Latest Folklore

Look, I know it’s a well, but this has got a stone (kind of) connected with it. I just report these things. You’ll have to see if it’s still there, if you’re passing.

Welsh Folk-lore Items. -- At the Archaeological Association Congress at Tenby some interesting notes were given. The party having halted at Gumfreyston church it was noted that on the hillside, below the church, there is one of the holy wells which are not infrequent in Wales.

Some curious old customs connected with the parish were given in a paper prepared by Miss Bevan, from which it appears that within the last fifty years on Easter Day the villagers used to repair to a well called “the Pinwell,” and throw a crooked pin into the water. This was called “throwing Lent away.” The field in which this well is situate is called “Verwel”[..]

On Lammas Sunday little houses, called “Lammas Houses,” were set up on “corse.” They were made of sods, reeds, and sticks, and a fire was lighted inside them, and apples roasted, people paying a penny to go in and have a roasted apple.

At the bottom of the street, near the brook, is a large upstanding stone with a small round hole in the top, and there is a saying that until you have put your finger in this hole you cannot say you have been in St. Florence* church.

(*This is surely St Lawrence’s church.)
From Notes and Queries
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 2, No. 11. (Nov., 1884), pp. 348-351.

A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (S. Lewis, 1833), as quoted on the Genuki pages, mentions the ‘highly medicinal properties’ of the iron-rich springs, and the likelihood of Gumfreston being able to become a fashionable spot.
genuki.org.uk/big/wal/PEM/Gumfreston/index.html

Some more info and pics on the Cistercian Way pages, here
cistercian-way.newport.ac.uk/place.asp?PlaceID=123

More fairies at Castell Dinas Bran: Llandyn Hall is on the south-east slope of the hill.

Fairies under Trees.-- One of our readers has forwarded us an old document, dated Nov. 30th, 1817, containing a quaint description of a walnut tree of extraordinary dimensions. It grew on a rock of limestone at Llanddyn Farm, near Llangollen; its height was about twenty-five yards, and its boughs covered a space of ground about thirty yards diameter. According to a story in the neighbourhood, this tree was very old. A man 95 years of age said that he remembered a bough of it being broken by the snow when he was a child, and that his grandfather used to tell the family that, in olden times, fairies used in the dead of night to celebrate their marriages under this walnut tree. ---Shrewsbury Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1882. From
Notes and Queries
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3. (Mar., 1883), pp. 90-93.

Midway down the cliff, is a large cavern, the gloomy recesses of which are said in the traditions of the peasantry to be inhabited by Pixies, or Pisgies...

...The entrance to the cavern is by a natural arch, about twelve feet wide, and ten high: the passage continues nearly of the same dimensions for about twenty yards, when it suddenly diminishes to nearly six feet wide, and four high, and still decreasing in size, extends about fifteen yards further. Here it expands into a spacious chamber, which dividing into two parts, runs off in different directions; but the rock dropping, neither of them can be pursued to any great distance; though tradition asserts, that a dog put into one of them, came out at an aperture in Botter rock*, about three miles distant.

p102 /104 in The Beauties of England and Wales, by John Britton etc. 1803.

*This must be Bottor Rock, at SX 826 804

A vast number of places out of the Highlands still retain their Gaelic names, and it is interesting to understand them; for example, TINTOCK is the highest mountain in Lanarkshire; and the name has a meaning in Gaelic, “The house of the mist” (Tigh n’ to-ag); and a local rhyme shews that to be the true meaning of the name, which has no English meaning.

On Tintock tap there is a mist,
And in the mist there is a kist,
And in the kist there is a cup,
And in the cup there is a drap;
Tak up the cup and drink the drap,
And set the cup on Tintock tap.

There was a popular tale about this mountain which I failed to get; but a cup, with some mysterious drink, is common in Celtic traditions.

p351 of Popular Tales of the West Highlands By John Francis Campbell (1862).

In the eighth volume of the Archaeologia, is an account, by Mr. Hayman Rooke, of some ancient remains on Hathersage Moor, particularly of a Rocking-stone, twenty-nine feet in circumference; and near it, a large stone, with a rock-bason, and many tumuli, in which urns, beads, and rings, have been found. At a little distance he mentions observing another remarkable stone, thirteen feet, six inches in length, which appeared to have been placed by art on the brow of a precipice, and supported by two small stones. On the top is a large rock-bason, four feet, three inches in diameter; and close to this, on the south side, a hollow, cut like a chair, with a step to rest the feet upon. This, in the traditions of the country, is called Cair’s Chair [Carl’s Chair?]. Not far from this spot are also some Rocking-stones, “and of such a kind as seems plainly to indicate, that the first idea of forming Rocking-stones at all, was the appearance of certain stupendous masses, left by natural causes in such a singular situation, as to be even prepared, as it were, by the hand of Nature, to exhibit such a curious kind of equipoise.” (Munimental Antiqua, vol 1).

p477-478 of ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ (1802).

