Page:Folklore1919.djvu/676

310 gate into a field, and on this gate is said to lean a headless man "in full canonicals"—Abbot Richard, in fact! The word "Dod" is said to be a corruption of "dead," and the name is supposed to have been given from this circumstance, although the more prosaic believe the lane to have been called after a "Miss Dod" who lived hard by. "Miss Dod" does not seem to be a very convincing personality, and the lane may well have been so called long before her day—whenever that may have been. As to the "full canonicals," I think that I am, under the circumstances, entitled to pass them over as an added gloss merely.

The second story concerns the Abbey Church itself. A corner of the ruins, towards the East end and some way from the outer wall of the original Church, is known as the "haunted corner" because the listener at a certain hole in the masonry can hear St. Dunstan working at his forge. A sound like the noise of a blow-pipe is audible, and is, of course, caused by the wind. I am not absolutely certain of my reference, but either Warner or Collinson, in writing of Glastonbury, mentions that "the head of an abbot is sometimes seen there," and is thought to be St. Dunstan. There can be no reason for connecting this saint with a bodiless head, and one would sooner expect it to be the head of the mutilated Richard Whiting; but the fact that the "haunted corner" is the traditional site of the forge (and it was not within the limits of the Church in Dunstan's day) seems to point to the more famous legend of the saint's conflict with the devil whilst working at his forge, and to imply that Dunstan may have thrown his tongs in the face of some apparition that he fancied he saw. The Glastonbury folk appear to be retelling very ancient legends with new names—one is reminded of the process pointed out by Mr. Baring Gould, when the "White Lady," traceable to Freyja, becomes associated in the popular mind with some local celebrity. The bodiless head and the headless body probably belonged in far away times to the god Urien-Bran, the "half-dead King." Possibly all stories of headless apparitions can be traced to this origin. The third ghost story rather confirms this; for it is rumoured that Prior Thorne "walks" in the upper part of the