Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 216, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1910 — LORNA DOONE NEVER EXISTED [ARTICLE]

LORNA DOONE NEVER EXISTED

English Ex-Lord Justice Discredits One of Favorite Legends of Devonshire. London. —Millions of people have xead Blackmore’s great tale of Exmoor, and have supposed that once •pon a time Loma Doone and Jan SUdd really lived. One of the greatest jurists in the world now suggests that they all have believed a myth. The skeptic is Sir Edward Fry, exlord justice and a member of tbe Somerset Archaeological society. Sir Udward Fry Is an expert judge of the -value of evidence, and he holds that -there Is no evidence that there ever •were any marauding .Doones on Exmoor. It was at a meeting of the Somerset Archaeological society that Sir JSdward Fry set out to demolish the legend of Loma Doone. While admitting that, on the face of it, tl story -was perfectly probable, he said that while old writers referred to the traditions of other banditti, such as the •Gubbinses of Dartmoor, no writer mentioned any Doone tradition. “No piece of historical evidence has ever been produced,” said Sir "Edward, “to show that the band existed. although their long-continued misdeeds were of a nature to produce • whole library of penny chapbooks, mu* as formed the reading oftry people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “ 'Loma Doone,' 1* a magnificent story, but the efforts to give it basis nf fact proride painful reading for

those who desire the progress of historical studies.” It will be Interesting to see what Devonshire people think of the the legends.