La Hougue Bie

As this book was going to press, the tumulus which bore the now demolished Prince's Tower in Jersey, and which is known as "La Hougue Bie," was opened by the Societe Jersiaise, under the supervision of my friend Mr. E. T. Nicolle.

The legend concerning it was that it was once the lair of a devastating dragon. A gallant knight, the Seigneur of Hambie, crossed from Normandy to slay it. He succeeded after a desperate fight, but was murdered by his treacherous squire. The latter returned to the Seigneur's beautiful wife, and married her on the strength of his lying statement that he was solemnly enjoined to do so by his master, whom, he said, the dragon had killed. The false squire was later unmasked and executed.

The tumulus, which is forty feet high and one hundred and eighty feet in diameter, has been found to contain a covered way, four feet high and five feet wide, leading to a central chamber seven feet high, thirty feet long, and twelve feet borad, the length of the whole structure being about seventy feet.

Further particulars as to this magnificent discovery are not yet forthcoming, but it is evidently a sepulchral chamber, which, judging by the numberous other megalithic remains in Jersey, is of neolithic age. It is exactly the kind of relic of an earlier race which would give rise to the legends which form the nuclei of so many of our fairy-tales.