Folly Bridge, as it now stands, was built a little south of Grand Pont, the old river-course to the north having been filled up by an embankment. The river now marks the Shire boundary which was once marked hereabouts by the Shire Ditch. Crossing the bridge to the Berkshire shore, the road, wherein you may still trace the piers of the old Grand Pont "linked with many a bridge," leads up to Hincksey. There the modern golf-links are, and the "lone, sky-pointing tree" that Clough and Arnold loved. And this road it was which, in the poetic imagination of Matthew Arnold, was haunted by the scholar gipsy. The main road leads over the hill, which is crowned by Bagley Wood, to Abingdon. That charming village, where once the great monastery stood, was separated in early days from the city by a great oak forest. Wandering therein, book in hand, a certain student, so the story runs, was met by a ferocious wild boar, which he overcame by thrusting his Aristotle down the beast's throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic, was choked by it, and his head, borne home in triumph, was served up, no doubt, at table in the student's hall with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. The custom of serving a boar's head on Christmas Day at Queen's College, whilst the tabarder sang: "The Boar's Head in hand bear I Bedecked with bays and rosemary, And I pray you masters merry be-- Quotquot estis in convivio. Chorus--_Caput apri defero_ _Reddens laudes Domino_," _etc._, is said to have originated in that incident. S. Aldate's Road, after leaving the river, skirted the enclosure of S. Frideswide, and gradually ascended the sloping gravel bank in a northerly direction. Here it was met by another road which, coming from the east, connected Oxford with the Wallingford district. The crossing of these roads came to be known as the Four Ways, Quadrifurcus, corrupted into Carfax. And Carfax was the second of the chief elements in the formation of Oxford. For at this point, as if to mark its importance in the history of the town, was erected S. Martin's Church, which has always been the city church, and in the churchyard of which Town Councils (Portmannimotes) perhaps were held. It was founded under a Charter of Cnut (1034) by the wealthy and vigorous Abbey of Abingdon, which, together with the foundation at Eynsham, seems to have thrown the Monastery of S. Frideswide very much into the shade both as to energy and influence. [Illustration: Abingdon Abbey]