TRADITIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS.

Two brothers, upon the estate of Disley, are lately successively deceased. The last, the youngest, stated to the author, that his brother, whose age was nearly eighty years, had taken him when a boy, to the stones upon Park's Moor, and told him always to remember, that they were put up in memory of two brothers who died of the plague in Lyme Handley: which malady overspread that valley towards the close of the seventeenth century.

This account, however, seems foreign to the purpose, because coinciding memorials are erected where the plague never came. The mortality from the plague is, moreover, denoted by common gravestones over the bodies in the adjoining fields, which will be noticed in their place. And other and very applicable traditions are in the memory of older people still in being.

One of these states, that he has heard say, "When there were kings in England, each of them knew his own land by the stones upon these hills."

Another relates, "that, before any inclosures or roads were made, and whilst the moors lay open, they were way-marks "for passengers."

These persons as well as the less informed of the rustics in the neighbourhood concur, too, in calling them by a more recent title, Robin Hood's stones. Those in Lyme, or Park's

Moor, are most generally named his Bow Stones. At other times they are confounded with the rest, and pass by the name of his Picking Stones. Both these names are analogous, so as to establish between them some implied connexion. The epithet of the bow signifies, that the Sherwood archer took his post at Park's Moor, and shot from thence to Whaley Moor, a distance rectilinearly of a mile and a half; from thence to Chinley the same; and from Chinley two ways, to Ludworth and Rough Low Tor, three miles: and that the first station, and each succeeding place, where an arrow fell, were designated by the location of stones. The other term implies, that this man of might picked or threw the identical stones themselves through the air from one mountain to the other. Those upon Rough Low excited his double industry, for after picking them to the summit of the mountain, he picked them to the bottom. The duplicate of the pillars refers, say the traditionists, to the alliance of Hood with Little John, the corresponding proportions of size being preserved in them. In Bow Stones, too, they shew an indenture, which the arrow made on its return from the Rough Low. By this confession, however, the stones must have pre-existed before the affair of the archery.

The agreement of the vulgar in credulity and formation of gross narrations is one, amongst better arguments, for their progressions from a common diverging stock. The dawn of the human race opens in all places with magnifying fictions of its own powers. The bards of the east had their giants, able to

pile Ossa upon Pelion. The natives of the western hemisphere indulge in similar reveries. Letters of an American Lady. The occurrence of this principle met Dr. Johnson in the detached regions of Caledonia. "For natural curiosities, I "was shewn only two great masses of stone, which lie loose upon the ground; one on the top of a hill, and the other at "a small distance from the bottom. They certainly were never "put into their places by human strength or skill. All nations "have a tradition, that their earliest ancestors were giants, "and these stones are said to have been thrown up and down by a giant and his mistress." Tour to the Heb: article, Cast of 'Col. These coincidences will account for the instru mentality of Robin Hood, exhibited as making sallies of his strength in the distribution of these not very trivial masses.

The actuating motive of this fable is incidental, as we have seen, to the early practice of all people, a pride of possessing names in their annals, which shall surpass the rest of the world in great performances; and which sometimes even dares to arrogate an almost creative prerogative. The marvellous, however, thus represented, 'is always and certainly reducible into the memorable; conferring upon works of art in particular, when narrated of them, a title to some sure antiquity and latent fame.

If any fidelity is then to be found under the mask of this fiction, it must be from the other branch of it, which represents these monuments "as Hood's "shooting butts. And, indeed, conjectures may be founded upon this view of the case,

if not demonstrable by certificate, at least satisfactory in comprehension.

Of the implements by which objects at a distance could formerly be annoyed, Dr. Robertson observes, "the bow and "arrow is the most early invention. This weapon is in the "hands of people, whose advances in improvement are "extremely inconsiderable, and is familiar to the inhabitants of "every quarter of the globe." The use of this, like all other instruments, is capable of being brought to high perfection by constant habit, even in the most unscientific hands. The same writer quotes Mr. Ellis, concerning its prowess in the hands of the Esquimaux Indians. "Their greatest ingenuity "is shewn in the structure of their bows, &c., &c.; and, as "they practise from their youth, they shoot with very great "dexterity." Through the three remaining continents of the world, likewise, the Roman "Sagitarii", light troops of the army carrying this weapon, uniformly found it in the hands of the native races, to whom it had been transmitted from the earliest time.

The annals of the British armouries partake of this analogy. St. Pierre, in his poem of the Arcadia, which conveys the sense of all classical and gothic commentators upon the manners of the early nations, existing upon both sides of the Fretum Britannicum, thus describes a discharge of missile implements from a column of the Britons, in an attack upon the Gauls near the Seine." Des Nuées de Dards, de fleches, "de cailloux, et de balles de plomb :" "Clouds of darts, arrows,

stones, and bullets of lead." The nature of things, not less than the testimony of the gothic writers, who first broke the pause in our history, which succeeded the luminous age of Julian literature, assures us, that no improvement in arts could have exploded the use of this missile, at the respective periods of the Pictish, Saxon, or Danish wars. If all, or some of these antagonists, should then hereafter appear to have entered the lists with the ever-embroiled natives upon these mountains, the tradition of Hood may be a misapplication and corruption of ancient battles, said in days of yore to have been decided here by the bow; but since lost and incorporated amongst the stories of the Sherwood hero, which have been received with such avidity by the vulgar. Armies were placed upon the opposing hills; and, if they could not shoot from one to another, they might make them, each at a time, the field of

contest.

Another, and equally feasible interpretation remains to be added; which, whilst it furnishes more immediate grounds for the feat attributed to Hood, leaves the prior statement to remain with unquestionable though far more remote authority.

The two extremities of the counties of Derbyshire and Cheshire, conjoining in this chain of hills, form parts of the Forests of Macclesfield and High Peak. These are adjoining royalties; and different demesnes in them will hereafter be shewn to have been dismembered by grants to merit, or by sales for money. But some mode of definition would be necessary, for the purpose of setting bounds to the quantity