the personality of our most famous outlaw? Was not Robin the Middle-English survival of a series of Celto-Teutonic traditions, centring in the beorn of Anglian rule, and later in the gísl-björn of Norse timesthe king's officer, bailiff, warden, and harsh rule? It is almost certain that this was so, and that the proud sheriff of Nottingham was the gisl or King's officer, his björn being a myrmidon, who has in turn come down to us as Sir Guy of Gisborne.

Barnsdale represents the border-land of three counties, Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Lincoln. Sherwood Forest-the forest at the shires, where rule divided, as it does for the police at the present daylike all the northern forests at least, was one of the last lurking grounds of the Celt, where broken men were likely enough to resort, and where they might live in some lawless freedom if they would but confine their operations within themselves, and keep off the king's highway, which traversed Barnsdale, and was watched over by the beorn and then the björn. The now somnolent little town of Bawtry stands upon the very intersection of the counties. If it be true that Bawtry-the baug-tré-takes its name from the Icelandic baug, compensation, we have some shadow of rule being maintained, or extortion practised, "under the greenwood tree"; of local tumults and fierce execution done or black-mail levied there in the ante-Conquest days. The boundary between Yorkshire and Nottingham runs through Bawtry, and so for legislative purposes the town would be convenient. It is situate upon the site of a Roman road from Agelocum, Littleborough, to Danum, Doncaster, and this fact meant something in the days when the Romans were masters. A fair of four days in the year was procured from King John by Robert de Vipont, then lord of the manor, for a present of four palfreys. That also means something having intimate relationship with the confluence of people, and the necessity of an authority to tax them and control. them either with beorn or björn. Anyhow, we may take it that the fair did not bring the people; they being present as of old was the necessity of the charter.

The romantic history of Barnsdale seems to loom out of these scattered facts; it would not be lessened if we could revive all the stories of the Celto-Teuton struggle. Sir Guy of Gisborne and the Dragon of Wantley are illustrations of its social history. Everything points to an oppressed people and a harsh rule. In the twisted, half-forgotten lines of the ballads we have the evidence of this:

Now, by my faye, sayd jollye Robin,

A sweaven I had this night;
I dreamt me of tow mighty yemen,
That fast with me can fight.

Not lords and proud aristocrats, not harsh sheriffs, but yemen, a people, race against race. And I take it that this is the dream of a Celt, the "tow mighty yemen" being the two branches of his Gothic persecutors, the Angle and the Norseman. It will be observed how soon one of these mighty yemen is dropped from the ballad; the one remaining being a very redoubtable personage:

A sword and dagger he wore by his side;

Of manye a man the bane;

And he was clad in his capul hyde,

Topp and tayll and mayne.

Which is an excellent picture of the last of the persecutors, one of the Bersarke followers of Ragnar Lothbrog, Ragnar of the shaggy breeks! The ballad has here allowed the Angle to drop out of sight, for his iniquities had been surpassed by those of the man "clad in his capul hyde."

Little John went to Barnsdale, whose "gates he knoweth each one," and the gate is the road, as the men of Norse origin speak today in their Kirkgates and other similar names. Little John was captured, as also was Scarlette.

For the sheriffe with seven score men
Fast after him is gone.

May we venture on the interpretation of the outlaw's name, Scarlette? The Norse pirates affected that colour, and paid heavily for garments of it. As the ballad proceeds Robin then encounters, not the sheriff, but his myrmidon the gísl-björn.

Now tell me thy name, good fellowe, sayd he,

Under the leaves of lyne.

Nay, by my faith, quoth bolde Robin,

Till thou have told me thine.

I dwell by dale and doune, quoth hee,

And Robin to take I'm sworne;

And when I am called by my right name,

I'm Guy of good Gisborne!

Which is certainly a very peculiar twist of the old forgotten phrase, remaining only as a sound. It is strange, if we accept the words literally, that this dweller by "dale and doune," who must clearly be a rustic if the words mean anything, should declare himself to be of "good Gisborne," a town whose old name was positively Gisilburn, and which means the burn or stream of the gísl, king's officer. However, Robin then has his say

My dwelling is in this wood, sayes Robin;

By thee I set right nought;

I'm Robin Hood of Barnesdale,

Whom thou so long hast sought.

And so they fought. The outlaw slew Sir Guy, and, when he had cut off his head, "Robin pulled forth an Irish knife." Why Irish, if not Celtic? The yeman had a sword and dagger by his sidenot the lance, be it remarked, the knightly weapon-he was a man wearing the Royal authority; but Robin was a bowman only; and as a subjected peasantry are always disarmed, he must conceal a metal weapon, so the one that he pulled forth was an Irish knifewhatever that might be! His description of the arms of the gíslbjörn and the outlaw falls back some centuries from the days of the Plantagenets and the era of Robin Hood.

Among the rest of the heroes we have the notorious Pinder, George à Green, and, what is most remarkable, he is the Pinder of Wakefield. The old name of this latter place-Wachefeld and even Walchefeld is evidently the field or allotment of the Welsh or Celts. In the earliest forms of the ballads, then, we have another law-myrmidon, and still again the reference to Celtic times and the Celtic borderland. And then comes the most singular circumstance, the place of the death of Robin.

