Legends and Traditions

AS TOLD BY HER ANCIENT CHRONICLERS,
HER POETS, AND JOURNALISTS.

BY THE

REV. THOMAS PARKINSON, F.R.HIST.S.,

MEMBER OF THE SURTEES SOCIETY,

THE YORKSHIRE ARCHEOLOGICAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION.
VICAR OF NORTH OTTERINGTON.

'History hath no page

More brightly lettered of heroic dust,

Or manly worth, or woman's nobleness,

Than thou may'st show; thou hast nor hill nor dale,
But lives in legend.'

THE NEW YORK
UBLIC LIBRARY

534974

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

1912

L

'We marked each memorable scene,
And held poetic talk between;
Nor hill nor brook we paced along,
But had its legend or its song.'

SCOTT,

By way of introduction to the second series of Yorkshire Legends and Traditions,' the writer has little to add to what was said in the introduction to the former series.

The stories are similar in scope and characterhistorical and apocryphal, and ranging from grave to jay, from lively to severe '-to those of the previous volume; and they are drawn from sources wide, and often dissimilar, as were those of that book.

The same principle, as to the relation of legend and tradition with art and poetry, local and otherwise, has uided the writer, in this volume as in the last, so that many of the legends and traditions are again told in the words of their original, or their poetical, nar

rators.

6

Possibly the writer will again be told, that some of the stories, (as those relating to Robin Hood), are so well known as to be commonplace, and might have been omitted; or, as to others, that he has not exercised he critical faculty (if he possess it)' as he might have one, and told his readers what, or how much, of this, that, story to accept as truth, or what, or how much, put aside as purely imaginative.