Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/115

Rh a hideous cast-iron case. In the woods and in the village of Minestead still live some of the descendants of Purkess, who is reported to have carried the bleeding corpse in his charcoal-cart to Winchester along the road now known as the King's Road. Twelve miles away, on the extreme south-west boundary of the Forest, close to the Avon, stands a smithy, on the site of the one where, the legend says, Walter Tiril's horse was shod, and which, for that reason, to this day pays a yearly fine to the Crown: and the water close by, where the fugitive passed, is still called Tyrrel's Ford. And Rufus lies in Winchester Cathedral, his bones now mixed with those of Canute; and under a marble tomb, in the south aisle of the presbytery, sleeps his brother Richard, slain also like himself in the Forest.

So runs the story, unquestioned save here and there by some few faint doubts. As to the tradition, I think we may at once set aside its testimony. The value of mere tradition in history weighs, or ought to weigh, nothing. Here and there tradition may be true in a very general sense, as when it says the Isle of 97