from what they said. The Normans when they came had called it Mal Lieu
and afterwards Mallintown and so it changed to Mallington. Though what
a town can ever have had to do with a place so utterly desolate I do
not know. And before that some say that the Saxons called it Baplas,
which I believe to be a corruption of Bad Place.

And beyond the mere rumour of a beautiful city all of white marble and
with a foreign look up on Mallington Moor, beyond this I could not
get. None of them had seen it himself, "only heard of it like," and my
questions, rather than stimulating conversation, would always stop it
abruptly. I was no more fortunate on the road to Mallington until the
Tuesday, when I was quite near it; I had been walking two days from
the inn where I had heard the rumour and could see the great hill
steep as a headland on which Mallington lay, standing up on the
skyline: the hill was covered with grass, where anything grew at all,
but Mallington Moor is all heather; it is just marked Moor on the map;
nobody goes there and they do not trouble to name it. It was there
where the gaunt hill first came into sight, by the roadside as I
enquired for the marble city of some labourers by the way, that I was
directed, partly I think in derision, to the old shepherd of Lingwold.
It appeared that he, following sometimes sheep that had strayed, and
wandering far from Lingwold, came sometimes up to the edge of
Mallington Moor, and that he would come back from these excursions and
shout through the villages, raving of a city of white marble and
gold-tipped minarets. And hearing me asking questions of this city
they had laughed and directed me to the shepherd of Lingwold. One
well-meant warning they gave me as I went--the old man was not
reliable.

And late that evening I saw the thatches of Lingwold sheltering under