Devon," of fiery dragons seen flying about certain
barrows or tumuli near Challacombe, and alighting on them, and how a
certain labouring man, having bought a small plot of waste land near
by, began depleting Broaken Bunow to build himself a house with the
material. And how, digging into the hillock, he came upon "a little
place, as it had been a large oven, fairly, strongly and closely walled
up," and breaking into this he discovered an earthen pot, which, hoping
it might contain some treasure, he stretched out his hand to seize,
when, as he put his hand upon it he heard a noise as of a great
trampling of horses coming towards him. So he rose and looked about
him, but, seeing nothing, knelt again to secure the pot, when the same
thing happened again, and so a third time also. Nevertheless he drew
out the pot and took it home, and found it to contain no treasure, but
only a few ashes and little bones. And a very little time after he
lost his senses both of sight and hearing, and died within three months.

There is another barrow also, near the same place, where I am inclined
to believe that a "mystical sciencer" worked a trick on two worthy
fellows, whom he promised to enrich with silver and gold if they would
dig into the hillock for him and find therein a great brass pan which
contained the treasure. This they did, and came to the brass pan
covered with a large stone, which the strongest of them tried to lift,
and was taken with such a faintness "that he could neither work nor
stand," and therefore called to the other to take his place. This the
man did, and was also taken with faintness; and when they both
recovered, which was in a very short space of time, the "mystical
sciencer" told them that the birds were flown and the nest only left.
And sure enough they found this true: the empty brass pan, with the
bottom bright and clean, as if a treasure had lain there, and all the
rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure
Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic
centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at
the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your
choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two
foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the shrine of your
judgment, and what truth soever there is in them, they are not unfit
tales for winter nights, when you roast crabs by the fire, whereof this