WHITE HORSES 
 
 OF THE I^^^K! 
 
 WEST OF ENGLAND. 
 
dyivauxcft, ««. — j , 
 
 1370 WHITE HORSEShof i6c W^'Vf^^ 
 land and Notices of other Ancient Turf- 
 Monuments, by Rev. W. C. Plenderleath. 
 Illus. Cr. 8vo. 1892 2/6 
 
 — 1 ' * ■»-» • . T 1 C 
 
THE WHITE HORSES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WEST OF ENGLAND. 
 
 WITH NOTICES OF SOME OTHER 
 ANCIENT TURF-MONUMENTS. 
 
 Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, 
 by THE 
 
 Rev. W. C. PLENDERLEATH, M.A., 
 
 Rector of Mamhead, Devon, 
 
 Sometime Rector of Cherhill, Wilts, 
 and J. P. for that County. 
 
 LONDON! 
 ALLEN & STORR, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 calne: 
 
 ALFRED HEATH. 
 1892. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 These pages were first laid before the public in 1885. 
 The original edition having sold out in about five 
 months, the writer was urged to publish a second 
 edition, but was for a long time unwilling, for various 
 reasons, so to do. But the demand for a reprint has 
 been so persistent that he has at last consented to 
 accede to the request. He has taken the opportunity 
 of revising the booklet throughout, and has added a 
 few sketches of some typical forms of the American 
 Animal Mounds, to which the attention of Archaeologists 
 has been a good deal directed of late years, and which 
 he thinks will be interesting, if only for the analogy 
 which they bear to the turf- monuments of our own 
 country. 
 
 Mamhead Rectory, Devon, 
 February, 1892. 
 
ON THE WHITE HORSES 
 
 WEST OF ENGLAND. 
 
 With Notices of some other Ancient 
 Turf-Monuments. 
 
 miles or more. Nor does the sight generally fail to 
 cause in the minds of such persons a desire to learn 
 something of the origin and history of these singular 
 memorials of a past age. It is this desire which the 
 following pages are intended in some degree to gratify. 
 
 We must commence first of all by remarking upon 
 the employment of animal forms from the very earliest 
 ages as the badge or symbol of nations. The seals 
 of the Phocaeans, the tortoises of the iEginetans, and 
 the beetles of the Egyptians, all date from several 
 
 OF THE 
 
 of the Western high roads who 
 _^ would not have seen and no- 
 S3? ticed one or other of those 
 SB*' great figures of horses cut 
 
 HERE are few travellers by any 
 
 out in the chalky hills which 
 form such conspicuous land- 
 s—a marks for a distance of ten 
 
2 
 
 centuries before the Christian era, and seem to have 
 been persistently retained during very long periods of 
 time. To which we may add the Horse itself as a well- 
 known Thracian type, appearing upon the coins of that 
 country for at least four centuries before this period. 
 The horse was also the emblem of Carthage, Abdera, 
 Pharsalus, Amphilochium, Argos, Corinth, &c, &c. 
 
 Not only this, but horses themselves appear to have 
 been from very early days the objects of religious 
 regard. Cyrus is reported by Herodotus (B. I., § 189) 
 to have ordered that the river Gyndes should be 
 punished for its having drowned one of his " sacred 
 horses " ; and we hear again, in the same history, 
 (B, TIL, § 55) of " sacred horses " as passing over 
 the Hellespont immediately before Xerxes himself. 
 Some five centuries later, Tacitus tells us in his treatise, 
 Be Moribus Germanorum (§ 10), "These people have 
 certain horses, which are kept in their sacred groves, 
 untouched and free from any sort of mortal labour 
 (candidi et nullo mortali opere contacti) ; and when they 
 are harnessed to the sacred chariot, the priest and the 
 king, or the chief man of the city, go with them and 
 observe their neighings and whinnyings. Nor is there 
 any sort of augury to which more importance is at- 
 tached — both in the minds of the people and also in 
 that of the nobles and priests — for they imagine them- 
 selves to be the servants, but the others the favourites 
 of the gods (se enim ministros deorum, illos conscios 
 putant)" 
 
 This national characteristic seems to have been long- 
 enduring, for Camden in his Britannia (Holland's 
 
3 
 
 Trans., p. 135, a.) says, " Moreover this nation of the 
 Saxons was very much addicted to superstition, and 
 for that cause when they were to consult of weighty 
 and important matters, besides soothsaying by in- 
 spection of beasts' entrails, they observed especially 
 the neighing of horses as presaging things to come. 
 And thence perhaps it is that the Dukes of Saxonie 
 in ancient times gave the horse in their Armes. But 
 why our first progenitours, Hengistus and Horsa, tooke 
 their names of an horse (for both their names in the 
 Saxon tongue do signifie an horse) surely I know not, 
 unless it were for a lucky osse and foretoken of their 
 warlicke prowesse, according to that verse of Virgil— 
 
 ' For warre our horses armed are, 
 These beasts also doe threaten warre." * 
 
 In Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie (p. 626, Ed. 1844) 
 it is said that the worship of the horse was common to 
 the Celtic and Germanic as well as to the Sclavonic 
 tribes; and in the Saga of Olaf Trygvesson it is 
 reported that Olaf, hearing of the inhabitants of 
 Drontheim having relapsed into the worship of Freyr, 
 sailed himself with an expedition and destroyed their 
 temple. " And when he landed," adds the chronicler, 
 " he found the sacred horses of the god feeding in the 
 precincts of the temple." And in connection with this 
 part of the subject may be mentioned a coin of the 
 Belindi, on which appears a very singular representation 
 of a horse standing within a distyle temple. This is 
 
 * "Bello armantur equi : belhim hcec armenta mvnantvr^ 
 —Mneid, ITL, 540. 
 
4 
 
 supposed by De Lagoy to have been a type of tie 
 goddess Epona, (see Apuleius, Metamorph. III.) — which 
 may or may not be the case. 
 
 S. Bede the Yenerable also mentions the reverence 
 shown by our ancestors to the horse, and it is by some 
 writers thought probable that when Caligula spoke of 
 raising his horse to the consulship it was not a mere 
 freak of imperial caprice, but was with the idea of a com- 
 pliment to the superstition of his Gallic and British 
 subjects. 
 
 Amongst the Scandinavian nations, not only was the 
 horse an object of religious reverence, but the sacrifice 
 of horses appears to have been one of their sacred rites. 
 In a curious book of Keysler's, entitled Antiquitates 
 Septentrionales et Celticce, is a quotation from the works 
 of Dithmar, Bishop of Merseburg, a historian of the 
 eleventh century, in which the latter says of the Danes, 
 "There is a place in these parts, the capital of the 
 country, called Lethra, in the district of Selon, where 
 the whole people are accustomed to come together, and 
 there to sacrifice to their gods ninety-nine men, and as 
 many horses, together with dogs and cocks." And in 
 the sixth century Agathius says " The Alemanni are 
 accustomed to appease the deities of certain trees, 
 sacrificing to them horses and many other victims with 
 their heads thrown back." 
 
