[17] Leeds Mercury, January 3rd, 1885, communicated by Mr. Wm. Grainge of Harrogate.
[18] Mr. Axon says it is current in Lancashire and in Cornwall, Antiquary, xi. 168; Sir John Rhys gives two Welsh versions in his Celtic Folklore, ii. 458-462, 464-466; a Yorkshire version in ballad form is to be found in Castillo's Poems in the North Yorkshire Dialect (1878), under the title of "T' Lealholm Chap's lucky dreeam," Antiquary, xii. 121; an Ayrshire variant relates to the building of Dundonald Castle, and is given in Chambers's Pop. Rhymes of Scotland, 236.
[19] Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, iii. 507, suggests that the animal carving represents a bear. There is nothing to confirm this and readers may judge for themselves by reference to the illustrations, which are from photographs taken in Swaffham Church.
[20] I discussed the details in the Antiquary, vol. x. pp. 202-205.
[21] This story was communicated by "W.F." to the St. James's Gazette, March 15th, 1888. Its continuation, in order to point a moral, does not belong to the real story, which is contained in the part I have quoted.
[22] Saga Library, Heimskringla, iii. 126.
[23] These have been collected and commented upon with his usual learning and research, by Mr. Hartland in the Antiquary, xv. 45-48. Blomefield, in his History of Norfolk, iii. 507, points out that the same story is found in Johannes Fungerus' Etymologicon Latino-Græcum, pp. 1110-1111, though it is here narrated of a man at Dort in Holland, and in Histoires admirables de nostre temps, par Simon Goulart, Geneva, 1614, iii. p. 366. Professor Cowell, in the third volume of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society Transactions, p. 320, has printed a remarkable parallel of the story which is to be found in the great Persian metaphysical and religious poem called the Masnavi, written by Jaláluddin, who died about 1260. J. Grimm discussed these treasure-on-the-bridge stories in Kleinere Schriften, iii. 414-428, and did not attach much value to them.
[24] It is not unimportant in this connection to find that London itself assumes an exceptional place in tradition. Mr. Frazer notes a German legend about London, Golden Bough (2nd ed.), iii. 235; Pausanias, v. 292. Mr. Dale has drawn attention to the Anglo-Saxon attitude towards Roman buildings in his National Life in Early English Literature, 35.
[25] See Archæologia, xxv. 600; xxix. 147; xl. 54; Arch. Journ., i. 112.
[26] I have worked this point out in my Governance of London.