The bowls story could be true within oral transmission limits

Evidence

Of course, it need not have happened. There is no contemporary authority for it; the earliest record is more than forty years after the event. But forty years is within the limits of fairly reliable oral transmission. It could have happened. The words are like Drake; they have his touch of swagger and his flair for the homely jest to relieve a moment of tension. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 597

Categorization

• SEED: Mattingly’s method — weighing oral transmission as evidence — models how a novelist can verify or justify legendary detail.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 597
• XREF: connects to: Oral transmission yields more internally consistent traditions than written transmission — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 664