ticularly noticeable in the binding of the hat, where, after having stitched the ribbon on to the right side of the brim by one edge, it is required to turn it over on to the other side, and neatly hem it down. A moment's reflection, aided by an inspection of a "chimneypot" hat, will render this perfectly clear.

Englishmen may justly feel proud that not a single "silk hat" is imported into this country, and that, in spite of the fact that the materials used in making them are brought from all parts of the world, the hats themselves are exported to the Continent, the Colonies, and every quarter of the globe where civilisation prevails. It stands to our credit that we beat every nation in this manufacture, and an English "chimney-pot" is an unsurpassable product. It is for English hatters, protected by their patron saint, to continue to defy the world, so far as the excellence of their workmanship is concerned.

JAMES CASSIDY.

39

A

THOMAS HICKATHRIFT:

THE NORFOLK GIANT-KILLER.

LTHOUGH the Eastern Counties of England are poor in legendary and romantic lore, they can boast one hero whose history may compare with most of the simpler tales of popular deliverers and doughty champions. Tom Hickathrift is no Cid riding his charger Bavieca across the sierras of sunny Spain, no Roland sounding his magic horn in the defiles of the Pyrenees, all unlike the high-toned knights and squires who prance in the hazy, iris-hued realm of chivalry, quite too lowly to mix with the courtly band who served the goddess Gloriana, and were ever ready to pursue the Blatant Beast, or to resist with stout hearts and pure souls the wiles of the false Duessa.

Tom Hickathrift is English out and out, and his story, in the main, might form a homely chapter in a secular "Pilgrim's Progress." · The earliest printed version of the tale, so far as is known, is that inthe Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, printed, it is supposed, soon after 1660; there is, however, a second part believed to be a printer's or a chapman's addition, the British Museum copy of which is dated 1780.

"The Pleasant History of Thomas Hic-ka-thrift," as the earliest story is entitled, is quaintly summarised thus:--

What honour Tom came unto.-How Tom Hic-ka-thrift's strength came to be known.-How Tom came to be a Brewer's man, and how he came to kill a gyant, and at last was Mr. Hickathrift.-How Tom kept a pack of hounds and kickt a football quite away, and how he had like to have been robbed with four thieves, and how Tom escaped.

So far as I am aware, the only attempt to edit the tale of Hickathrift was that of Mr. Lawrence Gomme, who, in 1885, printed it "from the earliest extant copies with an introduction," for the Villon Society. As this volume was one of a series of five "Chap Books and Folk Lore Tracts," published for a society not in touch with the general public, it is little known.

Mr. Gomme's system of marshalling his authorities is singularly

confused; he begins by asserting that Hearne, the antiquary (16781735), has gone so far as to identify Hickathrift with Sir Frederick de Tylney, Baron of Tylney in Norfolk, who was killed in Syria in the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion, and, as authority for this, quotes a Quarterly Review article (vol. xxi., 1819), on "Antiquities of Nursery Literature," by Sir Francis Palgrave.

Mr. Gomme does not seem to have referred to Hearne's "Glossary to Robert of Gloucester," but Hearne probably based his guess about Sir Frederic Tylney on the story in Hakluyt's first volume of voyages (1589) about the knight, vir magnæ staturæ et potens corpore, who sleeps with his ancestors at Terrington, near the town of his own name, Tylney, in the Norfolk marshland.

Hakluyt's story, from a note in an old book of Thomas Tylney, of Hadleigh, Suffolk, dated 1556, is given verbatim by Weever in his "Ancient Funerall Monuments," 1631.

Mr. Gomme sets himself to closely examine all the evidence available as to the existence and form of the popular tradition concerning Hickathrift, and starts with Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, "writing in 1808," says Mr. Gomme, evidently unaware that Blomefield died in 1752, though there is an edition of his work dated 1808. Moreover, the account of Hickathrift in volume iv. of the folio edition of the "History of Norfolk" is by the Rev. Charles Parkin, the continuator of Blomefield, and this volume was not issued until 1775-twenty-three years after Blomefield's death. This account is merely taken from Weever's "Funerall Monuments," 1631, and Sir William Dugdale's "History of Imbanking," 1662. Parkin, indeed, says that the common people "retain the tradition," but here he simply follows Weever and Spelman, though he was about fifty years rector of Oxburgh, near the scene of Hickathrift's exploits.

After quoting Dugdale, Mr. Gomme tell us that the local tradition can be carried further back to Sir Henry Spelman's "Icenia," written about 1640, and that "a still earlier version is to be found recorded by Weever in 1631."

