.' 4.*' •*: ^ VSR?.* * v « *>VW V-o 1 o V • \**~ _ %_ *•' j ^v «fc. ,• ^ V. °o : 'bv . "oV 1 ,*«r «<* I .4*°* > * &$* K" o \ 4^ •>* •- ,l >«^,* ♦' <» »• . i * ,0' ^ *<77i« A o* .••« : '^ 'III*' *<** #& ^* # ••jot- .s \. '--^k-' . **""*<• ••' V <^ 0* ••"•♦. *b c> **7v«* A c >* .i^L' ■<> £ o - • . *^- >■ S*K •: '/% W o* **"^ T * *° v V *'^r«'\y v » * •• * c* 9 .♦J^JV ^ V* i • r %^"/d S*. *o. ** v*™v v^*y v^v LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN 50 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF THIS ISLAND AND THE MEMORIALS WHICH THEY HAVE LEFT BEHIND THEM BY BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE D.Sc, M.D., M.A., Trinity College, Dublin F.S.A. (Lond. & Irel.) DEAN OF THE MEDICAL FACULTY AND PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY MASON COLLEGE, BIRMINGHAM WITH MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London: D. NUTT 1897 EARLY BRITAIN showing ROMAN ROADS & PLACES OF IMPORTANCE mentioned in tin* Book Jny/i../. . Vtlrs llntriaii Heads Die mmiefn r./wiV.i/r.-if- o.m. Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &■» Co. At the Ballantyne Press TO MY WIFE PREFACE The subject-matter of the following pages was arranged originally for a course of lectures which was delivered at Mason College, Birmingham. The object of that course, as of this book, was to present a brief but clear account of the different races which inhabited this country in prehistoric and early historic times, and to describe the chief relics which each has left behind it. It is hoped that this little book may be serviceable as an introduction to the study of Prehistoric Archaeology, and to the larger works on that subject by Sir John Evans, Professor Boyd Dawkins and others, the names of which will be found in the Appendix. In order to add to its practical value some attempt has been made to supply a list of objects, arranged in counties, by which the facts alluded to in the body of the work may be more fully illustrated. These also will be found in an Appendix. For permission to use certain of the figures with which the book is illustrated, the author has to thank Sir John Evans, the Councils of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries viii PREFACE and of the Archaeological Society, Mr. John Murray, Colonel Wood-Martin, Mr. W. R. Hughes and Messrs. Kegan Paul The author cannot but express his gratitude also to his friend and publisher, Mr. Alfred Nutt, for the great interest which he has taken in the book, and for the many valuable suggestions which he has made whilst it has been passing through the press. Birmingham, May i, 1897. CONTENTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH Introduction — Relics of past races in tale, custom, and law — Man and the Glacial Period — Palaeolithic and Neolithic Races — The Celts and the Bronze Age— The Roman Occupation — The Saxon Invasion — Struggle between the Britons and the Saxons — The fall of Britain— The Danes Pp. 1-18 CHAPTER II PALEOLITHIC MAN Wild animals of the period— Flint implements — Method of their manufacture— Relics of the River-Drift Man — The Cave- dweller — Kent's Hole — Early Art — Physical characteristics of the Cave-Man — His social life .... Pp. 19-34 CHAPTER III NEOLITHIC MAN Conditions of the land — Wild animals — Pit dwellings — Stone axes and arrow-heads — Their folk-lore — Manufactories — Art — Long barrows — Dolmens — Significance and folk-lore — Objects buried with the dead — Trephined skulls — Druidism — Language — Bodily remains — Social life Pp. 35-67 x CONTENTS CHAPTER IV THE BRONZE PERIOD The Aryan Race — Goidels and Brythons— Early accounts of Britain — Lake-dwellings — Crannogs— The Glastonbury Lake-village — Pile-dwellings — Bronze Celts — Swords — Personal ornaments — Casting of bronze — Pottery — Clothing . . Pp. 68-92 CHAPTER V THE BRONZE PERIOD— continued Camps — Maiden Castle — Yarnbury — Caer Caradoc — Bridges — Stonehenge — Avebury — The Rollright Stones — Folk-lore — Menhirion — Round Barrows— Celtic religion— Godiva's ride- Physical characters — Social life .... Pp. 93-118 CHAPTER VI THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN Condition of the country — Forests — Wild animals — Trackways — Roman roads — Camps — Cities — Silchester — Uriconium — Corinium .Pp. ng-^ CHAPTER VII THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN— continued The Roman city— Cemetery — Pom cerium— Amphitheatre — Gates —Forum and Basilica— Shops— Baths— Temples— Christian Church— Barracks Pp. i37- I 54 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER VIII THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN— continued The Roman villa — Hypocausts— Tesselated pavements — Chedworth Villa — Mines— Method of burial — The Roman Wall — Nature of the Roman Occupation Pp. 155-170 CHAPTER IX THE SAXON OCCUPATION The Christian Church in Britain — Intermixture of Races— Saxon Earthworks — Relation to subsequent Norman Castles — Offa's Dyke — Methods of burial — Weapons and other objects found in Graves — Art— Church architecture . . . Pp. 1 71-186 CHAPTER X TRIBAL AND VILLAGE COMMUNITIES The Tribal Community — Its members — The strangers living with it— The Chieftain — His house — The village community — The Hall — Evolution of the Manor-house— The Lord of the Manor — How a Manor was formed — The inhabitants of the Village — The land around it — Its allotment —The Manor of Westminster at the Conquest — The island of Heisgeier . . Pp. 187-206 CHAPTER XI SOME TRACES OF THE PAST RACES OF BRITAIN Traces in Language — Physical characteristics — Names of Places. Pp. 207-219 xii CONTENTS APPENDIX A List of Places Pp 221-227 APPENDIX B List of Books Pp. 228-229 INDEX 231 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Map of Early Britain, showing roads and places of importance. Frontispiece i. River- Drift Implement (Evans, "Ancient Stone Imple- ments") 21 2. Cave Implement (do.) 27 3. Harpoon Head (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) .... 28 4. Hunting of Horses (Joly, " Man before Metals") . . 29 5. The Mammoth (do.) 30 6. Plan of a Village Settlement 37 7. Neolithic Celt (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 39 8. A Celt in its Handle (Evans, "Ancient Stone Implements") 40 9. Perforated Stone Hammer (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) . . 41 10. Flint Arrow-Heads (Evans, " Ancient Stone Implements ") 43 11. The same in Shaft (do.) 43 12. Spindle Whorl (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) .... 48 13. A Long Barrow 49 14. An uncovered Dolmen (Joly, " Man before Metals ") . . 50 15. A Breton Dolmen 50 16. Kits Coty House (" A Week's Tramp in Dickensland," by 51 W. R. Hughes) 53 17. Plan of Chambers in Uley Barrow 54 18. Concentric Circles cut on Stone (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) . 57 19. Position of Skeletons in a Barrow (after a figure in Jewitt's " Grave-Mounds and their Contents ") 59 20. Trephined Skull (Joly, " Man before Metals ") . . .72 21. Restoration of aCrannog (Wood-Martin, " Pagan Ireland") 22. Section of a Crannog (do.) 74 23. Plan of a Crannog (do.) 75 Handbook for xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 24. Plan of a Crannog (Wood-Martin, " Pagan Ireland ") 25. Flat Bronze Celt (Evans, "Ancient Bronze Implements 26. Flanged Bronze Celt (do.) . 27. Winged and Ringed Bronze Celt (do.) 28. Socketed Bronze Celt (do.) 29. Bronze Celt in Handle (do.) 30. Bronze Pins (do.) .... 31. A Torque (do.) 32. Bronze Caldron (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 33. Stone Mould for Casting Celts (do.) . 34. Pottery of the Bronze Age (do.) . 35. General Plan of Stonehenge (Murray's Wiltshire) 36. Conjectural Restoration of Stonehenge (do 37. Trilithons at Stonehenge (Barclay, " Stonehenge ") . 38. Plan of Stonehenge as it is (Murray's Handbook) 39. Trilithons at Tripoli (Barclay, " Stonehenge ") . 40. Avebury, restoration (Murray's Handbook for Wiltshire) 41. Avebury, Plan of District (do.) 42. Menhir, the Kingst one (" Folk-Lore ") 43. Round Barrows (after a plate in Barclay's "Stonehenge 44. Plan of Silchester 45. Remains of Wall of Uriconium 46. A Roman Tombstone . 47. The Roman Gateway at Lincoln .... 48. Plan of Forum and Basilica at Silchester (after the plan in Anhaologia) .... 49. Roman Pottery (Durobrivian) . 50. Roman Pottery from Upchurch 51. Samian Pottery (Nos. 46, 47, 49, 50 and 51, after figures in Wright's "Celt, Roman, and Saxon ") 52. An Oculist's Stamp (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 53. The Roman Bath at Bath .... 54. A Tablet from the neighbourhood of the Roman Wall (Scot. Ant. Catalogue) 55. Roman Hypocaust and Pavement (Wright) 56. Orpheus from a Tesselated Pavement ILLUSTRATIONS 57. A Lion from the same (after illustrations in the Archceolo gical Journal) 58. Plan of Chedworth Villa . 59. Interior of a Roman Tomb (Wright) 60. Plan of a Buhr (after a figure in Clarke, Military Architecture ") 61. Rectangular Norman Keep 62. Norman Shell-keep 63. Anglo-Saxon Interment (after a figure in the Craniorum) 64. Anglo-Saxon Fibulae (Wright) . 65. Anglo-Saxon Tumblers (Wright) 66. Anglo-Saxon Manuscript (after a figure in Westwood' "Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts") 67. Bradford-on-Avon Church (after an illustration in the Archceologkal Journal) . Mediaeval Thesaurus 159 161 165 175 177 177 179 182 183 185 186 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH Introduction — Relics of past races in tale, custom, and law — Man and the Glacial Period— Palaeolithic and Neo- lithic races — The Celts and the Bronze Age— The Roman occupation— The Saxon invasion— Struggle between the Britons and the Saxons— The Fall of Britain — The Danes. England is full of the traces of her successive occupants, material relics of earth and stone, and less tangible, but not less real, relics of custom and tradition. As an American writer has remarked, the country is in fact one vast museum, on whose shelves lie objects illustrative of the history and genius of the races, out of which has been built up that complex entity, the Englishman of to-day. It is also true that just as those shelves of a museum which relate to the remotest periods are those in which the least interest is shown by the casual visitor and which are least in- spected by him, so those objects in this country which date back to the earliest periods are, with a few obvious excep- tions such as Stonehenge, far less popular than the erections of a later period. Perhaps this is scarcely to be greatly wondered at ; the stately cathedral or the ruined abbey, the historic castle or the royal palace, are certainly more striking objects and far more calculated to appeal to the imagination A 2, LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN than the obscure earthwork, overgrown with trees and nettles, or the ring of weathered and half-buried stones lying far away from the homes of man on some hillside. Yet these relics of early races possess at least one element of interest in greater measure than their later rivals, that of mystery — mystery as to their builders, mystery as to their object, per- haps in some instances, most of all as to the manner of their erection. In the pages of this book it is intended to present briefly an account of the races which successively occupied this island in prehistoric and eohistoric times, and to point out the remains which still exist as evidences of their labours, so that the traveller when he meets with a tumulus, a dolmen, or a camp, may be able to form an idea, limited though it may be by the present imperfect state of our knowledge, as to the period, builders and significance of each. Topics related to objects of this kind belong to the domain of Archaeology proper, and in dealing with them our greatest difficulty will be to make a selection from the crowd of in- teresting objects which present themselves for description. Further, it has already been mentioned that besides the tangible and visible remains just alluded to, there are many other relics in tale, in custom, and even in law, which when properly examined turn out to be as much the property of bygone inhabitants of this country as the tombs and temples which they erected. In many cases, indeed, such tales are actually connected with the cromlechs and other remains of these prehistoric races, visible and legendary relics thus being closely linked one with the other. Viewed from this standpoint, the child's game and the legal custom assume a remarkable and at first unsuspected interest, and carry us back to an age when they possessed a significance, perhaps religious, perhaps ceremonial, long since forgotten and traceable, if traceable at all, only with great difficulty. Let us take as an example of a legal method the manners in which, under ancient tenures, property is still distributed in INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 3 cases of intestacy. It may go to the eldest son by the method of primogeniture, a plan which is quite easily explicable. Or it may be distributed amongst all the sons, or in default of them, amongst all the daughters, by the method of gavel- kind, an arrangement which can also be readily accounted for. But in certain places, both in England and on the Continent, the property descends to the youngest son, a method which is called Junior-right or, in this country, Borough English. How is this curious system to be accounted for ? Is it because the youngest was presumably the least able to take care of himself, or because it was sup- posed that by the time of their parent's demise all the other sons had already received their portions ? It is very hard to say. Possibly Mr. Elton is right when he surmises that the custom may have been derived from some domestic religion, based on a worship of ancestors and a consequent reverence for the hearth-place, but belonging to a people who saw no natural pre-eminence in the eldest. Possibly Mr. Gomme's view is correct, and it is due to peculiarities in the Germanic settlement of England, which sent the elder born out to found new homesteads and naturally reserved the father's homestead for the younger son (Archceologia, " On Archaic Conceptions of Property," vol. i. 1887). In any case there can be no doubt that a custom which at length has passed into law, originated at a period of our history so remote as to be beyond the range of written records. Again it seems clear that many of the most popular children's games were originally serious and even solemn ceremonies, which have undergone a gradual process of degradation from their first state, through that of half-joke, half-earnest to their present lowly position. For instance, that well-known terror of the Bank Holiday, " Kiss in the Ring," seems to be a relic of the early form of marriage by choice or selection. One of its variants, for there are several ways in which it is played, presents this peculiar 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN feature, that the head of the girl standing in the centre of the ring is covered with a shawl, and a portion of the game turns upon her recognition by another player. This in- dicates, thinks Mrs. Gomme, that "in this game we have preserved one of the ceremonies of a now obsolete marriage- custom — namely, the disguising of the bride and placing her among her bridesmaids and other young girls, all having veils or other coverings alike over their heads and bodies. The bridegroom has to select from among these maidens the girl whom he wished to marry, or whom he had already married, for until this was done he was not allowed to depart with his bride. This custom was continued in sport as one of the ceremonies to be gone through after the marriage was over, long after the custom itself was discon- tinued. This ordeal occurs in more than one folk-tale, and it usually accompanies the incident of a youth having travelled for adventures, sometimes in quest of a bride. He succeeds in finding the whereabouts of the coveted girl, but before he is allowed by the father to take his bride away he is required to perform tasks, a final one being the choosing of the girl with whom he is in love from among others, all dressed alike and disguised. Our bridal veil may probably originate in this custom." A further instance of the com- plete alteration of character which befalls a custom as it passes through the various stages of its downward evolution, may be studied in the well-known child's song, " Green Gravel," which, little as the children or their mothers suspect it, is, according to the authority just cited, evidently a funeral game. The green gravel and green grass indicate the locality of the scene j " green " as applied to the gravel meaning probably, freshly disturbed, just as a green grave means a freshly-made grave. The tenant of the newly-made grave is the well-loved lady of a disconsolate lover, and probably the incidents of washing and dressing the corpse, putting an inscription on the place where it is laid, and INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 5 singing the dirge are indicated in some of the numerous variants of this popular game. Facts such as those which have been just cited belong to the realm of folk-lore, the youngest and perhaps not the least fruitful member of the Archaeological family. The callow youth of this branch was not unmarked by the excesses which have characterised the intellectual minority of other subjects, but now that it has attained years of discretion, all are beginning to recognise how much valuable information it is capable of affording, when properly used,* as to the early customs and ideas of this and other countries. There is one other relic which some, indeed most of these early races have left, a relic the most important, the most durable, and by far the most elusive, and that is their blood, which circulates in varying combinations in the different members of that highly complex race which now peoples the British Islands. Some attempt will be made to indicate the lines upon which the problem of English ethnology has been attacked and the results which have been attained. But it must be admitted that we are here treading upon more difficult and treacherous ground than is the case with either of the other two lines of inquiry, replete with difficulties though they are. For the sake of obtaining a clear idea of the different races whose remains are to form the subject of this book, and particularly with the view of securing an accurate knowledge of their order and relation to one another, it will be well to consider them from a historical standpoint before dealing with them upon the lines which have been just indicated. It is by no means certain at what period man first took possession of this land, and much discussion has raged around the question as to whether there were human occupants of this country in the pre- glacial period or not. This is not the place in which to deal exhaustively with the 6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN subject of the Glacial period ; it must, therefore, suffice to say that during the Pleistocene era the northern and north-western parts of Europe as far south as the 50th parallel of north latitude, were covered with a huge sheet of ice, from the edges of which great rivers flowed, just as rivers do now from the glaciers of Switzerland. This epoch was not one of continuous intensity, but was interrupted by periods of lesser cold, during which the ice-sheet receded and the mountain glaciers intruded less upon the plains. The relics of this age are found scattered over these islands in the shape of huge heaps of stone or moraines, boulders and erratic blocks and beds of clay, for the origin and sig- nificance of which the reader must consult some geological text-book. In certain places, and notably in some caves, implements of stone of a deep yellow colour have been found, which, though exceedingly rude in manufacture, have yet undoubtedly been shaped by the labour of man's hands. There can be no doubt that whether pre- or post-glacial, these implements must be looked upon as some of the earliest objects made by mankind in this country which have as yet been discovered. They have been found over- laid by what some authorities consider to be glacial drift, from which it has been urged that they are pre-glacial in age and point to the existence of human beings in this country at that extremely remote period. Others have, however, taken a different view of the matter, which is one to be de- cided, firstly, by the determination of the exact date of the superjacent deposit, which is a question for geologists ; and, secondly, by the resolution of the doubt as to whether implements and deposit occupy their original relation to one another, for it must be remembered that the discovery of the tools under the clay is not an absolute proof that the former were fabricated before the latter was deposited. It is, perhaps, not unfair to say that the general tendency of scientific opinion at the present day INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 7 is to deny the existence of human beings in the pre-glacial epoch. It may be well thus early in the consideration of the sub- ject to direct the reader's attention to the invaluable inform- ation which is afforded to us by the implements, whether of stone or of other material, which have been left behind by extinct races. As will be seen more fully in later chapters, it is on such materials that we have to rely very largely for our information as to the habits and state of civilisation of the people of each period; indeed it may be said that they supply the only information which we possess about some of them. The recognition of the purposes of such implements does not depend upon guess-work, but upon the fact that savage races are very much the same, with the necessary allowances for differences in climate and surround- ings, all the world over. Thus the implements which are prehistoric with us, are in actual use, or were so until a quite recent period, amongst less civilised races. By a com- parative study of implements from various parts of the world we are able to form not merely accurate ideas of the uses of those which we discover amongst the relics of the bygone peoples of our own islands, but can take a further step, and in some instances, form conclusions, though it must be admitted with less certainty, as to the customs, habits, and even the religious ideas of their makers. After the Glacial age had passed away, but at a time when the British Isles were still connected with the continent of Europe by dry land, the first undoubted immigrants made their appearance in the shape of the so-called Palaeolithic race, a race known almost exclusively by the weapons which they manufactured. Some of these implements have been discovered amongst river-drifts, and these have been assigned to an earlier period than other and similar remains which have mostly been found in caves. Thus the Palaeolithic race is divided into the men of the river-drift and the cave- 8 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN men. The remains of the former are found only as far north as a line drawn from Bristol to the Wash, whilst those of the latter have a more extensive area, being met with in the northern parts of Yorkshire. It is quite impossible to say at what period of time these wanderers first reached this country, for though many ^elaborate researches have been made in the hope of assign- ing a definite date for the advent of man in England, the question remains as doubtful as ever, and the most widely varying dates are still assigned by different authorities. It is as difficult to say what was the fate of this race, for it seems impossible to decide whether it became extinct before the arrival of its successors, or whether it became fused with them. Some authorities consider that there is no evidence of the existence of the direct descendants of Palaeolithic man among the osteological remains of the Neolithic period or of a later date in Britain, and that he seems to have become as extinct as many of the animals which were contemporary with him. This, however, may not be the case with respect to other parts of Europe, whilst Professor Boyd Dawkins and some American anthropologists believe that Palaeolithic man still has representatives on the American continent. During or after his occupation of the land, these islands became detached from the continent of Europe, and geo- graphical conditions substantially the same as those which now exist became established. Thus the succeeding bands of immigrants which poured in successive waves over the country must have made their way to these shores in boats. The first of these races is called Neolithic from the nature of their implements, and their prior occupation of various parts of the Continent has been established by the discovery of their characteristic weapons and instruments in diverse localities. The extent of this country colonised by the Neolithic race was much greater than that occupied by INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 9 their predecessors, for their remains have been found as far north as the Orkneys, and it is most probable that they reached Ireland, though it appears doubtful whether they did so until a later period. The men of this race are variously spoken of as Iberians, Ivernians or Euskarians, and they are believed to have been closely related ethnologically with the Basques of Spain and France, whose remarkable language may be the lineal descendant of the otherwise wholly, or almost wholly, lost tongue of the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain. This race certainly did not entirely disappear either before or at the advent of the next wave of immigra- tion, for we possess abundant evidence to show that the latter partly assimilated and partly drove further westward the occupants of the country whom they found in possession on their arrival. This, the third race of inhabitants, was that of the Celts, and there is this important distinction between them and their predecessors, that whilst the Celts belonged to the Aryan family, their predecessors were of non-Aryan stock. Without entering into the controversies as to the place of origin of the Aryan race, or the exact relation between Aryan races and races with an Aryan speech, it will be sufficient here to say that there are in Europe seven Aryan languages — viz., Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, Lettic and Albanian, and that there are three in Asia — viz., Indie (in- cluding Sanskrit), Iranic (including Persian), and Armenian. The race with which we are now dealing spoke a Celtic tongue, and was the first to introduce the knowledge of metals to this country, for though they were still ignorant of the use of iron they knew how to manufacture articles in bronze, for which reason the earlier part of their occupancy of the land is known as the Bronze age. The Celts appear to have descended upon this country in two separate invasions, separated from one another by a con- siderable period of time. The earlier of these invasions is io LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN known as the Goidelic or Gadhelic, and the people who took part in it are known as Goidels or Gaels. They are in point of speech the ancestors of the Gaelic speaking people of Ireland, the Highlands of Scotland and the Isle of Man, and their tongue existed in Wales and Devon as late as the sixth century or probably even later. They appear to have largely amalgamated with the Neolithic inhabitants whom they found in possession. The second invasion is known as the Brythonic, and those who were concerned in it as Brythons or Britons ; indeed it was from them that this country acquired the name of Britain.