 After the sacrifices followed a feast upon the flesh 
 of the victims, called " Blotfagnat," of which we have 
 some very curious details in the Saga of Haco, cap. 18. 
 " On the feast day, as soon as they had sat down to 
 the tables, the country folks came to the king and 
 
5 
 
 prayed him to taste the horse-flesh. And when he 
 would on no account consent to this, they entreated 
 him to drink some of the gravy ; which, when he 
 equally refused, they assure him that the fat would be 
 far from disagreeable. At last Sigard makes petition 
 that he will at least bend down towards the cauldron 
 and touch the handle of it with the tip of his lips. 
 Accordingly the king rose up and, having first covered 
 the handle with linen, applied the extremity of his lipg 
 to the cauldron. Then taking his place again upon the 
 royal seat he is hailed by all as having clearly done that 
 which was well-pleasing to the people." Haco was at 
 this time a Christian king, though he is said afterwards^ 
 to have relapsed into idolatry, and what was " well- 
 pleasing " to his heathen subjects was very far from 
 being so to the ecclesiastical authorities of the day. 
 And we accordingly find that the eating of horse-flesh 
 was prohibited under the severest penalties by several 
 Popes. Gregory III. (a.d. 737), in his Epistle tc* 
 Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, says, "You have 
 mentioned to me, among other things, that some 
 persons eat the flesh of the wild horse, and most 
 persons that of the domesticated one. This, very holy 
 brother, you must on no account allow for the future, 
 but restrain in every possible way, and impose a suit- 
 able penance upon the offenders ; for it is an unclean 
 and execrable thing to do." The next Pope, Zachary, 
 goes farther still, and pronounces that " even beavers 
 and hares, much more wild horses, are to be avoided 
 (for food)/' 
 
 Perhaps it may not be altogether foreign to our 
 
6 
 
 subject, considering the extensive connexion of the 
 great Indo- Germanic nation, to refer in passing to the 
 Aswamedha, or sacrifice of a horse, enjoined by the 
 rites of the Hindu faith, and to the reverence paid to 
 the consecrated animal previous to the consummation 
 of the sacrifice. The description given by Southey, in 
 his Curse of Kehama, singularly reminds us of some 
 of the very phraseology of Tacitus in the passage 
 given above 
 
 u Along the mead the hallowed steed 
 Still wanders whereso'er he will 
 
 O'er hill or dale, or plain; 
 No human hand hath tricked that mane 
 From which he shakes the morning dew; 
 
 His mouth has never felt the rein. 
 His lips have never frothed the chain; 
 
 For pure of blemish and of stain, 
 His neck unbroke to mortal yoke, 
 Like Nature free the steed must be, 
 
 Fit offering to the Immortals he. 
 A year and a day the steed must stray 
 Wherever chance may guide his way, 
 
 Before he fall at Seeva's shrine. 
 The year and day have passed away, 
 Nor touch of man has marred the rite divine." 
 
 — § VIII. 
 
 To this really magnificent piece of poetry, the writer 
 drily appends the following note : " Compare with this 
 the account of the Bengal horses in the very amusing 
 work of Captain Williamson — ' Which said horses have 
 Roman noses, narrow foreheads, white eyes, ugly ears, 
 square heads, thin necks, narrow chests, shallow girths, 
 lank bellies, cat hams, goose flanks, and switch tails ! ' " 
 
7 
 
 Let us hope that no one will be unkind enough to 
 apply this description to any of our "White Horses ; 
 although, indeed, beauty does not seem to have been 
 one of the characteristics by which the fabled horses 
 of our ancestors were distinguished. For in an old 
 poem of the sixth century, called The Talisman of 
 Cunobeline, the name of the sacred horse is " Trycethin," 
 and " Cethin " means " the hideous one ! " 
 
 Leaving, however, now, this introductory branch of 
 our subject, we proceed to consider the White Horses 
 in somewhat of detail. 
 
 Now it is a somewhat curious circumstance, that 
 although all the White Horses, except one, are in 
 Wiltshire, that one exception is the great sire and proto- 
 type of them all, which is at Uffington, just two and a 
 half miles outside the Wiltshire boundary, and within 
 that of Berkshire. See fig. 1, p. 8. This horse is to be 
 seen from the Great Western Railway near Uffington, 
 on the southern side of the line, but the distance being 
 over two miles, as the crow flies, and the outline being 
 a very narrow one, and still further diminished by fore- 
 shortening, it would not be easily found by anyone who 
 did not know exactly where to look for it. Now it is a 
 remarkable fact that none of the mediaeval topographers 
 of Berkshire (with the one exception which will presently 
 be noted) mention this horse. But this does not in the 
 least throw doubt upon its existence at the time they 
 wrote ; for not only they, but the Saxon and Roman 
 chroniclers as well are equally silent with regard 
 to the great mound known as Silbury Hill, the 
 largest solid earthwork in Europe, which was in- 
 
9 
 
 dubitably in existence in their time, and close to which 
 all travellers by the western high-road must necessarily 
 have passed. The one mediseval document in which 
 the White Horse is mentioned is a cartulary of the 
 Abbey of Abingdon, which must have been written 
 either in the reign of Henry II. or soon after, and 
 which runs as follows : "It was then customary amongst 
 the English, that any monks who wished might receive 
 money or landed estates, and both use and devolve 
 them according to their pleasure. Hence two monks 
 of the monastery at Abingdon, named Leofric and 
 Godric Oild, appear to have obtained by inheritance 
 manors situated upon the banks of the Thames ; one of 
 them, Godric, becoming possessed of Spersholt, near 
 the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill 
 (locam qui vulgfr mons albi equi nuncwpatur), and the 
 other that of Whitchurch, during the time that Aldhelm 
 was Abbot of this place." 
 
 This Aldhelm appears to have been Abbot from 1072 
 to 1084, and from the terms in which the White Horse 
 Hill is mentioned, the name was evidently an old one 
 at that time. 
 
 Now it was only two hundred years before this time, 
 viz., in 871, that a very famous victory had been gained 
 by King Alfred over the Danes close to this very spot. 
 " Four days after the battle of Reading," says Asser, 
 " KingjEthelred, and Alfred his brother, fought against 
 
 the whole army of the pagans at Ashdown And 
 
 the flower of the pagan youths were there slain, so that 
 neither before nor since was ever such destruction 
 known since the Saxons first gained Britain by their 
 
10 
 
 arms." And it was in memory of this victory that, 
 we are informed by local tradition, Alfred caused his 
 men, the day after the battle, to cut out the White 
 Horse, the standard of Hengist, on the hill-side just 
 under the castle. The name Hengist or Hengst, itself 
 means Stone Horse in the Ancient language of the 
 Saxons, and Bishop Nicholson, in his " English Atlas," 
 goes so far as to suppose the names of Hengist and 
 Horsa to have been not proper at all, but simply em- 
 blematical ; " even as," says he, " the Emperour of the 
 Germans was called the Eagle, and the King of France 
 the Lilly." 
 
 Is this tradition of the memorialization of Alfred's 
 victory by the Uffington Horse a trustworthy one ? 
 We do not see why it should not be so. The idea of 
 inscribing human records upon the actual face of nature 
 is one which had occurred to many persons before 
 Alfred. Semiramis is said to have cut a large rock 
 into a likeness of herself, and Hannibal to have made 
 use of a similar material as a tablet for the engraving 
 of an inscription. The question is, however, one which 
 has at various times been debated with considerable 
 vigour by archaeologists. Aubrey, in a valuable 
 transcript of his^MSS., annotated by Sir R. Hoare, 
 which is preserved in the Museum of the Wilts 
 Archaeological Society at Devizes, says, "The White 
 Horse was made by Hengist, who bore one on his arms 
 or standard." Mr. Hughes, however, gave it as his 
 opinion, in a communication to the Newbury Field 
 Club, reported in the Times of June 10th, 1871, that 
 " There are other sites within the old Ashdown district 
 
11 
 
 which answer the descriptions of the chroniclers, and 
 have evidently been the scene of battles, and I cannot, 
 therefore, aver positively that the Danes occupied 
 Uffington Castle and the Saxons Barwell and Alfred 
 Camps on the night before this great struggle. Nor 
 am I sure (and this is, perhaps, even greater heresy) 
 that our White Horse was cut out on the hill after the 
 battle. Indeed, I incline to believe that it was there 
 long before, and that Ethelred and Alfred could not 
 have spent an hour on such a work in the crisis of 
 871." On the other hand, in 1738, Dr. Francis Wise, 
 a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, published a letter 
 to Dr. Mead, in which he strongly upholds the affir- 
 mative side of the question. To this pamphlet there 
 appeared an answer two years later, entitled, "The 
 Impertinence and Imposture of Modem Antiquaries 
 Displayed, by Philalethes Rusticus," (the Rev. William 
 Asplin, Yicar of Banbury, Oxford. The preface is by a 
 Mr. Bumstead, to whom the pamphlet, which is in letter 
 form, is addressed.) Mr. Asplin says, u Though he has 
 Resemblance enough to be called a Horse as properly 
 as any other quadruped, yet I cannot say He is a Per- 
 feet Picture of a Horse. As to his Head, it wants a 
 little repairing. The Rest of His forehead is not so 
 much amiss, especially not at all too short, being from 
 his ears to his withers about fifty of my Paces, i.e., 
 150 feet. But then he is quite a light-bodied one : I 
 may say for a Horse that has lain so long at grass, 
 carries no body at all ; insomuch that should he take up 
 hill, were I upon the Back of him, I should be under 
 
12 
 
 terrible apprehensions he would slip through his 
 Girth. If his tail is as it was from the beginning, 
 it is a plain case he never carried it well ; but just 
 as you have seen a Fox drag his brush when almost 
 
 down This, perhaps, might be helped by 
 
 Nicking, but that being a modern invention would 
 derogate from his Antiquity, which is all in all." 
 
