The Myth of the Doones

1916

How largely Mr. Blackmore drew upon his imagination for the story of Lorna Doone is made clear by F. W. Hackwood in his book, "The Good Old Times."

There were, in fact, no Doones. The word was simply a local bogy, a modified form of "Dane," a memory of the far off times when the Viking invaders harried the land.

"The only vestige of actuality discoverable is a faint tradition that a fugitive from the battle of Sedgmoor, to escape the hangings of Judge Jeffreys, appropriated the ruins of some wretched huts in recesses of the Badgworthy glen, now 'the Doon valley,' finding there a safe retreat in which he reared a considerable family, which managed to eke out a living by committing petty depredations in the district. The 'last of the Doones,' an old man and his granddaughter, are said to have perished in the snow during the winter of 1900."