Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
In Glyde's _Norfolk Garland_ (p. 69), is an account of this legend,
but with a variant of one incident. The box containing the treasure
had a Latin inscription on the lid, which John Chapman could not
decipher. He put the lid in his window, and very soon he heard some
youths turn the Latin sentence into English:--
"Under me doth lie
Another much richer than I."
And he went to work digging deeper than before, and found a much
richer treasure than the former. Another version of this rhyme is
found in _Transactions of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society_ (iii.
318) as follows:--
"Where this stood
Is another as good."
And both these versions are given by Blomefield.
Now if there were no other places besides Swaffham in Norfolk to which
this legend is applied the interest in it would, of course, not be
very great. But there are many other places, and we will first note
those in Britain. The best is from Upsall, in Yorkshire, as follows:--
"Many years ago there resided, in the village of
Upsall, a man who dreamed three nights successively
that if he went to London Bridge he would hear of
something greatly to his advantage. He went,
travelling the whole distance from Upsall to London on
foot; arrived there, he took his station on the
bridge, where he waited until his patience was nearly
exhausted, and the idea that he had acted a very
foolish part began to rise in his mind. At length he
was accosted by a Quaker, who kindly inquired what he
was waiting there so long for? After some hesitation,
he told his dreams. The Quaker laughed at his
simplicity, and told him that _he_ had had last night
a very curious dream himself, which was, that if he
went and dug under a certain bush in Upsall Castle, in
Yorkshire, he would find a pot of gold; but he did not
know where Upsall was, and inquired of the countryman
if he knew, who, seeing some advantage in secrecy,
pleaded ignorance of the locality, and then, thinking
his business in London was completed, returned
immediately home, dug beneath the bush, and there he
found a pot filled with gold, and on the cover an
inscription in a language which he did not understand.
The pot and cover were, however, preserved at the
village inn, where one day a bearded stranger like a
Jew, made his appearance, saw the pot, and read the
inscription on the cover, the plain English of which
was--
"'Look lower, where this stood
Is another twice as good.'
The man of Upsall hearing this resumed his spade,
returned to the bush, dug deeper, and found another
pot filled with gold, far more valuable than the
first. Encouraged by this discovery, he dug deeper
still, and found another yet more valuable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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