332 On Wayland's Smithy, and on 



say MM. Depping and Michel, "as we see from the Iliad, was 

 the type of skilful artists. He forged metals, he fashioned the 

 most precious works, he constructed arms and armour ; he was a 

 deity ; mythology relates his cunning ti'icks. Moreover he was 

 lame, maimed like Weland." A very ancient story of the Greek 

 Vulcan is essentially identical with the Berkshire one of Wayland 

 and his smithy. It is taken from the voyage of Pytheas, who lived 

 in the 4th century B.C., probably in the time of Alexander the 

 Great. Vulcan, according to this story, had his chief abode and 

 workshop in the Lipari Isles ; and whoever, it was said, deposited a 

 piece of unwrought iron at a certain spot, with the money for the 

 labour, on coming the following day, received for it a sword or 

 whatever else he desired.^ 



Though perhaps the most important, Weland is not the only 

 supernatural or unearthly being by whom sepulchral cairns or 

 chambers have been tenanted, by mediaeval, or perhaps even more 

 primitive, superstition. " Hob Hurst's House," in Derbyshire, is a 

 barrow of curious form, described by the late Mr. Bateman ; ^ and 

 " Obtrush Roque " is a cairn, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, 

 surrounded bj' two circles of stones and containing a central cist.^ 

 Both derive their name from Hob-thrust, i.e. Hob o' the Hurst, a 

 spirit supposed to haunt woods, and doubtless a descendant and 

 representative of some old pagan divinity of the groves. Not only 

 was the Yorkshire cairn reputed to be haunted by the goblin, but 

 by his troublesome visits an honest farmer of Farndale was nearly 



' This curious passage, from the lost work of the famous Greek voyager of 

 Massilia, is preserved by the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, lib. iv., v. 761, 

 It is not given by Depping, and was first quoted in English, in illustration of 

 tbe Berkshire legend, by Price, uhi supra. 



* " Ten Year's Diggings," 1861, p. 87 ; where are figures of the mound and 

 of the stone cist in its interior, which was uncovered by Mr. Bateman. 



^ Phillips's " Rivers, Mountains, &c., of Yorkshire," p. 210. See also " Gent. 

 Mag.," December, 1861, p. 662. Keightley, " Fairy Mythology," 1828, vol. i., 

 p. 223. Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1851, vol. ii., p. 161. The word 

 ruck (pronounced rook) is in familiar use in the Dales district, and signifies a 

 pile or heap ; e.g. a ruck of turf, a ruck of stones. 



