Note 117 — Chapter IX · MINESTEAD AND RUFUS’S STONE.
Reading edition
William of Malmesbury says nothing about the tree, from which nearly all modern historians represent the arrow as glancing. Vitalis, as before, p. 751, expressly states that it rebounded from the back of a beast of chase (fera), apparently, by the mention of bristles (setæ), a wild-boar. Matthew Paris (Ed. Wats., tom. i. p. 54) first mentions the tree, but his narrative is doubtful.