150 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
Mr. Barron for correcting their pedigrees, but they would be very muc 
mistaken. I will give one example. 
One of our oldest families is that of Wake, of which the present head is 
Sir Hereward Wake, thirteenth Baronet. ‘The family ‘ tradition ’ is that itis 
descended in the direct male line from the famous Saxon hero, Hereward 
the Wake. The facts appear to be these. In 1166 a Norman called 
Hugh Wac came over from Normandy and married the heiress of the 
Norman FitzGilbert, lord of Bourne, in Lincolnshire. About two 
hundred years later the family of Wake, as it had then become, having 
attained to wealth and importance, thought itself entitled to a more high- 
sounding pedigree, and having discovered that a Saxon called Hereward 
had once owned a small part of the lordship of Bourne, decided to adopt 
the great Saxon hero as ancestor. For this purpose a pedigree was 
forged, conferring titles, ancestors and descendants upon the Hereward 
who lived at Bourne, and to make this pedigree more convincing there was 
conferred upon the Saxon hero the hitherto unheard-of cognomen of ‘the 
‘Wake.’ ‘There are some obscurities in the story, but the following facts 
seem certain: that Hereward was never called ‘the Wake’ till he was 
adopted as ancestor by the Wake family about the middle of the fourteenth 
century ; that the Wake family has no traceable connection with Hereward 
or any other Saxon ; and that the first Wake to be christened Hereward 
was born in 1851. As regards Hereward the Saxon hero, he may have 
been a real person, but the fact that among his exploits are narrated the 
slaughter of a gigantic bear in Scotland, and the rescue of a Cornish 
princess, suggests that he was a mythical hero after whom Hereward of 
Bourne and other Saxons were named.’ 
This story has many points of interest which can be followed up by 
those who care todo so. I shall leave it there, but before passing from the 
subject of ‘ family tradition ’ shall ask those who believe in it one question : 
Can any one of them produce a single fact about his great-grandfather 
which has not been placed on record? My great-grandfather, the first 
Lord Raglan, was a man of some distinction, and yet, though I often visited 
his daughters, who lived well on into the present century, I know practically 
nothing about him that is not in print. 
‘LocaL TRADITION.’ 
Sir G. L. Gomme, in his Folklore as an Historical Science, attempts to 
establish the historical value of local tradition, but is constrained to admit 
that it may often be mere false history, started by the local antiquary. In 
my view, with certain exceptions which I shall come to later, it is always 
false history. Let us take an example. ‘There is a well-known folk-story 
of the Faithful Hound, variants of which are found in many parts of 
Europe, Asia and Africa. It is probably derived from a rite, similar to 
that described in Genesis xxii, by which a pretence is made of sacrificing 
a child, and an animal substituted at the last moment. The popularity 
of this story in Wales, and the fact that in an English version the dog 
? D.N.B., s.v. ‘Hereward’; J. H. Round, Feudal England, p. 161; The 
Ancestor, vol. ii, pp. 109-113. 
8 S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 134 seq. 
