Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/370

 342 Collectanea.

which the party had to jump. I was a little girl of seven years old at the time, and I remember that the chimney-sweep lifted me over ! ^

"The garden-boys at Roddam used to get up morris-dancing at Christmas. It was simply dancing with wooden swords, there was no play."

Thus far my informant. I may add that, according to tradition, the land on which the house stands was granted to the ancestor of the Roddams by King Athelstan, whose pacification of Northumbria (it will be remembered that he was the first West- Saxon king whose dominion reached so far north) has left more than one trace in the traditions of the country. There is a mound south of the house at Roddam known as "Athelstan's Mount," which was opened about the middle of the nineteenth century, and two very perfect earthen vases (British, to the best of my judgment) were found in it."

Athelstan's gift is also rehearsed in the rhyming charter of Roddam : —

" I King Athelstan

Giffis heir to Paulane

Odam and Roddam

Als gude and als fair

As evir tha myne ware.

And yair to witness Maid my wyff."

In this form the charter is said to have been produced to substantiate the Roddam rights when Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife, invaded England in the time of Richard II. On the Roddam pedigree it is written as follows : —

" I King Athelstan gives unto the Roddam, From me and mine unto thee and thine,

Before my wife Maude and my daughter Maudlin and my eldest son Henry. And for a certen truth I bite this wax with my gang-tooth. As long as muir bears moss and knout grows hare, A Roddam of Roddam for evermair."

Rhyming charters such as this are generally associated with the

' Cf vol. xiii., p. 22Q.

"^ The rhyming charter of Roddam is to be found in the Dcnham Tracts, but for want of better authority accessible at the moment, I quote from Murray's Handbook to Northuviberland (A. J. C Hare).