_Source._--_Diary of Abraham de la Pryme_ (Surtees Soc.) under date 10th
November, 1699, but rewritten by Mr. Nutt, who has retained the few
characteristic seventeenth century touches of Pryme's dull and
colourless narration. There is a somewhat fuller account in Blomefield's
_History of Norfolk_, vi., 211-13, from Twysden's _Reminiscences_, ed.
Hearne, p. 299, in this there is a double treasure; the first in an iron
pot with a Latin inscription, which the pedlar, whose name is John
Chapman, does not understand. Inquiring its meaning from a learned
friend, he is told--
Under me doth lie
Another much richer than I.
He accordingly digs deeper and finds another pot of gold.
_Parallels._--Blomefield refers to Fungerus, _Etymologicum
Latino-Græcum_, pp. 1110-11, where the same story is told of a peasant
of Dort, in Holland, who was similarly directed to go to Kempen Bridge.
Prof. E.B. Cowell, who gives the passage from Fungerus in a special
paper on the subject in the _Journal of Philology_, vi., 189-95, points
out that the same story occurs in the _Masnávi_ of the Persian port
Jalaluddin, whose _floruit_ is 1260 A.D. Here a young spendthrift of
Bagdad is warned in a dream to repair to Cairo, with the usual result of
being referred back.
_Remarks._--The artificial character of the incident is sufficient to
prevent its having occurred in reality or to more than one inventive
imagination. It must therefore have been brought to Europe from the East
and adapted to local conditions at Dort and Swaffham. Prof. Cowell
suggests that it was possibly adapted at the latter place to account for
the effigy of the pedlar and his dog.