* Their speech still lives in that of the people of Wales and of Brittany ; until last century it also existed as the ancient Cornish language, now extinct as a living tongue; it was at a still earlier date that the Brythonic speech of Cumbria died out of use. The Brythons appear to have driven the com- bined Goidelic and Neolithic peoples to the western side of the island, so that at the time of the Roman invasion, the latter were to be found south-west of the Mendip Hills and the River Stour, in the regions north and south of the Sol way Firth and in Wales. In the last mentioned district, they were to be found in the northern part, to the west of a line drawn from Chester to the mouth of the River Mawd- dach, and in the south, west of the Severn and south of the Teme. They also occupied Ireland and the Isle of Man. The northern parts of Scotland were occupied by Ivemians and Picts, but the remainder, save for the part above mentioned near the Solway Firth, was peopled, like the greater part of England, by Brythons. The Romans, under Julius Csesar, had made a descent upon the island in the year 55 B.C., but it was more than one hundred years later, in the year 45 a d., that Claudius really undertook the reduction of the country. It is no * Prof. Rhys's view is that the name of the Brittones got mixed up with Prittania, a Brythonic form of the Goidelic Cruithneach. INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH n part of the purpose of this work to deal with the incidents of the campaigns by which Britain became a part of the Roman Empire. It is, however, important to note how essentially military in its character was the occupation of the country. Earthworks, great fortified cities, magnificent military roads, provided with change-houses and stations, not to speak of that remarkable triumph of military engineering, the Roman wall, sufficiently prove the truth of this statement. At the same time, the number and magnificence of the villas built for the occupation of Roman officials show that the settlement was regarded as permanent in its nature, and that the builders of these mansions con- sidered themselves firmly rooted in the soil of their adopted country. It is also important to remember that the Roman occupation was not accompanied by the extermination of the races which they found in occupation of the land on their arrival. Battles, it is true, there were between the Celts and the invaders, but the policy of the Romans, here as in other parts of their empire, obviously was, as far as pos- sible, to permit the natives to continue in occupation of their lands and properties, and in the practice of their own customs, whilst subject to and taxed by their foreign masters. The comparison has been justly made between the Roman occupation of Britain and our own occupation of India, for in both cases the intention of the conquering race has been, whilst firmly holding the dominions of which they had become possessed, to interfere as little as possible with the natives so long as they were content to submit quietly to the demands of their conquerors. Thus there was no such displacement of population during this period as had occurred previously or as took place during the next epoch. Early in the fifth century the Roman legions, whose presence was required nearer home, were finally withdrawn from England, and the Romanised Britons were left to 12 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN defend their own shores as best they might, a task for which they were probably not too well fitted by centuries of de- pendence on alien troops. They were not long left in quiet possession of their country. It is probable that Britain had already been threatened by invaders from the north, for amongst the great Roman officials we find one whose title was Comes littoris Saxonici per Brittannias, and whose jurisdiction extended along the eastern coast from the Wash to Southampton Water. To this official, who may be re- garded as the ancestor of the Warden of the Cinque Ports of our own times, was entrusted the organisation of the district most exposed to the attacks of the Saxon pirates. It was at three points on this shore that the land was invaded by the northern warriors. First, the Jutes under chieftains to whom tradition has assigned the names of Hengist and Horsa, descended upon the shores of Kent in 449. They were followed, in 477, by the Saxons who, under Aelle, invaded the south coast near Chichester. It was not until nearly a hundred years later that the third band, to whom this country was to owe its later name of England, the Angles, descended under the leadership of Ida upon the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk in the middle of the sixth century.* There was an important difference between this invasion and the two which preceded it. In the former cases it was only a detachment which had come over, but in the case of the Angles it was the entire * The dates and facts in the preceding paragraphs are those given by Green and other historians of a similar period. It is right, however, to say that Thurneysen, the latest investigator, considers that the main Germanic invasion took place in the early part of the fifth century. Moreover, it is true that we only hear of Ida in the middle of the sixth century, but that does not prove that he was the first invader of East Anglia. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the Germans established themselves earlier in the North of England than in the South, in which case the attack on East Anglia would be a movement from Northumbria, rather than from the Continent. INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 13 population of the district, in the neighbourhood of what is now Magdeburg, still known as Angeln or the Engleland, which removed en masse to England, leaving its former territory absolutely denuded of inhabitants. The operations of these successive bands of invaders were very different from those of the Romans. Their object was not merely to occupy the country but to colonise it, and to accomplish this, they proceeded as far as possible to exterminate the Celtic tribes, who, after a long and stub- born resistance, were forced to retreat before their invaders. Something of what occurred we learn from the writings of the historian of the Celts, Gildas, himself a scion of that race, who wrote some sixty or more years after the first Germanic invasion. " The red tongue of flame licked up the whole land from end to end," he says, in his somewhat high-flown language, " till it slaked its thirst in the western ocean." And again of the inhabitants he says : " Some, con- strained by famine, came and yielded themselves up to their enemies as slaves for ever, while others, committing the safety of their lives to mountains, crags, thick forests, and rocky isles, though with trembling hearts, remained in their fatherland." The Venerable Bede, if, indeed, he is not simply repeating Gildas, speaks in much the same terms : " Some were slaughtered ; some gave themselves up to undergo slavery ; some retreated beyond the sea ; and some remaining in their own land lived a miserable life in the mountains and forests." But apart from this written evidence, we gain some idea of the straits to which the Celtic fugitives were reduced from the traces of their occupation which have been found in some of the caves to which they were driven for shelter. Amongst these, one of the most celebrated is that of the King's Scaur, near Settle, in Yorkshire, from the evidence collected in which by Professor Boyd Dawkins, Mr. Green has drawn the vivid picture which follows. " In primaeval ages," he says, "it had been the haunt of hyaenas i 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN who dragged thither the mammoths, the reindeer, the bisons, and the bears that prowled in the neighbouring glens. At a later period it became a home of savages, whose stone adzes and flint knives and bone harpoons are still embedded in its floor. But these, too, vanished in their turn, and this haunt of primitive men lay lonely and undisturbed until the sword of the English invaders drove the Roman provincials for shelter to the moors. The hurry of their flight may be gathered from the relics their cave-life has left behind it. There was clearly little time to do more than drive off the cattle, the swine, the goats, whose bones lie scattered round the hearth-fire at the mouth of the cave, where they served the wretched fugitives for food. The women must have hastily buckled their brooches of parti-coloured enamel, the peculiar workmanship of Celtic Britain, and snatched up a few household implements as they hurried away. The men, no doubt, girded on as hastily the swords, whose dainty hilts of ivory and bronze still remain to tell the tale of their doom, and hiding in their breasts what money the house contained from coins of Trajan to the wretched minims that showed the Empire's decay, mounted their horses to protect their flight. At nightfall all were crouching beneath the dripping roof of the cave or around the fire which was blazing at its mouth, and a long suffering began in which the fugitives lost year by year the memory of the civilisation from which they came. A few charred bones show how hunger drove them to slay their horses for food ; reddened pebbles mark the hour when the new vessels they wrought were too weak to stand the fire, and their meal was cooked by dropping heated stones into the pot. A time seems to have come when their very spindles were exhausted, and the women who wove in that dark retreat made spindle whorls as they could from the bones that lay about them." The cities which had been erected in considerable numbers by the Romans were sacked, burnt, and then left as ruins INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 15 by the Anglo-Saxons, who appear to have been afraid or at least unwilling to use them as places of habitation. An instance of this may be found in the case of Camboritum, the important Roman city which corresponded to our modern Cambridge, which was sacked by the invaders and left a ruin at least until the time of the Venerable Bede (673-735), who relates that the nuns of Ely, requiring a coffin for the remains of their foundress St. Aethelthryth, searched amongst its ruins and found there a marble sarcophagus which they used for the interment of the Saint. In later days these ruined walls and buildings still unoccupied were used as stone quarries, from which were obtained the materials for the construction of churches and abbeys, as in the case of Uriconium, the carved stones of which may be traced not only in the construction of Wroxeter Church itself, but also in that of Atcham, some little distance off, and in other edifices in the district.* It was the same with the villas of the Roman provincials, which, magnificent and even luxu- rious as they often were, fell into a state of ruin, and in that condition afforded perforce at times, an accommodation so inadequate and uncomfortable to belated travellers as to gain for them the name of Cold Harbours, a title met with in a number of places throughout the country where such buildings formerly existed. In the struggles w T hich took place between invaders and invaded the former were not always victorious. Thus at the battle of Mons Badonicus, which may have been Badbury Rings in Dorsetshire, a band of West Saxons, who were probably making their way towards the city which occupied the site of the present Dorchester, was vanquished by the Brythonic forces. This battle is traditionally associated * " Caistor was a city when Norwich was none, And Norwich was built with Caistor stone." This Norfolk rhyme alludes to the custom above mentioned, Caistor having been the Roman city of Venta Icenorum. 16 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN with the name of the national Brythonic hero, King Arthur, various places in the south of England having been iden- tified with the sites of conflicts, in which he was concerned, by Dr. Guest. Too much reliance cannot, however, be placed upon this identification, since Mr. Skene has asso- ciated the same events with places in the south of Scotland. Again, at the battle of Fethanleah, now probably Faddiley in Cheshire, in 563, Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, fresh from the destruction of Bassa's churches, now Bas- church in Shropshire, was vanquished by the Britons under Brocmael, Prince of Powys, a victory which for fifteen years checked the progress of the army of Wessex. But gradually the Britons were driven towards the western side of the island, until that portion of it, to which the name of Britain could be legitimately applied, was confined to a continuous strip, consisting in its northern part, of the district of Strathclyde, which extended, roughly speaking, from Loch Long in Scotland to the River Dee ; in its central part, of the present Principality, under the name of North Wales ; and in its southern, of West Wales, which included the present counties of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. This continuous strip was cleft into three parts by two decisive battles. The first of these took place at Deorham, near Bath, in 577, when Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons, conquered the Britons under their three kings, Conmael, Kyndylan and Farinmael, and permanently separated North from West Wales. The second battle took place at Chester, in 607, when Aethelfrith, King of the Northumbrians, conquered Brocmael, Prince of Powys, divided Wales from Strathclyde, and finally put an end to the kingdom of Britain. It now only remains to see what became of the three dis- membered fragments. The most northerly portion, Strath- clyde, was in alliance with the little kingdom of Dalriada, founded by emigrants from Ireland, with which is associated INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL SKETCH 17 the fame of St. Columba of Iona. In 603, Aedhan, King of Dalriada, was conquered by Aethelfrith, King of the Northumbrians, at Daegstone, now Dawstone, after which event the British inhabitants of Strathclyde became tributary to their conquerors. West Wales, or Dyvnaint, extended from the Quantock Hills to the Land's End, and the first great inroad into it was made by Ine, who, in 710, conquered Geraint, the British king, pushed his army as far as the River Tone and there founded the city which we now know as Taunton. It was not, however, until 815 that Ecgberht, King of the West Saxons, made the conquest of Cornwall. It remains now only to speak of the district with which we now associate the name of Wales, and here it may be men- tioned that the name of Welsh was given to the Brythons by the Anglo-Saxons, and was derived by them from their word wealhas, meaning strangers or unintelligible people, a term met with in other parts than Wales, such as at Walling- ford, in Berks, " the ford of the strangers." North Wales, or Wales as we know it, had a more enlarged boundary than it now possesses until 799, when Offa, King of Mercia, pushed his way over the Severn, till then in its upper part the British boundary, drove the Prince of Powys from his town of Pengwyrn, and founded there the town in the scrub, Scrobbesbyrig, our present Shrewsbury. After this victory he constructed, according to a long-standing tradition, the dyke which bears his name. It is, however, possible, that it may be a work of much earlier date, which he utilised as a boundary line. Offa's dyke, of which extensive remains still exist, stretched from the mouth of the Dee to that of the Wye, including some portions of land now belonging to England, and stringent rules were laid down to prevent the Welsh from entering the English side of that boundary. It is important from an ethnological point of view to remember that whilst Britons and Saxons were at war with B 18 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN one another in some parts of the land, in others they were on sufficiently good terms to act as allies against a common foe. Thus in 591, at the battle of Wanborough, on the edge of the Wiltshire downs above the Vale of White Horse, the Hwiccas under Ceolric joined with the Britons to conquer Ceawlin, King of the West Saxons. This is the first instance of an amalgamation which doubtless became more common as the intensity of the struggle be- tween the invaders and the invaded decreased and the conflicts between different groups of the former became more common. In 866 the Danes first descended upon East Anglia, and upon the history of their connection with this country it will not be necessary to dwell. For the purposes of future ethno- logical observations it is only necessary to remind the reader that, after the battle in which Alfred vanquished the Danes at Ethandun, now Edington, near Westbury in Wilt- shire, the country was divided between the two races, the Danes dominating that part of it which lies north of a line from the Thames to the mouth of the River Lea, and thence by Bedford and the River Ouse to the Watling Street, which, further west, formed the line of demarcation. Thus the Danes ruled over the north-east division of the island, whilst the English had London and the south-west. CHAPTER II PALEOLITHIC MAN Wild animals of the Period — Flint implements — Method of their manufacture — Relics of the River-Drift man — The Cave-dweller — Kent's Hole— Early Art — Physical Charac- teristics of the Cave-man — His Social Life. The classification of the early races to whom the use of metal was unknown, and whose implements were, therefore, mainly manufactured from stone, depends largely upon the character and finish of the weapons and tools which they left behind. Those which are assigned to the earlier age are much rougher and less finished than those of the later, so that we may regard the former, or Palaeolithic period, as that in which stones were roughly chipped to the shape most applicable to the purpose for which they were intended, and the latter, or Neolithic, as that in which the stones were sometimes chipped alone but chipped with greater skill and minuteness, sometimes ground down and polished so as to be not merely more sightly, but also more effective weapons. It is with the former age that we have now to deal, and the reader will remember that it has been subdivided into two periods, that of the river-drift and that of the cave- dwellers. At the time when England was in the possession of Palaeolithic man not merely was its physical geography very different from that of the present day, but the animals which inhabited it were more varied in kind and far more dangerous in character. Amongst the fauna of that period, 2 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN were the hippopotamus, two kinds of elephant, and a like number of species of rhinoceros, a cave bear and a cave lion, the hyaena, bison, wild horse and reindeer. Palaeo- lithic man was thus provided with an abundance of animals to chase and to be chased by. It must be admitted that our predecessors of this period were but poorly provided for the pursuit of game of such size and ferocity. Their clothing, if indeed they did not for a large part of the year go naked, must have consisted solely of the dried skins of such animals as they were able to kill, and their weapons were confined to pointed stakes of wood and rude axes chiefly constructed of flint. The first implement of this kind which was ever recognised as being something more than a natural product, was discovered near Gray's Inn, London, about the year 1690, together with the remains of an elephant, with which it found a place in the Museum of Sir HansSloane, where it was described as "A British weapon found, with elephant's tooth, opposite to Black Mary's, near Grayes Inn Lane," but where its real antiquity was of course unsuspected. When the collection in question developed into the British Museum the specimen went with it, and there, too, it lay misunderstood, until one hundred and fifty years after its original discovery. It was then shown that it exactly corresponded with the specimens which had been discovered in the river gravels of Amiens and Abbeville. Such specimens having, after a long controversy and years of suspended opinion, been admitted to be the work of human hands, the true nature of the Gray's Inn flint was no longer a matter for doubt. This famous piece of flint is roughly triangular in shape, about six inches in length and four wide at its base, and has been fashioned by the process of chipping fragments off the original block until it assumed the shape which it now possesses. This and other implements of a similar kind belonging to this period do not appear to have been ever attached to any handle, Fig. i. — River-drift Stone Implement found at Reculver. (Sir John Evans.) It is made from a flint pebble, and the rounded end is well adapted for being held in the hand. 22 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN but were held by the blunter end. They must have been formidable weapons in a hand-to-hand contest, and may possibly also have been used as missiles at a short range. Other and smaller pieces of flint have been found of an oval figure and worked so as to possess a cutting edge all round, others fashioned into what may have been scrapers for the preparation of skins, and again, others worked to a sharp point so as to be capable of serving as awls. Special manufactories appear to have existed for these stone tools in places capable of affording a supply of the necessary materials. Here have been found the tools which were used in the fashioning of the implements ; these consist of large blocks of flint which probably served the purpose of anvils, and other pieces of the same stone designed for shaping the fragments out of which the weapons were con- structed. The material employed was almost invariably flint, and this because that kind of stone has a form of fracture called conchoidal, which lends itself peculiarly to the process of the formation of weapons by flaking and chipping. Sir John Evans, after describing and comparing the methods adopted in the construction of their implements by races now or recently in the habit of making them in stone, thinks that the flake-implements may well have been made in a similar manner to that in which gun-flints are prepared, a pebble having been employed instead of the iron hammer of the modern flint-knapper. " At first sight," he says, " it would appear that the production of flakes of flint, without having a pointed metallic hammer for the purpose, was a matter of great difficulty. I have, however, made some experiments upon the subject, and have also employed a Suffolk flint-knapper to do so, and I find that blows from a rounded pebble, judiciously administered, are capable of producing well-formed flakes,, such as in shape cannot be distinguished from those made with a metallic hammer. The main difficulties consist first, in making the PALAEOLITHIC MAN 23 blow fall exactly in the proper place ; and secondly, in so proportioning its intensity that it shall simply dislodge a flake without shattering it. The pebble employed as a hammer need not be attached to a shaft, but can be used without any preparation in the hand." The flakes, being gradually detached from a given lump of flint, must necessarily leave behind the central block, from which they had been separated. Such blocks are formed in the process of manufacturing gun-flints, and are called cores. Analogous structures are met with amongst the remains of the prehistoric manufactories. The process of manufacture in the case of the stone axes was somewhat similar, though here it was the central mass from which flakes were detached which was the object of the workman's attention and not the pieces which he re- moved from it in the process of its manufacture. Sir John Evans, dealing with the method of working this kind of weapon, says: "The hatchets seem to have been rough hewn by detaching a succession of flakes, chips, or splinters from a block of flint by means of a hammer-stone, and these rough-hewn implements were subsequently worked into a more finished form by detaching smaller splinters, also probably by means of a hammer, previously to their being ground or polished, if they were destined to be finished in such a manner. In most cases one face of the hatchet was first roughed out, and then by a series of blows, given at proper intervals along the margin of that face, the general shape was given and the other face chipped out. This is proved by the fact that in most of the roughly chipped hatchets found in Britain the depressions of the bulbs of percussion* of the flakes struck off occur in a perfect state * The bulb of percussion is the name given to a bulb or projection, of a more or less conical shape, at the end of the flake where the blow was administered by which it was detached. There is, of course, a corresponding hollow in the block from which it was dislodged. 24 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN only on one face, having been partly removed on the other face by the subsequent chipping. " There are, however, exceptions to this rule, and more especially among the implements found in our ancient river-gravels. In some cases the cutting edge has been formed by the intersection of two convex lines of fracture giving a curved and sharp outline, and the body of the hatchet has been subsequently made to suit the edge." Amongst some savage races flaking is effected by pressure and not by percussion, the required portion being detached with the aid of an instrument of wood, bone or horn, which is skilfully pressed against the block of stone with the result that a thin flake or shaving flies off. Captain John Smith, whose name is associated with that of Pocahontas, the original Belle Sauvage, in speaking of the Indians of Virginia, appears to allude to this method of forming stone- flakes when he says : " His arrow-head he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he ever weareth in his bracept, of a splint of stone or glasse in the form of a heart, and these they glew to the end of their arrows." Amongst the various kinds of weapons and implements belonging to this period which have been discovered, one form, met with in such quantities during the Neolithic era, is wanting, and this is the arrow-head. From this we learn the significant fact, that so low was Palaeolithic man in the scale of culture as to be unacquainted with the use of the bow. He does not seem to have been quite devoid of personal ornaments, for beads of a fossil shell, the orifices of which have been artificially enlarged as if to admit a cord, have been met with amongst his remains. In this, as in other points, his state of civilisation corresponds with that of many of the lower races of mankind, in most of which some effort at personal adornment is met with. The bodily remains of the man of the river-diift are PALEOLITHIC MAN 25 extremely scanty. On the continent, where implements of his manufacture have been discovered near Madrid in Spain, in Italy, Greece and Germany, as well as in Northern Africa, Palestine and India, some few portions of skeletons have been found which may be assigned to this period. At Eguisheim, near Colmar, Schaffhausen, a portion of a cranium was found with remains of the mammoth and other animals of a similar epoch. At Clichy, in the valley of the Seine, a skull and some bones were discovered at a con- siderable depth from the surface, in undisturbed strata, and lying with bones of the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse and stag. The skulls which have been found are long and narrow in shape, and have very prominent ridges over- hanging their orbits. In the case of the limb bones of the Clichy skeleton, those of the thigh are characterised by possessing a remarkably strong ridge running down the posterior aspect, whilst the tibia or shin-bone is platycnemic, or flattened. "The few fragments which remain to us," says Professor Boyd Dawkins, "prove that at this remote period man was present in Europe as man, and not as an inter- mediate form connecting the human race with the lower animals.'' The relics of the cave-man have been much more exten- sively met with than those of his predecessor, many caverns in Yorkshire, Somersetshire and elsewhere having, on care- ful exploration, yielded valuable results. One of the best known of these is the cavern of Kent's Hole, which has been so carefully explored by Mr. Pengelly. This cavern was re- discovered in 1825, by the Rev. J. McEnery, who found that it had been entered by one "Robert Hedges of Ireland," who had inscribed his name with the date, February 20, 1688, on a boss of stalagmite. These words, when found, were, as they are now, "glazed over and partly effaced " by the gradual deposition of carbonate of lime. It has been attempted to use the thickness of the 26 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN film of stalagmite which has accumulated since the inscrip- tion was made as a measure of the period of time which has elapsed since the earlier human relics were deposited in the cave. Such a method, however, like all others with a similar purpose put forward up to the present, is open to fallacies of various kinds and cannot be relied upon. Careful digging has revealed a series of deposits over- lying one another like strata; these are as follows, com- mencing with that nearest to the surface and working downwards. (i) Masses of limestone of various sizes up to pieces weighing one hundred tons. These have fallen from the roof and are more or less united to one another by the deposition of carbonate of lime. (2) The Black Mould, a layer from three inches to a foot in thickness, of decayed vegetable matter of a dark colour. (3) A layer of stalagmite of a granular character, which varies in thickness, being in some places as much as five feet, but in others no more than three inches. (4) The Black Band, met with only in one part of the cave, about four inches in thickness and composed, for the most part, of charred wood. (5) The Cave Earth, a light red loam. (6) A second layer of stalagmite, differing from the first by its crystalline nature; this is in some places twelve feet thick. (7) The Breccia, a dark red deposit of a sandy nature and free from limestone. The lower strata contain, as might be expected, the rudest implements, made exclusive of flint and chert. "They were much more rudely formed," says Mr. Pengelly, " more massive, less symmetrical in outline, and made not by operating on flakes but directly on nodules, of which PAL/EOLITHIC MAN 27 portions of the original surface generally remained, and which were probably derived from supra-cretaceous gravels existing in great volume between Torquay and Newton Abbot, about four miles from the cavern. It is obvious, however, that even such tools could not be made without the dislodgment of flakes and chips, some of which would Fig. 2. — Flint Implement from Kent's Cavern. (Sir John Evans.) Face and side views and section. be capable of being utilised, and accordingly a few remnants of this kind were met with in the breccia, but they were all of a very rude, simple character, and do not appear to have been improved by being chipped." In the cave earth a much more highly finished type of implement was found, some of the flints being lance-shaped 28 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN and possibly intended for spear-heads, others being oval. Scrapers and hammer-stones were also found, and with them implements of bone, amongst which may particularly be mentioned a needle, awls, and harpoons, constructed from the antlers of reindeer, one being barbed on both sides, the other only on one. In the black mould were found more modern objects, such as lumps of copper, bronze weapons and pottery of a Roman or pre-Roman type. From the various finds it is clear that this cave, and the same is true of others of a similar nature, was first inhabited by the Fig. 3.