Men from other lands came also. At the end of the tenth century a document dealing with trade in London speaks of men from Rouen, Flanders, Ponthieu, Normandy, France; from about the same date comes a description of York as the resort of merchants from all quarters, especially Danes.

The merchants and seamen plied an honoured trade. The poets speak with appreciation of the seaman «who can boldly drive the ship across the salt sea» or «can steer the stem on the dark wave, knows the currents, (being) the pilot of the company over the wide ocean», and it was at least a current opinion in the early eleventh century that the merchant who had crossed the sea three times at his own cost should be entitled to a thane’s rank. The merchant in Aelfric’s «Colloquy» stresses the dangers of his lot:

As we see people working in the sea or over the seas gained much respect in the society and were loved by others. But so much for the economical aspect. The water, as we already mentioned earlier, was one of the greatest attractions as a source of entertainment.

Fishing, like hunting, was highly popular in England, but these were pleasures reserved for the nobility. In the twelfth century, when the kings had normally been so strong, they had claimed such oppressive fishing — rights that all the classes had united in protest. One of the demands of the rebels in 1381 was that hunting and fishing should be common to all; not only was this refused, but in 1390 Parliament enacted a penalty for one year’s imprisonment for everyone who should presume to keep hunting — dogs or use ferrets or snares to catch deer, rabbits, or any other game. Fishing and hunting, said the statute, was the sport for gentlefolk.

So this is a sketch or an outline of reasons explaining why our ancestors valued so much the rivers, lakes, seas of their land — and it is worth mentioning that their land abounds in all that — and why they respected the work of sailors, merchants or travellers. All this is important for the understanding of how it was becoming an inseparable part of their culture and how it is reflected in their culture.

What is folklore? Funk and Wagnall’s «Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend» (1972) offers a staggering 22 definitions, running to half a dozen pages. In recent years definitions have tended to be all — embracing in their simplicity: folklore is made up of «the traditional stories, customs and habits of a particular community or nation» says the «Collins Cobuild Dictionary» of 1987.