Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/310

 292 Collectanea.

was given to her, and the woman soon recovered. — (From widow Linders, of Tetsworth, 12th September, 1897.)

[A figure of an old gipsy woman telling fortunes, said to repre- sent Mother Buckland, appears in the foreground of a very scarce lithograph drawn and printed by Plowman, of Oxford, in 1839, entitled " Commemoration of the Conservative Fete and Regatta held at Nuneham on the 13th August, 1839 . . . ."]

II. Prehistoric Monuments.

[The Rollright Stones and their folklore were the subject of an exhaustive paper by Mr. A. J. Evans, printed in Folk-Lo?-e in 1894 (vi., 6-51), but the following items were collected quite inde- pendently, and may therefore have some value for purposes of comparison. It will be remembered that the stones consist of a circle, a ruined dolmen called " The Whispering Knights," and a single standing stone called " The King," which are popularly said to be an invading king, five of his knights, and his army, turned into stones by a witch. If they could have topped the hill on which they stand and looked down on Long Compton, which lies just the other side, the king would have become King of England. Mr. Evans (p. 19) quotes the traditional verses which embody this story. In my own copy of Dr. R. Plot's Natural History of Oxfordshire, 2nd ed. 1705, are some MS. notes in a contemporary hand, and among them what is probably the earliest recorded version of these rhymes : —

" Said the Danish General,

If Long Compton I cou'd see Then King of England I shou'd be. But reply'd the [" British" erased] Saxon General. Then rise up Hill & stand fast Stone — For King of England thou'lt be none."]

[The stones are said to go down the hill to drink at a spring Evans, I.e. p. 24.] It was formerly said [writes Carter] that they went down to the brook on New Year's Eve to drink at twelve o'clock. Now the saying is, that they go down when they hear the clock at Long Compton strike twelve.

[Though often moved, the stones would always have to be brought back; Evans, I.e. p. 27.] The old king that stands by himself on the side of the road was drawn by eight horses to Long