— Harpoon Head of Reindeer-horn, 4! in. long, with six barbs on one side and five on the other. Cave of Laugerie Basse, France. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) river-drift men, and afterwards, though at a much later period, by those to whom the name of cave-dwellers has been given. Finally, the British or Romano-British remains point to its occupation at a date much nearer to our own. A remarkable feature of the finds of this period which have been made on the continent— and the same is true, though in a much less degree, of those of our own country — is the occurrence of incised figures of animals, showing considerable powers of draughtmanship. Repre- sentations of the hunting of bisons and of horses have been found in the rock-shelter of La Madelaine, the latter also showing the figure of a man. The human form, it may be remarked, is but rarely found represented in these drawings, possibly because it may have been considered PALEOLITHIC MAN 29 unlucky to depict it, such a superstition being widely prevalent amongst primitive races throughout the world. A considerable variety of animals has, however, been depicted by the artist of this period, thus a drawing of a cave-bear was found upon a piece of schist in the cave of Massat, one of a seal on the canine of a bear at Duruthy, and of a whale on an antler at Laugerie Basse. A still more artistically treated subject is the picture of a reindeer, inscribed upon the horn of an animal of that species, found at Kesserloch, in which it is represented Fig. 4.— Figure of a Naked Man between two Horses Heads. A fish (probably an eel) is represented behind him. From the cave of La Madelaine in France. (Lartet and Christy.) as feeding by a pool surrounded by rushes. Perhaps the most celebrated of all is a representation of the mammoth on a piece of its own tusk, which was dis- covered at La Madelaine. This figure is evidently a sketch from the life, and portrays the long up-curved tusks, the mane, bristles and other appurtenances of this formidable creature. In England, a portion of a rib, with the figure of a horse incised upon it, has been found in Robin Hood's Cave in Derbyshire. Finally, a drawing upon the canine tooth of a bear, found in the cave of Duruthy in the Western Pyrenees, of a long gauntlet-like glove, shows that the cave-dweller fashioned, with the aid of his bone awl and PALEOLITHIC MAN 31 needle, the skins of the animals which he killed into garments even of a somewhat complicated nature. It is important to bear in mind the nature of the art of the period, for rough as the implements must have been with which it was executed, the pictures show considerable spirit and a real artistic capacity. Very many persons of to-day would be pleased, if with all the aids with which art can supply them, they could produce so spirited a sketch as that of the reindeer by the pool, or the group of fighting reindeer represented in another drawing. Besides the instances mentioned above of incised work, there are many examples of the carvings of Palaeolithic man, in the shape of bone handles, representing animals of dif- ferent kinds. Whether drawings or carvings, the art of this period is particularly worthy of notice because it belonged to the cave-dwellers alone and perished with them, not being met with amongst the remains of later races. Professor Boyd Dawkins has called attention to the remarkable similarity between the art of Palaeolithic man and that of the Eskimos, and considers that this is one of several proofs of the identity of the two races. This theory, however, it is right to say, is not accepted by all ethnologists. It is necessary to have recourse to the discoveries made in continental caverns if we would study the physical characters of the cave-dweller. Amongst the relics which have been found, the most celebrated is that of the Neanderthal skull, which was discovered in a cave near Dusseldorf. This remarkable specimen, on the extreme antiquity of which much doubt has recently been thrown, was, when first studied, thought to belong to a class not now represented amongst living men. Further inquiry, however, has proved this view to be incorrect. Though unusual, this type of skull is not unknown amongst Europeans, whilst a race of Australians has received the name of Neandertha- 32 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN loid, from the resemblance of their crania to that which is now under discussion. It is long and narrow and its vault is extremely low, but perhaps its most striking charac- teristic is the great projection of the ridges above the orbits and of the glabella or space between the eyebrows and just above the root of the nose. Two skeletons assigned to this period, the skulls of which are also narrow, have been found at Spey in Belgium. Here also the projection of the supra- orbital ridges and of the glabella is very marked. The ridges upon the bones of the skull for the attachment of muscles are strongly developed and the cranial vault is low and flattened. The lower jaw shows no prominence of the chin — in fact, it recedes somewhat from the region of the teeth. Dr. Garson, from whose writings these facts have been condensed, further states that " the stature of the Neanderthal skeleton as estimated from the length of the femur (or thigh-bone) is 1604 metres (5 ft. 3 in.), and from the humerus (or arm-bone) 2 cm. less; that of the Spey skeleton (there being only one of these in which the long bones could be measured), estimated from the femur and tibia (or shin-bone), is 1504 metres (4 ft. 11J in.) and from the femur alone, 1540 metres (5 ft. f in.). The long bones of both the upper and lower limbs of the Neander- thal skeleton are characterised by their unusual thickness, and the great development of the elevations and depres- sions for the attachment of muscles ; the articular ends of the femur are also of larger size than usual. The femur of the Spey skeleton is more arched forward than usual ; it is somewhat flattened from side to side in section, and its articular ends are of large size, especially the lower, in which there is enormous antero-posterior development of the articular surfaces of the condyles. The tibia is actually and proportionately very short, flattened laterally and therefore platycnemic. The bones generally are re- markable for their stoutness, and indicate that the muscles PAL/EOLITHIC MAN 33 attached to them were large and powerful, especially those of the lower limb. "In regard to the platycnemism of the tibia, the Spey skeleton corresponds to the Laugerie Basse and Madelaine bones from the Perigord caves, and confirms in a very positive manner the evidence of their surroundings and relics, that Palaeolithic people were sons of the chase, as it is connected with the development of the tibialis posticus muscle, and not a race character." From the various observations which have been made at home and on the Continent, it is possible for us to form some kind of a picture, following on the lines indicated by Dr. Garson, of the social life of the cave-dweller. As might be inferred from his name, he lived, at least during the colder parts of the year, in those natural shelters in which his remains have been found. Here he lit his fire and brought the spoils of the chase to be cooked for his food. He was essentially a hunter and not an agricul- turist, like his successors in the land, yet he possessed no dog to assist him in securing his prey. The bison, the wild horse and the reindeer were the main objects of his chase, and he pursued them with flint-tipped spears and with daggers made of bone and possessing carved handles. He also captured fish with barbed harpoons. His clothing was made from the skins of the animals which he killed, and the different portions were sewn together with cords made of the sinews of the reindeer. For this purpose he employed the bone awls and needles which have been found in the deposits of the period, and with the same implements and from the same materials he made the long glove which he wore. He manufactured flint imple- ments for use in the chase and in war, as well as for domestic purposes, and he converted the bones of animals into various useful tools. The handles of many of these he decorated by carving them into the form of beasts, and his c 34 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN taste for art is also shown by the figures which he engraved upon bones and pieces of stone. He was not indifferent to the adornment of his person, but, like other savages, made necklaces of shells, teeth and pieces of ivory and bone, and in all probability painted his body of a red colour with mineral pigments. He was short in stature and his beet- ling brows must have given him a fierce and repellent appearance. CHAPTER III NEOLITHIC MAN Conditions of the Land — -Wild Animals — Pit dwellings — Stone axes and arrow-heads — Their Folk-lore— Manu- factories — Art — Long Barrows — Dolmens — Significance and Folk-lore — Objects buried with the dead — Trephined skulls — Druidism — Language — Bodily remains — Social life. The conditions of the land had been changed prior to the advent of the race with which this chapter is concerned, so as to be approximately the same as those which now obtain. England had become severed by the sea from the Continent and from Ireland, but the area which it covered was some- what greater than at present, since parts of what were then dry land are now submerged beneath the waters of the sea. The Isles of Wight and Anglesey were still part of the mainland, the estuary of the Thames west of a line drawn north from Felixstowe was dry land, and the same was true of a great part of the Bristol Channel. Traces of the forests which covered this part of the country may still be seen at low tide near Minehead in Somersetshire and in other places. The northern and western coast lines of Wales extended for a greater distance than they now do, nearly the whole of the bay of Cardigan having been formed since this period by the submergence of the land, indeed a tradition to this effect still remains amongst the Welsh peasantry. 36 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN The climate of the country was probably much damper than it is now, on account of the vast forests which covered the face of the earth ; and on account of the greater area of land it possessed more of a continental range of tempera- ture, with greater cold in the winter and greater heat in the summer. Many of the larger animals which existed during the epoch of Palaeolithic man had now become extinct, but others, some of which are now unknown in this country, still occupied the forests and marshes. There were " wild boars, horses, roes and stags, Irish elks, true elks and rein- deer, and the great wild ox, the urus, as well as the Alpine hare, the common hare, and the rabbit. Wolves, foxes and badgers, martens and wild cats were abundant ; the brown bear, and the closely allied variety the grisly bear, were the two most formidable competitors of man in the chase. Otters pursued the salmon and trout in the rivers, beavers constructed their wonderful dams, and water rats haunted the banks of the streams." (Dawkins.) It will be noticed that whilst many of the animals just mentioned are no longer to be found in England, only one, the Irish elk, has become absolutely extinct. From the insular character of the country it is obvious that the Neolithic peoples must have invaded it in boats, bringing with them their cattle and household stuffs, and starting from the nearest coast of the Continent, and by a similar means they must have reached Ireland from England. These boats were of the kind known as " dug-outs " — that is, each was composed of the trunk of a tree, sometimes as much as forty feet in length, hollowed out partly by the action of fire, and partly by the use of the stone axe. These boats must have been propelled by some kind of paddle, for there is no reason to suppose that any know- ledge of the use of sails existed at that period. Like their predecessors, the Neolithic people in some NEOLITHIC MAN 37 instances lived in caves, such as those at Cefn, near St. Asaph, in North Wales, but their most characteristic dwellings are those known as pit dwellings or hut circles. A group of these exists near Fisherton, in the Wylye Valley in Wilt- Fig. 6. — Plan of a part of a British Village, showing Ditches, Ramparts, and Cluster of Huts. shire, in which the excavations have been carried down to a depth of from seven to ten feet from the surface, passing through the superficial gravel to reach the subjacent chalk. Each pit or group of pits had a circular shaft by which it was entered, and below it expanded so as to have a diameter 38 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN varying from five to seven feet, the upper portion being about three. The floor consisted of the chalk in which the excavation had been made, and was often raised slightly in the centre. Each was covered by a roof, which was composed of a kind of wattle and daub, that is of interlacing sticks plastered with clay, which was partly hardened by the action of fire. Groups of these pits are found on the tops or sides of hills or sometimes in valleys, surrounded by ramparts and ditches, and intersected also by ditches or drains, probably rendered necessary by the damp nature of the climate. It must be remembered that such villages or settlements, though characteristic of the Neolithic race, are not peculiar to the period which bears that name, for some of them were constructed and inhabited at a much later date. General Pitt-Rivers has carefully explored such a village of the Romano-British period at Woodcuts Common, near Rush- more in Dorsetshire. This village, which is included within ramparts, is divided into quarters by mounds and ditches. Within the area are many pits, in the neighbourhood of which have been found various bronze implements, Roman coins, pottery and skeletons of children and adults. The remains of the people of this period, which have been found in their dwellings and tombs, enable us to form a good idea of their condition and manner of life. The most characteristic weapon of the period is the stone axe or celt, a much more highly finished implement than that of the earlier Stone age, and carefully shaped so as to have usually a wide cutting edge at one end, the other being more pointed. These celts were often polished by friction against another stone. " In all cases," says Sir John Evans, "the grindstone on which they were polished was fixed and not rotatory, and in nearly all cases the striae running along the stone hatchets are longitudinal, thus proving that they were rubbed lengthways and not crossways on the grind- ing-bed. This is a criterion of some service in detecting NEOLITHIC MAN 39 modern forgeries. The grinding- stones met with in Den- mark and Scandinavia are generally of compact sandstone or quartzite, and are usually of two forms — flat slabs, often Fig. 7. —Neolithic Celt of finely polished greyish Flint, found in Scotland. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) Side and front view. worn hollow by use, and polygonal prisms, smallest in the middle, these latter having frequently hollow facets in which gouges or the more convex-faced hatchets might be ground, and sometimes rounded ridges such as would grind the hollow part of gouges. From the coarse striation on the 4 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN body of most flint hatchets, especially the large ones, it would appear that they were not ground immediately on such fine-grained stones, but that some coarse and hard grit must have been used to assist the action of the grind- stone. M. Morlot thought that some mechanical pressure was also used to aid in the operation, and that the hatchet to be ground was weighted in some manner, possibly by means of a lever. In grinding and polishing the hollowed Fig. 8. — Stone Celt in original wooden handle, found in a peat moss in Cumberland. (Sir John Evans.) faces of different forms of stone axes, it would appear that certain rubbers formed of stone were used probably in con- junction with sand." Celts thus formed were sunk into a wooden stock, the smaller end being pushed through a hole, a wrapping of raw hide possibly making the connection more secure. Their discovery in the handled condition is naturally rare, since the wooden stocks have generally perished in the course of time : but one or two have been found in peat bogs, which NEOLITHIC MAN M Fig. 9. — Perforated Hammer-Stone found in Scotland. (Scot. Ant. ! Mus. ) The lower figure is a section of the hole, the narrowing of which at the centre shows that the boring was accomplished from both sides. The figure on the right is the side view. 42 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN show the method in which celt and handle were united together. These must have been formidable weapons, whether against animals or in warfare, as we may gather from the discovery of the skeleton of a man in a cairn in Kirkcudbrightshire, called locally the tomb of King Aldus M'Galdus. The arm-bone of the skeleton had been cut clean through near the shoulder in some conflict, and in the severed bone was still sticking a fragment of the stone axe with which the injury had been done. Other stone axes were provided with a hole, bored through them by means of some rude drill, such as is used by savages, in which hole the handle was fixed. Some of these stone weapons, it seems more than pro- bable, were used for throwing ; indeed, the references to offensive weapons of this kind in Irish literature prove that they were specially constructed for the purpose in that country. They were there called the warrior's stone, the champion's flat stone, the semi-flat stone of a soldier cham- pion, or by some such title. In the record of the battle of the Ford of Comar, near Fore, in the county of Westmeath, which is supposed to have occurred in the century before the Christian era, Lohar's people all came with a champion's handstone stowed away in the hollow of their shields. Fergus "put his hand into the hollow of his shield, and took out of it the semi-flat stone of a soldier champion, and threw a manly cast and struck the hag (a Druidess) on the front of her head, which it passed through, and carried out of its own size of the brains at her poll." Eochaidh, the son of Enna Ceinnselach, carried his champion's flat stone in his girdle. Beside the axes with which we have been dealing, the Neolithic peoples made numbers of arrow-heads of stone, many of which are beautifully shaped and polished. They are sometimes barbed, and sometimes plain, tanged or tang- less, leaf-shaped or triangular, and may be compared with NEOLITHIC MAN 43 the stone arrow-heads made by the North American Indians. Indeed one of the most remarkable things about these Fig. io. — Flint Arrow-heads, English. (Sir John Evans.) arrow-heads is the extraordinary similarity to one another which they present in whatever part of the world they may be found, a proof that the minds of different races work on similar lines, as we can scarcely suppose that the patterns were trans- mitted from one part of the world to another. Succeeding generations of people, finding these remnants of a former race and ignorant of their real signi- ficance, have looked upon them, here and elsewhere, with a superstitious awe and veneration. Thus the stone celt came to be regarded as the hammer of Thor, the thunderbolt, " the all-dreaded thunderstone " of Cymbeline. Indeed the opinion that such axes fell from the skies in thunderstorms, which seems to have existed from a very early period, is met with in many parts of the world, for besides having been prevalent in all parts of Europe, it is found in Fig. ii. — Stone Arrow- head.with original Shaft, found in Switzerland. (Sir John Evans.) 44 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Japan, Burmah, Assam, Malaysia, Western Africa, and else- where. Many virtues have also been attributed to these weapons, the water in which one has been boiled having been used, even in recent times, as a cure for rheumatism in Corn- wall, whilst the discovery of a celt in Egypt bearing Gnostic inscriptions, shows that some mystic power was assigned to it by some early possessor. An ancient stone-axe has been known to be hung round the neck of each successive ram which acted as leader of the flock during many years, in order that the influence of the evil eye might be warded off from him, and through him from the flock of which he was the head. The Neolithic arrow-heads are as widely known as fairy-darts, or elf-shots, and have been used as amulets up to a recent date both in these islands and on the continent. This practice must also be of great antiquity, since a flint arrow-head has been found attached to an Etruscan gold necklace, apparently as a kind of charm. Writing in 1691, of the Fairies and their ways, in his " Secret Common- wealth," the Rev. Robert Kirk, a firm believer, by the way, in the tales which he narrated, gives us a good idea as to the views which were held at that date, and indeed we may say up to a much more recent period, as to the nature of these arrow-heads, for it is of them he speaks. "Their weapons," he says, "are most what solid earthly Bodies, nothing of Iron, but much of Stone, like to yellow soft Flint Spa, shaped like a barbed Arrow-head, but flung like a Dairt, with great ' Force. These Amies (cut by Airt and Tools it seems beyond humane) have something of the Nature of Thunderbolt subtilty, and mortally wounding the vital Parts without breaking the Skin ; of which Wounds I have observed in Beasts, and felt them with my Hands. They are not as infallible Benjamites, hitting at a Hair's breadth \ nor are they wholly unvanquishable, at least in Appearance." A letter of Dr. Hickes to Pepys, dated London, June 19, 1700, is a further proof of the prevalence of the idea at this NEOLITHIC MAN 45 time. "At the same time, as I remember, he (Lord Tarbut) entertained the Duke (of Lauderdale) with a story of Elf arrows, which was very surprising to me. They are of a triangular form, somewhat like the pile or beard of our old English arrows of war, almost as thin as one of our old groats, made of flints or pebbles, or such-like stones, and these the country people in Scotland believe that evil spirits (which they call Elves, from the old Danish word A/far, which signifies Daemon, Genius, Satyrus) do shoot into the hearts of cattle ; and, as I remember, my Lord Tarbut, or some other Lord, did produce one of these Elf arrows, which one of his tenants or neighbours took out of the heart of one of his cattle that died of a usual death. I have another strange story, but very well attested, of an Elf arrow that was shot at a venerable Irish Bishop by an Evil Spirit, in a terrible noise louder than thunder, which shaked the house where the Bishop was." Besides the use of these arrow-heads as amulets against the malign influence of fairies, they have been employed in other superstitious practices. Every reader will be familiar with the fact that one of the commonest devices of witch- craft was to construct a wax or clay image of the person whom it was desired to injure, and to pierce it with pins or other sharp instruments. It was, of course, hoped that the injury to the image would be followed by serious illness in the person which it represented. Now Mr. Gomme tells us that in Scotland the implement used for wounding the image w T as sometimes a stone arrow-head, and that its use was accompanied by an incantation. No doubt it was believed that the effect of the injury would be intensified by the use of a magical weapon such as the fairy dart. It is probable that this idea is a genuine relic of the period when the fabricators of these weapons lived side by side with other and later races, who may have regarded them with that superstitious reverence with which the aborigines have 46 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN been regarded in other countries by later immigrants. This, however, is a question which must be dealt with more fully at a later point. Apart, however, from the arts of witchcraft, we have abundant evidence that flint flakes had their place in genuine religious ceremonies in various parts of the world. Thus, in the process of the embalming of the body in Egypt, after the line of the first incision had been marked out in the left groin with ink, an assistant, the slitter or para- schistes, taking "an Ethiopic stone " says Diodorus Siculus, "a knife, probably made of flint," says Mr. Budge, made the required opening. Circumcision amongst the Jews may be performed with a stone knife, and a similar implement is used by the Arabians in the opening of the veins which forms a part of the ceremony of making pledges of faith. The Romans preserved a sacred flint in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, with which the Pater Patratus slew the victim, offered up to consecrate the solemn