 Again, " It was one of the wise sayings of our 
 ancestors, even our Saxon Ancestors, that 'a Good 
 Horse was never of a bad Colour,' and might I be 
 worthy to interpose my private opinion, the horse we 
 are now upon happens to be a White one only because 
 his native soil abounds with Chalk or a sort of Lime- 
 stone. Just as that other Nag of Renown, from whom 
 the Yale of Bed Horse is denominated, happens to be 
 red only because he is cut in a ruddy soil." This last 
 remark is a hit at a passage in Mr. Wise's letter, in 
 which he quotes a statement from Kranzius, that 
 " Witichind, upon his conversion from the darkness of 
 Paganism, was the first who took the white colt for his 
 device, in allusion to the brightness of Christianity, 
 having till that time used a black one." (This black 
 horse would probably be the " Pybyr Llai Llwynim 99 
 of Druidical tradition, i.e., ' the horse of the gloom of 
 the grove.') "Which things put me in mind of a 
 certain learned Academick, who, much admiring that 
 his Horse being turned out in the snow should roll in 
 it, was very gravely told it was ' because he had no- 
 where else to roll.' In a word, whoever will have such 
 sort of Horse must be content with such sort of Colour 
 as the country affords, however he may blazon his own 
 
13 
 
 arms I may venture to hold him (i.e. Dr. Wise) 
 
 a small Wager, that should the Horse scape a scouring 
 but two seven years more his Dapple would become a 
 Green one, which would be a still greater Rarity for all 
 true lovers of Antiquity." 
 
 To this pamphlet an anonymous answer of no great 
 interest was published in London the following year ; 
 and then the matter appears to have been allowed to 
 rest until revived by a letter by Mr. W. J. Thorns to 
 the Society of Antiquaries, in which he expresses his 
 belief that this horse was simply a memorial of the 
 conversion of the Saxons to Christianity, taking the 
 form of one of the White Horses which used formerly 
 to be preserved in their sacred ash-groves (see 
 Archceologia xxxi., p. 289). 
 
 We have already referred to a cartulary of the Abbey 
 of Abingdon, dating to the reign of Henry EL, in which 
 the White Horse is named. In another cartulary of 
 the same Abbey which appears to have been written 
 about the year 1190, or shortly afterwards, the follow- 
 ing notice occurs : " Near the hill, where is the ascent 
 to the White Horse, this Church has from ancient days 
 possessed the Lordship of the Manor called Tiffing ton 
 {manerium Offentun appellatum), near the village of 
 Sparsholt," &c, &c. 
 
 Again in the Wilts Institutions, a.d. 1307, there is 
 a reference to " Compton Sub Album Equum." This 
 would at first sight appear to refer to the Cherhill 
 Horse, which is not far from Compton Basset, and if so 
 would indicate the existence of a far earlier horse in 
 that spot than the one which at present appears. But 
 
 B 
 
14 
 
 Canon Jackson says, in a note upon this entry, that 
 there was "a place (also in Sarum Diocese in 1307) 
 called Coinpton Beauchamp, or Compton Juxta White 
 Horse, near Wantage, which makes it uncertain which 
 Compton is alluded to, Compton Basset or Compton 
 Beauchamp. The patron of Compton Sub Album 
 Equum, in 1307, was Guy Beauchamp. Now Guy 
 Beauchamp certainly had Cherhill Manor in 1307 ; but 
 he also had Compton Beauchamp, near Wantage ! So 
 that proves nothing. The Bishops of Sarum were,. in 
 1311 and downwards, the patrons of Compton Basset ; 
 and unless it can be shown to the contrary, I should 
 conceive that they were patrons before 1311. So that 
 I rather think that Compton Sub Album Equum, of 
 1307, was Compton near Wantage." To this, however, 
 we shall have occasion to refer again presently, 
 
 In 1323 we again meet with " Compton Juxta White 
 Horse Manor" (in the Inquis. post m., p. 306), and 
 in 1348 with " Bishopstone Super Album Equum, 
 Prsebendalis " (in the Inst., Wilton). In 1367 appears 
 " Kingston in le Vale de White Horse 99 (Inquis. pose m.). 
 And in 1368 or 1369, in the Close Bolls of Edward III., 
 a notice that " Gerard deVIsle tient en la Vale de White 
 Horse, Ifee" &c. 
 
 The above are all the references to the Uffiington 
 Horse that we have been able to discover. Leland 
 does not speak of it at all, and all that Camden tells us 
 is to mention the valley, " which " he says, " I wotte 
 not from what shape of a White Horse, imagined to 
 appeare in a whitish chalky hill, they terme ' The Vale 
 of White Horse: 99 
 
15 
 
 The representation of this horse, given on p. 8, 
 was drawn from a careful survey in May, 1885. 
 A comparison of this figure with one published by 
 Mr. Christopher Edmonds, in 1735, shews that the 
 outlines have undergone very little modification since 
 that time, the almost only difference being that he 
 represents the irregularly shaped head as if the eye and 
 the two lines surrounding it were exactly concentric 
 circles, — a matter in which we strongly suspect the artist 
 to have been in fault. If, therefore, the figure has 
 been so accurately preserved during the last century 
 and a half, we think that it may be assumed that, so far 
 at any rate as the main outline goes, we have still the 
 same figure as was traced by the original makers eight 
 centuries and a half earlier. Now in this outline there 
 is one very remarkable feature, and that is the beaked 
 shape of the head. And here the question arises 
 whether this wonderful head is simply the result of 
 rude iconographic power, or whether there is a meaning 
 in it. A reference to some contemporary British coins 
 will, we think, solve the question. Figs. 3 and 4, p. 16, 
 represent coins of Boduo, the wife of Prassitagus, king 
 of the Iceni (otherwise called Boadicea), and in them 
 will be noticed the same feature, which seems exactly 
 to fulfil the description of the horses of Ceridwen, the 
 Druidical Ceres. These, in several poems of Taliesin, 
 preserved in the Myvyrian Archaeology, are spoken of 
 as "Hen-headed Steeds." For that the horse's head 
 is intended to be that of a bird will be clear by com- 
 paring it with that figured on a very remarkable (and 
 we believe unique) coin, shown on the same page, fig. 5, 
 
16 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 Coin of Cunobeline, struck at Colchester. From the 
 collection of the Rev. 0. Soames, Rector of Mildenhall, 
 Wilts. 
 
 Fig. 3. Fig. 5. 
 
 Coin of Bodno or Boa- Coin of Boduo or Boa- 
 
 dicea, Queen of the Iceni. dicea, Queen of the Iceni. 
 
 From the British Museum. From the collection of the 
 
 Rev. E. H. Goddard, Vicar 
 of Cliffe Pypard, Wilts. 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 Ancient British Coin. From the Collection of the Rev. 
 C. Soames, Rector of Mildenhall, Wilts. 
 
17 
 
 and which must have been of approximately the same 
 date. Ceridwen is herself said by some of the bards to 
 have assumed the form of a White Mare, while in other 
 poems she is spoken of as the " High-crested Hen ** 
 (see Hanes* Taliesin, ch. 3). It may be added that 
 Mr. Davies, in his Druidical Mythology refers to a 
 coin of Boduo, in which he considers that the horse 
 thereon depicted was intended to represent Ceridwen 
 herself. 
 
