Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/359

 Collectanea. 337

once the Common arable fields, and end at Woeful Dane's Bottom, to which I shall refer presently.

Tozvn-ronoval traditions. — Although there can have been no breach of continuity in the occupation of the site from very early times, I have met with a removal tradition at Minchinhampton. A small cattle-dealer gave it in this form : " Hampton was built at first about a mile further east, but there was no water supply, so they moved it." I was inclined to put this down as a variant of the church-removal tradition (see below), but, on the other hand, other traditions of town-removal or town-destruction exist at Frampton Mansell,"* near traces of earthworks, and at a valley below the village of Camp, two miles north of Bisley.

Church-reynoval traditions. — At Bisley and Minchinhampton there are also church-removal traditions, and another at Church- down, near Cheltenham ; in all three places the devil is said to have pulled down by night the work that was done during the day, and in each case the legend is connected with a prehistoric hill-top site. But at Churchdown, contrary to the general rule, the site which could not be built upon was at the foot of the hill, the church being actually built upon the summit.

Common lands. — Minchinhampton offers an excellent example of a hill-top community, with Common grazing grounds stretching to the escarpment on the west, and Common arable fields (finally enclosed about 181 2) as far as the scene of the removal-tradition on the east. Within living memory, anyone had the right to build a dwelling on the grazing common, if he could once light a fire upon the hearth before he was interrupted. Neighbours used to help each other in the hasty erection of a dwelling while the Hayward was being well plied with drink in some other quarter.

Looking across the western valley that bounds Minchinhampton Common, we see Selsley Hill, which is partly Common, and has earthworks, including a tumulus called " The Toots." ^ On

■* G. F. Playne, On the Ancient Camps of Gloucesieishire in Proceedings of the Cotteswotd Naturalists' Field Club (1877), page 215.

'On "Toot Hills" see W. Johnson, Byways in British Archaeology, pp. 70 et seq. He derives the name from A.S. totian, "to. project, to peep," in allusion to the swelling or protuberance of the ground.

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