treme punishment, worse in severity than death itself, might have been devised to satisfy the law. With The end was now at hand. an ejaculation, 'Oh, blessed Virgin, aid me! Oh, unhappy France!' he expired. But he had made one speech which almost imported the element of romance into the ghastly scene. The malicious, while giving credit to the Orleans family for deep grief and sympathy, credited them with a certain complacency, human enough, which found comfort in thinking that this catastrophe had effectually cleared the road to the throne. Had such a feeling been in their breast, it must have been chilled by the strangely dramatic incident that occurred. When the Duke saw the Duchess overwhelmed with anguish at the surgical operation they were performing, and vainly tried to console her, he suddenly said, in a strong voice, 'My love, you must not let yourself be overwhelmed with sorrow in this way. You must take care of yourself for the sake of the child that you bear next your heart!' At these words, continues the account, a sort of electric flutter passed over all present, with the exception, it might be insinuated, of those whose interests the news promised to affect. There was something, indeed, mysteriously apropos in this sudden announcement of life in the midst of death. A strange mystical being who had visions had been brought to the King a few months before, and had uttered a sort of exalted prophecy, 'Out of death should spring life!' These words were now recalled over the stage couch on which the dead prince was stretched. No announcement of the kind, or of such importance, was, perhaps, ever made under such circumstances, or so much apropos; and thus mysteriously was the coming of the COUNT OF CHAMBORD announced to the world. WHE THE FOLK-LORE OF DEVONSHIRE. THEN Sir Francis Palgrave said that the life of a popular belief ceases the moment it is written down, he uttered but a half truth. The life may change; but it rarely ceases altogether until the causes which at first localised or nourished the belief have themselves disappeared. A wild and solitary country will retain its folk-lore until the neighbouring dwellers become sufficiently philosophical 'to make modern and familiar' things which their ruder forefathers regarded as supernatural and causeless.' And this does not take place until the country itself is changed, either by increased cultivation or by the inroads of sightseeing strangers. It is curious to trace the gradual progress towards extinction through which the old beliefs pass under such circumstances. Like older inhabitants before a conquering race, they are slowly driven towards the remoter districts of the country, where they linger after the fashion of glacial plants on some mountain summit. Chance or a rude hand destroys the little patch of vegetation; and the long-descended life then really ceases. Devonshire has more than one of these remote districts; where a folk-lore of unusual interest, from the peculiar history of the country, still lingers. In or adjoining the northern division of the county, there are not only the wastes of Exmoor, but many outlying tracts, apart from railways or from great roads, intersected by a network of lanes and cattle tracks at least as old as the days of King Alfred, and rarely visited by strangers of any degree. These regions of rude 'cotes' and 'worthys' are not very picturesque. There is little to attract or to detain the passing traveller. But for this very reason they are the strongholds of old tradition; and VOL. VIII.—NO. XLVIII. NEW SERIES. the dreary, swampy moor, or the group of half-shattered oak trees has lost nothing of its ancient power over the imagination or the superstition of the natives. In this part of Devonshire a modern 'philosopher' might, perhaps, find it difficult to recognise the influences of wild land and solitary nature which age after age have fostered, if they did not at first create, the local folk-lore and traditions. But if he turns southward, and wanders for a time among the granite tors of Dartmoor, he will be compelled to acknowledge that the whishhounds and the pixies have there established themselves in a very congenial home. Dartmoor is one of those unchanged, unchangeable districts in which old-world beliefs are sure to linger latest. Its wide wastes and rocky hill-sides can still produce their effect, and, if the season be judiciously chosen, form one of the best possible backgrounds for a tale of ghosts and spirits.' Unless the stranger be a very philosophical person indeed, he will be ready enough to acknowledge the power of the 'ancient moor,' should he find himself in the gathering twilight under the rocks of Houndtor, or among the solitary wildernesses where the Dart and many another river steal from their fountains. The dusky hill rising steep against the sky, with all its hollows and foldings, marked here and there, it may be, by a knotted thorn or a bush of stunted rowan; the foreground blocks of lichen-stained