 The Uffington horse measures 355 feet from the nose 
 to the tail, and 120 feet from the ear to the hoof. It 
 faces to sinister, as do also those depicted upon most 
 British coins. The slope of the portion of the hill 
 upon which it is cut is thirty-nine degrees, but the 
 declivity is considerably greater beneath the figure. 
 The exposure is south-west. 
 
 The following impromptu poem is given by Philalethes 
 Rusticus, as having been presented to him by "an 
 Oxford Scholar" whom the same curiosity led to the 
 spot : — 
 
 "See here the Pad of Good King Alfry, 
 Sure never was so rare a Palfry ! 
 Tho' Earth his Dam, his Sire a spade, 
 No Painter e'er a finer made. 
 Not Wotton on his hunting pieces 
 Can shew one such a Tit as this is." 
 
 The horse used in former days to be periodically 
 scoured or cleaned, on which occasion the whole 
 population used to turn out and celebrate the event 
 with all sorts of festivities, as is recorded by Mr. 
 Hughes in his "Scouring of the White Horse." A 
 
18 
 
 letter published by Dr. Wise, in 1738, speaks of the 
 custom as an old one; and another pamphlet which 
 appeared two years later, incidentally refers to the 
 scourings as taking place " every seven years." Sub- 
 sequently to this period, however, the intervals do not 
 seem to have been accurately observed, the years on 
 which scourings took place having been 1755, 1765,* 
 1766, 1780, 1785, 1790* 1796* 1803, 1808, 1813* 
 1825, 1838, 1843, and 1857. Since this time little or 
 nothing had been done to it until the year 1884, when 
 it was thoroughly cleaned and re-chalked ; without* 
 however, the festivities by which the operation used to 
 be accompanied. The following local ballad is reported 
 to have been composed at one of the annual scourings. 
 We fear that internal evidence prevents our guaranteeing 
 that it was one of very ancient date : — 
 
 H The old White Horse wants setting to rights, 
 And the Squire has promised good cheer ; 
 
 So we'll give him a scrape to keep him in shape, 
 And he'll last for many a year. 
 
 "He was made a long, long time ago, 
 
 With a great deal of labour and pains, 
 By King Alfred the Great, when he spoiled their conceit, 
 
 And caddledf those worsbirds $ the Danes. 
 
 * Some little uncertainty exists as to the exact accuracy 
 of these dates. 
 
 t Harrassed. 
 
 J A term of abuse — probably whore's -bird. 
 
19 
 
 <{ The Blowing-stone, * in days gone by, 
 
 Was King Alfred's bugle horn, 
 And the Thorning-tree f you may plainly see, 
 
 Which is called King Alfred's thorn. 
 
 " There'll be back- sword play and climbing the pole, 
 And a race for a pig and a cheese ; 
 And we think as he's a dumble J soul 
 
 Who do n't care for such sports as these." 
 
 Thus much for the Uffington Horse. The next 
 which challenges our attention is that on Bratton Hill> 
 near Westbury, Wilts. And here we again meet with 
 King Alfred and his exploits. " In the same year " 
 (viz., a.d. 878, — seven years subsequently to the battfe 
 of Reading and traditional cutting of the Uffington 
 Horse), " after Easter, King Alfred, with a few of his 
 partisans, found a stronghold in a place which is called 
 iEthelingey, and from that stronghold continued in- 
 defatigably to wage war against the Pagans, at the 
 head of the noblemen, his vassals, of Somersetshire. 
 And, again, the seventh week after Easter, he rode to 
 the stone (Egbryhta, which is in the eastern part of 
 the forest which is called Selwood, but in Latin, Silva 
 
 * A large stone at Kingstone Lisle, near the Foot of the 
 Castle hill, pierced by a channel the shape of a Y turned 
 upside-down. By blowing into the orifice at the top a sound 
 something resembling that of a fog- whistle is produced, which 
 may, on a still day, be heard four or five miles off. 
 
 t A thorn tree which stood in the midst of the field of 
 battle at Ashdown in 871, The remembrance of it is still 
 preserved in " Roughthorn Farm." 
 
 J Dull. 
 
20 
 
 magna in British Coitmaur; and there met him all 
 the inhabitants of Somerset and Wiltshire, and all 
 such inhabitants of Hampshire as had not sailed 
 beyond sea for fear of the Pagans, and upon seeing the 
 King received him as was proper, like one come to life 
 again after so many troubles, and were filled with 
 excessive joy, and there they encamped for one night. 
 At dawn of the following day he advanced his standard 
 to a place which is called ^Ecglea, where he encamped 
 for one night. At dawn of the following day he came 
 to a place that is called Ethandun, and fiercely warring 
 against the whole army of the Pagans with serried 
 masses, and courageously perserving for a long time, by 
 Divine favour, at last gained the victory, overthrew the 
 Pagans with very great slaughter, and put them to 
 flight, and pursued them with deadly blows, even to their 
 stronghold, and all he found outside of it, men, horses, 
 and sheep, he seized, immediately killed the men, and 
 boldly encamped before the entrance of the Pagan 
 stronghold with all his army." 
 
 For fourteen days the siege lasted, after which time 
 the enemy surrendered : and then followed, according 
 to local tradition, the cutting of the White Horse on 
 Bratton Hill, to commemorate the victory; which 
 victory was, as Gough remarks, " much more con- 
 siderable than the other won by Alfred. In the former 
 he only acted as his brother Ethelred's lieutenant. In 
 this he was not only Commander-in-chief, but King of 
 England : his affairs were in a most critical situation, 
 and the Danes masters of his kingdom." — Cough's 
 Camden, p. 146. 
 
21 
 
 But here the question arises as to whether it was 
 really in the neighbourhood of Westbury that this fight 
 took place. There unquestionably exists a local tra- 
 dition* of a great battle having been fought at some 
 remote period on these downs. And to such tradition 
 a considerable amount of weight would seem to be due, 
 unless, on the one hand, there can be shewn any in- 
 herent evidence of its improbability, or that, on the 
 other hand, fresh facts have come to light establishing 
 beyond all reasonable doubt the greater probability 
 of some rival theory. 
 
 Now it will be remembered that King Alfred had 
 come to the throne eight years previously, on the death 
 of his brother Ethelred, and that he had for some time 
 been dogged persistently by an evil fate. He had in 
 the first year of his reign been worsted by the Danes in 
 no less than eight or nine encounters, and had eventually 
 been driven to compound with them by a money pay- 
 ment for their departure from Wessex. From this time 
 he seems to have remained quiet, recruiting his forces, 
 until in 875 he felt himself strong enough to resume 
 hostilities. For a long time fortune was still adverse, 
 and at the beginning of 878 we find the Danes encamped 
 in force at Chippenham, and Alfred reduced to flight. 
 Then came the period of his residence at Athelney, 
 during which he was alternately occupied in raising 
 
 *The details of the tradition have become somewhat vague 
 by lapse of time. The writer of these pages was informed by 
 one whilom visitor to Bratton that he was accompanied to 
 the camp by a local guide who told him that the battle of 
 Waterloo was fought in that place, and that on this occasion 
 the cart tracts had u run down full of blood \" 
 
22 
 
 troops, and (as a certain time -honoured legend informs 
 us,) toasting cakes, and occasionally letting them burn ; 
 until, in May, he determined to make another bold f~ 
 stroke for the kingdom, and, as his faithful chronicler 
 informs us, " rode to the stone CEgbryhta," as aforesaid. 
 
 And now comes the difficulty ; we have accepted the 
 cakes, but some of our greatest authorities find it 
 difficult to digest the stone, or at any rate to convert it 
 into such good honest historical pabulums as to be able to 
 say where it stood, or perhaps still stands. For a long 
 time it was largely believed that the name of Brixton 
 Deverell indicated its position, Brixton seeming a very 
 probable corruption of " Ecbyrt's stone." But upon 
 this theory a good deal of doubt has been lately thrown, 
 and it is unquestionably true that apparent resemblance 
 is but poor ground upon which to build any philological 
 structure. Furthermore, Canon Jackson, in an article 
 published some years ago in the Archaeological Jour- 
 nal, points out that Brixton is in Doomsday called 
 "Brictric's Town," which seems absolutely conclu- 
 sive as to the origin of that name. He is himself 
 disposed to regard as a more probable site for 
 the Petra Ecbrighti that whereupon stands an 
 ancient stone called in Andrews and Dury's map 
 of Wilts, " Redbridge Stone, on the road from 
 Westbury to Frome. 
 
