of the Greek metallurgic arts.[260] Whencesoever that knowledge may have been immediately derived, we shall adopt the most consistent idea if we turn back to the Eastern cradle-land both of the Hellenic and Scandinavian races, and assume a common origin for the mythic fable which records with corresponding symbolic legends the restoration of the art of Tubal-Cain to the postdiluvian race. It is a remarkable and interesting fact, that while modern learning and research have brought to light the most ancient literate forms of this northern myth, in the Edda and the Niebelungen Lied, it is in England only that it has survived to our own day as a living popular tradition; and it is due to the somewhat grotesque travesty of its rude Berkshire version inwrought into the tragic tale of Kenilworth, that it has been restored to the favour of modern Europe. Among the old Scandinavian nations, and in Iceland, where the language of their runic literature is still a living tongue, as well as in France, and throughout the whole Germanic races of the Continent, all memory of the restoration of this divine gift of the metals has utterly passed away. In England only--towards which we see the galleys of the elder inheritors of civilisation winging their way in quest of its metallic treasures with the first glimpse we catch of it as it emerges out of the night of time--the mythic legend has retained vitality till now. How the story of our northern Dædalus came to be associated with the monolithic group at the foot of White-Horse Hill, in the vale of Berkshire, it is now equally vain and useless to inquire. There, according to rustic folk-lore, dwelt the invisible smith. No one ever saw him; but he who had the courage to avail himself of his skill had only to deposit a piece of money on one of the stones, and leave his horse beside it. On his return the horse was found to be shod, and the money gone. Such was the last shadowy tradition of the venerable myth. On one of the rarer coins of Cunobeline an armourer or coiner is represented. Some numismatists have supposed it to be Vulcan forging a helmet. May it not more probably be assumed as the northern Weland, whose metallurgic skill was so widely celebrated among the Teutonic nations? Before the great Alfred had won his way to the English throne the symbolic impersonation had assumed a perfect individuality; and in the translation of the _De Consolatione Philosophiæ_ into Anglo-Saxon, he thus paraphrases the passage,--Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato? "Where are now the bones Of the wise Weland, The goldsmith Formerly most famous? * * * * * Who knows now the bones Of the wise Weland, Under what mound (or barrow) They are concealed?"[261]