granite, piled in fantastic shapes, and growing more and more fantastic in the fading light; the deep hush and stillness, unbroken in some parts of the moor even by the tinkle of a streamlet; all combine, with the sense of solitude and the absence of all sign of human work or labour, to produce something of that 'eerie' feeling, that sense of 3н the mysterious in nature, which ages ago may have affected a British or a West Saxon wanderer on the same spot and in the same manner. Only for him the vague feeling took the definite forms of wild women, brown men of the moors, or elves of might. For us— The fair humanities of old religion, have altogether disappeared. The It is hardly necessary to begin by attempting to trace in any detail the gradual advance of the West Saxons into the old Damnonian kingdom; the country which now forms Devonshire, Cornwall, and part of Somersetshire, and which was known to the English as West Wales. The history of this kingdom and the progress of the invaders are questions of very great that need be remarked here is, that interest and of equal obscurity. All the advance was gradual, and that at different times there were different lines of march or boundary between the two races. There are indications that at one period-in the great uncertainty which prevails it is dangerous to attempt to fix itthe march line ran nearly in the course of the existing boundary be tween the present counties of Devon and Somerset, following the crest of the Blackdown hills south of Wellington, by Bampton and Dulverton, and so through the wild country of Exmoor forest to the sea. It is, perhaps, significant that the English chronicles mention a great fight at Beandune (generally held to be Bampton) in the year 614; when two thousand and sixty. five 'Walana' (Britons) were slain. Some other Beandune may, perhaps, be meant, since there is difficulty in placing so decisive a battle west of the Parret at this early period; but however this may be, the local folklore seems to point out in a very remarkable manner an ancient line of boundary. On the highest crest of the Blackdown hills, and commanding a very wide view over much of Devon and Somerset, is a great 'tump' or barrow known by the name of Symonsborough. It is said to be raised over the grave of a king named Symon, whose fastness or stronghold lay in the heart of Exmoor, where his name again appears at Symonsbath. This is a deep, clear pool on the river Barle, overhung by bare moorland heights, and marked by a group of ancient ash trees. In it, say the neighbours, 'Sir Symon the King' was wont to disport himself daily; and on the recognised. It is just possible (alriver bank above the pool was gather- though the time at which the name ed all the spoil of the surrounding first appears there is somewhat country, which Symon from time to doubtful) that it is Sigmund who time distributed among his followers. figures in Simonsward,' as the Now the mark or boundary between parish of St. Breward in Cornwall cognate tribes, and still more be- is frequently called. This is the tween hostile races, was among all parish in which rise the famous Corthe Teutons placed under the pro- nish hills, Roughtor and Browntection either of some great deity willy-to be seen from the coast or of a hero hardly less divine. In near Ilfracombe on the one hand, this case the King Symon of popu- and from the high land in Zennor lar tradition preserves, there can be near the Land's End on the other. little doubt, the name of a hero who Traditions of Arthur abound there; must have been regarded in this and according to one story Simon country as an especial guardian of Ward' was the brewer' (Breward) uninhabited wastes and land divi- of the king's hall. But St. Breward sions-Sigmund 'the dragon slayer.' lies just at the limit of a line of He is mentioned with this title in the 'stows'-Michaelstow, Davidstow, poem of Beowulf, where he is also Jacobstow-which indicate early called 'Wælse's offspring . . . of English possession and settlement. wanderers far the most famous over They do not occur farther west; and all the earth.' Sigmund and Beo- one cannot help fancying that here wulf were the two great heroes of too we may have Sigmund as the the Walsingas-the Anglian race guardian of a march, and that the which gave name to Walsingham traditions of the two races, Britons and other places on the eastern side and Teutons, are here in curious of England. But the fame of Sig- juxtaposition. However this may mund at least was by no means be, the name is frequent elsewhere. confined to his own kith and kin. To give only a few instances. We The Sigmund of Beowulf is the have 'Symonds Yat' (Gate) on the same as the Sigmund of the Nibe- Wye, so long a boundary stream, as lungen Lied, where he is made father the names of 'English' or 'Welsh' of Sigfried, the hero of the poem. Bicknor, one on either side of the But in these Old High Dutch tra- 'Yat,' still indicate; we have a ditions, Sigfried the son was