 But where was iEcglea ? It has been variously con- 
 jectured to have been either Oley Hill, or else Buckley, 
 (now generally spelled Bugley,) which are respectively 
 a mile and a half, and one mile, to the west of War- 
 minster ; or, on the other hand, to have been on the 
 
23 
 
 borders of Berkshire., in a place subsequently known as? 
 the Hundred of iEcglei, or in the plains of Glastonbury 
 at Edgar-lea, both of which places are some thirty miles 
 distant from the Bratton hill. And it has been suggested 
 as against the claims of the two former sites that they are 
 too near to the place of the encampment of the previous 
 night, which was only some four or five miles off, (as 
 the crow flies,) if we imagine it to have been at Brixton r 
 or a mile further if we take it to have been at the Red- 
 bridge Stone. It has been also pointed out on very high, 
 authority that one great secret of King Alfred's success, 
 like that of Napoleon and of many other distinguished 
 generals, lay in the rapidity of his forced marches. 
 There is, no doubt, some force in this objection ; still it 
 would not seem to be quite conclusive. It must be 
 remembered that there were no telegraphs or war cor- 
 respondents in those days to tell generals the exact 
 whereabouts of the opposing armies, and it may not 
 have been until he got to Ecbyrt's Stone that the King 
 found that he had fixed upon a place of rendezvous so 
 very near to the encampment of the enemy upon 
 Bratton hill. 
 
 For now comes a very noteworthy part of the history. 
 On the morrow after the encampment at iEcglea, King 
 Alfred " came at dawn," says the Chronicler, " to a 
 place which is called Ethandunan, where fiercely war- 
 ring against the whole army of the Pagans, he at last 
 gained the victory, overthrew them with very great 
 slaughter, and pursued them even to their stronghold, 
 where he boldly encamped with all his army." 
 
 And now we see the importance of this question of the 
 
24 
 
 position of JEcglea. If iEcglea be in Berkshire or in 
 Somersetshire, Ethandunan cannot be Edington in Wilt- 
 shire, but another place of the same name not far from 
 Hungerford, or yet another on Polden Hill near Bridg- 
 water, or perchance Yattendon near East Ilsley. Now 
 as to this matter we find a great conflict of authority. 
 Camden and Sir R. C. Hoare identify Ethandunum, or as 
 it is otherwise called Ethandun, or iEthandune, or 
 Edderandun, with Edington near Westbury. Milner 
 and others believe it to have been Heddington near 
 Calne. Whitaker and Beke prefer the claims of Yatton 
 down, near Chippenham ; while Bishop Clifford would 
 carry both iEcglea, and Ecbyrt's Stone, and Ethandun, 
 as well, down into the fastnesses of Somersetshire; 
 a theory which he first propounded in an able and closely 
 reasoned paper published in 1875, and which has since 
 obtained a very considerable amount of credence and 
 collateral support. If this view be correct, it is quite 
 clear that the Bratton Horse can be no monument of 
 King Alfred's Victory in 878, and its raison d? etre 
 would remain still to be sought for. 
 
 But however this may be, the old figure — and a very 
 old figure it indubitably was — has itself long since 
 ceased to exist, — ruined by the same unenlightened 
 spirit which has destroyed so many precious historical 
 remains of mediaeval architecture, in order to substitute 
 for them a tower, or a roof, or a window, which some 
 wiseacre or other thinks to be more in keeping with the 
 rest of the structure than such as have been gradually 
 added to meet the needs of successive generations. 
 
 Fortunately, however, we possess a drawing of the 
 
26 
 
 old horse, made in 1772 by Gough, the editor of 
 Camden, of which a copy will be found on p. 25, 
 fig. 6. The dimensions, as given by Gough, are : 
 extreme length, 100 feet; extreme height, nearly as 
 much ; from toe to chest, 54 feet. The drawing is 
 evidently in perspective and very much foreshortened. 
 
 Now there are in the old horse as thus depicted 
 several very remarkable points. Not the least of these 
 is the crescent- shaped tip given to the tail, which one 
 would, perhaps, have been disposed to regard as 
 accidental were it not that on more than one ancient 
 British coin we meet with something more or less 
 resembling it, and in the case of a coin of Ounobeline, 
 figured in Holland's Camden, p. 89, fig. v., we find, 
 together with the horse, a crescent introduced, evidently 
 for some set purpose. Now the crescent is a symbol of 
 Oeridwen, whom we have before mentioned as being 
 represented under the form of a mare, and to whom 
 all horses were, therefore, probably regarded as being 
 more or less sacred. Taliesin, in the poem before 
 quoted, speaks of the " strong horse of the crescent," 
 which is generally supposed by commentators to refer 
 to a son of Ceridwen, by Neivion (i.e., Neptune). It 
 must not, however, be forgotten that in all Teutonic 
 languages the word for moon is masculine. iElius 
 Spartianus, in his life of Oaracalla (c. 6 and 7), speaks 
 of the " lunus deus," and says that he who considers 
 that the moon should be called by a female name is 
 the slave of women. The word for moon (mds) is also 
 masculine in Sanscrit. 
 
 The destruction of the old Westbury Horse and re- 
 
27 
 
 "cutting of the new one (fig. 7) was perpetrated in 177$ 
 by a wretch by the name of Gee, who was steward to 
 Lord Abingdon, and who, while employed on a survey 
 of that nobleman's estates in the parish of Westbury, 
 " new-modelled " it, and in so doing changed its whole 
 character ; the old one having been, according to Sir 
 R. C. Hoare, " of the cart breed," and the new one 
 " of the blood kind," The latter fact would not seem 
 apparent at first sight. The horse was repaired and 
 the outlines practically recut about the year 1853. The 
 drawing given on p. 25 fig. 7, represents it as it stood in 
 1870. Since this time there have been some further 
 reparations, and an edging of kerbstones was intro- 
 duced, only to be torn up in the course of the following 
 summer by the cheerful play of the British tourist. 
 The extreme length from head to tail, both included, is 
 175 feet ; height, from feet to shoulder, 107 feet ; cir- 
 cumference of eye, 25 feet. 
 
 It will be noticed that the old horse is represented 
 as facing to sinister, whereas the modem one faces to 
 dexter. Now it is scarcely likely that Mr. Gee when 
 recut ting the horse would have taken the trouble to 
 turn it round, which would have involved a vast 
 amount of patching and piecing of the turf. A more 
 probable explanation is that the engraver of Mr. 
 Gough's representation transferred his drawing to the 
 wood as it stood, instead of reversing it, and that the 
 figure therefore appears facing the reverse way to what 
 it really did. It must, however, be admitted that, if 
 this be the case, it is somewhat curious that the horse 
 should have been cut facing to dexter, whereas the whole 
 
28 
 
 series of ancient British coins with only a few exceptions 
 (as has been already stated) shew the opposite position. 
 The reason of this is, however, a question which can 
 never now be decided 
 
 We come next to the Cherhill Horse (fig. 9. p. 29) 
 and for this, we think, no possible claim to antiquity 
 can be set up. It does, indeed, lie, like each of the 
 other two, in close proximity to a reputed Danish 
 Camp — that of Oldborough — and near the scene of a 
 great battle, which is stated to have taken place here 
 between Egbert, King of the West Saxons, and 
 Ceolwulph, King of the Mercians, in a.d. 821, but 
 there is no record, so far as we are aware, of the 
 existence of any horse anterior to the date at which 
 the present figure was cut ; and as it is only about a 
 quarter of a mile from the great London high road, 
 and in full view of that road for several miles, it would 
 seem scarcely possible that there can have been any 
 ancient horse here without some mention of it being to 
 be found. Moreover, there is no local tradition of any 
 earlier horse, — a fact which, in a matter of so recent 
 date, may, perhaps, be held to be conclusive. 
 
