We were in no hurry to leave Banbury, for we had not recovered from the
effects of our long walk of the previous day and night, and were more
inclined to saunter about the town than to push on. It is astonishing
how early remembrances cling to us in after life: we verily believed we
had come to Banbury purposely to visit its famous Cross, immortalised in
the nursery rhyme:
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady get on a white horse;
She's rings on her fingers and bells on her toes.
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
[Illustration: BANBURY CROSS.]
The rhyme must, like many others, have been of great antiquity, for the
old Cross of Banbury had been removed by the Puritans in the year 1602,
and its place taken by a much finer one, recently erected to commemorate
the marriage of the Emperor Frederick of Germany to the Princess Royal
of England. The fine lady and the white horse were also not to be found,
but we heard that the former was supposed to have been a witch, known as
the Witch of Banbury, while the white horse might have been an emblem of
the Saxons or have had some connection with the great white horse whose
gigantic figure we afterwards saw cut out in the green turf that covered
the white chalk cliffs of the Berkshire Downs.
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