Indeed, this weakness is not exclusively an attribute of either British or Anglo-Saxon historians or romance writers. Mr. H. H. Howorth, in his able essay on "The Early History of Sweden," in Vol. 9 of the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, lucidly expounds the character of the contents of the professedly Danish History by Saxo-Grammaticus. He says--"He had no scaffolding upon which to build his narrative. He had to construct one for himself in the best way he could, and to piece together the various fragments before him into a continuous patchwork. His was not a critical age, and we are not therefore surprised to find that his handiwork was exceedingly rude. A piece of the history of the Lombards by Paul and Deacon, and another taken from the Edda, are thrust in after narratives evidently relating to the ninth century, when Ireland had been more or less conquered by the Norsemen. Icelanders are introduced into the story a long time before the discovery of Iceland. Christianity is professed by Danish kings long before it had reached the borders of Denmark. The events belonging to one Harald (Harald Blatand) are transferred to another Harald who lived two or three centuries earlier, and the joints in the patchwork narrative are filled up by the introduction of plausible links." He afterwards adds--"The other important fact to remember is that our author was patriotic enough to lay under contribution, not only materials relating to Denmark, but to _transfer to Denmark the history of other countries_. To appropriate not only the traditions of the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, and the common Scandinavian heritage of the Edda, but also the particular histories of Sweden and Norway, and that a good deal of what passes for Danish history in his pages is not Danish at all, but Swedish, and relates to the rulers of Upsala, and not to those of Lethra; topographical boundaries being as lightly skipped over by the patriotic old chronicler, whose home materials were so scanty, as chronological ones." It is, under such circumstances, vain to expect reliable historical evidence of the identity of locality or the names of the real warrior chiefs who commanded in many of the presumed Arthurian battles and adventures, some of them being evidently mythical or artistic creations. Whitaker's "large old spur, carrying a stem four or five inches in length, and a rowel as large as a half-crown," does not seem to indicate so early a date as the Anglo-Saxon conquests in Britain. Mr. Thomas Wright, in his "Celt, Roman and Saxon," referring to spurs of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods, says--"Amongst the extensive Roman remains found in the camp at Hod Hill were several spurs of iron, which resembled so closely the Norman prick-spurs, that they might easily be mistaken for them. I suspect that many of the prick-spurs which have been found on or near Roman sites, and hastily judged to be Norman, are, especially when made of bronze, Roman. As far, however, as comparison has yet been made, the _Roman and the Saxon spurs are shorter in the stimulus_ than those of the Norman." Spurs with long _stimuli_ or large rowels do not appear to have been in use until some time after the Norman Conquest. This, however, does not necessarily affect the antiquity of the whole of the remains referred to, which, of course, may have been deposited at different periods.