 This horse then was cut in the year 1780, only 
 two years later than the re-modelling of the Westbury 
 Horse, which very likely suggested it. The maker was 
 one Dr. Christopher Allsop, who was then living in the 
 High Street,Calne, and who had a few years before served 
 the annual office of Guild-steward of that borough. The 
 figure is so cut as to be seen in best proportions from 
 that part of the town which is known as " The Quarry." 
 
 Dr. Allsop is reported to have first marked out the 
 
29 
 Fig 8. 
 
30 
 
 outline with small stakes bearing white flags. Then 
 he took his position at a spot exactly on a line between 
 the Downs and Oalne, about 200 yards above the top of 
 Labour-in-vain Hill, and from thence, by means of 
 a speaking-trumpet, directed the removal of the stakes 
 one way or the other, until he was satisfied with the 
 result. The turf was then pared off:, and the hollow 
 levelled up with chalk obtained by . quarrying the 
 downs just over the brow of the hill above. The 
 inner circle of the eye, which is four feet in diameter, 
 is stated to have been filled with glass bottles furnished 
 by Farmer Angell, of Studley. No trace of these now 
 remains, but considering the well-known propensities of 
 English tourists this fact by no means diminishes the 
 credibility of the story. 
 
 The point at which Dr. Allsop stood to direct the 
 work was pointed out to the writer of these pages by 
 a very intelligent old man, who was born in the year 
 1786 — only six years after its completion — and he said 
 that he had often heard the whole circumstances of the 
 j cutting related by men who had taken part in it. 
 
 The principal dimensions of the horse are as follows : 
 extreme length, 129 feet ; extreme height, 142 feet ; 
 length of barrel, 78 feet ; depth of ditto, 41 feet. 
 
 The sketch on the opposite page gives the horse in 
 its actual plane projection. The foreshortening arising 
 from the slope of the hill, which is 31 degrees, and also 
 from the fall of the ground to Oalne, brings the figure, 
 when viewed from the latter place, to as nearly as 
 possible its true proportion. 
 
31 
 
 The scouring of this horse, which takes place at no 
 fixed interval, bnt whenever it appears to want it, is 
 done by the Lord of the Manor. The manner of doing 
 it is as follows : a windlass is erected on the top of the 
 hill, immediately over the horse, and from thence chalk 
 is let down in small trucks and spread evenly over the 
 figure. The only disadvantage of this plan is that the 
 first shower of rain that comes on brings down a 
 copious white stream, which extends from the ends of 
 the legs right down to the valley below, and the tracks 
 of the trenches also shew for some time. The result 
 is that until these marks have become obliterated, the 
 horse looks as if he were suspended in a sling and 
 mounted upon stilts 300 feet long ! The re-chalking is 
 an operation of some labour and not unattended with 
 risk. In 1876 it occupied three men for a fortnight, 
 and one of the workmen employed was very nearly 
 killed through the giving way of a rope by which a 
 truckfull of chalk was being let down from above. The 
 truck, of course, rushed on with fearful velocity, and 
 the man had barely time to step aside when it dashed 
 past him and buried itself deeply in the ground at the 
 foot of the hill. An elliptical trench was dug some 
 years ago, a short way above the horse, with a view of 
 carrying off the surface drainage. This being perfectly 
 grassed over does not show from a distance, but 
 whether it is of any great use may, perhaps, be subject 
 to question. 
 
 The next figure in our cavalcade is that which is 
 seen upon the slope of the hill, to the right of the high 
 road, entering Marlborough from the west. This horse 
 
32 
 
 is 62 feet in length and 47 feet in height, and was cut 
 in 1804 by the pupils of one Mr. Gresley, who kept a 
 school in Marlborough at that time. The designer and 
 architect was William Canning, a son of Mr. Thomas 
 Canning, of the Manor House, Ogbourne St. George. 
 He marked out the figure with wooden pegs, after 
 which the rest of the boys set to work, and in a very 
 short time cleared away the turf and filled up the 
 vacant space with chalk broken to the size of a couple 
 of fists. So long as Mr. Gresley lived and the school 
 was carried on, so long did each succeeding generation of 
 pupils accept the charge of keeping their predecessors' 
 work in order ; and the annual scouring of the horse 
 was one of the most honoured traditions of the school. 
 Mr. Gresley, however, died about the year 1830, and 
 the scourings then fell into desuetude and the figure 
 became gradually overgrown with weeds. But in the 
 year 1873, the late Captain Reed, of Marlborough, who 
 was one of the original makers of the horse, undertook 
 to have it repaired, and the outline is now again very 
 fairly defined. The Marlborough Horse is represented 
 as walking, and faces to dexter. The slope of the hill 
 is very moderate, being only about 32 degrees, and this 
 fact having apparently not been taken into consideration 
 by the artists, the outline, when seen from the Bath 
 road (which is the only possible point of view), does 
 not look nearly so well proportioned as it really is. 
 
 Eight years after the cutting of this horse, it occurred 
 to one Mr. Robert Pile, who was at that time tenant of 
 the Manor Farm, Alton Barnes, that the valley of 
 Pewsey possessed equal claims to the ownership of a 
 
33 
 
 White Horse as did those of Calne or Marlborough. 
 And accordingly he determined upon the formation of 
 one, and chose for this purpose the southern slope of the 
 hill known as " Old Adam." Being, however, dis- 
 trustful of his own powers of delineation, he employed 
 a journeyman painter named John Thorne, who was at 
 the time working in the neighbourhood, to carry his 
 wishes into effect. Thorne undertook the job for £20, 
 but after having completed the sketch, and set men 
 to work at the cutting and chalking, he disappeared 
 from the scene, leaving his fellow-helpers to whistle 
 for their share of the reward. The horse, like 
 the rest of the modern figures, faces to dexter, and 
 bears a considerable resemblance to that at Cherhill. 
 It is, however, somewhat larger, being 180 feet in 
 height and 167 feet in length. The point of view 
 from which it was sketched is the place where the 
 Honeystreet road crosses the canal, which is exactly a 
 mile and a quarter off. It is said to be visible from 
 Old Sarum — a distance of about twenty miles as the 
 crow flies. It is kept in fair repair, the cost of scouring 
 it, when required, being defrayed by subscription. 
 
 Besides the above-named figures, all of which have 
 more or less of a history attaching to them, there are 
 traces on a good many other Wiltshire hill-sides of the 
 imitative faculty having been exercised, and some 
 leisure hours harmlesly occupied, by attempts at 
 smaller White Horses, most of which, after having been 
 once cut, have been suffered to be again grown over, 
 without any attempt to keep them up. An exception, 
 however, to this rule is the Broad Hinton Horse, which 
 
34 
 
 is in an admirable state of preservation. This figure 
 may be seen upon the downs east of Winterbourne 
 Bassett, on the right-hand side of the road leading from 
 Wootton Bassett to Marlborough, and just within the 
 boundary of the parish of Broad Hinton. It was cut 
 out by Henry Eatwell and Robert Witt, the former of 
 of whom subsequently became parish clerk and the latter 
 landlord of the Crown Inn in the last-named parish. It 
 measures 90 feet square, the extreme length and extreme 
 height being equal. The best point of view is from 
 the Devizes road, when it seems not unlike the Marl- 
 borough Horse in outline, but is differenced from that 
 figure by the possession of two ears, whereas the former 
 shows only one. The tail, however, with its very short 
 upstanding dock, more resembles the Cherhill and 
 Alton Horses. It was cut in the year 1838, to com- 
 memorate the Queen's coronation. 
 
 Two more Horses are known to have been cut in 
 Wiltshire in recent times. The first of these was the 
 work of the shoemakers of Devizes, and was placed by 
 them upon Roundway hill at Whitsuntide, 1848. For 
 many years this was known as the " Snob's Horse," 
 tha word snnb being used in more than one provincial 
 dialect for a shoemaker's journeyman and appearing 
 also in the form of snab in Lowland Scotch for an 
 apprentice to that trade. JSTo signs of this figure are 
 however now visible. Another small horse formerly 
 existed upon what is known as " The Slopes," near 
 Pewsey. But of the origin of this figure there is no 
 tradition remaining, so far as the writer has been able to 
 
35 
 
 discover, and the traces of it are now almost, if not en- 
 tirely, obliterated. 
 
