Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/180

 driven into the river and drowned, after affording much entertainment to the townsfolk; thereupon the bull-running was established as a sport. The legend does not sound so improbable as some legends do, but whether based on fact or not I cannot say. It is only for me to repeat stories as they come to my ear.

In the same street outside Browne's "Callis," we further learnt, the old market cross stood which was taken down about the year 1790. According to ancient engravings it appears to have been a structure with a tall stone shaft in the centre, surmounted by a cross which was duly knocked off by the Puritans; from this central shaft a roof extended to a number of columns around, thus forming a shelter for the market folk. This market cross is not to be confounded with a Queen Eleanor's Cross that stood beyond the Scot-Gate about half a mile from Stamford on the old York and Edinburgh road. A glorious example, this latter must have been, of one of these picturesque crosses erected in pious memory of a loved consort, judging at least from a description of it we observed quoted in a local guide-book we found in our hotel, which runs thus:—"A vision of beauty, glorious with its aggregate of buttresses and niches and diaper, and above all with the statues of Eleanor and Edward; the most beautiful of that or any age. Shame to those savages in the Great Rebellion who swept away the very foundations of it! But the cry of superstition hunts down such things as these a great deal faster than age can despatch them."