treaties of the Romans. " If by public counsel," he said, " or by wicked fraud, they swerve first ; in that day, oh Jove, smite thou the Roman people, as I here to-day shall smite this hog ; and smite them so much more as thou art abler and stronger." With these words he struck the hog with the flint stone. In various parts of the country, where flints were plentiful, there existed regular manufactories of the weapons we have been considering. One of the most celebrated of these was at the place called Grimes' Graves, near Brandon in Suffolk, a locality where the descendant trade of gun-flint making has long been carried on. Here the Neolithic workers sank shafts in search of flints and connected them together by means of galleries from three to five feet in height. The miners of this period had never thought of the simple method of using wooden props for the roofs of their galleries and hence they did not dare to carry on operations NEOLITHIC MAN 47 very far from the shaft. Thus when they had carried their gallery a short way and exhausted all the flints near at hand, they sank a fresh shaft in a new spot and recom- menced operations. In some of their old workings, the tools of the Neolithic miners have been discovered, and we thus learn that they used the antlers of deer as pickaxes, as well as the polished stone celts described above. Chisels made of bone and horn have also been found, and primitive lamps made of cups of chalk hollowed out to contain grease. Canon Greenwell gives the following account of the exploration of one of these galleries which had obvi- ously fallen in during the interval between two periods of work. " It was seen," he writes, " that the flint had been worked out in three places at the end, forming three hollows extending beyond the chalk face of the end of the gallery. In front of two of these hollows were laid two picks, the handles of each towards the mouth of the gallery, the tines pointing towards each other, showing in all probability that they had been used respectively by a right and left handed man. The day's work over, the men had laid down each his tool, ready for the next day's work ; meanwhile the root had fallen in and the picks had never been recovered. " I learnt from the workmen that it would not have been safe to have excavated further in that direction, the chalk at that point being broken up by cracks so as to prevent the roof from standing firm. It was a most impressive sight, and one never to be forgotten, to look, after a lapse it may be of three thousand years, upon a piece of work unfinished, with the tools of the workmen still lying where they had been placed so many years ago. Between the picks was the skull of a bird, but none of the other bones. These two picks, as was the case with many found elsewhere, had upon them an incrustation of chalk, the surface of which bore the impression of the workmen's fingers, the print of the skin being most apparent. This had been caused by the chalk LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN with which the workmen's hands became coated being transferred to the handle of the pick." Other relics have been found in the pit-dwellings and tombs, such as spindle whorls, showing that spinning was practised, chalk weights to stretch the warp and long combs to push the woof, which prove that weaving was also one of their occupations. They were also acquainted with the manufacture of pottery, though only by hand. Thus in their industries, they attained to a much higher level than their predecessors, so that it is the more remarkable that their ideas of art were so much less advanced. The really graceful delineations of animal forms which we find associated with the cave-dwellers have no place in this period, where instead we meet with spirals, concentric circles, rude geometrical orna- ments, in fact, alone or almost alone. In one instance, at Locmariaquer in Brittany, a figure of a stone axe in its wooden handle has been found inscribed on the under surface of the capstone of the great dolmen known as the Table des Marchands. This axe is repre- sented as decked with a plume, and it is interesting to note that its handle is depicted as curved back beyond the socket for the blade, a feature which has been observed in one of the very few shafted celts which have been found in this country. The burial-places of this race, so full of valuable informa- tion from the relics which they contain, must next be con- sidered. In some cases the Neolithic people buried their dead in caverns., but their most characteristic form of Fig. 12.— Spindle- Whorl. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) NEOLITHIC MAN 49 interment was under a Jong oval mound of earth known as a long barrow, which was usually erected on the top or side of a hill or eminence of ground. Such mounds of earth form striking and unmistakable objects in the land- scape in the parts of the country in which they occur. The interior of these mounds contained in some cases only a pile of stones in the midst of which the corpse was placed, but in other instances the internal structure was much more complicated. In chambered barrows of this kind there was an entrance with passages and galleries all formed, as to Fig. 13. — A Long Barrow, with the ring of standing stones restored. their sides and roof, of flat slabs of stone. In these galleries and transepts successive interments took place. In many instances the superjacent earth has been removed, for farm- ing or other purposes, with the result that the internal skeleton of stones has been left exposed.* In its simplest form this skeleton consists of a large flat stone or capstone, supported by others standing on their sides or ends. The tabular appearance of such structures has led to their re- ceiving the name of dolmen, or stone table {daul, a table,. and maen, stone, Celtic). Subsequent generations of people, ignorant of their real purpose, have called them by the title of Druidical altars, to which they have no claim. Very * It should be mentioned that, according to some archaeologists, some of these dolmens have possibly, or even probably, always been sub-aerial and never covered with a mound of earth. 5o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN many of these structures exist in various parts of the country, and a few examples of some of the more important Fig. 14. — Dolmen. Fig. 15. — Breton Dolmen. or better known may now be cited. Kit's Coty House, near Aylesford in Kent, is a well-known instance of an English NEOLITHIC MAN 51 dolmen ; and others familiar to tourists are those of Chun in Cornwall, the capstone of which has been estimated to weigh twenty tons, and the double dolmen at Plas Newydd in the Isle of Anglesey. The great Lanyon dolmen in Cornwall was uncovered about one hundred years ago by a farmer, ^v^^^^r k ,t,s coty HouSE Fig. 16. — Kit's Coty House. Dolmen near Aylesford, Kent. (From "A Week's Tramp in Dickensland," by W. R. Hughes.) who supposed it to be a mere heap of earth which he thought might be usefully applied to farming purposes. By degrees, as the earth was carted away, the great stones began to appear, and when operations were completed and all the soil had been cleared away, the dolmen, much as it now exists, was disclosed, containing in its interior a heap 52 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN of broken urns and human bones. The capstone is about eighteen and a half feet long by nine wide, and is computed to weigh more than fifteen tons. In 1815 it was blown off by a storm, but it was replaced in 1824, though it was found to be impossible to restore one of the upright stones to its position, since it had been broken in the fall. Weyland Smith's forge on the downs near the Icknield Street, and close to the White Horse of Berkshire, is another instance of the uncovered stones of a long barrow. It con- sists of a ruined chamber, of some remains of a gallery and of a second chamber to complete the cruciform arrange- ment. All these were at one time buried beneath the earth and surrounded by a ring of stones. This group of stones owes the name which it now bears to Wieland (Norse, Volundr), the Smith of the Teutonic mythology, and must have been known by that title for a long time, for in 955 we find King Edred granting lands to the wide gap "west of Welandes Smithan." Again, King Alfred, who was born at Wantage in the immediate neighbourhood of the remains, says, in his translation of Boethius, " Who now knows the bones of the wise Weland, ungLer what barrow they are concealed ? " The legend which is attached to this group of stones, and which has been made use of by Sir Walter Scott in his novel of " Kenilworth" is that it was the habitation of an invisible smith, and that if a traveller's horse lost his shoe it would be replaced, if the horse was brought to the stones and left there with a piece of money. The long barrow at Uley in Gloucestershire was a very complicated structure of its kind. There was, as in other instances, a boundary wall laid in horizontal courses, faced on the outside, and carried up to a height of two or three feet. This surrounded the mound itself, which " is about 120 ft. in length, 85 ft. in its greatest breadth, and about 10 ft. in height. It is higher and broader at its east end than else- NEOLITHIC MAN 53 where. The entrance at the east end is a trilithon, formed by a large flat stone upwards of 8 ft. in length, and 4J ft. in depth, and supported by two upright stones which face each other, so as to leave a space of about 2 J ft. between the lower edge of the large stone and the natural ground. Entering this, a gallery appears, running from east to west, about 22 ft. in length, 4 J ft in average width, and 5 ft. in height ; the sides formed of large slabs of stone set edge- ways, the spaces between being filled in with smaller stones. The roof is formed, as usual, of flat slabs, laid across and Fig." 17. — Plan of the Chambers in the Uley Barrow. resting on the side slabs. There are two smaller chambers on one side, and there is evidence of two others having existed on the other side. Several skeletons were found in this fine tumulus when it was opened many years ago." (Jewitt.) Had this barrow been denuded of earth, the stones, many of which would necessarily have lost their original position, would have presented similar, though more extensive, remains to those of Weyland Smith's forge. In some cases the stones forming the entrance and lining the galleries are carved in rude patterns. Examples of this occur in the great barrow at New Grange in the County Meath, and at 54 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Gavr Inis in the Morbihan, Brittany. It will be remembered that it is on the under surface of the capstone of such a dolmen at Locmariaquer that the figure of a hafted axe is incised. Again, in other cases, the barrow was surrounded by a ring of standing stones. Such was the case, according tc Dr. Thurnam's restoration, at the long barrow of West Kennet in Wilts, 350 ft. in length. This had a bounding wall of rubble with large upright blocks interspersed at regular intervals. The observation of Aristotle, to which Fig. 18. — Stone with incised concentric circles, found at Eday, Orkney. (Scot. Ant. Mus. ) To illustrate the type of orna- ment alluded to on p. 48. Dr. Thurnam calls attention, that the Iberians used to place as many obelisks around the tomb of the dead warrior as he had killed enemies, perhaps gives a clue to the origin of this custom. In certain cases where the mound and rubble wall have disappeared, the standing stones remain, and some of the so-called Druidical circles have thus been formed. Indeed, Mr. Arthur Evans points out that in the most primitive examples of such burial mounds, " it seems a universal rule that the stone circle surrounds a central dolmen or stone cist containing the remains of the dead. To take, for example, some of the closest known parallels to our great British monument* — the stone circles described * Stonehenge. NEOLITHIC MAN 55 by travellers in Arabia and its borderlands are distinctly associated with central interments. Mr. Palmer in his book on ' The Desert of Exodus ' states that in the neighbour- hood of Sinai he saw huge stone circles, some of them measuring 100 ft. in diameter, having in the centre a cist covered with a heap of huge boulders. In the cists he found skeletons in the same contracted position — the attitude of sleep amongst the ' Courtmantles ' of primitive times — as is seen in our own early interments." Again, he points out, that the early barrows of the North are in fact a copy of a primitive kind of mound dwelling, such as is still repre- sented by the Gamme of the Lapp. " It is a primitive dwelling of the living preserved by religious usage as a dwelling for the dead in days when in all probability the living had adopted houses of somewhat improved construc- tion, and adapted to a less boreal climate." By studying these primitive dwellings, then, we can arrive at a compre- hension of the meaning of the different parts of the grave mound. In the Lapp Gamme near the North Cape " there are the ring-stones actually employed in propping up the turf-covered mound of the dwelling, and there is the low en- trance gallery leading to the chamber within, which, in fact, is the living representative, and at the same time the remote progenitor, of the gallery of the chambered barrow." Again, the entrance to such barrows is directed towards the east, a fact which may be explained by what we know of the Northern dwelling-mounds, which have their doorways directed towards the east also, in order that the inhabitants may be awakened by the first rays of the sun in a land where during a large part of the year the hours of daylight are but few. " However the afterthoughts of religion may have connected this usage with the worship of the sun, it is in its origin to be accounted for, like the stone circle and the gallery and avenue, by purely utilitarian reasons." After the construction of such mounds had long ceased, perhaps after 56 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN their signification has been forgotten, we find the dolmens associated with superstitious observances, and looked upon with a certain veneration. In the earlier days of Christianity in Europe, and especially in the Teutonic regions, one of the great difficulties with which the Church had to contend was the tendency of its converts to revert to stone worship, and various fulminations of local synods are extant against this practice. For instance, we find the twentieth canon of a council held at Nantes, in Brittany, ordering the "stones which are venerated in ruinous places and in the forests," to be dug up and thrown away so that they may be con- cealed from those who were in the habit of worshipping them.* A striking instance is met with in the life of St. Boniface, the apostle of Friesland, who, when he commenced the con- version of that country in the eighth century, found that one of the megalithic tombs in the province of Drenthe had been turned into an altar for human sacrifices. Any stranger who fell into the hands of the wild races of the district was first made to creep through the opening between the upright stones and then "sent to Odin" on the capstone. The influence of the Saint was powerful enough to cause the cessation of the sacrifice itself, but the practice of causing a stranger, especially if he hailed from Brabant, to creep between the upright stones persisted until late in the Middle Ages. Many such mounds have been supposed to be habitations of the fairies in these islands and on the Continent, and the veneration with which they have been regarded has lingered to our own days, for so late as 1859 a farmer in the Isle of Man offered a heifer up as a propitiatory sacrifice so that * " Lapides quos in ruinosis locis et sylvestribus daemonum ludifi- cationibus decepti venerantur, ubi et vota vovent et deferunt, funditus effodiantur, at que in tali loco projiciantur, ubi nunquam a cultoribus suis inveniri possint. " NEOLITHIC MAN 57 no harm might befall him from the opening of a tumulus upon his land. The skeletons which have been found in these tombs show that the dead were buried in a huddled-up position, perhaps, Sir John Evans thinks, because it was the habit of Fig. 19. — Interments in a Barrow. The lower skeleton is that of a man who has been buried in a crouched-up position. The upper is a secondary interment of a later age, such as is often met with in barrows. the people of the period to sleep in that position, and not stretched out straight. As Mr. Andrew Lang puts it : " He buried his dead with their toes Tucked up, an original plan, Till their knees came right under their nose, 'Twas the manner of Primitive Man." But in some of these barrows, and particularly in the south-western part of England, the bodies seem to have been deposited in a sitting posture with their backs resting against the walls of the tomb. In the eastern chamber of the barrow at Charlton Abbots, there were twelve skeletons which must have been originally placed squatting on flat 58 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN stones round the walls. At West Kennet, in Wilts, six skeletons, whose original position must have been the same, were discovered, and similar facts have been noted at Avening and Uley in Gloucestershire. Very great interest attaches to the objects which are found in great abundance interred with the dead. The cleft skulls of some of the skeletons met with in many instances by Dr. Thurnam, led him to believe that human sacrifices took place at the funeral ceremony, as is the case with other savage races. The bones of domestic animals found in the same places were also probably the remains of less cruel sacrifices. It is very likely that slaves and animals were slain in order that their spirits might accom- pany that of the dead man in his last journey, as the warrior's horse was slain by the Scythians and by North American Indians, so that it might serve its master in the other world. In some cases the skull of a dog has been met with, as at Knock Maraidhe. near Dublin, the idea probably being the same. The Greenland missionary, Cranz, says that it is the custom of the people of that region to place the head of a dog in the tomb of a child, " in order that the soul of the dog, which can always find its way home, may show the helpless infant the way to the country of souls." Nilsson quotes this statement as illustrative of the fact that the skulls of dogs have been found in the burying-places of the Stone age in Sweden. But beyond these relics of sacrifices, weapons, such as celts and arrow-heads, pottery and other implements, sometimes in a perfect condition and sometimes broken, and with every evidence of having been purposely broken, have also been discovered in great quantities. There can be no doubt from what we know of the practices of savage races, that these implements were placed in the grave that they might be of service to the departed in the land of souls, and the custom testifies to the fact that the people of the NEOLITHIC MAN 59 Neolithic period had a belief in a future existence. The fact that some of the implements had been broken is an additional proof of this, for we know that this is done by other races with the idea that the spirit of the broken weapon will be utilisable by the spirit of its dead master. Fig. 20.— Skull trephined during Life and after Death. From one of the Dolmens called Cibournios or Tombs of the Poulacres. AB, Healed edge of the surgical trephining; BC, AD, edges whence pieces had been cut off after death. ( Prunieres. ) A further light is thrown upon this question by the dis- covery in France of skulls upon which the operation of trepanning, or removing a portion of bone from the cranium, had been performed. The operation was per- formed at this period of course with a flint implement, and sometimes took place in children or young adults, some- 6o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN times in the dead. The object probably was to open a door for the escape of the demons who may have been supposed to have been the cause of epilepsy or other nervous troubles. If a patient survived so critical an operation, and there is abundant evidence in the condition of the bone that some- times patients did survive for many years, it is not wonderful that he or she should have been looked upon as an indivi- dual particularly beloved by the gods, and that after his death pieces of his skull should have been treasured as precious amulets. Such amulets have, in fact, been found in French dolmens, with grooves or holes for the attach- ment of a cord, and each preserves on one of its borders a part of the cicatrised edge of the original opening as evidence of its genuineness. The most valuable of these amulets, curiously enough, have been met in the interior of the skulls of persons who had suffered posthumous trepan- ning. The amulets had evidently been purposely inserted in the position which they occupied, and the significance of this fact is thus explained by M. Broca, the distinguished French anthropologist: "Were they a symbol, a repre- sentation of the great portion of the skull removed by trepanning? It is hardly likely, since any fragment of a skull might have been employed for this purpose ; and the precious amulet would not have been so lightly sacrificed. The intra-cranial amulet meant much more than that. It was a viaticum, a talisman which the deceased carried away with him into another life to bring him luck, and to protect him from the influence of the evil spirits who had tormented his childhood. But, even if we admit the first hypothesis, it none the less indicates the belief that a new life awaited the dead ; for otherwise there would have been no motive whatever for the ceremony of restitution. The study of prehistoric trepanning and the attendant ceremonies prove, therefore, incontrovertibly, that the men of the Neolithic age believed in a future life, in which the dead retained NEOLITHIC MAN 61 their individuality. It is, I think, the earliest epoch to which we can attribute this belief." Beyond these facts connected with the religious opinions of the Neolithic people, certain female figures of the rudest art, decked with necklaces, and in one case ornamented with the figure of a stone axe, have been discovered carved on the walls of artificial grottos of this period in France by the Baron de Baye. These figures, which somewhat re- semble the representations of the goddess Minerva on the clay vases found in ancient Troy, have been thought to be the tutelary deities of the inhabitants of the grottoes. At a later date their religion appears to have been Druidism, of which, though the name is so familiar, we cannot be said to know a great deal. The first idea which rises to the mind when the name of Druid is mentioned is that of a venerable old man in a white robe cutting down mistletoe with a golden sickle. From the various facts which we know about the Druids, they must really have closely resembled the angekoks of the Eskimo or the medicine-men of the North American Indians. Strabo (born c. 64 B.C.) described those whom he saw as walking in scarlet and gold brocade and wearing gold collars and bracelets, whilst in a mediaeval Irish account the chief Druid of Tara, " is shown to us as a leaping juggler with ear-clasps of gold and a speckled cloak 'he tosses swords and balls in the air,' and like the buzzing of bees on a beautiful day is the motion of each passing the other." (Elton.) They practised human sacrifice and augury from the viscera, whilst at some seasons of the year human victims were "crucified or shot to death with arrows ; elsewhere they would be stuffed into huge figures of wickerwork, or a heap of hay would be laid out in the human shape, where men, cattle, and wild beasts were burned in a general holocaust." (Elton.) In Julius Caesar's time, and later, they taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. " One would have laughed," 62 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN says Valerius Maximus, a writer of the first century, " at these long-trousered philosophers, if we had not found their doctrines under the cloak of Pythagoras." The Romans seem to have had a certain respect for the Druids of the later period when they occupied the country, for Lucan, addressing the Romano-Britons, says : "Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven ; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still; death, if your lore is true, is but the passage to eternal life." The religious writings of Ireland afford many allusions to the Druids, St. Patrick's Hymn containing a prayer against " black laws of the heathen and against the spells of women, smiths and Druids," whilst St. Columba exclaims, in a striking metaphor, " The Son of God is my Druid ! " The magic of the Druids has also made a great impression upon the folk-stories of the same country, mention of the Druidical rod as an implement of wizardy and of the spells of the Druids being frequent. This has survived to the present day. Thus in the story of "The Champion of the Red Branch," as one example from many which might be quoted, we find such expressions as " I lay on thee the spells of the art of the Druid, to be feeble in strength as a woman in travail, in the place of the camp or of the battle if you go not out to meet the three hundred cats." Of the doctrine of metempsychosis, mentioned above, it is possible that some relics may still linger in the folk-lore of the country. In Yorkshire the country people call the night-flying white moths "souls," and in parts of Ireland NEOLITHIC MAN 63 butterflies are said to be the souls of your grandfather. Mr. Gomme mentions some further examples, one relating to an instance in London where a sparrow was supposed to be the soul of a dead person. In the county Mayo it is believed that the souls of virgins, remarkable for the purity of their lives, took after their death the forms of swans, perhaps a reminiscence of the Children of Lir. In Devonshire there is the case of the Oxenham family, whose souls at death are supposed to enter into a bird : while in Cornwall it is believed that King Arthur is still living as a raven. In Nidderdale the country people say that the souls of unbaptized infants are embodied in the nightjar. The most conspicuous example of souls assuming the form of animals is that of the Cornish fisher-folk, who believe that they can sometimes see their drowning comrades take that shape. In the Hebrides when a man is slowly lingering away in consumption the fairies are said to be on the watch to steal his soul, that they may therewith give life to some other body. In Lancashire some one received into his mouth the last breath of a dying person, fancying that the soul passed out with it into his own body. These examples, Mr. Gomme thinks, represent the last link in the genealogy of the doctrine of metempsychosis, as it has survived in folk-lore. Poetry may have kept alive the idea of the butterfly or moth embodied in the soul, but it did not create the idea, because it is shown to extend to other creatures not so adaptable to poetic fancy. When we come upon the Lincolnshire belief that the soul of a sleeping comrade had temporarily taken up his abode in a bee, we are too near the doctrine of savages for there to be any doubt as to where the first links of the genealogy start from. There is scarcely any need to draw attention to its non-Christian character, except that folk-lore has preserved in the Nidderdale example evidence of the arresting hand which Christianity put upon these beliefs. 