Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/179

again and again, the heart turns sick, and the visitor is impatient to fly from towns thus vulgarised.

To Bideford he comes full of thoughts of "Westward Ho!" and expects to find an Elizabethan flavour about the place, only to be woefully disappointed. Even the church is new; only the bridge remains, and that has been menaced with destruction.

Bideford has memories, but modern Bideford has made herself aesthetically unworthy of them.

To begin with, the old Roman, or pre-Roman, road from North Cornwall passing through Stratton, that takes its name from the street or road, ran to the ford on the Torridge and passed on to Barnstaple. At the beginning of the ninth century the estuary of the Taw and Torridge (Dur, water, and Dur-rhyd, the water ford^[1]) invited the entry into the land of the Northmen.

A memorable incident in one of these incursions is connected with a romantic story that shall be told in full.

Roger of Wendover gives the tale, founding it on old ballads.

"There was, not long ago, in the kingdom of the Danes, a certain man named Lodbrog (Hairy-breeches), who was sprung from the royal race of that nation, and had by his wife two sons, Hingvar and Hubba. One day he took his hawk and went unattended in a little boat to catch small birds and wild-fowl on the seacoast and in the islands. While thus engaged he was surprised by a sudden storm, and carried out to sea, and after having been tossed about

1. The ford gave its distinctive appellation to the river above it.