strange story of old times—some fact or some
tradition with which you are glad to make
acquaintance, or to renew your acquaintance if it
be an old friend. London has been a famous
ground for strange adventures during more
centuries than one could count upon the fingers of
both hands; and Mr. Timbs tells them in a
manner brief, intelligible, and sufficing.

When next the reader goes over London
Bridge, and looks at the beautiful church of St.
Mary Overies, let him think of the miserly ferryman
and his lovely daughter who plied there in
the remote Anglo-Saxon times. In those ages,
there was no bridge over the Thames, and old
John Overs, who ferried people across from the
city of London to the borough of Southwark,
prospered at a great rate. John rented the
ferry of the City; but so many people crossed
from side to side, together with horses, cattle,
and market produce, that he made a very
large profit by his work, and, waxing rich,
put out his money at usurious interest, and so
waxed richer. In time (according to the old
tract in the British Museum from which Mr.
Timbs quotes) he acquired an estate equal to
that of the best alderman in London; but he
always lived in abject poverty, though, for
purposes of business, he kept several servants and
apprentices. He had an only daughter, beautiful
and pious, whom he took care to have
liberally educated, but " at the cheapest rate."
When, however, she grew of age to marry, " he
would suffer no man, of what condition or
quality soever, by his good will, to have any
sight of her, much less access to her." Of
course, all his fine precautions were in vain.
You may shut up Danae in a brazen tower, but
Jupiter will find his way in somehow. The
Jupiter of this particular legend was a young
gallant, who certainly did not effect his entrance
into the maiden's bower in a rain of gold, for he
seems to have rather sought that commodity
than to have brought it with him; but who
managed in some way to obtain three interviews
with Danae while her father was rowing to and
fro on the river. Finally, a match was agreed
on; but an unlooked-for circumstance
prevented the desired nuptials. Old John took
it into his miserly head that he could save
something worth having, by starving himself
and all his household for a day; he therefore
feigned to be dead, and caused his daughter (who
reluctantly consented to the trick) to wrap him
in a sheet, and lay him out in his own chamber,
with a taper burning at his head, and another at
his feet, as the manner then was. He took it
for granted that all the people in his house
would fast during the whole day, in sorrow at
the event; but, watching narrowly from his
sheet, he was horrified to find that everybody
sang and danced for joy, and, breaking into the
larder, began feasting without check. He bore
it as long as he could without moving; but at
length the agony of seeing so much waste going
on about him became greater than he could
endure, and, says the tract, "stirring and struggling
in his sheet, like a ghost with a candle in each
hand, he purposed to rise up and rate 'em for
their sauciness and boldness; when one of them,
thinking that the devil was about to rise in his
likeness, being in a great amaze, catched hold of
the butt-end of a broken oar which was in the
chamber, and, being a sturdy knave, thinking to
kill the devil at the first blow, actually struck
out his brains." The sturdy knave was afterwards
tried for murder, but acquitted, doubtless
to the satisfaction of all reasonable men. The
ferryman's daughter inherited the old man's
estate; and the lover, hearing of the news in the
country, where he then was, posted up to London
as hard as he could, but on the way was
thrown from his horse, and broke his neck. The
body of Overs the ferryman was denied Christian
interment, on account of his extortions and
usury; and when the friars of Bermondsey
Abbey consented, for a money consideration, to
give a little earth for the reception of the
remains, the abbot, who was away at the time, no
sooner learnt the fact on his return, than he
caused the body to be taken up, and put on the
back of an ass, which was then turned out of
the abbey gates, the abbot praying that the beast
might carry the corpse of the old usurer to such
place as he would best deserve to be buried in.
The ass thereupon paced solemnly along
Kent-street, and so to a certain pond which was then
the common place of execution, and there he
shook off his burden immediately beneath the
gibbet, and the body was put under the ground
without any kind of ceremony. These lamentable
events seem to have permanently shadowed the
spirits of fair Mary Overs, and to have turned
her thoughts from this world to the next; for
she first dedicated her wealth to the building ot
the church of St. Mary Overies (so called after
her), and then retired into a convent. In the
church, a monumental effigy represents a skeleton
in a shroud; but the name given to the
ferryman in connexion with this figure is Audery,
not John Overs, and the workmanship is said to
be of the fifteenth century.

A different story is told of the original of the
effigy; namely, that he was a fanatic who
attempted to fast forty days in imitation of
Christ, and who died in the attempt. There
are many such effigies in other churches.

I will next filch from Mr. Timbs's repertory
a narrative of a murder, and of the strange way
in which it was discovered after many years.
Dr. Airy, provost of King's College, Oxford,
from 1599 to 1616 was one day passing with
his servant through St. Sepulchre's Churchyard,
London, while the sexton was making a
grave, when he observed a skull move. The
sexton examined it, and found a toad inside,
but remarked that a tenpenny nail was stuck in
the temple-bone. The doctor, inferring from this
fact that the possessor of the skull had been
murdered, asked the sexton if he remembered
whose skull it was, and was told that it was
that of a man who had died suddenly two-and-
twenty years before. Dr. Airy advised that
the matter should be inquired into; and
the sexton, after his departure, thinking