When all the world shall be aloft,
Then Hallam-shire shall be God’s croft;
Winkabank and Temple-brough,
Will buy all England through and through.

Winkabank is a wood, upon a hill, near Sheffield, where there are some remains of an old camp. Temple-brough stands between the Rother and the Don, about a quarter of a mile from the place where these two rivers meet...

p235 of ‘A Provincial Glossary’ by Francis Grose (1811). Whatever it means.

On Pen Dinas, a very high and steep hill, near the bridge over the Rheidiol, is a large entrenchment, still in a good state of preservation, and where, Caradoc informs us, Rhys ap Grufydd, in 1113, encamped his forces, which, by a manoeuvre of the English, were enticed from the hill over the bridge, to besiege Aberystwyth castle, where they were surrounded and cut off almost to a man.

The tradition of the town attributes this entrenchment to the forces employed by Cromwell to beseige the castle.

p16 of ‘Excursions in North Wales’, ed. by John Hicklin, 1847. Online at google books.

A story about the circular churchyard. TP Ellis doesn’t believe its druidic roots either.

The church stands in the middle of a circular graveyard, one of the most perfect specimens of the type left to us.. ..The reason why it is circular is this. In olden times, the altar in a church was a very holy place indeed; more holy than it is generally regarded now, for people believed that, on the altars of the Church, Christ was, in the strictest literal sense of the word, actually present. That being so, anyone who claimed the protection of the altar, no matter what he had done, could not be touched. He was at once protected by the altar and by God from the vengeance of man, and round the sacred altar a circle was drawn, within which a man, so long as he remained within that circle, could claim sanctuary for seven years and seven days.

The graveyard at Llanelltyd was a sanctuary circle of the church, and the limits of the circle were settled in this way: the ploughman stood at the foot of the altar,with his arm outstretched, and, in his outstretched hand, he held the yoke of his plough-team. A plough team consisted of eight oxen, yoked two abreast, and the yoke extended from the front of the first couple to the end of the plough. Holding the yoke in his hand, the ploughman, no doubt with assistance, swept it round in a circle, and all land within that circle, which was called the “erw,” became holy ground. That is the origin of the phrase “God’s acre,” for “erw” means “acre.” It was the immediate circle of God’s protection, not of the dead, but of the living, however guilty.

People, I think rather fancifully, go a great deal further back than that in explaining the old Welsh circular graveyards. They associate them with the ancient stone-circles of the Druids, or whoever it was who made stone-circles.

Another object worthy of notice in the Llanelltyd church is an old stone, on the top of which there is incised a footprint, and underneath an inscription which reads in Latin, “The mark of Rhodri is on the top of this stone, which he placed there when he set out on a pilgrimage.” Nothing is known about Rhodri, for that or Rhydderch appears to be the name..

From chapter 9 of The Story of Two Parishes Dolgelley and Llanelltyd, by TP Ellis (1928)

From the Merioneth Local History Website / Merionnydd Gwefan Hanes Lleol:
rootsweb.com/~wlsmer2/DolgaLLan/llanchch.htm

Seems like there’s some confusion over the names.. Rhodri.. Kenric.. hmm.

Among the traditions attaching to megaliths and boulders a very common one is that they have been hurled to their place by giants, and crosses have been added by giants to this sport. The famous Hurle Stone at Chillingham, much famed for its circumambulatory ritual expressed in the jingling rhyme:

“Wind about and turn again,
And thrice round the Hurl Stane.
Round about and wind again,
Thrice round the Hurl Stane”

is actually a Christian cross. In this case the acquisition of the tradition may be due to the conformation of the shattered shaft which is pointed and inclines to the east, thus giving it “from a distance the look of a gigantic cross-bow bolt hurled here.“**

*Denham Tracts, ii, p142.
**History of Northumberland (Northumberland County History Committee) vol.xiv, 1935, pp323-4

In Pre-Christian Survivals in Connection with Crosses in the North of England
E. M. Guest
Folklore, Vol. 52, No. 3. (Sep., 1941), pp. 224-228.

So is the idea that it was a cross actually part of the folklore? To my untrained eye it seems more convincing crossbow bolt. And when a giant’s thrown it, you just know it’s a standing stone and not a cross shaft. Probably.