64 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN The tongue of the people of the period with which we are dealing was not long extinct in Ireland in the ninth century, when in the famous old Irish glossary ascribed to Cormac, King and Bishop of Cashel (slain 915), it is called the Iarn or iron tongue. Professor Rhys mentions that Cormac " records two of the Ivernian words known to him, namely fern, anything good, and ond, a stone. But these, together with Net, Corb, Ri and others in his work which may be suspected of being Ivernian, have hitherto thrown no light upon the origin of the language ; but should it turn out that those who without hesitation call our Ivernians Iberians, and bring them into relationship with the Basque-speaking people of France and Spain, are right in doing so, one could not at all wonder that Cormac considered the Ivernian a dark speech. In the North of Ireland that idiom may have been extinct in the time of Adamnan ; and Columba in the sixth century cannot have known it, which, nevertheless, does not prove that there were no peasants who spoke it there in his time. How- ever that may be, Adamnan mentions a name into which ond, a stone, possibly enters ; to wit, that of Ondemone, a place where the Irish Picts were beaten by the Ultonians in the year 563 ; it seems to have been near the Bann, between Lough Neagh and the mouth of that river." It is possible that the earliest known title of this country, Albion, may belong to this tongue. This title is found in the story of the labours of Hercules, who, after he had secured the cows of Geryon, came from Spain to Liguria, where he was attacked by two giants, whom he killed before proceeding to Italy. According to the first-century geographer, Pomponius Mela, these giants were Albiona and Bergyon — i.e., Albion and Iberion, or England and Ireland, the position of the two islands in the sea being symbolised in the story by its making them the sons of Neptune. NEOLITHIC MAN 65 There is no lack of osteological remains of the Neolithic people from which to form an opinion of their physical characteristics. These remains occur with the greatest fre- quency in the south-west district and particularly in Wilts and Gloucestershire, occupied by the Dobuni or Silures at the commencement of history. Dr. Garson, who has examined many of their skeletons, says that their skulls were large and well-formed, being long and proportionately narrow and of an oval shape — that is, they were dolichocephalic. The ridges over the orbits and the central part of the forehead, both so prominent in the skulls of the earlier race, were moderately or even feebly developed. Their foreheads were well formed, narrow and curved gracefully to the occiput, which was full and rounded. There was no tendency to prognathism or forward projection of the lower part of the face, such as is seen in negroes. The jaws were small and fine, and the whole facial expression must have been mild. The age of the persons to whom they belong averages, according to Thurnam, forty-five years, which looks as if the duration of life was not very long at that period. Their stature was short, averaging, according to Dr. Thurnam, 5 feet 6| inches, though Dr. Garson thinks that this average was too high. Their bones were slender, often with a well-marked ridge on the back of the thigh-bone and a flattened shin-bone, which would show that the Neolithic people led an active life, probably as hunters. Tacitus, in speaking of the characters of the inhabitants of Britain, says of the Silures, whom we may take to represent the Neolithic folk : " The high complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are evidences that Iberians at some earlier time crossed over and occupied these parts." This account of the Neolithic people may fitly be con- cluded by quoting the admirable picture which Professor Boyd Dawkins, putting together facts, many of which have E 66 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN been elucidated by himself, has drawn of the civilisation of the period : " If we could in imagination take our stand on the summit of a hill commanding an extensive view, in almost any part of Great Britain or Ireland in the Neolithic period, we should look upon a landscape somewhat of this kind. Thin lines of smoke rising from among the trees of the dense virgin forest at our feet would mark the position of the Neolithic homesteads, and of the neighbouring stockaded camp which afforded refuge in time of need ; while here and there a gleam of gold would show the small patch of ripening wheat. " We enter a track in the forest, and thread our way to one of the clusters of homesteads, passing herds of goats and flocks of horned sheep, or disturbing a troop of horses or small short-horned oxen, or stumbling upon a swineherd tending the hogs in their search after roots. We should probably have to defend ourselves against the attack of some of the large dogs, used as guardians of the flock against bears, wolves and foxes, and for hunting the wild animals. At last, on emerging into the clearing, we should see a little plot of flax or small-eared wheat, and near the homestead the inhabitants, some clad in linen and others in skins, and ornamented with necklaces and pendants of stone, bone or pottery, carrying on their daily occupations. Some are cutting wood with stone axes with a wonderfully sharp edge, fixed in wooden handles, with stone adzes or gouges, or with little saws, composed of carefully notched pieces of flint about three or four inches long, splitting it with stone wedges, scraping it with flint flakes. Some are at work preparing handles for the spears, shafts for the arrows, and wood for the bows, or for the broad paddles used for propelling the canoes. Others are busy grinding and sharpening the various stone tools, scraping skins with implements ground to a circular edge, or carving various implements out of NEOLITHIC MAN 67 bone and antler with sharp splinters of flint, while the women are preparing the meal with pestles and mortars and grain rubbers and cooking it on the fire, generally outside the house, or spinning thread with spindle or distaff, or weaving it with a rude loom. We might also have seen them at work at the moulding of rude cups and vessels out of clay which had been carefully prepared. The Neolithic farmers used for food the produce of their flocks and herds, and they appear to have eaten all their domestic animals, including the horse and the dog ; the latter animal, however, probably only under the pressure of famine. " They also had abundance of game out of the forest, but it was probably rather an occasional supply, and did not furnish them with their main subsistence. The roe and the stag, probably also the elk and the reindeer, and in Ireland, the Irish elk, provided them with venison; and the dis- covery of the urus in a refuse-heap at Cissbury, proves that the wild ox was still living in the forests, and was some- times a victim to the Neolithic hunter. They also ate hares, wild boars and beavers." CHAPTER IV THE BRONZE PERIOD The Aryan Race — Goidels and Brythons— Early Accounts of Britain— Lake Dwellings— Crannogs— The Glastonbury Lake Village— Pile Dwellings— Bronze Celts— Swords- Personal Ornaments — Casting of Bronze— Pottery — Cloth- ing. The Celtic immigrants, whether belonging to the earlier Goidelic, or to the later Brythonic wing, were members of the Aryan race, a race which had attained to a consider- able pitch of civilisation before the arrival of either division on these shores. From an examination of the words which seem to have belonged to the original tongue, we learn that the undivided Aryan race reckoned its year by months determined by the phases of the moon, which they styled the measurer, that they had domesticated animals, could count up to one hundred, and had a religion, a large part of which was a profound reverence for the hearth as the altar and shrine of ancestral deities. Traces of this reverence are to be met with even in these days, especially in Scotland and Ireland, where to " trample the cinders " is one of the worst insults which can be offered to a household. It is in the customs connected with the initiation of the new-born child into the family circle, however, that perhaps the most striking relics of this reverence have been found in recent times. Pennant narrates that in the Highlands of Scotland he saw at christening-feasts the father place a basket of food across the fire and hand the child three times over the THE BRONZE PERIOD 69 food and the flames. Another striking custom, also met with in the Highlands of Scotland, and described by Light- foot, is when, after the birth of the child, the nurse takes a green stick of ash, one end of which she puts in the fire, and while it is burning receives in a spoon the sap that oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first food. "Some thousands of years ago," says Kelly * in his " Indo-European Folk-lore," commenting upon this custom, " the ancestors of this Highland nurse had known the fraxinus ornus in Arya, and now their descendant, imitating their practice in the cold North, but totally ignorant of its true meaning, puts the nauseous sap of her native ash into the mouth of her hapless charge." It was perhaps on account of their reverence for the hearth that they regarded the eating of uncooked meat with such scorn that the term eaters of uncooked meat, or some similar phrase, is applied in many of the derivative languages to barbarous men. But perhaps the most important piece of knowledge which they brought with them to this country was that of the working of metal in the shape of bronze, the period, at least the earlier part of it to which they belonged, having from that circumstance received the name of the Bronze Age. As has already been mentioned, the Celtic peoples came over to this country in two bands, separated from one another by several centuries. The Goidels, who were the first to arrive, to a greater or lesser extent amalgamated with the Ivernians, whom they found in possession, and seem to have in part at least assimilated their Druidism, a question which will have to be more fully dealt with on a future page. As to the Brythons, Professor Rhys remarks that : " The name Brittones is that which all the Celts who have spoken a Brythonic tongue in later times own in common ; among the Kymry it becomes * In reference to this passage, it must be remembered that Kelly fully held the Central- Asian view of the Aryan origin. 7 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Brython, which is one of the names they still give them- selves, and from which they derive the word Brythoneg, one of their names for the Welsh language. This, in old Cornish, was Brethonec, and meant the Brythonic dialect of Wales and Cornwall, after the Goidelic had been chased away. In Breton the word assumes the form Brezonek, and means the Brythonic tongue spoken in lesser Britain or Brittany. So," he continues, " when one wants to speak collectively of this linguistic group of Celts from the Clyde to the neighbour- hood of the Loire, confusion is best avoided by calling them by some such names as Brythons and Brythonic, leaving the words Britain, British and Britannic for other uses, including amongst them the exigencies of the Englishman who, in his more playful moods, condescends to call himself a Briton." The name Brythonic, which the race appears to have adopted before reaching this island, means a cloth-clad people, in contradistinction to a people dressed in skins, some continental tribe being doubtless indicated who used the hides of beasts for their clothing. When these immi- grants reached this country, it cannot have been a very attractive spot for occupation, covered as it was with vast forests and marshes, overhung with constant fogs and deluged with frequent rains. During their occupancy, in the fourth century before Christ, we have indeed direct evidence of the condition of the country, for at that period an energetic syndicate of merchants of Massilia, the modern Marseilles, being anxious to extend their trading relations, fitted out an expedition, which they placed in charge of a learned Greek mathematician, Pytheas by name, a contem- porary of Aristotle and Alexander the Great. He twice visited these shores, and from his observations we learn that he was struck by the contrast which the climate of Britain presented when compared with that of the South of Europe, whence he came. "The natives," he says, "collect the sheaves in great barns, and thrash out the corn there, be- THE BRONZE PERIOD 71 cause they have so little sunshine that our open thrashing- places would be of little use in that land of clouds and rain." He also tells us that the inhabitants made a drink " by mixing wheat and honey," in which statement he doubtless alludes to mead or metheglin, a compound still prepared in some parts of the country. It is probable that he was also the first to mention the British beer, which was known to the Greek physicians by a Celtic term, curmi, now cuir??i in Irish and cwrw in Welsh, a drink against which they warned their patients as one " producing pain in the head and injury to the nerves." But the authority for this statement may have been another Greek explorer, Posi- donius, who had been a fellow student with Cicero at Rhodes, and who visited this country two centuries later than Pytheas. At any rate, he is supposed to have been the person from whom Diodorus Siculus learnt that the inhabitants of Britain lived in mean dwellings, made for the most part of reeds and wood, and that their harvests con- sisted in cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in underground pits, from which they fetched each day those which had been longest in store to be prepared for food. In speaking of the mean dwellings of wood or reeds, he was probably alluding to the huts of wattle and daub which have been found in considerable numbers in the lake dwellings of the period. Lake dwellings are of two kinds, the crannog and the pile building, and it will now be necessary to say something about either variety. But first it may be remarked that, though different in construction, the idea was the same in each case, namely, to construct a habitation surrounded by water, which might serve as an effectual barrier against the depredations of wild beasts or of human enemies. The same idea precisely led the military architects of a later date to construct moats around their mounds or castles, only in the latter case the lake was constructed around the island, 72 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN whilst in the former the artificial island was formed in the pre-existent lake. The Irish crannog seems to have been inhabited to what may be called a recent period, for in 1567 P 3 in oj we find that " one Thomas Phettiplace, in his answer to an inquiry from the Government as to what castles or forts O'Neil hath, and of what strength they be, states : ' For castles, THE BRONZE PERIOD 73 I think it be not unknown to your honours, he trusteth no point thereunto for his safety, as appeareth by the raising of the strongest castles of all his countreys, and that fortification which he only dependeth upon is in sartin ffreshwater loghes in his country, which from the sea there come neither ship nor boat to approach them ; it is thought that there in the said fortified islands lyeth all his plate, which is much, and money, prisoners and gages ; which islands hath in wars to fore been attempted, and now of late again by the Lord Deputy there, Sir Harry Sidney, which, for want of means for safe conducts upon the water, it hath not prevailed.' " And again in 1603, it is stated in the " Annals of the Four Masters," that Hugh Boy O'Donnell, having been wounded, " was sent to crannog-na-n-Duini, in Ross Guill, in the Tuathas. to be healed." In Scotland also they were inhabited to a late date, for in some instructions to "Andro bischop of the Yllis " and others in 1608 we read : "That the haill houssis of defence strongholdis and cranokis in the Yllis perteining to thame and their foirsaidis sal be delyverit to his Maiestie and sic as his Heynes sail appoint to ressave the same to be vsit at his Maiesty's pleasour.' Another crannog in the loch of Forfar, partly natural and partly artificial, bears the name of St. Margaret, che queen of Malcolm Canmore, who died in 1097. A record of 1508 states that the artificial barrier of the isle had been repaired in that year. It will be well to learn something about the structure of the crannogs of the countries mentioned above before turning our attention to an English example, and for this purpose the accounts of some of those who have made these structures a subject of special investigation, may be quoted. Sir William Wilde, writing about Irish crannogs, says, " that they were not, strictly speaking, artificial islands, but cluans, small islets, or shallows of clay or marl, in those lakes which were probably dry in summer time, but submerged 74 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN in winter. These were enlarged and fortified by piles of oaken timber, and in some cases by stonework. A few were approached by moles or causeways, but, generally speaking, they were completely insulated and only ac- cessible by boat; and it is notable that in almost every instance an ancient canoe was discovered in connection with the crannoge. Being thus insulated they afforded secure places of retreat from the attacks of enemies, or were the fastnesses of predatory chiefs or robbers, to which might be conveyed the booty of a marauding excursion, or the product of a cattle raid." On the same subject, Mr. Wakeman, a well-known Irish archaeologist, writes : " The Fig. 22. — Section of Crannog in Ardakillen Lough, Co. Roscom- mon (Ireland). (From Wood-Martin's "Pagan Ireland. ") Irish crannog, great or small, was simply an island, either altogether or in part artificial, strongly staked with piles of oak, pine, yew, alder, or other timber, encompassed by rows of palisading (the bases of which now usually remain), behind which the occupiers of the hold might defend them- selves with advantage against assailants. Within the enclosure were usually one or more log-houses which no doubt afforded shelter to the dwellers during the night- time, or whenever the state of the weather necessitated a retreat under cover." In Scotland their structure was similar to that just described, and the method of their erec- tion has been studied in that country by Dr. Munro, who points out that it was a task of no small difficulty to THE BRONZE PERIOD 75 construct, in perhaps ten feet of water, with very likely a treacherous bottom beneath it, a firm compact artificial island, possibly with a circular area of as much as ioo feet. Fig. 23.— A completely drained Lake-Bed at Cloneygonnell, Co. Cavan (Ireland), with site of Crannog in foreground. (From Wood-Martin's " Pagan Ireland.") DOG -'PLATEAU R A I L W A Y Fig. 24.— General Plan of the Lake-Bed shown in Fig. 23, with sites of plateaux. (From the same book.) 76 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN He believes that the work was thus carried out : (i) Im- mediately over the chosen site a circular raft of trunks of trees, laid above branches and brushwood, was formed, and above it additional layers of logs, together with stones, gravel, &c, were heaped up till the whole mass grounded. (2) As this process went on, upright piles, made of oak, and of the required length, were inserted into prepared holes in the structure, and probably also a few were inserted into the bed of the lake. (3) The rough logs forming the horizontal layers were made of various kinds of wood, generally birch, it being the most abundant. These were occasionally pinned together by thick oak pegs, and here and there at various levels oak beams mortised into one another stretched across the substance of the island, and joined the surrounding piles. (4) When a sufficient height above the water line was attained, a prepared pavement of oak beams was constructed, and mortised beams were laid over the tops of the encircling piles which bound them firmly together as already described. The margin of the island was also slantingly shaped by an intricate arrangement of beams and stones, constituting in some cases a well-formed breakwater. (5) When the skeleton of the island was thus finished, probably turf would be laid over its margin where the pointed piles protruded, and a superficial barrier of hurdles, or some such fence, erected close to the edge of the water. (6) Frequently a wooden gangway, probably submerged, stretched to the shore, by means of which secret access to the crannog could be obtained without the use of a canoe. The crannogs dis- covered up to now in England are much fewer in number than those of the other parts of the kingdom, but whether for size or for importance of the discoveries made therein, none of them surpasses the lake-village near Glastonbury, which has been for some years undergoing investigation under the supervision of Mr. Bulleid. Although the finds THE BRONZE PERIOD 77 in this village point to its having been inhabited during the Roman occupation, in its character it belongs strictly to the period with which we are now concerned. This village was constructed on the edge of a mere now converted into a peat moor, but when in occupation would have been pro- tected from attack by the sheet of water which lay between it and Glastonbury, which is one mile distant. It consisted of a cluster of round huts which were erected upon artificial platforms of clay and timber and surrounded by a stockade. Each hut was from 12 to 14 feet in diameter, and was con- structed of what is known as wattle and daub, that is to say, a kind of wicker-work, smeared over with clay, and each had a wooden door about 3 feet high. In the centre of each floor was a stone hearth for a fire, and outside each door a few slabs of lias formed a rough platform in front of the wooden threshold. The stockade around the village was composed of a palisading of piles from 3 to 9 inches in diameter, and from 9 to n feet high, which were kept together by a kind of rough hurdle-work. Canoes of oak have been discovered by which the inhabitants gained access to the mainland. It may be well to anticipate to some extent what will hereafter be said of the implements of the Bronze period, and to give some account of what has been found in this village, it being premised that whilst it belonged to the people of the Bronze age, it belonged to them at a time when, through the Roman influence, they had learnt the use of iron and perhaps of other things not known during what was strictly the Bronze age. Various implements of iron, both civil and military, have been found, and the presence of some of these in an unfinished condi- tion, as well as of lumps of scoriae, show that the forges existed in the village itself. Glass slag has also been found, which seems to show that the inhabitants manufactured the beads of that material met with amongst their remains. They worked in bronze, and a fine bowl, fibulae, pins, and 78 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN other articles testify to their skill in this direction. They smelted lead ore, doubtless obtained from the neighbouring Mendips, and made from it spindle-whorls and weights for their fishing-nets. They made pottery partly by the aid of the wheel and partly — in a ruder manner— by hand, and decorated it with designs of various kinds. They spun flax and used the loom for weaving. Perhaps that which excites the greatest admiration is the remarkable skill which they showed in carpentry, beams well squared and holed, wheels, ladders, doors, buckets, dishes and bowls, many of them adorned with incised patterns of a flamboyant character, remaining as evidences of their capabilities in this direction. Besides ornamenting their persons with beads, rings and pins, they seem to have painted themselves with red ochre and charcoal mixed with grease. Some of the human remains which have been found outside the stockade are cut and broken, and some of the skulls, including one of a woman, have been cut off the body and stuck upon the head of a spear, to be placed probably on the stockade, just as the heads of criminals were, up to a recent date, stuck upon the gates of cities or over bridges. The inhabitants of the village cultivated wheat on the main- land adjacent, and had flocks and herds ; they were also pro- vided with large dogs. They killed for their food the red deer and the roe, the beaver and the otter, as well as wild geese, swans, ducks and pelicans. Such was the nature of a British lake-settlement, and such the mode of life of its inhabitants in the third and fourth centuries after Christ. The other form of lake-village, which has been met with especially in the Swiss lakes, was built in a totally different manner. Long piles were driven into the bed of the lake, and when a sufficient number of these were in position a platform was constructed upon them, on which were even- tually raised the huts in which the inhabitants dwelt. The jest which Erasmus made in reference to the citizens of THE BRONZE PERIOD 79 Amsterdam, that he knew a city where people lived on the tops of trees, might well have been applied to the inhabi- tants of these villages. Such settlements still exist in some parts of the world, and the description which Herodotus gave of one belonging, in his day, to the Pseonians, not merely shows what such constructions were like, but affords a clue as to the manner in which they were built and extended to meet the growing needs of the community. " Their dwellings," he says, " are contrived after this man- ner : planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a single bridge. These piles, that support the planks, all the citizens anciently placed there at the public charge \ but afterwards they established a law to the following effect : whenever a man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelus ; but every man has several wives. They live in the following manner : every man has a hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with a trap-door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake. They tie the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for fodder, of which there is such abundance, that when a man has opened his trap-door, he lets down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, and, after waiting a short time, draws it up full of fish." This description of the dwelling-places particularly asso- ciated with the people of the Bronze period has necessitated some digression into the life at another and later date, and in other countries, but we must now return to the time before the Celtic inhabitants of the country had been affected by Roman influence and see what light the remains in our possession throw upon the state of civilisation of that period. The most characteristic weapons and other imple- ments of this age are composed of the metal bronze, for 80 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN although it is possible that there may have been a time when copper was used in a pure state, such period must have been of short duration, for the lesson was soon learnt that the addition of a small quantity of tin produced a more serviceable and harder material for the purposes for which it was required. It must not, however, be supposed that the manufacture of stone weapons came to a sudden and complete end with the introduction of bronze. On the contrary, we know, as an historical fact, that the English forces, at the battle of Senlac, used stone mauls as well as other weapons. Again, the extreme rarity of arrow-heads made of bronze leads us to conclude that stone was still used for this purpose, even during the Bronze period, and this perhaps because that metal was too precious to be sub- jected to the risk of loss which must necessarily attach to such a weapon as an arrow-head. Just as each of the Stone periods had its characteristic axe or celt, so also has the Bronze age, though the weapon varies more in its shape on account of the greater possibili- ties opened up to the craftsman by the nature of the material in which he worked, a material which was cast and not hewn. But in its essential features, and this particularly in the case of those celts which are supposed to be the earliest in date, it was very similar in shape to the stone celt of the polished period. Such early implements form the first class, and are called flat celts, and some of these are ornamented on their faces with patterns such as lines, chevrons and herring bones produced by punches or gravers. A similar form of ornamentation is found in some instances on the second variety, or flanged celts, the edges of which have projecting ledges, either because they have been so cast originally, or because, after having been cast flat, the edges have been hammered up so as to form flanges. The third type, or winged celt, is in its simplest form an ex aggeration of the flanged variety, the flanges being shorter, THE BRONZE PERIOD a Fig. 25. — Flat Bronze Celt found in a Barrow at Butterwick, Yorks, with side view and section. (Sir John Evans.) Fig. 26.