 On Roulston Hill, near Northwaite, in Yorkshire, is 
 a White Horse, measuring about 30 feet by 40 feet, 
 and in very good proportion. This is stated to have 
 been cut by a journeyman mason, who had been 
 working in the neighbourhood, as a memento of his 
 stay. 
 
 On the Hambledon Hills also, near Thirsk, in the 
 same county ,|is a White Horse, said to have been cut 
 by a man of the name of Taylor about the year 1857. 
 He was a native of the neighbouring village of Kilburn, 
 who had settled in a distant town, and cut out the 
 horse in the course of a visit to his native place. 
 
 Returning again to Wiltshire, we find that at Broad- 
 town, near Wootton Bassett, a horse was cut out as late 
 as 1864 by Mr. William Simmonds, the then occupier 
 of Littleton Farm. Broadtown lies under the range of 
 high land which, beginning from Compton Bassett, 
 stretches right away into Berkshire, and forms the 
 southern boundary of the Yale of White Horse itself. 
 This figure has, therefore, the honour of following — at 
 a long interval, in more senses than one — the original 
 sire and prototype of the whole breed, whose place is 
 at the eastern extremity of this same range of cliff. 
 It measures 86 feet in extreme length by 61 feet in 
 height. These were not, fc however, intended to be its 
 ultimate proportions, as its maker says that he pro- 
 posed to " enlarge it by degrees, which was the way 
 that all White Horses were made !" Unhappily for the 
 interests of art, however, Mr. William Simmonds gave 
 
36 
 
 up his farm many years ago, so that the application 
 of his ingenious theory of growth remains still un- 
 accomplished. 
 
 We have now come to the end of the White Horses 
 of England ; unless, indeed, we are to reckon amongst 
 them a figure which bears some sort of resemblance to 
 a horse upon the higher part of Dartmoor, in Devon- 
 shire. It is produced by the baring of the granite, 
 which is here but thinly covered with turf ; but whether 
 this has been done intentionally, or whether it has 
 taken place from natural causes, and the resemblance 
 is a mere accidental one, seems very doubtful. No 
 local tradition exists to guide us in the matter, save 
 such as is afforded by the fact of the place being known 
 as " White Horse Hill." And it would seem scarcely 
 likely that if the figure had been the work of human 
 hands its outlines would have become so utterly 
 confused as they have done- 
 
 We will only mention, in passing, a figure of George 
 III. on horseback, upon the hills between Preston and 
 Osmington, in Dorsetshire. This was cut out about 
 the beginning of the present century by a soldier whose 
 regiment happened to be quartered near, and was 
 intended to commemorate the stay of the king at the 
 adjoining town of Weymouth. It shows best from the 
 sea, and is in very good proportion. As the quadruped 
 is, however, in this case, a mere addition to the biped, 
 it can scarcely be reckoned amongst the White Horses 
 of England. 
 
 Our country possesses, however, a Red Horse of no 
 small fame, situate in the lordship of Tysoe, in Warwick- 
 
37 
 
 shire, and giving its name to the Vale of Red Horse 
 beneath. This is traditionally reported to bave been 
 cut in 1461, in memory of the exploits of Richard, 
 Earl of Warwick; who was for many years one of the 
 most prominent figures in the Wars of the Roses. The 
 Earl had in the early part of the year found himself, 
 with a force of forty thousand men, opposed to Queen 
 Margaret, with sixty thousand, at a place called Towton, 
 near Tadcaster. Overborne by numbers, the battle was 
 going against him, when, dismounting from his horse, 
 he plunged his sword up to the hilt in the animal's 
 side, crying aloud that he would henceforth fight 
 shoulder to shoulder with his men. Thereupon the 
 soldiers, animated by their leader's example, rushed 
 forward with such impetuosity that the enemy gave 
 way and flew precipitately. No less than twenty-eight 
 thousand Lancastrians are said to have fallen in this 
 battle and in the pursuit which followed, for the 
 commands of Prince Edward were to give no quarter. 
 It was to his victory that the latter owed his elevation 
 to the throne which took place immediately afterwards. 
 
 The Red Horse used to be scoured every year upon 
 Palm Sunday, at the expense of certain neighbouring 
 landowners who held their land by that tenure, and the 
 scouring is said to have been as largely attended, and 
 to have been the occasion of as great festivity, as that 
 of the older horse in the adjoining county of Berks. 
 The figure is about 54 feet in extreme length, by about 
 31 in extreme height. 
 
 In Ireland there are, so far as we are aware, no turf- 
 horses whatever, and in Scotland only one, that of 
 
38 
 
 Mormond, in the County of Aberdeen. Mormond is a. 
 conical hill, in the north-eastern corner of the county, 
 and from the flatness of the surrounding country forms 
 a conspicuous object whether viewed from the land or 
 the sea. The horse, which covers about half-an-aere of 
 ground, was cut out in the early part of the last century 
 by the laird of the village of Strichen, and was intended 
 as a memorial of a favourite riding-horse of his own. 
 It is said that he got so interested in the progress of 
 the work as to have died of grief at not being able to 
 get it to appear in good proportion from all points of 
 view ! The figure was cut in the turf and the outline 
 filled up with white quartz quarried close by. 
 
 Of Turf-Monuments other than horses the best 
 known is probably the Giant, on Trendle Hill near 
 Oerne Abbas, in Dorsetshire. (Fig. 10, p. 39). This is 
 a figure roughly representing a man, undraped, and with 
 a club in his right hand ; the height is 180 feet, and 
 the outlines are marked out by a trench two feet wide, 
 and of about the same depth. It covers nearly an acre 
 of ground. Hutchins imagines this figure to represent 
 the Saxon God, Heil, and places its date as anterior to 
 a.d. 600. Heil certainly appears to have been a 
 popular deity in this neighbourhood, for Camden 
 speaks of St. Augustine as building Cerne Abbey to 
 commemorate his having " broken there in pieces Heil, 
 the idol of the heathen English- Saxons, and chased 
 away the fog of paganish superstition." (Britannia 
 212 B.) Stukeley calls the figure "A memorial of the 
 Phoenician Hercules, or Melicartus." The former of 
 these conjectures seems not improbable, as Helios 
 
Fig. 11. 
 
40 
 
 (whom Nonnus, in his Bionysiaca, tells to us have 
 been the same as Hercules) was a great object of the 
 adoration of the Phoenicians ; and that this people 
 visited the southern coast of Britain is almost certain. 
 What, however, " Melicartus " (Melicertus ?) can have 
 done in Dorsetshire does not appear to be so clear. 
 The account of the Gallic Hercules, given by Lucian, 
 is that he " had a club in his right hand and a bow in 
 his left" (See the Prcefatio.) Britton, on the other 
 hand, tells us that " Yulgar tradition makes this figure 
 commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having 
 feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor, and laid himself 
 to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down, like another 
 Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants, who 
 immediately traced his dimensions for the information 
 of posterity." There were formerly discernable some 
 markings between the legs of the figure, rather above 
 the level of the ankles, which the country-folk took for 
 the numerals 748 and imagined to indicate the date ! 
 We need, perhaps, scarcely remark that Arabic numerals 
 were unknown in Europe until at least six centuries 
 later than this period. 
 
