Note 5 — Chapter VIII · Welsh Cave Legends

Those are, says Gwynionyđ, the ideas cherished by the old people of Troed yr Aur in Keredigion, and the editor adds a note that the same sort of story is current among the peasantry of Cumberland, and perhaps of other parts of Britain. This remark will at once recall to the reader’s mind the well-known verses5 of the Scottish poet, Leyden, as to Arthur asleep in a cave in the Eildon Hills in the neighbourhood of Melrose Abbey. But he will naturally ask why London Bridge is introduced into this and Iolo’s story, and in answer I have to say, firstly, that London Bridge formerly loomed very large in the popular imagination as one of the chief wonders of London, itself the most wonderful city in the world. Such at any rate was the notion cherished as to London and London Bridge by the country people of Wales, even within my own memory. Secondly, the fashion of selecting London Bridge as the opening scene of a treasure legend had been set, perhaps, by a widely spread English story to the following effect:—A certain pedlar of Swaffham in Norfolk had a dream, that if he went and stood on London Bridge he would have very joyful news; as the dream was doubled and trebled he decided to go. So he stood on the bridge two or three days, when at last a shopkeeper, observing that he loitered there so long, neither offering anything for sale nor asking for alms, inquired of him as to his business. The pedlar told him his errand, and was heartily laughed at by the shopkeeper, who said that he had dreamt that night that he was at a place called Swaffham in Norfolk, and that if he only dug under a great oak tree in an orchard behind a pedlar’s house there, he would find a vast treasure; but the place was utterly unknown to him, and he was not such a fool as to follow a silly dream. No, he was wiser than that; so he advised the pedlar to go home to mind his business. The pedlar very quietly took in the words as to the dream, and hastened home to Swaffham, where he found the treasure in his own orchard. The rest of the story need not be related here, as it is quite different from the Welsh ones, which the reader has just had brought under his notice6.