210 Wild Darell of LiUlecote. 



Camps in Cambridgeshire, but then it is unconfirmed by any shadow 

 of proof, and the fact of the mention of the midwife being paid 

 with a purse of " guineas," at a time when no such coin existed, is 

 of itself sufficient to stamp, at least this version of the story, as an 

 amusing figment and a lively myth. 



The oldest written authority, at present known, for the Littlecote 

 story, being that of Aubrey, it becomes necessary to fix the exact 

 amount of value to be attached to it coming from that quarter. 

 Aubrey was, as is well known, a diligent collector of topographical 

 and genealogical matter: a department in which a certain merit 

 belongs to him, for having preserved a great nimiber of local par- 

 ticulars, that would otherwise have been, in all probability, entirely 

 lost. But it must be remembered, that with the exception of the 

 book called his "Miscellanies," a compilation redundant with the most 

 wretched superstitions, Aubrey published nothing in his own lifetime : 

 nor does he appear, at the time of his death, to have actually finished 

 any thing else, or to have left it in a proper form for publication. His 

 "Collections" having come to us in unre vised manuscript, cannot 

 therefore in any way be regarded as the elaborate result of careful 

 inquiry. He was moreover a credulous man, greedy of anecdote, 

 and, no doubt, often imposed upon. His stories are evidently often 

 only those of the day, committed precipitately to paper, without 

 having been either carefully traced to their source, or winnowed 

 from the chafi" of oral tradition. When confronted with strong 

 circumstantial evidence, Aubrey's mere statements are of compara- 

 tivelv Kght weight. 



The passage in which he introduces this Littlecote story, is in 

 the "Lives of Eminent Men."^ These "Lives" were a compilation 

 of Aubrey's later years, long after his residence in Wiltshire ; when 

 he was living about London in poverty and obscurity, without 

 either the means or the heart to carry on laborious investigation. 

 They consist, in great measure, of personal recollections and of oral 



' If he ever took, any other notice of it, among his Wiltshire Topographical 

 Collections, such notice would probably have been entered in the Second Part, 

 marked "Liber B." now most nnfoi-tunately lost, (see Wilts Mag. I. 34) : as, in 

 one of his letters to Wood, Nov. 17, 1670, he mentions that "Eamsbury" (the 

 parish with which Littlecote is connected,) "is in Liber B." 