— Flanged Bronze Celt found in Dorsetshire. (Sir John Evans.) The sides are decorated with a fluted chevron pattern, and the faces with indented herring-bone and chevron patterns. 82 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN but much deeper. Sometimes there is a transverse stop- ridge across the blade to prevent its slipping too deeply into its haft, and sometimes, to assist towards the same end, that part of the blade which is between the flanges and below the stop-ridge is thinner than the rest. Thus a kind of groove is formed on each side into which the handle fitted. In some cases the edges of the flanges were hammered over so as to form a kind of socket, like that often used at the present day for iron implements, such as rakes and hoes. p IG> 27.— Looped Palstave found at Brassington, Derbyshire. (Sir John Evans. ) This variety led up to the last and most perfect form of socketed celts, in which, as Sir John Evans puts it, the haft was embedded in the blade, instead of, as in the other cases, the blade being embedded in the haft. This form marks an advance in casting, as a more perfect mould must have been employed, with a core for the socket and special arrangements for the ring or loop, which was often placed at the side of the blade, so that the head might be more securely fastened to the haft. In this variety orna- mentation in the shape of reedings, pellets, circles and THE BRONZE PERIOD 83 other devices is sometimes met with, the patterns beiug raised and produced in the casting and not by the subse- quent use of tools. As to the handling of these celts, the Fig. 28. — Socketed and Ringed Celt with raised ornament, found at Kingston, Surrey. (Sir John Evans.) simpler forms may have been attached to their hafts much as the stone celts were to theirs, but the others would require a crooked helve if they were to be used as axes. One such celt with its handle was found in Ireland, in which the helve consisted of a branch with a second 84 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN portion sticking out from it nearly at right angles, to which the head was attached. Other implements of the same :/ f5'" : metal which have come down to us are chisels, gouges, hammers, punches, awls, tongs, socketed and tanged knives, daggers, razors and sickles. Special mention must THE BRONZE PERIOD 85 be made of two classes of weapons, swords and lance- heads. The former are leaf-shaped and their "total length is generally about 24 inches, though sometimes not more than 16 inches, but they are occasionally as long as 30 inches, or even more. The blades are in most cases uniformly rounded, but with the part next the edge slightly drawn down so as to form a shallow fluting. In some instances, however, there is a more or less bold rounded central rib, or else projecting ridges running along the greater part of the blade near the edges. They differ considerably in the form of the plate for the hilt, and in the number and arrangement of the rivets by which the covering material was attached. This latter usually con- sisted of plates of horn, bone or wood, riveted on each side of the hilt plate. In rare instances the outer part of the hilt was of bronze." (Evans.) Sometimes, though rarely, a pommel has been cast on to the handle, and occasionally a considerable part of the scabbard was made of the same material as the blade, though probably, for the most part, the sheaths were of leather or wood. The spear-heads found in this island are of the socketed variety, great care and skill having been bestowed on the coring. They may be divided into the following classes : (1) The simple leaf-shaped, either long and narrow, or broad, with holes in the socket through which to pass the rivets to fasten them to the shaft. (2) The looped, with eyes on each side of the socket below and on the same plane with the blade. These are generally of the long, narrow, straight-edged kind. (3) Those with loops in the angles between the edge of the blade and the socket. (4) Those with side apertures and per- forations through the blade. (5) Those in which the base of each side of the blade projects at right angles to the socket, or is prolonged downwards so as to form barbs. Besides these weapons of offence, pieces of defensive armour, 86 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN in the shape of shields, bucklers and helmets, have been found, for a full description of which the reader is referred to the work of Sir John Evans on "Ancient Bronze Fig. 30. — Bronze Pins found in Ireland. (Sir John Evans.) One has a loop at the side, the other has a turned-over head of the type described in the text. Weapons of Great Britain," a work which must form the basis of all study of this subject. Amongst articles of personal adornment may be men- tioned pins, either for fastening the clothes or for the hair, THE BRONZE PERIOD 87 which have been found in great quantities and of very various patterns, the head being sometimes turned over so as to be visible when stuck in the clothes, just as that of a scarf-pin is when placed in a tie. Others have rings or loops attached to them and others again are Fig. 31. — Torque found at Wedmore, Somerset. (Sir John Evans.) ornamented with patterns of various kinds. To this period also belong the torques, or twisted necklets, bracelets, finger and ear rings, sometimes of gold, some- times of bronze, which have been found in various parts of these islands. The torque seems to have been a favourite ornament of the Celtic race ; it " takes its name from the 88 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Latin torques, which again is derived a torquendo. This word torques was applied to a twisted collar of gold or other metal worn around the neck. Among the ancient Gauls gold torques appear to have been abundant, and to have formed an important part of the spoils acquired from them by their Roman conquerors. About 223 B.C., when Fig. 32. — Bronze Caldron found in Carlimvark Loch, Kirkcud- brightshire. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) It is composed of thin plates of bronze riveted together. Flaminius Nepos gained his victory over the Gauls on the Addua, it is related that instead of the Gauls dedicating, as they had intended, a torque made from the spoils of the Roman soldiers to their god of war, Flaminius erected to Jupiter a golden trophy made from the Gaulish torques. The name of the Torquati, a family of the Manlia gens, was derived from their ancestor, T. Manlius, having, in B.C. 361, slain a gigantic Gaul in single combat, whose torque he THE BRONZE PERIOD 89 took from his dead body after cutting off the head, and placed it around his own neck." (Evans.) Some of these torques are of great size, one in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, which was found near Holywell in Flint- shire, is of gold, measures 44 inches in circumference and weighs 28 ounces. Vessels, cups and caldrons of gold and bronze were made Fig. 33. — Stone Mould for casting flat Bronze Axes and Knife, found in Ireland. (Scot. Ant. Mus. ) at this period, the last mentioned being sometimes formed of thin plates of bronze riveted together, and having rings or lugs by which they could be lifted. The objects in bronze appear to have been cast in the following ways, as summarised by Sir John Evans : (1) In a single mould formed of loam, sand, stone, or metal, the upper surface of the casting exhibiting the flat surface of a molten metal, which was left open to the air. In the case of loam or sand castings a pattern or model would be used, which might be an object already in use, or made of the desired form in 90 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN wood or other soft substance. Several specimens of stone moulds for the casting of celts or spear-heads have been discovered. (2) In double moulds of similar materials. The castings produced in this manner, when in an un- finished condition, show the joints of the moulds. When sand was employed a frame or flask of some kind must have been used to retain the material in place when the upper half of the mould was lifted off the pattern. The loam moulds were probably burnt hard before being used. In many cases cores for producing hollows in the castings were employed in conjunction with these moulds, Double moulds have also been found for the casting of celts. (3) In what may be termed solid moulds. For this process the model was made of wax, wood, or some combustible material, which was encased in a mass of loam, possibly mixed with cow-dung or vegetable matter, which on exposure to heat left the loam or clay in a porous condition. This exposure to fire also burnt out the wax or wood model and left a cavity for the reception of the metal, which was probably poured in while the mould was still hot. The pottery of the period, consisting of urns for the ashes of the dead after cremation, of pots for cooking, drinking vessels, &c, seems to have been made by hand, and was ornamented with simple patterns formed by dots and straight lines. Indeed the art of the period is very simple in its character, being limited to geometrical designs, such as circles, triangles, crosses, chevrons, and the like. The clothing was of linen and wool, and portions of the apparatus for spinning and weaving both of these materials have been discovered. Naturally, perishable fabrics such as these are but seldom found, but in the Scale-house barrow at Rylstone, the body had been covered from head to foot in cloth before being placed in the hollow oak tree which served for a coffin. Further, a wooden coffin was found in a tumulus in Jutland, con- THE BRONZE PERIOD 91 taining a body, the clothing of which had been preserved by the presence of certain salts in the water. The body had been wrapped in a coarse woollen cloak which was Fig. 34. — Pottery from a Bronze Age Cemetery in Scotland. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) almost semicircular and hollowed out at the neck. On its inner side were left hanging a great number of short woollen threads, which gave it somewhat the appearance of plush. A box beside the body contained, amongst other articles, a woollen cap, and there were also in the coffin two woollen 92 LIFE IN EARLY. BRITAIN shawls, of a square shape and with long fringes. A shirt, also of wool, cut out a little at the neck and with a long projecting tongue at one of the upper angles, had been fastened round the body by a long woollen band which went twice round the waist and hung down in front. Two woollen leggings and traces of leather, probably representing the remains of the boots, complete the equipment of this early believer in Jager's all-wool theory of clothing. The people of the era appear to have arranged their hair in a large shock or pyramid, and if the length of the hairpins, some of which measure twenty inches, is to be taken as a criterion, this must at times have attained a huge size. Like some savage races of to-day who treat their hair in a similar manner, they used, at least in Switzerland, where pottery head-rests of a crescentic shape have been found, to support their necks alone and not their heads whilst sleeping, for fear of disarranging a head of hair which must have given them considerable trouble to arrange. Besides the metal ornaments mentioned previously, they decorated their persons with necklaces of stone, bone, and glass, as well as of amber. CHAPTER V THE BRONZE PERIOD— continued Camps — Maiden Castle — Yarnbury — Caer Caradoc - — Bridges — Stonehenge — Avebury — The Rollright Stones — Folk-lore— Menhirion — Round Barrows — Celtic Religion — Godiva's Ride — Physical Characteristics — Social Life. Having in the previous chapter considered some of the smaller relics of the Bronze age, there remain for investiga- tion some of the larger of their works, such as camps, barrows, and megalithic remains. Most hilly parts of England afford examples of the kind of earthwork known as a camp, a form of fortification which consists of a circular bank of earth, called a vallum, enclosing an area of variable size, and having on its outer aspect a ditch called the fosse. Sometimes there are two or three concentric series of ramparts and ditches in the case of the larger and better fortified camps. Though the space which is enclosed is nearly always of a more or less rounded shape, it would be a mistake to suppose that all British camps are circular. Such no doubt is the case where the camp is placed on a flat surface or where the contour of the hill favours that shape, but where an oval or other figure is more in con- formity with the top of the hill which had to be fortified, a camp of the corresponding contour has been constructed. Again, in some cases, as at the great camp of Croft Ambrey, near Ludlow, the artificial ramparts are wanting on one side, 94 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN but where this is the case it will be found that it is because the natural declivity of the hill is so great at that part as to render other defences unnecessary. It may be well here to mention that the quadrilateral camps also met with through- out the country, though not with such frequency as the other variety, are of Roman origin, and will be more fully dealt with at a later part of this work. Sometimes a camp of each kind is to be found in the same neighbourhood, as on the hill above Dunster in Somersetshire, where a Roman camp is placed within a few hundred yards of one of the circular fortifications of the Britons. The fosse and vallum were traversed at one or more points by openings, often guarded by advanced earthworks, and probably closed in times of war with masses of timber. But a description of a few examples will enable the reader to form a better idea of what an ancient British camp was like. Maiden Castle was the British predecessor of the Roman Durnovaria, now the Dorsetshire Dorchester, close to which it stands. It has been identified with great pro- bability with the city called Dunium by Ptolemy. The name appears to be derived from Celtic words meaning the Hill of Strength, a title which might well be applied to one of the most extensive and most strongly fortified earthworks in England. It occupies the flat summit of a natural hill, is iooo yards long and 500 wide, and is surrounded by double, and in part by triple, ditches and ramparts, the latter being exceedingly steep and even now sixty feet in height. It appears to have had four entrances, defended by advanced earthworks, and is divided internally into two parts by a ditch and bank of very much lower elevation than those forming the outer defences. In having been the pre- cursor of a Roman and subsequently of an English town, Maiden Castle is not singular, for the same has happened at other places, Old Sarum, for example, having been almost certainly British, and Oswestry having been preceded by THE BRONZE PERIOD 95 the large triple-ramparted camp, now overgrown with trees and nettles, which is situated about a mile off and is called Hen Dinas or Old Oswestry. It will be noted that the shape of Maiden Castle is oval, in conformity with the shape of the top of the hill which it occupies. For an example of a great circular camp, that known as Yarnbury, may be selected. This is situated about two miles from Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain and close to the old road between Bath and Salisbury. It is surrounded by a double fosse and vallum, the inner ditch being fifty feet deep, and the principal entrance is defended by a complicated arrangement of earthworks. In its neighbourhood are a host of other camps of the same period. On the Herefordshire Beacon, near Malvern, is another great British camp, which possesses a triple fosse and vallum of irregular outline, following the shape of the hill. This camp is said to have been the work of, or at least to have been occupied by, the British chieftain Caratacos, or, as he is generally but incorrectly described, Caractacus. This chieftain's name is, however, more closely associated with another camp situated on the top of the hill called Caer Caradoc, which is situated near Church Stretton in Shropshire, and at the foot of which tradition places the site of the decisive battle between Caratacos and Ostorius Scapula, The ditches in this case are quite shallow, no doubt because the exceeding steepness of the hill rendered more formidable earthworks unnecessary. It has been already mentioned that sometimes pit- dwellings are found within ramparts of a similar character, as, for instance, on the top of Chalbury Hill, familiar to visitors to Weymouth. In their neighbourhood are also sometimes found remains of the terrace or " lynchet " form of cultivation. In the West of England, on Dartmoor and Exmoor, have been found a few bridges which have been assigned to this period. One of the finest of these is known as Tarr or Torr 96 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Steps, and crosses the River Barle, not far from Winsford on Exmoor. It is composed of a number of solid, though short piers built up of stones, laid on the top of one another without any cement or mortar. Large flat slabs of stone, stretching from one pier to the next, form the pathway, a pathway which is submerged when the river is in flood, but which at other times affords an excellent passage for those on foot, a ford just above serving for the crossing of horses, But the most striking stone erections of this period are the great circles, of which Stonehenge is the best-known example. This great, though ruinous temple, for temple it seems certainly to have been, has been assigned by some to a Roman or even post-Roman date, but the general consensus of opinion amongst archaeologists is that it is a work of the Bronze period, though of a late date, as seems to be proved by the fact that it is the only circle of the kind in which the stones have been hewn and shaped, all the others being composed of rough and unworked boulders. Mr. Arthur Evans thinks that the construction was in part at least of a gradual character, and that its foundation belongs to the same age as the latest class of the round-barrows by which it was surrounded — a class of barrows which it would not be safe to bring down beyond the approximate date of 250 b.c. On the other hand, he says, if we are to accept the view that the construction itself was gradual and that, in particular, the blue stones were set up in groups at intervals of time, we may carry down some parts of the monument to a considerably later date. The collection of stones which forms this monument is surrounded by a low bank and ditch, enclosing a circle 100 feet in diameter, a measurement which is common to several of these temples, to which the general term of 100 feet circles has been applied. Within this circle, now almost obliterated, are a few THE BRONZE PERIOD 97 Fig. 35. — General Plan of Stonehenge. A, Stone circles in centre of circular earthen bank and ditch ; B, Standing stone, called "The Friar's Heel"; C, Large fallen stone; D, D, Two smaller stones on margin of earthen bank ; E, E, Barrows, which, being absorbed in the earthen bank, appear to have been of earlier construction than the bank. (From Murray's " Handbook to Wiltshire.") 98 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN upright stones with many others in a more or less recumbent position, indeed such is their confusion, that it is difficult even for experts to arrive at any certain conclusion as to all the details of the perfect temple. Under these circum- stances it will be better to consider Stonehenge as it probably Fig. 36. — Conjectural Restoration of Stonehenge. A, Small Syenite trilithon, which may have stood here ; it now lies as at A in Fig. 38. was when complete and uninjured, and to indicate as we go on such parts of the structure as are still recognisable. The outer circle of stones, the nearest in position to the ditch, consisted of thirty upright pillars, each 16 feet in height, with imposts or square masses of stone passing from one to the next, so as to form a continuous ring. Each upright was 3 J feet distant from its neighbour on either side, and each had on its upper end two projections, or tenons, each of THE BRONZE PERIOD 99 which fitted into a corresponding hole or mortice on the under surface of one of the imposts. It is obvious that much greater security was thus attained than if the imposts Fig. 37.— Trilithons and other Stones at Stonehenge. Notice the projections on the top of the large upright stones, which fit into corresponding depressions on the under surfaces of the imposts. (From Barclay's "Stonehenge.") had merely been laid upon the uprights. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that no mortar or cement was used in any of the stone structures of the period. The stones of this circle are all of local origin, being the sarsens or grey-wethers of Marlborough Down. Of this ioo LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN circle, sixteen uprights and six imposts still remain in position. About nine feet nearer to the centre was the second circle, which consisted of unhewn pillars, probably more than thirty in number, of syenite, an igneous rock, which must have been brought from a considerable distance, as none is known to exist nearer than Wales. These, and the others of a similar character, are known as the blue stones. Each of these stones is about six feet in height, and there are now only seven of them left. Within this circle, which deprived of its adjuncts would not in any way differ from similar simple circles in Wales and elsewhere, was the most striking part of the monument, an ellipse consisting of at least five and probably seven great trilithons. Each of these is composed of two hewn pillars with an impost, and they gradually increased in height to the central trilithon, which is twenty-five feet in height. Of these trilithons, two remain perfect and in situ, there are two other uprights standing, but without imposts, and portions of the others are lying on the ground. These stones are similar to those of the outer circle, and no doubt derived from the same place. Within the ellipse of trilithons is an ellipse of nineteen pillars of syenite, the material being the same as that of the stones which form the inner circle, of which seven are still in place. Finally, in the centre of all is a block, called, for no valid reason, the altar-stone, which was very probably always recumbent. It is of a fine micaceous sand- stone, and differs in character from all the other stones of which the monument is composed. Thus to summarise ; Stonehenge consisted of: — (i) A shallow ditch and bank, which opens out at one doint into an avenue flanked by a ditch and bank on either side. (2) A ring of hewn local stones, with imposts mortised to them. THE BRONZE PERIOD S 2 s S 2 £ m *-> o io2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN (3) A ring of unhewn, non-local, igneous pillars. (4) An ellipse of local, hewn trilithons, with mortice and tenon connection. (5) An ellipse of unhewn, non-local, igneous pillars. (6) A single recumbent rock of different character from the rest. It is certainly surprising that so little is said in the works of early writers about a monument which would, one would have supposed, have excited the wonder of all who might see it. It is possible that Hecataeus, a geographer who flourished about five hundred years before Christ, may have alluded to Stonehenge, when he says that there is a magni- ficent circular temple in the island of the Hyperboreans, over against Celtica. Giraldus Cambrensis gives us the mythical tale which was told to account for it in his day : " There was in Ireland, in ancient times, a pile of stones worthy of admiration, called the Giant's Dance, because giants, from the remotest part of Africa, brought them into Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not far from the Castle of Naas, as well by force of art as strength, miracu- lously set them up; and similar stones, erected in a like manner, are to be seen there at this day. These stones (according to the British history) Aurelius Ambrosius, king of the Britons, procured Merlin, by supernatural means, to bring from Ireland into Britain. And that he might leave some famous monument of so great a treason to future ages, in the same order and art as they stood formerly, set them up where the flower of the British nation fell by the cut-throat practice of the Saxons, and where, under the pretence of peace, the ill-secured youth of the kingdom, by murderous designs, were slain." As regards the explana- tion of these monuments, Mr. Arthur Evans thinks that the component parts of stone circles such as Stonehenge, namely, the circle itself, the avenue of stones which lead up to it, imperfect at Stonehenge, though better marked at THE BRONZE PERIOD 103 Avebury, and the central dolmen, wanting in the instance now under consideration, are all of them amplifications of the simplest sepulchral forms. The circle is an enlarged version of the ring of stones placed round the grave mound; the dolmen represents the cist within it; the avenue is merely the continuation of the underground gallery, which in the early barrows, described in a previous chapter, leads to the sepulchral chamber. The trilithons are a new feature in connection with the stone circle, but, as shown Fig. 39.— Trilithons in Tripoli. (From Dr. Barth's "Travels.") by the example of some of our later long barrows, and by a comparison with the monuments of Tripoli, of Syria, of India and elsewhere, are themselves only the perpetuation of a part of the sepulchral structure, the actual gateway of the subterranean chamber, which remains as a ritual survival when, owing to cremation or other causes, the galleried chamber to which it led has itself been modified away. Like the circles themselves, and like the avenue, the trilithon is of sepulchral origin, and connects itself directly with the worship of departed spirits. Finally, he thinks 104 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN that the original holy object within the central trilithons of Stonehenge was a sacred tree, and in this connection he reminds us that the oak was of special sanctity amongst the Celtic nations, as shown, amongst other things, by the words of Maximus Tyrius, "The Celts worship Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak." Professor Rhys in his "Hibbert Lectures" replies as follows to the question " Whose temple Stonehenge was, or whose it chiefly was ? After giving it all the attention I can, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot do better than follow the story of Geoffrey, which makes Stonehenge the work of Merlin Emrys, commanded by another Emrys, which I interpret to mean that the temple belonged to the Celtic Zeus whose later legendary self we have in Merlin." In the same county as Stonehenge, but further north, is a second collection of great stones, now unfortunately even more reduced in numbers, which in the time of Charles II. was described by Aubrey as surpassing Stonehenge as much as a cathedral did a parish church. This monument is Avebury or Abury, and the village of that name which now lies within the ditch has been the destruction of the temple, whose stones have been used up for building and even for road-mending purposes, more than 650 having thus perished. The temple was surrounded by a rampart and fosse, the latter being internal and not external as in the case of fortifications. This rampart and fosse form nearly a circle, with a diameter of 1200 ft., a circumference of 4442 ft., and enclosing an area of 28 J acres. From the top of the rampart to the bottom of the fosse is a depth of 40 ft. Inside the ditch was a circle of rough stones supposed to have been 100 in number, and this again enclosed two neighbouring, not concentric, circles, each again containing a smaller circle and a group of stones forming what is called a cove. These, it seems probable, originally contained THE BRONZE PERIOD 105 ■■ \ , ■■ ■ . ^^mm^^a}^^^ Fig. 40. — Conjectural Restoration of Avebury. Silbury Hill is seen in the distance. The circles of stones were much less regular than is above shown, and there is no evidence for Stukeley's Beckhampton Avenue. (From Murray's " Hand- book to Wiltshire.") 