 For many years the Cerne Giant stood alone in 
 Great Britain ; but within quite a recent period a 
 brother of his has been brought to light at Wilmington, 
 in Sussex. (Fig. 11, p. 39.) This figure had long been 
 known to the neighbouring rustics by the name of the 
 j Long Man, and appears to have been carved upon the 
 chalk on Winddoor Hill. It had, however, become 
 entirely grown over with grass, and was, consequently, 
 only visible under certain atmospheric conditions, viz., 
 
41 
 
 on bright sunny mornings in the summer, and during 
 frosty weather in the winter time. At these periods 
 the different hue of the grass caused the outline to be 
 distinctly traceable from the village of Wilmington, 
 which is about half a mile off ; but on a nearer approach 
 it entirely disappeared. The height of the figure is 
 240 feet; extreme width from hand to hand 148 feet. 
 The outline was in 1874 rendered more permanent and 
 more easily discernable by the insertion of white bricks, 
 at the expense of the Duke of Devonshire, who owns the 
 land upon which the figure stands. Dr. Phene, who 
 first called attention to it in 1873, imagines it to 
 represent Andreas, the embodiment of the powers of 
 Nature ; and be points out the curious fact that "it is 
 close to the neighbourhood of Caesar's landing place 
 and if fenced round would form an arena exactly answer- 
 ing to the ancient British deity of sacrifice, mentioned 
 by both Caesar and Strabo, and in which it is supposed 
 human victims were enclosed and burnt." The words 
 of Caesar are as follows : — " They have images of 
 enormous size, whose bodies, made of woven osiers, 
 they fill with living men (simulacra, quorum contexta 
 viminibus membra vivis hominibus complent), and these 
 being set on fire, the victims perish in the surrounding 
 flames." B. VL, Ch. 15. The account of Strabo is 
 much the same; only he says that it was of hay or 
 straw that the image was constructed ( cataskeuasantes 
 colosson chortou). Here, then, the question arises 
 whether the theory to which Dr. Phene appears to 
 point, that these " images " were simple spaces marked 
 out by a sort of paling within which the victims were 
 
42 
 
 confined, is a permissible explanation of the passage. 
 It must be admitted, on the one hand, that the two 
 different modes of making an enclosure, which according 
 to this hypothesis the Latin and Greek authors would 
 respectively indicate, may still be seen in use in the 
 Country. The fence of woven twigs is, of course, the 
 more common of the two; but it is by no means 
 unknown for a quantity of straw to be built up into a 
 winter fold for sheep, to afford them a temporary 
 protection, until such time as the straw is wanted for 
 other purposes. On the other hand there appears to be 
 no adducible example of the use of the word " colossus " 
 in any other sense than that of a statue; while the idea 
 of a large image, to which, and in which, human 
 victims were sacrificed, is one of the most familiar in the 
 rites of heathen nations. Archbishop Thomson, in his 
 Bampton Lectures, speaks of the statue of Ohronos, at 
 Carthage, " in a bending posture, with hands stretched 
 out and raised upwards. It was heated till it glowed ; 
 into its arms were placed the children destined for 
 sacrifice ; they fell into the gulf of fire beneath." 
 (Cf. Leviticus xviii. 21 and 2 Kings xxiii. 10; also 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, I. 392-6.) Hesus, we may add, 
 is mentioned by Lactantius, B. I. Ch. 21, as one of the 
 Gods to whom human sacrifices were offered, and the 
 same thing is also said by Lucan, Pharsalia, I. 444-6. 
 Of the somewhat unmeaning sticks in the hands of the 
 Wilmington Giant, one may very possibly have been 
 originally a club, and the other a bow. The bulges at 
 the top of the right-hand stick look very much like the 
 commencement of a club, while the production of the 
 line at the bottom may have been due in the first 
 
43 
 
 instance to a line of chalk carried down by the rain, 
 suggesting to some restorers of the figure that it was a 
 stick similar to that in the other hand. If this sug- 
 gestion were correct, the description of Lucian above 
 quoted would apply with absolute exactitude. 
 
 We represent this figure as entirely white, and not 
 merely in outline, for the sake of comparison ; though 
 there is, indeed, considerable ground for believing that 
 such was in point of fact its original condition. 
 
 The last Turf- Monument that we shall take occasion 
 to mention is the Cross cut upon the chalk hill, at 
 Whiteleaf, in Buckinghamshire. (Fig. 8. p 29.) This is 
 a right-angled figure, standing upon a triangular base. 
 The height is 230 feet, of which the cross itself takes 
 up 55 feet ; width of base 340 feet. Mr. Francis Wise, 
 in his Observations on the Antiquities of Berkshire, 
 supposes it to be a memorial of some victory of the 
 Saxons or the Danes, and imagines that the name of 
 the neighbouring village of Bledlow is derived from 
 Blodlaw, the bloody hill. He adds that it is a memorial 
 analogous to the White Horse, but of later date, when 
 the heathen device upon the banner of the Saxons had 
 been exchanged for a christian one after their con- 
 version to Christianity. Mr. Wise quotes the Saxon 
 Chronicle as relating a predatory excursion of the 
 Danes into Buckinghamshire, between Aylesbury and 
 Bernwood Forest, in A.D. 921, where he conjectures 
 that the battle which led to the erection of the trophy 
 was fought under the banner of King Edward, the son 
 and successor of Alfred. 
 
 Lipscombe, in his History of Buckinghamshire, takes 
 
44 
 
 quite a different view. He points out that the parish 
 of Risborough, in which the Cross is situated, belonged 
 at the time of Domesday Book to Archbishop Lanfranc, 
 and was held at the conquest by Algar Stalre, standard- 
 bearer of Christ Church, Canterbury. And he thinks 
 that if the ancestors of Stalre held Risborough under 
 the monks of Canterbury at an earlier period, and 
 exercised his office, the setting up the standard of 
 Christianity immediately after the conversion of the 
 Britons to that faith must appear appropriate. He 
 adds that the cross being the armorial bearing of the 
 Church and Priory, might have been a memorial of the 
 property acquired here by the monastery. 
 
 Another local authority, the Rev. A. Baker, in a 
 paper in Vol. I of the Records of Buckinghamshire, 
 speaks of the existence of " a second cross, traditionally 
 coeval, incised on a still more prominent hill in the 
 parish of Bledlow." This he describes as " of the Greek 
 form, with four equal limbs, each 30 feet by 15 feet. 
 No base. Near the brow of the hill. Now overgrown 
 with weeds." And, he adds, "may this not have been 
 the original memorial, and have suggested the position 
 of the other, as on a more conspicuous spot, where it 
 would have served the further purpose of a wayside 
 cross, the monks being the authors of this monument ? 
 A right of sanctuary, or demarcation of Church lands, 
 may have been included in the intention." 
 
 The Earl of Buckinghamshire holds the ground 
 around the cross upon condition of keeping it as com- 
 mon land, and the Cross in order. 
 We have now come to the end of the Turf -Monuments 
 
45 
 
 of this country. We are unaware of the existence of 
 any similar memorials in any other of the countries of 
 Europe, indeed of the world. The well-known American 
 Animal Mounds, however, may be said to bear a certain 
 part of analogy to our various incised figures, though 
 not a very close one, and we think that it may add to 
 the interest of these pages if we append a few of the 
 typical forms of those curious structures. They are of 
 considerable number, and exist chiefly, (though by no 
 
 Fig. 12. 
 
 means exclusively,) in the States of Wisconsin and Ohio. 
 They vary in height above the soil, from 2 feet to 6 feet, 
 and the largest of them is stated to be 300 feet in length. 
 The objects represented are not only alligators, buffaloes, 
 beavers, &c, but also men, birds, and other figures, one 
 of which looks exactly like a barbed arrow-head. Mr. 
 Lapham, to whose work on the Antiquities of Wisconsin 
 we are indebted for the outlines of fig. 12 and 13, does 
 
46 
 
 not doubt but that they were all constructed by the 
 Indians, and were of the character of totems. Dr. Phene, 
 however, who has carefully investigated the subject, is 
 
 of opinion that some of them were meant to represent 
 deities, while others were sepulchral, and some again, 
 intended as landmarks. The alligator mound (Fig. 12) 
 
47 
 
 Fig. 14. 
 
 measures 250 feet by 12 feet, not including the 
 heap of calcined stones projecting from the body. The 
 beaver mound (Fig. 13) 140 feet by 45 feet. And the 
 buffalo mound (Fig. 14) 108 feet by 52 feet. We may 
 add that these mounds are represented as white upon 
 black in our woodcuts, for clearness' sake, but that it is 
 not intended to convey thereby the idea that they are 
 differentiated in point of colour from the surrounding 
 surface in the way that our White Horses are, this not 
 being, so far as we are aware, the case at present, 
 whatever it may have been when they were at first 
 constructed. 
 
 A. HEATH, PRINTEB, CALNE. 
 
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
 3 3125 01430 3727