Mr. Elton, who quotes this passage, adds in a note that one
of the family clubs is still preserved at a farm in East
Gothland.[102] Aubrey has preserved an old English "countrie story" of
"the holy mawle, which (they fancy) hung behind the church dore,
which, when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock
his father in the head, as effoete, & of no more use."[103] That
Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of
similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose
romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his
adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease,
congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where
sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace
of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this
savage custom in Prussia, and a Count Schulenberg rescued an old man
who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called
Jammerholz, or "Woful Wood;" while a Countess of Nansfield, in the
fourteenth century, is said to have saved the life of an old man on
the Lueneberg Heath under similar circumstances.

Our investigation of barbarous and savage customs, which connect
themselves with the essential incidents of this Highland tale, has at
this point taken us outside the framework of the story. The old father
in the tale was not killed by the mallet, but he is said to have used
it as a warning to others to stop the practice of giving up their
property during lifetime. We have already seen that this practice was
an actual custom in early times, appearing in local survivals both in
England and Scotland. Therefore the story must have arisen at a time
when this practice was undergoing a change. We must note, too, that
the whole story leads up to the finding of a mallet with the rhyming
inscription written thereon, connecting it with the instrument of
death to the aged, but only on certain conditions. If, then, we can
find that the rhyming inscription on the mallet has an existence quite
apart from the story, and if we can find that mallets bearing such an
inscription do actually exist, we may fairly conclude that the story,
which, in Scotland, is the vehicle of transmission of the rhyme, is of
later origin than the rhyme itself.

First of all, it is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note
to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of
Bromyard'