Reviewing aerial photographs of a Romano-British temple in what is now Berkshire (formerly Oxfordshire), archaeologists noticed a large, dark oval mark on the ground near the temple site.

Wisely, they consulted with the local man who actually farmed the land, and so knew it best.

“That's where I have my slurry pit,” he told them.

They weren't entirely convinced. It would have been the largest slurry pit in the country.

“What's the name of the field?” they asked.

(In Britain, every field has a name—or used to, at least.)

“Trendles,” he told them.

Their ears immediately pricked up.

Trendel was the Old English word for “circle”—in certain Witch circles, this is still the name for the magic circle—but the word went out of common use more than 1000 years ago.

Excavations later revealed the reason for the Anglo-Saxon name. Beneath the field lay the remains of a Roman amphitheater.

A review of surviving medieval documents never mentioned the name Trendles. Experts in British place-names had never heard of it.

To quote one of the archaeologists:

 The survival of the name 'Trendles' is remarkable. It must have been passed down by word of mouth for about fifteen hundred years, long after the amphitheater itself had been lost in the ground (191).

Academicians in recent decades have been prone to downplay the trustworthiness of oral tradition in preserving accurate historical memory. Clearly, claims of continuity are best handled with caution.

Caution, though, is not the same as skepticism.

David Miles, The Land of the White Horse: Visions of England (London, Thames and Hudson, 2019)