the Dorsetshire 'Symonsbury;' and to 'dragon slayer;' among the Low turn northward to Anglian districts, Dutch of this country and of the where we might reasonably expect Continent it was Sigmund the to find traces of so great an Anglian father. This is a difference of hero, we have 'Simon Howe,' a large which many examples might be barrow on the highest point of the quoted; the same adventures being Goathland moors, near Whitby; attributed by one race to a father 'Simon's Seat,' on the ridge beor remoter ancestor which by tween the valleys of the Wharfe and another and kindred race are Nidd; 'Simon Fell' a shoulder of assigned to the son. As a dragon the Yorkshire Ingleborough; and slayer and a mighty wanderer- the range of the Simonside' hills as great as Woden himself—Sig- in Northumberland-a wild, dreary, mund here became a guardian of rarely visited region, haunted by a boundaries; and the numerous in- race of grisly dwarfs, the dark stances in which the name Symon elves' of Teutonic heathendom. or Simon occurs either in wild, uninhabited districts, or on the ascertained line of ancient marks,' seem to prove how widely he was thus To come back to Devonshire. The Exmoor border, as it windsr northward from Simonsbath to the sea, is marked by numerous large bar rows, of which the Chapman's him much; hoping that some great barrows'-a name which takes us good would befall him, and that far back to early days of wayfaring there might be some treasure there -are the most important. They hidden. Wherewith encouraged, he lie nearly on the present border be- plies his work earnestly until he tween Devon and Somerset, and had broken a hole through this wall, may well continue the old line of in the cavity whereof he espied an 'mark' indicated by the Sigmund earthen pot. . . . But as he thrust names-whether that was, as has in his arm and fastened his hand been before suggested, a line of thereon he suddenly heard, or seemed division between distinct races, or to hear, the noise of the trampling between Sumorsætas' and 'Defe- or treading of horses coming, as he nas 'the Teutonic colonists who thought, towards him, which caused took possession of the country now him to forbear and arise from the known as Somersetshire and Devon- place, fearing the comers would shire. At any rate these barrows take his purchase from him (for he are, and have always been, the sub- assured himself it was treasure); jects of much remarkable local tra- but looking about every way to see dition. The fiery dragons, which what company this was, he saw in the North always guard the trea- neither horse nor man in view. To sures of the tomb, have often been the pot again he goes, and had the seen lighting on them; and those like success a second time; and yet, who have ventured to dig into them looking all about, could ken nothing. have been punished in various ways. At the third time he brings it away, Even when they have persevered, and therein only a few ashes and and reached the urn containing the bones, as if they had been of children prize, they have been overpowered or the like. But the man, whether by a mysterious faintness at the by the fear, which yet he denied, or moment of uncovering it, and have other cause which I cannot compreonly recovered to find the treasure hend, in very short time after lost which it must of course have senses both of sight and hearing, held, conveyed away by the watch- and in less than three months conful guardian. Westcote, who wrote suming, died.' his Survey of Devon early in the seventeenth century, tells a story of one of these barrows which preserves so much Northern lore, and reads so much like a passage from an Icelandic saga, that it is worth quoting at length. A daily labouring man, he says, 'by the work of his hand and sweat of his brow having gotten a little money, was desirous to have a place to rest himself in old age, and therefore bestowed it on some acres of waste land, and began to build a house thereon near or not far from a barrow named Broakenborough, whence he fetched stones and earth to further his work; and having pierced into the bowels of the hillock he found therein a little place, as it had been a large oven, fairly, strongly, and closely walled up; which comforted This mounted host which the tomb-breaker heard coming towards him, is the 'Gannreid' or 'spirit ride' of Norway; a piece of wild folk-lore well known, under varying forms, in all Teutonic countries as well as in Scandinavia. It is the old hunt of Odin,' the 'Roland's hunt' of the Black Forest, and the medieval Familia Hellequini'the 'Maisne Hellequin' whose appearances are recorded by sundry chroniclers, the most striking story being one told by Ordericus Vitalis. The occurrence of this old belief in Devonshire is one among many proofs that although our English ancestors had become, nominally at least, Christians when (according to the usual belief) they first established themselves within the limits of the present county, they never |