The hero's grave is pointed out in the park of Kirklees, a beautiful woodland site in the valley of the Calder, once the park of a small Benedictine, or, perhaps, Cistercian nunnery. The story is that Robin went to the Priory, of which his aunt was prioress, to be let blood. In its allegorical sense such an errand is very comprehensive. While there, in the hands of friends, he was designedly or carelessly suffered to bleed to death by the nun who had performed the operation, and his death was due to the Church, the history of which at that time is abundantly significant. The creation of the Priory of Kirklees, in the very core of the Robin Hood era, the last quarter of the twelfth century, is due to a de-nationalised Celt of the valley of the Don! That, at least, is a very noteworthy fact.

The donor of the lands is called Reiner Flandrensis in the charter of foundation, but the correctness of translating the vernacular name Fleming by Flandrensis is here doubtful. The Icelandic word Flæmingr means a stroller, land-louper, and has clear reference to strife and unsettled habits-to Celts and outlaws. The monks did not always so translate the word. In an essentially Celtic district Michael Flamengus gave lands to Furniss Abbey in 1253; so we have the Norse word latinised, and not the geographical expression.

At a short distance from the Angle foundation, Hertshead, near the highway "is the base of a genuine Saxon cross, called Walton Cross, a very interesting relic "—at a Wealhas-tún, or Celt's enclosure,

And so we have a Celtic outlaw, coming from the valley of the Don, over the great Wakefield fee, to this remote corner of it. He there founds a nunnery, and that nunnery provides the grave of what? of Robin Hood, alias the last hero of the Celtic race, now so rapidly assimilating with the usurpers, and forming the greater whole that must grow from the Gothic stock. Thus, then, in the beautiful allegory which proclaimed the dissolution of Celt-rule, Robin Hood, the incarnation of the Celts in their struggle with their oppressors, left the great haunt where the turmoil had so long gone against them, to rest on the less dangerous border, where kinsfolk were settled in peace. Why he should be betrayed there, and that, too, in a religious house, is a matter for much further inquiry.

There are some other remarkable coincidences in this strange story. Having passed the Walchefeld with its ruthless government, and followed the windings of the Calder up to the Waletun and the edge of Warren's fee, it still found no repose. If reliance be placed on the date of the epitaph on the so-called tomb of Robin, it is singular that it should be dated in the month of December in the year 1247, the close of the year when, after a long minority, young Earl Warren was reaching the power he will sway with a hand which will take care that "sick utlauz az hi an iz men, vil Inglande nivr si agen." The Countess his mother, under whom the rule had been an easy one, died in 1248, and henceforth her wayward son is in trouble greater or less. In the satirical ballad of Richard of Almaigne the Earl is thus spoken of :

By God that is above ous, he dude muche synne

That let passen over see the Erl of Warynne;

He hath robbed Englelond, the mores ant the fenne,

The gold ant the selver, and y-boren henne.

The allusion to his robbery of the "mores and fenne" refers to his doings upon Hatfield Chase, and other of his estates, as a game preserver and destroyer of the common rights of the people. It was he who bared the rusty sword before Edward's commissioners inquiring into titles of lands. He was Edward's lieutenant in Scotland in later years a warrior of fame, whose death the king mourned for, and ordered masses to be sung publicly for the weal of his relentless soul. He and his ancestors had been the chieftains of the northern portion of the line of the Don since the Conquest, and the gaol of the Walchefeld, once Warren's richest seat, is still one of the greatest gaols of the kingdom.

W. WHEATER.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.

“T1

HERE are many ways," says Del Rio, "in which the Philosopher's Stone is made. Writers contest with each other which is the right way. Pauladames opposes the opinion of Brachescus; Villanosanus will have none of the mode of Trevisanus. So one assails another, and all call each other foolish and ignorant." But however they may have disputed how to make it, no one succeeded in finding the right way, for no one knew where to look for it; and yet the Philosopher's Stone was before all their eyes, to be enjoyed by all alike, but to be appropriated by none. This precious stone, which went by various names, the "Universal Elixir," the "Elixir of Life," the "Water of the Sun," was thought to procure to its happy discoverer and possessor riches innumerable, perpetual health, a life exempt from all maladies, and cares, and pains, and even in the opinion of some-immortality. It transmuted lead into gold, glass into diamonds, it opened locks, it penetrated everywhere; it was the sovereign remedy to all disease, it was luminous in the darkest night. To fashion it—so the alchemists said—gold and lead, iron, antimony, vitriol, sulphur, mercury, arsenic, water, fire, earth, and air were needed; to these must be added the egg of a cock, and the spittle of doves. Really, said one shrewd and satiric writer, it only wanted oil, vinegar, and salt, to make of it a salad.

Now the curious thing is-as we shall see in the sequel-the alchemists were not far out in their opinion. All these ingredients, or rather most of them-the cock's egg and the dove's spittle only exempted-are to be found combined in the Philosopher's Stone, and only recent science has established this fact.

As the possessor of this stone was sure to be the most glorious, powerful, rich, and happy of mortals, as he could at will convert anything into gold, and enjoy all the pleasures of life, it is not surprising that the Philosopher's Stone was sought with eagerness. It was sought, but, as already said, never found, because the alchemists looked for it in just the place where it was not to be