A reasonably old record of the legend:
This was recorded by Francis Wise in 1738:
“All the account which the country people are able to give of it is ‘At this place lived formerly an invisible Smith, and if a traveller’s Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the Horse to this place with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse new shod.”
(Letter to Dr Mead concerning Antiquities in Berkshire, Oxford, 1738, p37).The stone tomb is usually called ‘Wayland’s Smithy’, but Wise and other early writers call it simply ‘Wayland Smith’.
From: Weland the Smith, by H. R. Ellis Davidson, in Folklore, Vol. 69, No. 3. (Sep., 1958), pp. 145-159.