Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/324

 318 remembrance of an event may be preserved among unlettered people, are by no means unimportant, and much light, it seems to me, may be thrown on them by observing how ascertained historical events are represented in the folk-lore of civilised countries, and how long they are remembered. Let me give a few examples from my own knowledge.

We have in this neighbourhood a traditional account of some incidents connected with the flight of the Royalists from the battle of Worcester in 1652. It is a fact, recorded in Blount’s Boscobel, that the Duke of Buckingham and three companions were in hiding for some days in the woods and cottages near Blore Pipe in Staffordshire, about five miles from where I am now writing. The poor folk, mostly “squatters” on what was, and is still to some extent, a tract of woodland, are unanimous in pointing out Buckingham’s Cave in the garden of a cottage, where they say the Duke was concealed for two or three days. (I am bound to say, though, that the old owner of the cottage himself can give no more account of it than: “There was a many kings and head-men and such like, about in all countries then; and it was one of these ’ere kings as they were arter, to cut his yed off or summat, and he come and hid i’ the hole yonder for a good bit. But it’s a many years back. I reckon some ’un mun ha’ takken him his meat up, for it’s a desper’t awk’ard plaze to get at.”)

At a little distance is a wild sort of field, always known as Buckingham’s Field, where they sat the Duke fell and broke his arm, and (here the inevitable bit of folk-etymology comes in!) the valley is therefore called Armsdale to this day. One elderly man (the village innkeeper) points out the very spot where the accident happened, as his great-grandfather showed him, from the information he had received from a very old man, a sort of bailiff or wood-ranger, who (so he believed) was living at the time; which is, of course, not absolutely impossible.

Not far from Blore Pipe is the site of the battle of