“September 3rd, 1747.—Got to Oare and then to the valley of the Lyn; the scenery very bonny, like our own land, but the part extremely wild and lonely. Wandered about and thought of the doings of the family when here, which I gather were not peaceable.” How very precious is that last phrase—and how entirely unconvincing! It would, in short, were any claim to material things attached to these pretensions, be impossible to establish it on such slight foundations. The first printed collection of Doone legends is that to be found in Cooper’s “Guide to Lynton,” published in 1853. It is derived from local folklore and from a manuscript collection of stories made for the Reverend J. R. Chanter in 1839. Among these legends, besides those of the Doones, we have the wild tales of Tom Faggus, the North Devon and Somerset highwayman, and his “enchanted strawberry horse,” and the fantastic and particularly stupid “legend of the de Wichehalse family,[6] utterly without foundation.” Footnote 6: See _The North Devon Coast_, pp. 25-33 for a complete exposure of the lying “de Wichehalse” legend, which contains no particle of truth. Caution is therefore evidently to be exercised before accepting anything in the way of these folk-tales, which tell of a fierce and utterly lawless band of Doones who dwelt up the Badgworthy Valley, from about the time of the Commonwealth, in a collection of some eleven rude stone-built huts, and lived by raiding the houses and stockyards of the neighbouring farmers. One of these stories tells us how the band was at length exterminated by the long-suffering countryside. One winter’s night, it appears, when snow was lying upon the ground, they made a raid upon Yenworthy Farm, a lonely farmstead which still stands, although since those times rebuilt, in a deep valley between the high-road near County Gate and Culbone. Here they were received with an unexpectedly bold front. _Arma virumque cano_; only in this instance it is of arms and the woman one must sing. It was, in short, the farmer’s wife who stood at an open window and opened fire upon them with a long duck-gun that is to this day preserved in the house. This scattering discharge appears to have severely wounded one, or several, of the raiders, for blood-tracks were traced in the snow, leading in the direction of Badgworthy. That same night the same party (or perhaps really another part of the numerous band) appeared at Exford, in midst of Exmoor, and attacked a farmhouse, in which were only a servant girl and a child. The servant hid in the oven, leaving the child in the kitchen. The robbers, the legend goes on to declare, killed the infant, and went off, with the mocking lines, If any one asks who ’twas killed thee, Tell ’em—the Doones of Badgery.