H.—ANTHROPOLOGY 151 
is called Kill-hart, apparently led, in the late eighteenth century, to the 
localisation of the story at Beddgelert, a village near Snowdon, the name 
of which is thought to mean the grave of Kelert, an early saint. The fact 
that Llewellyn is a popular North Welsh hero, and the enterprise of a 
local innkeeper, who about 1830 set up a tombstone at a suitable spot, 
were sufficient to establish a ‘ tradition ’ which was accepted by thousands, 
not merely of the ignorant but of the learned.? 
Where local traditions are not the result of such guesswork, they 
usually arise from ignorance and superstition. Krappe!? tells us that 
‘the dolmens of France and the British Isles are the work of fairies ; 
‘the remains of the Roman limes are attributed by German peasants to 
‘the Devil, who divided the earth with Our Lord, and erected the wall 
“to mark the boundary. The ruins of the Roman amphitheatres of 
“Southern France are called the “ palais de Gallienne,’’ Galienne being 
“a powerful Moorish princess and the wife of Charlemagne. To the 
* fellahin of modern Egypt the pyramids are the work of the jinn.’ Those 
who believe that Caesar’s Camp was constructed by Cesar are morally 
bound to believe that the Devil’s Dyke was constructed by the Devil. 
Czsar’s Camp in Sussex, excavated by General Pitt-Rivers, proved to be 
of Norman origin. 
But while we find on the one hand that local tradition, whenever it can 
be checked, proves to be untrue, we find on the other that real events 
never find their way into local tradition. Near where I live are the 
remains of a score of castles, many of them the scene of historic sieges 
and other events. Yet not only are chere no authentic traditions about 
these events—there are no traditions at all. 
I will conclude my remarks on this part of the subject by noting that 
there is one possibility of a genuine local tradition—where the repetition 
of a ritual drama at a given spot gives rise to the belief that the events 
enacted in the drama. really occurred at that spot. There are various 
parts of the world, particularly Ancient Greece, in which this type of 
tradition has probably come into existence. 
TRADITION AND ENGLISH History. 
Those writers who have tried to establish the historicity of tradition 
have invariably, so far as I can learn, adopted the method of taking some 
period the history of which is totally unknown, examining the traditions 
which they assume to belong to that period, striking out all miraculous 
or otherwise improbable incidents, and then dilating upon the verisimili- 
tude of the residue. I shall follow a totally different method. I shall 
take a period the history of which is known, the feudal age in England, and 
see what tradition has had to say about that. According to the usually 
accepted theories, outstanding personalities in the history of a country 
never fail to leave their mark on tradition. Now who were the outstand- 
ing personalities of the period in question? No one, I suppose, will 
object to the inclusion of William the Conqueror and Edward I. The 
Norman Conquest in the one case, and the conquest of Simon de Montfort, 
* J. Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales, pp. 261-264. 10 Op. cit., p. 75. 
