VOL. XVII. (2) PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 153 



US what a wealth of curious lore still remains ungarnered. We 

 have in our district many other localities, less influenced by 

 the progress of culture from which even more interesting infor- 

 mation may be collected. 



Of course, the tentative explanations which I have 

 suggested of these local rites may be upset by some historical 

 or other local evidence which some Members of this Club, now 

 that their attention has been excited and the scientific interest 

 of such enquiries illustrated, may be able to supply. The 

 suggestion that they may be survivals of early custom is 

 rendered more probable by other analogies. We are told that 

 when some one tried to build a Church below the slope on the 

 Churchdown Hill, the Devil every night removed the materials 

 to the summit, where it became eventually necessary to build 

 the sacred edifice. The same story is told of the Church at 

 Bisley, and of many others in different parts of the country. 

 The underlying meaning of the legend is obviously to explain 

 why such Churches are built on inaccessible and otherwise 

 apparently unsatisfactory sites ; the real object being to erect 

 the Christian place of worship on a place already the scene of 

 pagan rites. In the same connexion I may note that the 

 Churches at Notgrove, Nether Swell, Condicote and Wyck 

 Risington occupy the sites of Roman buildings, just as the 

 Guild Hall at Gloucester is built on the ground once occupied 

 by the Roman Praetorium. 



Lastly, I may ask whether we have any fairies now in our 

 district. We have good reason to believe that they were once 

 found there. Gervase of Tilbury, an Anglo-Italian writer of 

 the late 12th or early 13th century, tells us that in a hunting 

 forest in Gloucestershire, which may have been the Forest of 

 Dean, and which was full of boars, deer and other game, there 

 was a glade, and in it a hillock rising to the height of a man. 

 Knights and other hunters were wont, when fatigued with 

 heat and thirst, to ascend the hillock and there seek rehef. 

 It had to be done by each man singly, all comrades being left 

 at a distance. The adventurous sportsman would then say : 

 " I thirst" and immediately a cupbearer would appear at his 

 side in a splendid dress and with a jovial countenance, and 

 would offer him a drinking horn adorned with gold and gems, 



