It is a recognised element in popular tradition or folk-lore, that the deeds of one historic or mythological hero are sure, when he is forgotten, to be attributed to some other man of mark, who, for the time being, fills the popular fancy. I am, therefore, inclined to think that the imaginary victories of Arthur on the continent of Europe in the sixth century, as recorded in Geoffrey's tenth book, owe their origin mainly to the real ones of Karl der Gross in the ninth. Geoffrey, or his Breton authority, had three centuries of tradition to fall back upon, time amply sufficient for mediæval myth makers and romance writers to torture them to their own purposes. Instances of this re-crystallisation of several stories, mythical and otherwise, around the name of a single hero, by the vulgar, may be found in relatively modern history. There is, in the region of traditional lore, in various parts of England, a mythical Cromwell, as well as the two well-known historical personages of that name. In whatever part of the country stands a ruined castle or abbey, or other ecclesiastical edifice, the nearest peasant, or even farmer, will assure an inquirer that it was battered into ruin by Oliver Cromwell! Here the Secretary Cromwell, of Henry the Eighth's reign, and the renowned Protector, of the following century, are evidently amalgamated. Indeed, the redoubted Oliver seems to have absorbed all the castle and abbey-destroying heroes of the national history, old Time himself included. There is a weather-worn statue on the triangular bridge at Croyland, erected in honour of King Ethelbald, the founder of the neighbouring abbey now in ruins, which is popularly supposed to be an effigy of Cromwell, and by some the bridge is likewise named after him. It is, however, more than probable that the neighbouring ruin is alone responsible for this nomenclature. A similar fate has befallen Alexander the Great in the East. Arminius Vámbéry, in his "Travels in Central Asia," says--"The history of the great Macedonian is invested by the Orientals with all the characteristics of a religious myth; and although some of their writers are anxious to distinguish Iskender Zul Karnein (the two-horned Alexander), the hero of their fable, from Iskenderi Roumi (the Greek Alexander), I have yet everywhere found that these two persons were regarded as one and the same." There is likewise a mythical as well as an historical Taliesin (the Welsh poet), but they are generally confounded by the populace.