Abbotsbury Garland-Day Procession stopped. Chief Constable’s Apology to Parish Council.
The Daily Express of May 14, 1954, reported that the village constable of Abbotsbury had stopped the children’s Garland-Day Procession as it danced its way through the fishing village to the sea, on the ground that it was “begging” and was against the law. He also confiscated the collection amounting to £1 1s. 7 1/2d. The uproar reached Mr. John Fox-Strangways, Chairman of the parish council and son of the Earl of Ilchester, lord of the manor. He rang up a solicitor and said that the village would take steps to preserve its ancient and picturesque custom. The Thanksgiving Garland is blessed annually and thrown into the sea from whence comes their livelihood. In the evening the children put the Garland on its pole and again danced down to the sea, while the police were busy preparing a legal action.

The Times of May 20 announced that the Chief Constable of Dorset had expressed his sincere apologies for the “unfortunate occurrence” to the Abbotsbury parish council and said that the constable had acted on his own initiative, without the knowledge of the divisional superintendent. “It is no part of my policy to interfere with old village customs,” he stated. Mr. Fox-Strangways was authorised to take any necessary action to establish the legality of the Garland Day custom.

Proof that the Express has been complaining about Political Correctness for decades. p175 in Folk Life and Traditions
E. F. Coote Lake
Folklore, Vol. 65, No. 3/4. (Dec., 1954), pp. 172-175.

..I walked across to Criccieth Station; but on my way I was directed to call at a farm house called Llwyn y Mafon Uchaf, where I was to see Mr. Edward Llewelyn, a bachelor then seventy-six years of age. He is a native of the neighbourhood, and has always lived in it; moreover, he has now been for some time blind. He had heard a good many fairy tales.

.. He told me of a man at Ystum Cegid, a farm not far off, having married a fairy wife on condition that he was not to touch her with any kind of iron on pain of her leaving him for ever. Then came the usual accident in catching a horse in order to go to a fair at Carnarvon, and the immediate disappearance of the wife. At this point Mr. Llewelyn’s sister interposed to the effect that the wife did once return and address her husband in the rhyme, Os bydd anwyd arfy mab, &c.

From chapter three of
Celtic Folklore Welsh And Manx
by John Rhys
[1901] (online at the sacred texts archive).
sacred-texts.com/neu/cfwm/cf105.htm#page_44

Surely the fairies had something to do with the cromlech – it can’t be coincidence that the husband came from that farm?

The ‘usual incident’ is that the husband had tried to throw a bridle over his horse, but accidentally touched his fairy wife with it. The rhyme is some motherly advice for the children she’d left behind:
“If my son should feel it cold,
Let him wear his father’s coat;
If the fair one feel the cold,
Let her wear my petticoat.”

Just to the north east of the church, at ~SN101270 (there’s a public footpath to it from the road) is/was St Teilo’s Well. As Kammer’s added the area of the church, I won’t feel too guilty adding this. It is very long, and I have cut it down somewhat – but it’s such a popularly cited case (what with the alleged Celtic Head symbolism) that I thought it good to have the original account.

[The landlady of Llandeilo farm-house] told me of St. Teilo’s Well.. adding that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked her if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told; the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family: to be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. One of her sons, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions [at the church], that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else.

Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. “What skull?” said I. “St. Teilo’s skull,” was the answer. “Where do you get the saint’s skull?” I asked. “Here it is”, was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine.

I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was a thick, strong skull*, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. You all know it, probably: the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo – not simply one – and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one.

I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been very much worn by its owner; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Llandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpth a dead Teilo each. Another view, however, is possible: namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos into three, in order to gratify the Welsh fondness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there [..] that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well [..and] that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:- The saint had a favourite maid-servant from the Pembrokeshire Llandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his death was approaching, he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that at the end of a year’s time she was to take his skull to the other Llandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it [..]

I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes of the site being chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well-paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well-ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, do not believe in the efficacy of the well, or take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, to hand the skull full of water to those who persevere in their belief in it.

In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, when the walls of the church have fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of ancient beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakeably to an ancient priesthood of this spring of water.

p75-77 of
Sacred Wells in Wales
John Rhys; T. E. Morris
Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Mar., 1893), pp. 55-79.

*In his Celtic Folklore, Welsh And Manx [1901] he says it was the ‘upper portion’ of the skull.

Some more details in the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1892-3)l

This possibly refers to the stone-walled square holy well at SH242294, just called ‘Ffynnon Sant’ on Coflein.