This is a most unfortunate derangement of dates; for, though Weever dates his " "Funerall Monuments' from my House in Clerkenwell Close this 28th May, 1631," he also expressly states in the margin of his account of Hickathrift, that he derived it from Sir Henry Spelman's "Icenia," and, in the last page of "Funerall Monuments," excuses himself from giving particulars of the diocese of Norwich because "that learned and judicious knight and great antiquary, Sir Henry Spelman, in his booke (before mentioned)

called 'Icenia,' a Manuscript much desired to come to the open view of the world," had already given the information.

Spelman died in 1641, and there is very good reason to believe that the fragment called "Icenia" was written in 1630. However that may be, it is incontestable that Weever got his story of Hickathrift from Sir Henry Spelman, who was born at Congham, Norfolk, not far from Hickathrift's native marshland.

It would appear from these rectifications that Sir Henry Spelman is the first known chronicler of the legend of Hickathrift. "Icenia," in Latin, forms pages 135-162 in "Reliquiæ Spelmannianæ," London, 1723, and the story of "Hikifricus Pugil quidam Norfolciensis," may be found at page 138 of that volume, as partially quoted by Mr. Gomme.

Grim old Weever somewhat amplifies Sir Henry Spelman's notice of Hikifricke, and dwells on the funeral monument in the churchyard of Tilney All Saints, a scattered parish some four miles from Lynn. "A ridg'd Altar, Tombe, or Sepulchre, of a wondrous antique fashion, upon which an axell-tree and a cart wheele are insculped.” Concerning this, he says the town-dwellers report, "How that upon a time (no man knows how long since) there happened a great quarrell betwixt the lord of this land and the inhabitants of the foresaid seven villages (i.e. of Norfolk marshland) about the meeremarks, limits, or boundaries of this fruitful feeding place; the matter came to a battell or skirmish, in which the said inhabitants being not able to resist the landlord and his forces began to give backe; Hikifricke, driving his cart along and perceiving that his neighbours were faint-hearted, and ready to take flight, he shooke the axell-tree from the cart which he used instead of a sword, and tooke one of the cart-wheels, which he held as a buckler; with these weapons he set upon the Common adversaries, or adversaries of the Common, encouraged his neighbours to go forward and fight valiantly in defence of their liberties; who, being animated by his manly prowesse, they tooke heart to grasse, as the proverbe is, insomuch that they chased the landlord and his companie to the utmost verge of the said Common; which from that time they have quietly enjoyed to this very day. The Axell-tree and cart-wheele are cut and figured in divers places of the Church and Church windows, which makes the story, you must needs say, more probable."

Weever, still following Spelman, compares Hikifricke's feat with that of Hay, a spirited Scottish ploughman (ancestor of the Earls of Errol) who, in the year 942, rescued some of his countrymen from the Danes by means of an ox-yoke or plough-beam.

Sir William Dugdale, whose sympathies were not democratic, represents Hickifricke as the landlord, stoutly repelling the "bold invaders" who contested the boundary question: "For further testimony of which notable exploit they to this day show a large gravestone near the east end of the chancel in Tilney churchyard, whereupon the form of a cross is so cut as that the upper part thereof by reason of the flourishes (wherewith the carver hath adorned it), showeth to be somewhat circular, which they will, therefore, needs have to be the wheel and the shaft of the axle-tree."

This is from Sir William Dugdale's "History of Imbanking," &c., first published in 1662, to prepare which he visited the Marshland, and, no doubt, saw the "funerall monument," as Weever, in all likelihood, did not see it.

Parkin stolidly points out that the supposed representation of a cart-wheel is "a cross pattée, on the summit of a staff, which staff is styled an axle-tree. Such crosses pattée on the head of a staff were emblems or tokens that some Knight Templar was therein interred, and many such are to be seen at this day in old churches."

Sir Francis Palgrave, in the Quarterly Review article of 1819 already referred to, says that a Norfolk antiquary procured him an authentic report of the state of Tom's sepulchre at that time. The sculptured lid was then no longer in existence, but, said the antiquary, "it must have been entire about fifty years ago, for when we were good 'Gaffer Crane would rehearse Tom's achievements,' and tell us that he had cut out the moss which filled up the inscription with his penknife, but he could not read the letters."

Parkin says that the stone coffin pointed out as Hickifricke's would not receive a person above six feet in length. So much of it as is now above ground is much defaced and broken, and I can find no authority for the statement in Murray's "Eastern Counties " (1892, p. 323), that the original grave-slab has been moved into the north aisle of the church.

There is a mound near the Smeeth Road Station, between Lynn and Wisbech, called the Giant's Grave, said to be the actual burialplace of the giant slain by Hickathrift, as hereafter described, while in the neighbouring churchyard of Terrington St. John is a cross known as "Hickathrift's Candlestick." This tends to connect Hickathrift with Hakluyt's gigantic Sir Frederic Tilney; and Richards, the historian of Lynn, suggests that perhaps the crusader was descended from Hickathrift. As the Tilney line ended in an heiress, who married a Duke of Norfolk, we can pleasantly surmise that the