If tradition is to be credited, the Romans were not satisfied with roads as a means of rapidly communicating information; speaking-trumpets or pipes, we are told, ran along the whole length of the Wall. Of this, Drayton, long ago, sang in his Polyolbion— Townes stood upon my length, where garrisons were laid Their limits to defend; and for my greater aid, With turrets I was built, where sentinels were plac’d To watch upon the Pict; so me my makers grac’d With hollow pipes of brasse, along me still they went, By which they in one fort still to another sent, By speaking in the same, to tell them what to doe, And soe from sea to sea could I be whispered through. Sir Christopher Ridley, in his letter tells us, that— In this Wall was theyr a trunck of brass, or whatever kynd of mettal, which went from one place to another along the Wall, and came into the Captaynes chamber, whereat they had watchers for the same, and yf theyr had bene stryfe or business betwyxt the enemies, and that the watchmen did blow a horn in at the end of the truncke that came into the chamber, and so from one to one; there was certayn money payed yearly to the mantenance of this trunck by the inhabitants theyrabout, and doith yet pay to some gentilmen in Northymberland, the which money is called horn-geld money.[39] [Sidenote: THE THEORY PROBABLY INCORRECT.] Camden also refers to this curious tradition. Once, but only once, have I met with this story in my own rambles. Such myths will not long outlive the introduction of the electric telegraph. ‘There are no old people upon the Wall now,’ as a man of three-score lately said to me, when I was endeavouring to persuade him to gather up from his still more ancient neighbour the fire-side lore of by-gone times. It is curious to observe that a similar statement is made respecting the BARRIER of the UPPER ISTHMUS. A correspondent writes— One old man told me, that when he was young, on digging through one of the wall stations—at Upper Croy—they came upon stone pipes, laid horizontally in the soil, and joined at the ends like those for water. From the elevation of the place, it is quite obvious that they could not be water conduits. This old person said that the idea he had heard ‘learned people’ give of these pipes, was, that they were for speaking through. That the pipes were found, and made of stone, not clay, is certain.