9 ^ Fig. 41. — Plan of Avebury and surrounding country. A, The Kennet Avenue of stones leading to Overton Circle, O ; B, Stukeley's supposed avenue to Beckhampton ; c, c, Roman Road ; d, d, British trackway ; e, Beckhampton ; g, West Kennett Long Barrow ; h, East Kennett Long Barrow. (From Murray's " Handbook to Wiltshire.") 106 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN interments. An avenue of stones, of which fifteen still remain, led S.W. to West Kennet, and according to Stukeley, though it is more than doubtful whether he had any valid reason for making the assertion, there was a second avenue leading to Beckhampton in the opposite direction. The size of some of the stones forming this monument is immense ; one destroyed in recent years weighed ninety tons, and another still remaining is esti- mated to weigh sixty. It may well cause wonder as to how these huge stones were transported to this spot and reared up on end in the cavities prepared for them, especially by a people possessed of only the rudest mechanical appliances to assist them in their task. Perhaps we may obtain a clue as to the manner in which the stones were moved by look- ing at the pictures of the transport of the huge stone figures of Egypt, as represented on some of the buildings of that country. In the representation of the colossal statue of Thothotpu being dragged to its place, we see the figure itself on a sort of flat wheelless sled to which numbers of slaves are attached by cords. The captain stands on the knees of the statue to urge on those who are dragging it, and an attendant on the pedestal pours water on the ropes, lest their tension should cause them to take fire. But we have a further example of how the work of shaping and carrying these huge stones may have been effected, by the way in which it is carried out by the Khasis, a tribe of Northern Bengal, who break and flake their blocks by heating them along the required line of fracture and then pouring water upon them. They trans- port them by placing wooden rollers underneath and then harnessing numbers of men to them with ropes of rattan. When it is necessary to set a block upright, one end is slipped into a hole some feet in depth, whilst the other is pulled upon by the ropes. And finally, when it is desired to lift one block into position on the top of others, a slope THE BRONZE PERIOD 107 of earth is constructed leading up to the desired altitude and then the impost is pulled up the slope upon rollers. Obviously it is possible that huge masses can be trans- ported even with rude means, all that is necessary being a sufficiency of men and of enthusiasm. There must have been no lack of either at the building of Avebury. Before passing to the consideration of any other stone circle, it may be well to mention that remarkable conical earthwork close by, called Silbury Hill. This mound, the largest artificial earthwork of its kind in England and probably in Europe, covers with its base over five acres of ground, is 1657 ft. in circumference and 170 ft. in height. It was originally surrounded by a circle of sarsen stones, nearly all of which have disappeared. Its origin and date are equally doubtful ; it is apparently not sepulchral, at least all excavations so far have failed to find any remains, and whether it has any relation to the megalithic circle at Ave- bury is a question which may perhaps never be cleared up. Its gigantic size and the labour which its construction must have cost afford another example of the energy and engineering skill of the period. Another interesting monument of this class is that called the Rollright stones, most of which are in Oxfordshire, though only just in that county. The boundary between that county and Warwickshire is formed by an ancient road which passes between the circle and dolmen on the one hand and the menhir on the other. This circle is one of the hundred feet variety, but the stones of which it is composed are insignificant in size, the tallest being 7 ft. and most of them ranging between 2 ft. and 4 ft. The circle is locally called the King's Men. Not far off is a group of stones called the Whispering Knights, which consists of the remains of a collapsed dolmen. On the other side of the road, and near a long artificial mound of earth, of uncertain nature, which the imaginative Stukeley 108 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN called the Arch- Druid's barrow, is a single standing stone, or menhir, named the King's Stone. The legend which is related about these stones may be cited as a good example of the kind of story which grows up around such relics. The king is said to have set out with his men to conquer England. Arrived at the top of the hill where the stones stand he meets a witch who says : " If Long Compton thou canst see King of England thou shalt be." Long Compton, it should be said, is a village in the valley north of the stones and just invisible from them. The king, delighted at what he supposes will be the triumphant issue of his expedition, exclaims : " Stick, stock, stone, As King of England I shall be known." As he speaks the mound of earth near the menhir rises up before him and prevents him from seeing the village, whilst the witch exclaims : " As Long Compton thou canst not see King of England thou shalt not be. Rise up stick, and stand still stone, For King of England thou shalt be none, For thou and thy men hoar stones shall be, And I myself an eldern tree." Thereupon they all turn, the witch into an alder tree, the rest into stones, the menhir being the king, the circle his army and the dolmen his officers, either engaged at the time of their transmutation in prayer or in plotting against their leader, according to different versions of the story. Further traditions attach to these stones, in common with others of the same character in different parts of the country, such as that it is impossible to count them correctly, that they arise at midnight to dance with one another and the like ; but the point of greatest interest, perhaps, is related to their name, THE BRONZE PERIOD 109 which appears, according to Mr. Arthur Evans, to have been properly Rollendrice, and to have meant the kingdom or dominion of Roland. Thus the group of stones whose f Fig. 42. — Menhir, the " King Stone," at Rollright. original name and signification had long been forgotten, was in later ages associated with the name and fame of Roland, the legendary champion of Christendom against the paynim. In connection with this group of stones mention has been made of a menhir, and it may now be well to say something no LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN about this kind of monument. The menhir derives its name from two Celtic words meaning a standing stone, and is the simplest and most obvious form of memorial or monument which can be imagined. This being so, one is not surprised to find that it is not specially associated with any age or with any country, indeed Cleopatra's needle and many of the memorials in our own towns and cemeteries are nothing more than glorified menhirion. But using the term as it is employed in British archaeology it is limited to single, unhewn, standing stones, probably belonging chiefly to the Bronze, but certainly also to the Neolithic period. These stones are very variable in shape, being sometimes long and comparatively narrow, like the great menhir of Carnac and others, sometimes larger at the upper part, like the Kingstone at Rollright ; sometimes wide flat slabs, like the great Clun menhir in Shropshire, which is 8 ft. in height, 6 ft. 6 in. in breadth and 8 in. to 1 2 in. in thickness. Sometimes they appear to have been erected on the summits of barrows, sometimes, as we have already seen, they formed a ring round their base. Mr. Stevens points out that such monoliths are associated also with long barrows and with ancient grave mounds in other countries. He says : " In the chambered tumulus at Ablington, Gloucestershire, there was found a large upright oval stone, 6 ft. in height and 5 ft. in width, standing on a block of stone having a natural perforation and by which it was steadied and kept in its place. Upon a long barrow at Duntesbourne Abbots, Gloucestershire, is a monolith known as the ' Hoar Stone, 5 and upon another long barrow in the same county is a monolith known as the ' Tingle Stone.' The ancient Greeks, in like manner, appear to have placed a monolith (o-TrjXr}) upon the summit of some of their tumuli, and Paris, taking his position behind such a pillar on the barrow of Ilus, shot at Diomede, wounding him in the foot." Such stones have been in other countries not merely THE BRONZE PERIOD in memorials of some great deed or departed hero, but objects of worship, and the same was probably the case in this country. Indeed Mr. Gomme calls attention to a curious custom in connection with such a stone, which looks like the degenerated remains of a real act of sacrifice offered to a menhir. "At the village of Holne, situated on one of the spurs of Dartmoor, is a field of about two acres, the property of the parish, and called the Ploy Field. In the centre of this field stands a granite pillar (menhir) 6 ft. or 7 ft. high. On May morning, before daybreak, the young men of the village used to assemble there and then proceed to the moor, where they selected a ram lamb, and after running it down brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field, fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and then roasted it whole, skin, wool, &c. At mid-day a struggle took place, at the risk of cut hands, for a slice ; it being supposed to confer luck for the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through the crowd to get a slice for the chosen amongst the young women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the Ram Feast as it was called. Dancing, wrestling, and other games, assisted by copious libations of cider during the afternoon, prolonged the festivity till midnight." The places of interment of this race, like those of the people who preceded it, are marked by mounds or barrows, which are, however, smaller, nearly always circular, and in this country devoid of the passage and chambers which formed a feature of the long barrow. The shape of these barrows on elevation is sometimes like a bowl, more rarely like a disc or even a bell. In some of them the remains of the dead are buried in the same crouched up position as they occupy in the long barrows, in others there is an urn containing the ashes which have resulted from the cremation of the corpse, and in both cases there may be found implements of different H2 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN kinds laid beside the remains. These two systems of burial have undoubtedly been pursued simultaneously, and may perhaps mark a divergence in religious ideas between the two sections of the Celts. It is at least possible that the Goidelic branch may have conformed to the funeral customs of the Neolithic race, whilst the Brythonic people, perhaps from veneration for the sun, perhaps from the idea of puri- fying the body, may have resorted to the practice of crema- tion. However this may be, it is interesting to find that Fig. 43. — Round Barrows near Stonehenge. (After a plate in Barclay's ' ' Stonehenge. ' ' ) sometimes both kinds of interment have been met with in the same barrow, one being secondary to the other. In these cases the earlier burial is usually that of the unburnt body, the secondary being that of the cremated, but this is not an invariable rule. So far as it goes this evidence also points in the direction above mentioned that the earlier Goidelic race was that which practised inhumation. There are great numbers of these round barrows scattered over the country, and in some parts of it many may be seen close together. Around Stonehenge, for example, there are about THE BRONZE PERIOD 113 three hundred within a circuit of three miles. There ore a number of others in the vicinity of Avebury, and in one spot on the road between Weymouth and Bridport twenty can be seen at once, a spot, says Stukeley, "for sight of barrows not to be equalled in the world." In certain places they, as well as other mounds of earth, artificial and natural, have been supposed to be the homes of fairies, and names such as the Fairy Know or Fairy Hill applied to them. In one instance such a mound affords what seems to be an example of the extraordinary persist- ence and endurance of a tradition. Near the town of Mold there was a cairn called Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, the hill of the fairy or of the goblin, which was long said to be haunted by a ghost in golden armour, who was seen to enter it from time to time. When the tomb was opened there was found within it the skeleton of what had been a fine tall man with a corselet of bronze overlaid by gold, of Etruscan work, says Professor Boyd Dawkins, and probably belonging to the Romano-British period. Unless we are to believe that the ghost really did walk, we must admit that the tradition had been handed down of this warrior's burial in his armour for perhaps fourteen hundred years. The religion of the Celts, both Brythons and Goidels, was polytheistic, and the names of some of their gods and minor deities have come down to us. Of these the principal Bry- thonic deity seems to have been Teutates, the god of war, in whose honour the stone inscribed " Marti Toutati " found in Hertfordshire was probably erected. In this country, Teutates seems perhaps more often to have been spoken of under the name of Camulus, a name which enters into the formation of the word Camulodunum, the title of the city which preceded the modern Colchester. Taranis, another deity, seems to have been the summer- god, and Nodens, the god of the sea, had a temple at Lydney on the Severn even in the Roman times. Among the Goidels the H ii 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Irish Boann, a minor goddess, the deity of the Boyne in Ireland, is an example of the personification of rivers under the guise of minor deities, another instance of which in Britain is Sabrina, the goddess of the Severn, " Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair," as Milton wrote in "Comus." Other minor deities figure in our stories of to-day as giants. Thus Rabelais took his name of Gargantua from such a half-deity, half-hero. A dolmen in France is shown to this day as his tomb. Goemagot, another similar personage, becomes Gogmagog, the name of a range of what pass for hills in Cambridge- shire, and of the well-known giants of the Mansion House. The Celt, however, of both families, seems to have in some measure adopted the Druidism of the Neolithic peoples with whom he came in contact on reaching the island. In so doing he only conformed to what seems to have been almost a general rule where an Aryan and a non-Aryan race have come in contact, as Mr. Tylor and Mr. Gomme have pointed out. Such is the case in Scandinavia, where the Lapp is looked upon as being a very superior magician to the later occupants of the land, and in India, where the non-Aryan races, despised and harried though they may be during the rest of the year by their Aryan neighbours, are yet brought into the villages of the latter on solemn occasions to perform the religious cere- monies which are supposed to be more effectively performed by them than by any other. A curious instance of this is given by Walhouse, which may be cited, as showing the kind of thing w T hich may perhaps have happened in this country centuries ago. " The Kurumbas of Nulli, one of the wildest Nilgherry declivities, come up annually to wor- THE BRONZE PERIOD 115 ship at one of the dolmens on the tableland above, in which they say one of their old gods resides. Though they are re- garded with fear and hatred as sorcerers by the agricultural Badagas of the tableland, one of them must, nevertheless, at sowing-time, be called to guide the first plough for two or three yards, and go through a mystic pantomime of propi- tiation to the earth deity, without which the crop would certainly fail. When so summoned, the Kurumba must pass the night by the dolmens alone, and I have seen one who had been called from his present dwelling for the morning ceremony, sitting after dark on the capstone of a dolmen, with heels and hams drawn together and chin on knees, looking like some huge ghostly fowl perched on the mysterious stone." It is probable that the later coming Aryans, here and elsewhere, might have considered the inhabitants whom they found on their arrival as somewhat uncanny, and, again, it is highly probable that they reasoned that their priests, the Druids, having been longer in occupation, were better able to approach the local divinities with hope of success than those who were strangers in the land. There is a statement by Pliny that the wives and daughters-in-law of the Britons attended certain religious rites without clothing and with their bodies painted black like Ethiopians. To which race this statement applies is more than doubtful, but it is possible, if Mr. Hartland's surmise is correct, that we have a trace of this rite in the processions which took place in Coventry and Southam in honour of Lady Godiva. Though Godgifu, or Godiva, was an historical personage, her celebrated ride is purely mythical, a good example, indeed, of the kind of myth which, without any reason, often becomes attached to some hero or heroine. The essence of the tale consists in the passage of a naked woman through a town where the men were not allowed to look out upon her, and such a story is not peculiar to n6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN England, as readers of the " Arabian Nights " will remember. Now, we know that in Rome the religious rites of the deity known as the Bona Dea were performed by women alone and that men were forbidden under the severest penalties to intrude upon them. It is highly probable that the rite of which Pliny speaks may have been of a similar character, and that it may gradually, in the manner which has been already pointed out, have dwindled down and lost all its original significance. The probability that this view is correct is much increased by the fact that in the procession of Southam, no very great distance from Coventry, there were two Godivas, one of whom was of the natural colour, but the other was black, and formed, perhaps, the last link in the chain stretching back to the woad-painted British matron of Pliny. It now only remains to speak of the physical character- istics of the Celts. They were a tall race, indeed their average stature of 5 feet 9 inches, as ascertained by measurements of the long bones of their skeletons, exceeded the average of the present inhabitants of the island. They were a longer -lived race than that which they succeeded, if we are to trust Dr. Thurnam's computation, that the average of the Celt was fifty- five and of the Neolith forty-five years. Their skulls were rounder and broader than those of the previous race, or, to use the language of physical anthropology, the Celt was brachy- cephalic, or round-headed, the Ivernian, dolichocephalic, or long-headed, only in the physical sense of course. The skull was also of large size, with a well-formed and broad brow and salient ridges above the eyes, and with prominent cheek-bones. The stature of the Celts seems to have made a great impression upon those with whom they were brought in contact, for Caesar alludes to their mirifica corpora, whilst Strabo, speaking of some of the Coritavi, a tribe who inhabited Lincolnshire, says, " To show how tall they were, I THE BRONZE PERIOD 117 saw myself some of their young men at Rome, and they were taller by six inches than any one else in the city." Many contemporary references also leave little doubt that the Celt belonged to a fair or red-haired race. Lucan calls the Britons Jidtfi, Silius Italicus says their hair was golden, and Vitruvius, in a passage supposed to allude to them, speaks of their huge limbs, their grey eyes, and their long, straight red hair. In his perhaps partly fanciful de- scription of Boudicca or Boadicea, the queen of the Iceni, Dion Cassius speaks of her greatness of stature, of the fierceness of her appearance, which struck all beholders with awe, and of the severe and piercing expression of her countenance. She had, he adds, a harsh voice, and a pro- fusion of dark, ruddy hair which reached down to her hips. The life of the tall, fair-haired, round-headed occupant of this land during the Bronze period has been sufficiently dealt with in this and the preceding chapter to render unneces- sary any prolonged summary of the conditions under which he existed. It will be sufficient to point out that he entered the island possessed of a greater amount of culture than that of the people whom he found in occupation of the land. Above all else he understood the art of working in metal, a piece of knowledge which differed, not merely in degree but in kind, from any possessed by previous inhabitants of the land. In correspondence with his wider knowledge and perhaps also with his greater strength, the works which he undertook were of a more ambitious character than those of his predecessors, and included huge earthworks, massive stone monuments, and artificial island residences. In the arts of spinning and weaving he was an adept, and prided himself so much upon using textile clothing instead of gar- ments fashioned from skins, as to find in that fact the most appropriate name for his race. Such was the inhabitant of this country at the time of the Roman occupation, and, as will be seen, or indeed has already been seen, from the n8 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN description of the Glastonbury lake village, he lived on in the land, beside his conquerors, in his own villages. And when that conqueror was obliged to desert the country which he had occupied for four hundred years, the Celt remained behind in possession once more of full sovereignty over the land. Thus we shall here only leave him for a time, returning to the consideration of the race again, after dealing with the Romans and their remains. CHAPTER VI THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN Condition of the Country — Forests — Wild animals — Trackways — Roman roads — Camps — Cities — Silchester — Uriconium — Corinium. When the Romans took possession of this country, it can only have been their insatiable zeal for colonisation, coupled perhaps with some knowledge of the mineral riches which it afforded, which could have induced them to take so much trouble over what must have appeared a singularly unin- viting spot. For such, the accounts of the earlier visitors, whose opinions remain on record, declare it unanimously to have been. They speak of its stormy sky, obscured with constant rain, of its atmosphere chilly and damp even in summer-time, and of the dense fogs, but rarely pierced by the rays of the sun, which hung over it like a pall. The im- mense forests, with which the land was covered, condensed the rain, fallen timber choked up the streams, and caused them to spread their waters into wide marshes, so that only the higher grounds lifted themselves from the morasses and woods. It is a little difficult to realise how great a portion of the surface of this island was covered with forest at the time we are speaking of, and even down to a much later period. Nearly the whole of Warwickshire was covered over by the Forest of Arden (see Map), the district now occupied by Birmingham and the adjacent Black Country towns being 120 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN then a dense woodland, penetrated by the little stream of the Rea, and traversed by one trackway, the Ryknield Street. In fact, at a very much later period, it was said that a squirrel could leap from tree to tree for nearly the whole length of Warwickshire. To-day we can gather some idea of its limits by the names of the places which existed around its fringes, like Wooton Wawen, with its pre-Con- quest church, on its southern border, and Woodend on its northern. North of Worcester, the Forest of Wyre, which still exists, though shorn of most of its ancient glory, extended as far as Chester. Another still existent forest, Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire, associated with Robin Hood and his crew, was, according to Camden, anciently set with trees, whose entangled branches were so twisted together that they hardly left room for a man to pass. Of one of its outliers, Charnwood Forest, the name only remains, for the district has long been disafforested. The Forest of Dean was described as "very dark and terrible " on account of its gloomy paths and rides, whilst Denbighshire, up to the fifteenth century, was one immense forest, from the Dee to the region of Snowdonia. In the South of England that vast piece of woodland, the Andredsweald, or Forest of Anderida, stretched for more than one hundred and twenty miles continuously between the North and South Downs, and formed a barrier far more impervious than seas, rivers, or mountains. These dense woodlands, with their frequent marshy bottoms, were inhabited by numerous wild beasts. The huger animals of an earlier period had, of course, long since disappeared, but wolves swarmed in Arden and Sherwood, and the wild ox, or urus, and wild boar were objects of the chase at a period long after that with which we have now to do. In fact, in the time of Henry II., we hear of the citizens of London hunting both the last-named animals in the forests of Middlesex. Wolves disappeared finally in England somewhere in the fifteenth THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 121 century, though they appear to have lingered in the re- cesses of the Irish forests until the eighteenth. When the bear disappeared is not known, for though it is recorded that the city of Norwich gave one of these animals yearly to Edward the Confessor, it is possible that it was not a native wild beast. Beavers, which have been extinct for a long time, must have been plentiful in the wooded swamps, judging from the places called after them, such as Beverley, in Yorkshire ; Bevere, near Worcester ; and Nant Francon (the glen of the beavers), near Llyn Ogwen, in North Wales. Through these woods in some districts, but more frequently along the tops of high ranges of hills, the Celtic people had cut narrow roads, known by the name of trackways, remains of which may be seen in various parts to the present day. Of the Ryknield Street, which ran through Arden, from the Fosse Way, near Stow, to Wall on the Watling Street, pieces remain here and there, which must very closely resemble the condition of that road when actually in use. One portion of this way which is probably still much in its primitive state is Buckle Street, a narrow trackway which runs along the top of the Cotswold Hills, above Broadway, and another little altered portion crosses the fields between Alcester and Wixford. Another ancient trackway which preserves its original appearance is called the Portway, and runs along the top of the Longmynd, above Church Stretton, in Shropshire, while a second way of the same kind crosses, close to the same place, the lower Watling Street, and ends in the valley called the Cwms, behind Caer Caradoc. Another called the Ridgeway, runs along the top of the range of hills which intervenes between Weymouth and Dorchester, and many other examples might be cited, from which only one further instance, and that the most striking, shall be selected. Along the top of the Downs above the Vale of White Horse, skirting Ashdown, the 122 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN yEscandune of Alfred's decisive battle, and that ancient barrow, Weyland Smith's forge, is a broad grassy road, marked off from the surrounding fields by low banks, and called in that part of the country the Green Road. This ancient way, which was one of the Quatuor Chimini of the Confessor's laws, hereafter to be dealt with, differs from the other three apparently in never having been remade by the Romans, by whom it must nevertheless have been used. Under the name of the Icknield Street, Acling Street, and other terms, it makes its way from the neighbourhood of Gloucester to Icklingham, in Norfolkshire. Its ancient name was the Icenhilde Weg, the path of the warriors of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe who dwelt in the district which is now Norfolk. This street gives us a good idea of what the British trackways in their fullest development must have looked like, and one of the great aims of the Romans was to construct out of them wide and well-made roads along which bodies of troops might be rapidly and easily trans- ported from one part of the country to another. Their road- making, like all their other works, was carried out in a most systematic and careful manner, the exact method of con- struction varying with the character of the land through which the road had to pass. Thus in the neighbourhood of Lincoln the roads through the marshes were upon piles. On the other hand a part of the Great Fosse Road, which still remains as a monument to the engineering capabilities of the Romans, was constructed of the following layers : (i) Pavimentum, or foundation of fine earth beaten in hard. (2) Statumen^ or the bed of the road, which was com- posed of large stones, sometimes mixed with mortar. (3) Ruderatio, made of small stones also mixed with mortar. (4) The Nucleus, which was formed by mixing lime, chalk, pounded bricks or tiles ; or again, by mixing gravel sand, and lime with clay. THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 123 (5) The Summum Dorsum, or top of the road, forming the actual surface exposed to the wear and tear of the traffic. Of these roads, three beside the Icknield Street were, in the time of Edward the Confessor, called the Quatuor Chimini, and placed under the King's Peace, that is to say, crimes committed upon them were tried in the King's Court, and not in any local court, as would have been the case had they taken place on any other road. These three were the Watling Street, the Fosse Way, and the Ermine Street, and much labour has been spent on the task of tracing out the exact line of each, a task rendered none the easier by the fact that there are several roads of each of these names, in some cases quite unconnected with one another. A few words must be devoted to describing the course of each of these ways ; and here it may be said that our knowledge of the Roman roads and stations is largely drawn from the Itinerary of Antoninus, a description of the roads compiled probably for military use and ascribed to the age of Hadrian or Severus. The most celebrated of the four roads received at a later date from the Saxons the name of Watling Street, a title, by the way, which, as we learn from Chaucer, was also given to the Milky Way (see Map). Starting from London, it ran north-west through St. Albans (Veru- lamium), Dunstable, Fenny and Stony Stratford, Towcester (Lactodorum), crossed the Fosse Road at a place now called High Cross, traversed Wall (Etocetum), and finally reached Wroxeter (Uriconium). Here it met a second but smaller road of the same name, which, starting from Caerleon-on- Usk (Isca Silurum), passed through Kenchester (Magna), near Hereford, Leintwardine (Branodunum), and the Stret- ton Valley. Places with names such as Stretton, Stretford, Stratford, and the like, found along these and other great roads of the time, derive their titles from their proximity to the ancient "street." 