By J. S. UDAL, F.S.A. 



(Read March 2nd, 1910.) 



PART I. 

 BETTISCOMBE : THE LEGEND OF THE SKULL 



quiet and unobtrusive was the introduction 

 to public notice of the story of this old 

 skull that in the reference which heralded 

 its first appearance in " Notes and Queries " 

 [Circa 1872] (4th Series X., 183) no mention 

 at all was made of its local habitat. I sent 

 it simply as the record of a matter of pure 

 Dorset folk-lore, a subject in which I was as 

 keen then as I am now, and I have been 

 collecting ever since ; so that my readers may imagine what 

 a mass of more or less undigested material those intervening 

 years must have brought me. 



* See "Notes and Queries" (4th Series, X., 183); and "Somerset and 

 Dorset Notes and Queries," Vol. II., p. 249 ; VIII., pp. 308, 343 ; IX., pp. 

 315, 350, 352. 



