That the tradition is not true no one can say. We know that
the memory of an action or tragedy of a character to stir the
feelings and impress the imagination may live unrecorded in
any locality for long centuries. And more, we know or
suppose, from at least one quite familiar instance from
Flintshire, that a tradition may even take us back to
prehistoric times and find corroboration in our own day.

But of this story what corroboration is there, and what do
the books say? I have consulted the county history, and no
mention is made of such a tradition, and can only assume that
the author had never heard it--that he had not the curious
Aubrey mind. He only says that it is a very early church
--how early he does not know--and adds that it was built "for
the convenience of the inhabitants of the place." An odd
statement, seeing that the place has every appearance of
having always been what it is, a forest, and that the
inhabitants thereof are weasels, foxes, jays and such-like,
and doubtless in former days included wolves, boars, roe-deer
and stags, beings which, as Walt Whitman truly remarks, do not
worry themselves about their souls.

With this question, however, we need not concern ourselves.
To me, after stumbling by chance on the little church in that
solitary woodland place, the story of its origin was accepted
as true; no doubt it had come down unaltered from generation
to generation through all those centuries, and it moved my
pity yet was a delight to hear, as great perhaps as it had
been to listen to the beautiful chimes many times multiplied