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I stumbled across a work "Minor morals for young people" published in London & Dublin in 1839: https://archive.org/details/minormoralsforyo03bowr

It includes a story that appears to be have much in common with the Joseph Smith Golden Plates story. In particular, there is sinking treasure chests, a "hideous monster, in the shape of a huge toad" which strikes down the treasure-seeker.

Have any historians expressed an opinion on whether this is a direct borrowing from the Chase affidavit or if it's a matter of mutual inheritance of a common folklore??

Thanks for the link. Very intriguing. It may also be possible that Mark Hofmann obtained a copy while on his mission in the UK. On second thought, I might be mixing up the Salamander Letter with the Chase affidavit, which talks about an angel appearing in the form of a toad, if memory serves. Still an interesting link, though.

The Erotic Apologist wrote:It may also be possible that Mark Hofmann obtained a copy while on his mission in the UK.

I hadn't considered influence on Hofmann-- from what I can tell, there's nothing in Minor Morals that is unique to the the Salamander letter.

But there are lots of parallels to the Chase affidavit. It would be exciting if both stories had an earlier common ancestor in folklore, but there's ample time for the 1833 Chase story to make it to UK by 1839.

The author, Sir John Bowring, did eventually know about Mormonism. He appears to have had a cousin who was a 1830s Mormon convert. http://books.google.com/books?id=1xTZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA571 The author made explicit mention of Mormons in his 1877 autobiography. So the simplest explanation is probably that Bowring had read Howe's Mormonism Unvailed.

But how exciting if, instead, the stories had a common ancestor that remains undiscovered.

I don't remember if toads appeared elsewhere as treasure guardians, but the lore of slippery treasures, monstrous treasure guardians, etc. was definitely common in New York at the time. The place to look would be Quinn's book, Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview.

You're going to run into toads in hermetic and alchemical literature.

I came back to take a look at this in more detail, but archive.com is down for maintenance. A few months ago I was reading a number of books on hermetic literature and alchemy along with The Refiner's Fire. I had to lay them aside to attend to the travails of Spring semester, so my memory isn't very fresh.

I'll have to see the text in question before I can say more, but the toad figures so consistently in hermetic lore and ritual that I can't imagine there isn't a connection somewhere.

When I was last pursuing these ideas, I had become very interested in the Chase family.

I relish the fact that it takes place in Alexandria. Of course, one of the best visits to a crypt in Alexandria is Augustus' visit to the Soma to view the body of Alexander the Great. This story must have served as the model for the visit of Otto III to the tomb of Charlemagne.

The point of raising Augustus and Otto III is to suggest that the discovery of the gold plates was intended to evoke the re-establishment of ecumenical empire, as it existed under Alexander the Great, Augustus, and in the dreams of Otto. The Gold Plates were the relics of the Nephite dynasty. Their discovery was intended to endue the discoverer with dominion in the New World. To this end, Smith established his monarchy in Nauvoo, as King of the Kingdom of God and His Christ, a title held by subsequent LDS presidents in the 19th century.

And lest you think this fanciful, recall that one of the treasures Smith viewed in his seer stone was a great king sitting on his throne under the earth. The king sitting on his throne in a subterranean funereal scene perfectly describes what Otto III found when, at Pentacost in the year 1000, he opened the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix la Chapelle (Aachen).

Eliza Garrison, Ottonian Imperial Art, 64 wrote:Having uncovered the tomb, [Otto] knelt before Charlemagne's corpse. Charlemagne was seated "like a living person" and his body had not decayed, save for the tip of the nose, which Otto III replaced handily with a gold prosthesis, but not until he had removed one of Charlemagne's teeth. In return for the relics Otto III procure from Charlemagne's body, he also presented Charlemagne with a new set of white robes (appropriate for Pentacost), cipped his fingernails, and, finally, tidied up the rest of the tomb.

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Bazooka wrote:reddit, reddit.....

Meaning?
I'm new round these parts.