Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/67

Rh was known in 1815, and was also used by Sir Walter Scott. We can, however, go further back still, for Alban Butler, in his Life of St. Hilda or Hild, Abbess of Whitby. remarks:—

Now Woodward the geologist lived from 1665 to 1728, which shows us that the belief cannot have been altogether modern; and we are taken yet one step further back by a reference in the second part of Drayton's Polyolbion (1622, Song 28), in which he remarks with reference to Whitby:—

The other great centre in England round which the snakestone legend centres is Keynsham, in Somersetshire. The general form of the legend is very similar to that which is current at Whitby. The Rev. J. Mitford is quoted by J. E. Harting, the editor of White's The Natural History etc. of Selborne, for a "fabulous legend which says that St. Keyna, from whom [as he erroneously supposes] the place [Keynsham] takes its name, resided here in a solitary wood, [which we miss in the Whitby versions], full of venomous serpents, and her prayers converted them into stones, which still retain their shape." White himself, in his immortal work, (which appeared in 1789), calls them cornua ammonis or ammon's horns, and John Walcott