Locals tell a rhyme about the Rusty Flagon: 'When ribbons fall and tankards ring, the Flagon's heart will soon take wing.' Superstition says the tavern sits on a seam of old road-stone where travelers once left offerings for safe passage. Some swear there's a bricked tunnel to the river used by smugglers in winter; others whisper of a lantern-lit widow who searches for a husband drowned when the old toll-bridge gave way. Old coins have been found in the mortar of the hearth, and once every decade someone digs up a tarnished token stamped with a king's face — proof, the old timers say, that the road remembers those who walked it.