to generation by word of mouth.

"But where is Tenterden steeple? It is nowhere near the Goodwin Sands," exclaimed several of my literary auditors at once; and I then had to supplement my lecture on the persistency and value of English oral tradition with a short discourse on English geography, explaining that there was a timestrange as it might seem to these highly literary gentlemen-when Tenterden steeple was nearer the coast than it is to-day.

The Mayor of Canterbury writing to the Times only the other day, in answer to a letter of Sir W. B. Richmond concerning the alarming condition of the cathedral tower, states that ""The Mayor and commonalty, as a body corporate, are no more responsible for the present condition of the cathedral tower than are the Goodwin Sands for that of Tenterden church steeple." The Mayor in his quotation of this old maxim has got it wrong end first, but his meaning is clear enough, and he has unwittingly evoked an example which is fatal to his arguments, for if the municipality of Canterbury is no less as well as no more responsible for the decay of the cathedral tower than Tenterden steeple was for the accumu

lation of the Goodwin Sands, then it is wholly responsible.

The ecclesiastical parish of Chipperfield-where I acted as locum tenens for nearly a year-lies for the most part within the manor of King's Langley. This was once a royal manor, and some remains of the royal manor-house are still to be seen on the top of Langley Hill. There is also a royal tomb in Langley church, and there is a tradition, which is acted upon to this day, that the lord or lady of the manor has the special privilege of raising the Royal Standard on all national festive days. All these things have, as it were, clothed King's Langley parish with an atmosphere of royalty. Now, among the traditions, there is one to the effect that during the royal residence at this manor-house there was a decree passed that the widows of the village of Chipperfield in the manor of King's Langley should not be allowed the usual dowry from their husband's estates, be they large or small. That some of the villagers believe this law to be still in force is shown by the following incident. The late lord of the manor, a few years ago, was condoling with a widow who had just lost her husband, when the old crone greatly surprised him by saying, "Yes, sir, it is hard, but the worst is, I can't keep any of his things if his children" (who were also her own) "wants to take them." "But why not?" asked the lord of the manor. "Why, sir, don't you know there is a law that no woman in Chipperfield can claim anything that belonged to her husband?"

"I know there is an idle tradition to that effect, but it has never been a law so far as I know. But what makes you think there is such a law?" "Well, sir" (I give the substance of her words), "I have always heard that once there was a king with a hunchback, who came to see our beautiful Chipperfield Common. The women of the village all

turned out to see his Majesty, and when they saw his hunchback they all laughed at him. This made the king very angry, and he then and there decreed that no Chipperfield woman should ever inherit a dowry from her husband."

The lord of the manor had lived at least for sixty years in Chipperfield, and, whilst he was familiar with this tradition, he had never before heard anything about the special circumstances connected with the origin of this royal decree. And yet this very picturesque bit of history-for history it appears to be had been passing for five centuries, by word of mouth, from one generation to another, and from one villager to another. Could anything better illustrate the unintentional secrecy and persistency of English oral tradition?

The story of a visit to Chipperfield by a hunchback king is strangely corroborated by the fact that Richard the Third was at least once in residence (between the years 1483-85) at King's Langley manor.

A curious and amusing instance of the way family reputations are sometimes perpetuated by oral traditions came under my notice in an ancient Lincolnshire country parish. I was talking one day with my cook about the various families in the parish, when in the course of our gossip the name of a very old county family became the subject of comment. Speaking of the lady who was the present head of this family, my cook said: "She be mighty good to the people, she be; but she do like her own way, she do, and she be dreadful hard on the young people. But they do say that her own young ladies" (they were all married) "be a bit wild." "What do you mean?" I asked.

"No harm, I am sure, sir, only they do say as how one of the young ladies fell into the dyke stream at the end of the first field as you goes to the cricket

ground, and that she was taken out with her long beautiful hair all down and wet by a young gentleman what was a readin' with the rector, sir."

"I don't understand."

"Well, sir, it was like this, sir. You know the rectory field" (I was living in the rectory house) "and the manor field both go down together to the dyke side by side like. Well, sir, the rector he had a young gentleman a-readin' with him for the University, and him and my lady used to meet each other o' nights at the Dyke Bridge. And the way they was found out was because my lady fell into the dyke one dark night, and the young gentleman had to pull her out and take her home all wet and drabbled like, with her long hair a-hanging down, and they do say it reached nearly to the ground. And that's how it all comes out at last that they were a-making love with each other, sir."

"When did this happen?" I inquired. "Oh, I don't know that, sir." "Did you know this young lady?" "Oh no, sir."

On further investigation, and on making inquiry of the lady of the manor herself, I found that this clandestine and very romantic meeting between the man and the maid had been the talk of the parish for more than a hundred years, and had given a reputation for wildness to the daughters of this famThe Nineteenth Century and After.

ily during all these years. Which is another proof of the persistency and truthfulness of English oral traditions, and, as I remarked to the lady of the manor, the continuity of character, to which latter, however, she demurred. It is in these quiet and remote places and by the most simple and unpremeditated methods, that the oral traditions of England are handed on from generation to generation. Written records kill them, as does also too much knowledge. But knowledge, at least in the sense of reading and writing can no longer be kept away from the peasants, so that now is the time to take stock of these most interesting and valuable traditions which are hidden away in the remote corners of the rustic mind all over England; and I fear that in another generation they will have been lost for ever.

I feel sure that almost every country parish in England contains some interesting and valuable local oral tradition, if one but knew how to get on the scent of it, however trivial it may seem. The smart up-to-date destructive critic often talks more nonsense than the ignorant local story-tellers in the old Anglo-Saxon villages, where they still keep the "veast" by old reckoning, a fortnight behind the date of national festivals as given in the modern almanack.

G. Monroe Royce.

A certain phrase about "mending or ending" has become indissolubly associated with one branch of the British Legislature. The aspirations summed up in that phrase may be the dreams of visionaries, but one section of them has been applied to the sister House in a spirit which at first sight is nothing if not practical. No one, indeed, talks

in so many words of "mending" the House of Commons, but a great many men,-some of great experience, others of yet vaster ignorance-have talked of making it business-like. It is a convenient uncontroversial phrase; it has a good chance of winning support from men of the most diverse political opinions, and it has only one obvious defect,