Note Note — No 112 ARTHUR LE BRIDE

112. Arthur le Bride. Taken down from Sam Fone, Mary Tavy, by Mr. Bussell, in 1892. Sam told us that this was his father's favourite song. He had learned it from his father when he was quite a child, for the elder Fone deserted his family, and was never heard of again. But one day Sam, when aged eighteen, saw a workman standing at a cottage door, talking to someone within, and he had his hand against the door-post, clutching it as he leaned forward. Sam exclaimed: "That's my father's hand!" The man turned about, and without showing his face, walked away. When Sam came from his work in the evening he made enquiries, and ascertained that a stranger had been lodging in the cottage for a few nights, but was gone. He asked the woman of the house about her lodger. "Well," said she, "I don't know his name, nor nothing about him. But he asked me for a tallow candle, and melted it up into his boots." "That was my father. It was a trick of his," said Sam, promptly. And that was the last ever seen of the man.