This story may have something to do with the genesis of the legend of St. Christopher bearing the infant Christ on his shoulders over a broad stream, a subject of one of the early mediæval pictures discovered some time ago, on the removal of the whitewash from the walls of Gawsworth Church, near Macclesfield. The historical anachronism in ascribing such an action to him may have resulted from the mere transference of it from the pagan hero to the Christian saint. The original story seems to have been pretty familiar to the people as late as the fourteenth century. Mr. Kemble says--"Chaucer once or twice refers to this (Wade's _boat_) in such a way as to show that the expression was used in an obscene sense. Old women, he says, 'connen so moche craft in Wade's boat.' Again of Pandarus: 'He song, he plaied, he told a tale of Wade.' _Troil. Cressid._ 'In this there seems to be some allusion to what anatomists have termed _fossa navicularis_, though what immediate connection there could be with the mythical Wade, now escapes us.'" The "Traveller's Tale" likewise refers to a chieftain named "Billing," who "ruled the Wærns," and who, in Mr. Haigh's opinion, was likewise a "probable associate of Hencgest." Mr. Haigh likewise identifies Whaley in Cheshire, Whalley in Northumberland, and Whalley in Lancashire, with a chieftain described in the same poem as "Hwala once the best." Dr. Whitaker, Mr. Baines, and others, however, derive Whalley from _Walalega_, "Field of Wells." Mr. Jno. R. Green ("Making of England,") says--"In the star-strown track of the Milky Way, our fathers saw a road by which the hero-sons of Waetla marched across the sky, and poetry only hardened into prose when they transferred the name of Watling Street to the great trackway which passed athwart the island they had won, from London to Chester. The stones of Weyland's Smithy still recall the days when the new settlers told one another, on the conquered ground, the wondrous tale they had brought with them from their German home, the tale of the godlike smith Weland, who forged the arms that none could blunt or break; just as they told around Wadanbury and Wadanhlæw the strange tale of Wade and his boats. When men christened mere and tree with Scyld's name, at Scyldsmere and Styldstreow, they must have been familiar with the story of the godlike child who came over the waters to found the royal line of the Gwissas. So a name like Hnaef's-scylf was then a living part of English mythology; and a name like Aylesbury may preserve the last trace of the legend told of Weland's brother, the sun-archer Egil."