Myrddin Fardd* [..] mentioned Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan,, or the Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Lleyn. In the case of this well it is necessary, when going to it and coming from it, to be careful not to utter a word to anybody, or to turn to look back. What one has to do at the well is to bathe the warts with a rag or clout which has grease on it. When that is done, the clout with the grease has to be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. This brings to my mind the fact that I have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.

*aka Dr John Jones. Myrddin was his ‘bardic’ name. From p61 of
Sacred Wells in Wales
John Rhys; T. E. Morris
Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Mar., 1893), pp. 55-79.

I suppose this chamber could well be the stones referred to in the story:

Hundreds of years ago they used to keep the Collection money in the Church. One time, thieves broke into Llanfaelrhys Church to steal the money. Somehow, while at their work they were seen by passers by, who went into the church. When the thieves saw this they fled for their lives and they were followed by their pursuers until they came to the top of Rhiw, there the thieves were caught, on the road by a place called Terfyn. After catching the thieves they killed them on the spot, that was the punishment in those days for thieving. The two were buried in Four Crosses Field, Rhiw, and to show where they were buried big stones mere placed on their graves and till today these stones are called Lladron Maelrhys, but few people know of them today. It’s a pity that old things become lost.

From “Recollections” by Rowland Willlams
Bryn Golau, Rhiw.
Written in April 1946, when he was 72 years old.
This is online at Rhiw.com, here:
rhiw.com/pobol/rowland_williams/rowland_willlam_03.htm

With reference to Rhiannon’s comments about Robin Hood’s Pillars.
These can be found at NZ918095.
Stanhope White describes them as
“two saddle-like stones, round pillars with small mushroom caps; the rim of the first is engraved Robin Hood Close and the other Little John Close......
It is not improbable that these two stones have replaced two Bronze Age standing stones; they would have attracted tales of Robin Goodfellow; when Robin Hood began to appear as a folk hero his name replaced the earlier leaders name, and no doubt some good burgher of Whitby replaced the ancient stones with these more decorative modern ones!”
Stanhope White
Standing Stones & Earthworks on the North Yorkshire Moors.
1987

“A couple of tumuli near the Bay are called “Robin Hood’s Butts,” at which, it is stated, he exercised his men in archery.”
p114 in ‘A glossary of Yorkshire words and phrases collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood. By An Inhabitant. 1855. You can read this on Google Books.

Robin Hood, or Robert Earl of Huntingdon, of whose exploits, at the head of his merry outlaws, all the world has heard, died in 1274. He is said to have been the founder of “Robin Hood’s Bay,” near Whitby. One day, standing on the top of Swarthoue, the highest tumulus in our vicinity, he resolved to build a town where his arrow should alight, which he then shot towards the coast where the maritime place above named, with its 1200 inhabitants, is now situated, although the distance direct across the country from Swarthoue is at least six miles!

p114 in ‘A glossary of Yorkshire words and phrases collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood. By An Inhabitant. 1855. You can read this on Google Books.
The Inhabitant also mentions some stones of indeterminate age connected with Robin Hood, but maybe they’re gone now?

Robin Hood’s Pillars – two rude stones, between three and four feet high, a mile to the south of Whitby Abbey, which tradition asserts as marking the places where the arrows of Robin Hood and his mate Little John fell, on a trial of archery from the top of the abbey, after they had dined with the abbot. They are in separate fields, which are still called Robin Hood and Little John’s closes; but John outshot his master by a distance of one hundred feet, according to the position of the pillar assigned as his.

Little John outdoes Robin Hood? Good work there.

This round barrow was used as a base for a post mill at one time, according to the scheduled monument record. According to Leslie Grinsell’s source, “the late R. R. Clarke of Norwich Castle Museum”, this barrow on Belton Common was said to contain golden gates or a golden plough.
in Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation
L. V. Grinsell
Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38.

Winterslow: tradition of golden coffin buried in the vicinity, which contains two of the largest barrows in the county (excluding Silbury). Information from the late J.F.S. Stone, 1951.

From Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation
L. V. Grinsell
Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38.

As you can tell, this might not be this Bronze age barrow that the folklore refers to – there are a large number of barrows in cemeteries to the north of the Winterslows. So you probably won’t find it. Just leave your metal detector at home please.

Hollingbury: hidden treasure, uncertain whether supposed to be concealed in the hill-fort or the barrows within it. See Sussex A. C. 75 (1934), 238.

Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation
L. V. Grinsell
Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38.

Berwick St John, Winkelbury Hill: golden coffin said to be buried on this hill where there are several barrows. (Landlord of the Talbot Inn to L.V.G., 1951).

Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation
L. V. Grinsell
Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38.

Hence I went to Mamme Torr, which is an high Mountain broken on one Side, of which the Tradition is, that the Earth continually falls down, yet is not the Hill any thing diminished, nor the Heaps of Earth below at all encreased.

I got as near as I could to the broken Side, but could not hear or see any such running down of the Earth; when there is Rain, the Water running down washeth away with it much of the Hill.

I was informed, that on the Top of this Mountain is an antient Roman Camp, encompassed with a double Trench, whereabout are sometimes found Store of antient Roman Medals.

p177 in ‘Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, with his Life’ by William Derham. Published 1760.
Online at Google Books.
John Ray’s journey to Mam Tor was made in 1658.

A later visitor didn’t believe the hype:

Mam-tor is a huge Precipice facing the East, or South-East; which is said to be perpetually shivering and throwing down great Stones on a smaller Mountain below it; and that nevertheless, neither the one increases, nor the other decreases in Bigness.

This Mountain is composed chiefly of a Sort of Slate-Stone (called in that Country Black Shale and great Stone. The Nature of the Black Shale is known to be, that notwithstanding it is very hard before it is exposed to the Air; yet it is afterwards very easily crumbled to Dust. Thus on any Storm, or melting of Snow, this Shale is considerably wasted; and as the great Stones are gradually disengaged, they must necessarily fall down.

That it is only at these Times that the Mountain wastes, is affirmed by the most intelligent of the neighbouring Inhabitants: And that this Decay is not perpetual, I can affirm myself; having not only taken a close Survey of it, but also climbed up the very Precipice, without feeling any other shivering in the Mountain, than what the treading of my own Feet in the loose crumbled Earth occasioned. That the Mountain does not decrease in the mean Time, is a Tale too frivolous to need any Consideration.

An Account of some Observations relating to Natural History, made in a Journey to the Peak in Derbyshire by Mr. J. Martyn, F.R.S. From the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 1753.

We ascended to the Top of that noted Hill, called Roseberry, or Ounsberry Topping, the Top whereof is fastigiate, like a Sugar Loaf, and serves for a Sea-mark. It may be seen at a great Distance, viz. from Stanmore, which is in a right Line above 20 Miles off.

From hence we had a Prospect of that pleasant and fruitful Vale, Part whereof is called Cliveland, a Country noted for a good Breed of Horses. The Ways here in Winter Time are very bad, and almost impassable, according to that proverbial Rhyme,

Cliveland in the Clay,
Bring in two Soles, carry one away.

Near this Hill we went to see a Well celebrated for the Cure of sore or dim Eyes, and other Diseases. Every one that washes in it, or receives Benefit by it, ties a Lacinia, or Rag of Linnen or Woollen, &c. on a Shrub or Bush near it, as an Offering or Acknowlegement.

From p176 of ‘Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, with his Life’ by William Derham. Published 1760.
Online at Google Books.

I think John Ray’s journey was made in 1661.

I only leave the first bit in because it might be funny if you know someone from Whitby.

The People of Gisburgh are civil, cleanly, and well-bred, contrary to the Temper of the Inhabitants of Whitby, who, to us, seemed rude in Behaviour, and sluttish.

In the Way from Whitby to Gisburgh, we passed by Freeburgh Hill,, which they told us was cast up by the Devil, at the Entreaty of an old Witch, who desired it, that from thence she might espy her Cow in the Moor.

From p177 of ‘Select Remains of the Learned John Ray, with his Life’ by William Derham. Published 1760.
Online at Google Books. I think John Ray’s journey was made in 1661.

There is an artificial mount, by the side of the road leading from North Burton to Wold Newton, near Bridlington, in Yorkshire, called “Willy-howe,” much exceeding in size the generality of our “hows,” of which I have often heard the most preposterous stories related.

A cavity or division on the summit is pointed out as owing its origin to the following circumstance:-

A person having intimation of a large chest of gold being buried therein, dug away the earth until it appeared in sight; he then had a train of horses, extending upwards of a quarter of a mile, attached to it by strong iron traces; by these means he was just on the point of accomplishing his purpose, when he exclaimed--

“Hop Perry, prow Mark,
Whether God’s will or not, we’ll have this ark.”

He, however, had no sooner pronounced this awful blasphemy, than all the traces broke, and the chest sunk still deeper in the hill, where it yet remains, all his future efforts to obtain it being in vain.

p92 in: The every-day book and table-book; or, Everlasting calendar of popular amusements. By William Hone, 1837, and now online at Google Books.