ix.
258.
[28] Mommsen's account of the Pontifex Maximus should be consulted,
_Hist. Rome_, i. 178; and _cf._ Fowler, _Roman Festivals_, 114, 147,
214.
[29] Mrs. Gomme, _Traditional Games_, i. 347.
[30] Bingley, _North Wales_, 1814, p. 252.
[31] See my _Folklore Relics of Early Village Life_, 29; Tylor,
_Primitive Culture_, i. 97. This case was reported in the newspapers at
the time of its occurrence. It came to England from the _London and
China Telegraph_, from which the _Newcastle Chronicle_, 9 February,
1889, copied the following statement:--
"The boatmen on the Ganges, near Rajmenal, somehow came to believe that
the Government required a hundred thousand human heads as the
foundation for a great bridge, and that the Government officers were
going about the river in search of heads. A hunting party, consisting
of four Europeans, happening to pass in a boat, were set upon by the
one hundred and twenty boatmen, with the cry 'Gulla Katta,' or
cut-throats, and only escaped with their lives after the greatest
difficulty."
[32] I have worked out this fact in my _Governance of London_, 46-68,
202-229.
[33] See Turner, _Hist. of Anglo-Saxons_, ii. 207-222; _Y Cymmrodor_,
xi. 61-101.
[34] A passage in William of Malmesbury points to the fact of the
Bretons in the time of Athelstan looking upon themselves as exiles
from the land of their fathers. Radhod, a prefect of the church at
Avranches, writes to King Athelstan as "Rex gloriose exultator
ecclesiae ... deprecamur atque humiliter invocamus qui in exulatu et
captivitate nostris meritis et peccatis, in Francia commoramur" etc.,
_De Gestis Regum Anglorum_ (Rolls Ed.), i. 154.
[35] Rhys, _Celtic Folklore_, ii. 466. Sir John Rhys acknowledges his
indebtedness to me for lending him my Swaffham notes, but at that time
I had not formed the views stated above and Sir John Rhys confessed his
difficulty in classifying and characterising these stories (p. 456).
[36] In the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, anno 418, and in _Ethelward's
Chronicle_, A.D. 418, it is recorded that "those of the Roman race who
were left in Britain bury their treasures in pits, thinking that
hereafter they might have better fortune, which never was the case."
[37] Buried treasure legends are worth examining carefully, especially
with reference to their geographical distribution, with a view of
ascertaining how far they follow the direction of the Roman, English,
Danish and Norman Conquests.
|