124 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN The Fosse Road started from a point north of Seaton, in Devonshire, passing thence north-east through Bath (Aquae Sulis), Cirencester (Corinium), and Stow-on-the-Wold, to High Cross already mentioned. Thence through Leicester (Ratae) and Newark it pursued its course to terminate at Lincoln (Lindum Colonia). The Ermine Street in later times ran nearly due north from London to Lincoln, but it is probable from the silence of the Roman itineraries as to any direct road between the former city and Huntingdon, that the only part of the street which existed at the time with which we are now dealing was the northern portion between Huntingdon and Lincoln. These great streets were provided with many of the conveniences possessed by our own main roads at the present day. They were marked by milliaria, or mile- stones, a number of which have been found in different parts of the country along the course of former Roman highways. They bore, as is shown by the following example, found some time ago about two miles from Leicester (Ratse), not merely the distance from the nearest town, but also the titles of the reigning Caesar and the year, so that it is possible to tell the date at which each was placed in its position. IMP. CAES. DIV. TRAIANI. PARTH. F. NER. NEP. TRAIAN. HADRIAN. AVG. P. P. TRIB. POT. IV. COS. III. A. RATIS. II.* Along the roads, at distances varying from seven to twenty miles, were placed posting-stations (mansiones) which, at * " Imperatore Csesare Divi Trajani Augusti, Maximi Nobilissimi Parthici Filio Divo Augusto Maximo Nobilissimo Hadriano Tri- bunitii Potestatis Quarto Ter Consulate. A Ratis Duo." During the emperorship of the divine, august, most great and noble Caesar Hadrian, son of the divine, august, most great and noble Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, in the fourth year of his tribu- nitian power : thrice consul. Two miles to Leicester. THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 125 first intended for the use of the military only, eventually came to resemble the inns of our own day, and provided hospitality for travellers of all kinds. In many places the cemeteries were placed by the sides of great roads ; indeed, so many funeral monuments have been discovered by the side of the road between York and Tadcaster (Calcaria), that it has received the name of the Street of Tombs. As the Romans pushed their military operations deeper and deeper into the heart of the country, they were naturally confronted with the necessity of providing suitable accommo- dation, either temporary or permanent, for their troops. Where possible they, no doubt, saved themselves the trouble of constructing fortifications of their own by utilising, with or without modification, those British camps whose occupants had fled or been expelled. Hence we meet with many fortresses which have been successively used by these races and by those who came after them in the land, such as old Sarum, the Roman Sorbiodunum, a place whose history is an instance of what has occurred at many another spot of less strategic advantage and fame. " Celt and Roman alike," writes Mr. Green, "had seen the military value of the height from which the eye sweeps nowadays over the grassy meadows of the Avon to the arrowy spire of Salisbury; and admirable as the position was in itself, it had been strengthened at a vast cost of labour. The camp on the summit of the knoll was girt in by a trench hewn so deeply in the chalk that from the inner side of it the white face of the rampart rose one hundred feet high, while strong outworks protected the approaches to the fortress, from the west and from the east." This fortress long held out against the progress of the West Saxons, barring their approach up the Avon Valley, and finally fell, probably because want of food or water caused its defenders to evacuate it. It was afterwards held by the Saxons and Danes, and here Canute died. In Norman times, William the Conqueror summoned i 2 6 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN his barons to Old Sarum to renew their oath of fealty. Its decay dates from the time when the Bishop and clergy, weary of squabbles with the military, and probably also influenced by the chronic want of water, migrated to the plains and founded the present City of Salisbury. In later times, Old Sarum appears as the rottenest of rotten boroughs, whose two members were returned by one elector, and now its earthworks alone remain as an imperishable monument of its former greatness. But where the Romans had to undertake the construction of a camp from the beginning, the plan which they pre- ferred was that of a quadrangle, with four gates or entrances, one in each side, and often protected by advance earth- works. Of these earthworks, castra exploratoria, or tempo- rary fortifications, such as might be thrown up by the advance guard of an army, and castra cestiva, which were intended to be used during a whole season, are generally placed on the tops of hills, and, consequently, are not so regular in their outline as the more permanent con- structions. Careful rules were laid down by the Roman authorities on castrametation as to the selection of localities for the camps, and Hyginus, in a treatise of the kind, enumerates the objects which should be avoided as neighbours for the proposed camp. These he calls novercce, a word meaning mothers-in-law, that much -abused character having thus early acquired an evil reputation. " Those defects which our ancestors called novercse," he says, " should always be avoided ; such as a hill commanding the camp, by which the enemy can descend in attack, or see what is done in the camp ; or a wood where the enemy can lie in ambush ; or ravines or valleys by which they can steal unawares on the camp ; or such a situation of the camp that it can be suddenly flooded from a river." Castra stativa, or stations which were intended for pro- longed occupation, were generally placed on lower ground THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 127 and in the vicinity of water. When fully developed, this kind of camp was called legionary, and an example of the kind at Caistor in Northamptonshire (which indeed derives its name from this castra) is an oblong, 1349 feet in length and 1 1 20 in breadth, and covers about 33 acres of ground. In such a camp, the gate facing the enemy was called the Porta Praetoria, and from it led a straight wide path, the Via Principalis, to the gruma, or measuring point, behind which was situated the Praetorium. On this were the altar for public sacrifices, the Auguratorium, where the auspices were consulted, and the Tribunal, from which the troops were harangued. A second Via Principalis cut the first at right angles and led from the Porta Principalis of one side to that of the other. The gate at the opposite side to the Praetorian, and therefore furthest from the enemy, was called Porta Decumana. In the interior, the positions of the leader and his staff, of the various troops and of the workshops, were marked out with that precision so characteristic of the military genius of the Romans. Even the most perfect form of camp, however, was more or less of a temporary expedient, and often the castra stativa proved to be the forerunner of the later walled city. " A Roman camp was ' a city in arms,' and most of the British towns grew out of the stationary quarters of the soldiery. The ramparts and pathways developed into walls and streets, the square of the tribunal into the market-place, and every gateway was the beginning of a suburb, where straggling rows of shops, temples, rose-gardens, and cemeteries, were sheltered from all danger by the presence of a permanent garrison. In course of time the important positions were surrounded with lofty walls, protected by turrets set apart at the distance of a bowshot, and built of such solid strength as to resist the shock of a battering-ram. In the centre of the town stood a gioup of public buildings, containing the courthouse, baths and barracks, and it seems likely that 128 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN every important place had a theatre or a circus for races and shows. The humble beginnings of our cities are seen in the ancient sketch of a visit to central Britain, in which a poet (Statius) pictured the arrival of the son of a former governor, and imagined a white-haired old man pointing out the changes of the province. ' Here your father,' he says, ' sat in judgment, and on that bank he stood and addressed his troops. Those watch-towers and distant forts are his, and these walls were built and entrenched by him. This trophy of arms he offered to the gods of war, with the inscription that you still may see ; that cuirass he donned at the call to arms ; this corselet he tore from the body of a British king." (Elton.) In some instances their situations were not identical, as in the case of the quadri- lateral Roman camp, locally called Poundbury, situated on a hill a little distance north of Dorchester, which was the parent of the Roman Durnovaria, on whose remains Dorchester stands. But here the alteration in position was probably due to the greater proximity of the second site to the water supply. In other cases, the town grew up actually inside the earthworks, which may, as at Wareham, though altered, persist to the present day. Where the walled city was built from the commencement as such, and of set plan, or where it grew out of a legionary camp, it was constructed of a quadrilateral shape, as may be seen at Dorchester (where avenues of trees mark out the foundations of the walls), and was provided with a gate at each side. In such towns two main streets ran at right angles to one another so as to connect the gates of opposite sides, and where they intersected they formed the cross, which we find in the centre of towns like Gloucester, Worcester and Dor- chester. But in other cases the city grew up first, and when it became advisable subsequently to provide it with walls, they had to accommodate themselves to the shape of the collection of houses and could not assume a rectangular THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 129 form. Such is the case at Silchester, where we have perhaps the most perfect example of a Roman city wall in England. When the Roman troops were withdrawn from this country there existed in it fifty walled towns, not count- ing the stations placed along the course of the more important roads. Of these, twenty-eight deserved to rank as cities, two of them, Eburacum (York) and Verulamium (St. Albans), belonging to the highest class or municipia, and nine to the second or colonia. It may perhaps be interesting to give the names of the colonia, one of which has long since out-topped not merely its fellows but also the two municipia in importance. They were Glevum (Gloucester), Lindum (Lincoln), Deva (Chester), Camulo- dunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), Rutupise (Rich- borough, the port of prime importance at that time), Aquae Sulis (Bath), Isca Silurum (Caerleon-on-Usk), and Cambo- ritum (close to Cambridge). The reader will perhaps obtain a more clear idea of the construction and contents of a Roman city if a few examples are first described, and then the most salient features common to all are separately dealt with. The remarkable remains of Silchester, which might, were money forthcoming, be made into an English Pompeii, are situ- ated a short distance from Reading, close to the village of Mortimer Fielding. Nearly the whole of the wall is present and in a wonderfully perfect condition, its extent being i|- miles. It is composed largely of flint, mixed, however, with other stones, and is intersected with bonding courses, not, as in all other walls in England of the same period, made of brick, but of flat slabs of stone. It is from 15 to 21 feet in height, from 9 to 15 feet in thickness, and is strengthened by buttresses placed against its inner face. It has the usual four gateways, and in addition, a smaller exit directly opposite the amphitheatre, which is, as cus- tomary, placed outside the walls. Beyond the walls, and i 3 o LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN at some small distance from them, is a fosse, which is 100 feet in width and from 12 to 14 feet in depth, and still in places is filled with water. This city contained, besides a number of residences, a forum forming a parallelogram 276 by 313 feet, which was surrounded by ^ mr iT if*. // /^\^ # y/ ^ N X // yiim // 15- pn <>q t/vi E a H Lf| +e j 7 1 ®f '• K ^^~ s ^ Fig. 44— Plan of Silchester, showing the walls and some of the objects of interest. N, S, W, E, the principal gates ; a, Small gate leading to b, amphitheatre ; c, forum ; d, basilica ; e, site of Roman Christian basilica ; f, site of circular temple ; g, " Cavalry barracks " ; h, baths ; j, modern church ; K, K, in- trenchments ; L, L, L, remains ot Fosse ; m m, Villas ; n, Hypocaust. an ambulatory from 12 to 15 feet in width. Along its northern side was a row of shops, amongst which have been identified those of a wine merchant, a fish-seller, from whom were bought some at least of the oysters whose shells litter the remains of Silchester so profusely, a butcher, whose steel-yards and flesh-hooks have been found, a poulterer, in whose shop were some of the steel spurs used for arming game-cocks for a fight, and a jeweller. Attached THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 131 was also a hall for the use of merchants, which measured 30 by 60 feet. There was an apsidal basilica 276 by 60 feet, with a gallery on one side, and a central nave sustained by two rows of pillars with Corinthian capitals. Around it were a series of smaller rooms, in one of which was found the eagle or standard of a legion, a unique discovery so far as this island is concerned. There have also been identified one or more temples, the usual baths, and a Christian church. A further range of buildings may have been cavalry barracks. To all these objects further attention will be paid in the next chapter. Uriconium, the modern Wroxeter, situated at the foot of the Wrekin, in Shropshire, must also have been a place of great importance. "The town," says Mr. Green, "was strongly placed at the foot of the Wrekin, not far from the bank of the Severn, and was of great extent. Its walls enclosed a space more than double that of Roman London, while the remains of its forum, its theatre and its amphi- theatre, as well as the broad streets which contrast so strangely with the narrow alleys of other British towns, show its wealth and importance. With its storm by the West Saxons the very existence of the city came to an end. Its ruins show that the place was plundered and burned, while the bones which lie scattered among them tell their tale of the flight and massacre of its inhabitants, of women and children hewn down in the streets, and wretched fugitives stifled in the hypocausts whither they had fled with their little hoards for shelter. A British poet sings piteously, in verses still left to us, the death-song of Uriconium, 'the white town in the valley,' the town of white stones gleaming amongst the green woodlands. The torch of the foe had left it, when he sang, a heap of black- ened ruins, where the singer wandered through halls he had known in happier days, the halls of its chief Kyndylan, 'without fire, without light, without song,' their stillness 132 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN broken only by the eagle's scream, the eagle 'who has swallowed fresh drink, heart's blood of Kyndylan the fair.' Of this great city even less remains above ground than of Silchester, the most prominent portion being a bit of the city wall, long known in the district as the ' Old Works.' " This fine fragment is about twenty feet in height and seventy-two in length. Like other Roman walls it is erected upon a good foundation, on which are laid one or two set-off courses of stone. Upon this is placed a series of courses of shaped stones, then a string or bonding course of flat tiles, then more stones, another course of tiles and so on. In fact this alternation of tile and stone is characteristic of Roman walls in this country, that fine fragment, recently threatened with destruction by a railway company, the Jewry Wall, a portion of the fortifications of Ratse, the Roman Leicester, having no less than sixteen alternations of stone and tile. In some cases instead of the courses of tiles having been laid flat, they have been placed in a herring-bone manner. Outside the area of the wall in places can be seen the remains of the fosse and ramparts with which it was surrounded. As has been mentioned in another chapter, the ruins of Uriconium, after its sack and burning, were used as a stone quarry for the building operations of later ages. The pillars of the gateway lead- ing into the churchyard are topped with capitals which once surmounted the pillars of some edifice in the Roman city, whilst another pillar, hollowed out internally, forms the font. Its stones are found not merely at Wroxeter and at Atcham in the walls of the Norman churches of those two places, but are said to have been used in great numbers in the construction of the Abbey of Lilleshall. It is not, therefore, surprising that there should not be much of Uriconium left above ground. Our knowledge of what it was is gained from the excavations which have been undertaken there from time to time, but as nearly all the THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 133 i 3 4 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN places which have been disclosed have been covered up again, in order that the land may be used for agricultural purposes, the visitor will be disappointed if he expects to see any number of the objects described as existing at Uriconium by the books dealing with it. In fact, he will learn more as to the habits of the citizens of Uriconium by visiting the museum in Shrewsbury, where are collected many of the objects which have been found from time to time, than he can from the few relics to be seen at Wroxeter. In the course of the excavations were exposed the usual basilica and baths, together with shops, one of which, apparently the property of a worker in glass or metal, or of an enameller, possessed a furnace or forge, built of red clay, the interior surface of which had been completely vitrified by the intense heat to which it had been exposed. Four or five feet from it stood a curious roughly-formed grey stone, circular in shape and with a flat top, which may have been used for a work-table. The villas, here as elsewhere, had been warmed by a heating apparatus under the floors of the rooms, called a hypocaust, which will be more fully described in the next chapter. In one of the hypocausts were found the remains of three of the inhabitants, referred to in the passage quoted above. One of these skeletons was that of a woman, another, that of a very old man, was found in a crouching position in one corner of the low chamber into which he had crept, with his savings, for near his remains was found a heap consist- ing of 132 coins and a few nails, the latter being the only remnants of the wooden box in which the money had lain. The third skeleton, like that of the first, was a woman. No doubt when the sack of the town took place these three wretches crawled into the hypocaust by the narrow passage through which the flames and heat entered, in the hope that they might escape the notice of their barbarian foes. But whilst hiding there they must have THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 135 been stifled, either by the hot air and smoke belonging to the hypocaust, or by the conflagration in which the city itself perished. Corinium, the modern Cirencester, was probably built on the site of a British camp, and was surrounded by walls, fifteen feet in height and two miles in circuit, which en- closed a parallelogram. It was placed at the junction of several important roads, as the Fosse ran through it, also another great highway called the Ermine Street (not, of course, that mentioned earlier in this chapter), whilst, finally, another road which led to Bath and received in Saxon times the significant name of Akeman Street,* from the condition of the gouty sufferers who travelled along it, also traversed the city. It was the chief town of the Cotswold district, a district distinguished above all other parts of England by the number, size and magnificence of its villas, and is said to have been occupied by. Ostorius Scapula prior to his campaign against Caratacos. One may gather from the words of Stukeley not merely what extensive remains there were in existence at his day, but also how it is that so many of them both there and elsewhere are no more to be seen. " Here/' he says, " are found many mosaic pavements, rings, intaglios, and coins innumerable, especially in one great garden, called Lewis Grounds. I suppose it was the Praetorium. Large quantities of carved stones are carried off yearly in carts, to mend the highways, besides what are useful in building. In the same place they found several stones of the shafts of pillars, 6 ft. long, and bases of stone (as the tenant expressed himself) near as big in com- pass as his summer-house adjoining ; these, with cornices, very handsomely moulded, and carved with modillions and * It is right to say that this etymology has been objected to by some who find in the word Aqua (water) the derivation of the first syllable of the name, 136 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN the like ornaments, were converted into swine troughs. Some of the stones of the bases were fastened together with cramps of iron, so that they were forced to employ horses to draw them asunder. Capitals of these pillars were likewise found." Like the villas in the district to which it belonged, the houses of Corinium were notable for the beauty and diversity of their tesselated pavements, of many of which we fortu- nately possess full details, which will be dealt with in the next chapter. Here have also been found funeral monu- ments and other inscriptions, some on the walls of houses. Outside the wall of the city was an amphitheatre. It would be tedious to give further accounts of the general details of the Roman towns in Britain, but what has been said will show how immeasurably civilisation had advanced upon the lake villages of the previous era, lake villages which, be it remembered, were still existing in England, side by side with, and only partially influenced by, the culture of the cities which we have been considering. CHAPTER VII THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN — continued The Roman city — Cemetery — Pomoerium — Amphitheatre — Gates — Forum and Basilica — Shops — Baths — Temples — Christian Church — Barracks. The outlines afforded in the last chapter of the Romano British cities must now be filled in by a more complete description of some of the prominent objects found in or near them. This may perhaps best be effected by taking them in the order in which they would naturally be met with by a stranger visiting a city for the first time. Approaching by one of the great roads, the attention of the traveller would probably first be attracted by the numerous tombstones which he would see by its side, setting forth the names, ages and conditions of those who were interred beneath. These would, in the great majority of cases, as is natural, having regard to the condition of the country, be * The inscription may be thus translated: " Rufus Sita, of the sixth cohort of the Thracians, forty years of age, served twenty-two RVFVS-S1TAEWES-CH0VI 7FWCVNVANNXLST1PXXII HEREDES-EXSTESTF-CVRMIEJ H S/\E Fig. 46. — Roman Tomb- stone from Uriconium. (Wright.)* i38 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN either soldiers or their relatives. Some of these are adorned with carvings like that on which a Roman soldier on horse- back is represented as bestriding his prostrate British foe. A few instances out of the many which have been collected must suffice. (i) A military tombstone from Uriconium. The original inscription is on the left, the full Latin in the centre, and the translation on the right. M. PETRONIUS Marcus Petronius, Marcus Petronius, LF. MEN Lucii films Menenia, son of Lucius, of the Men- VIC. ANN Vicsit annis enian tribe, lived 38 XXXVIII xxxviii years, MIL. LEG miles legionis a soldier of the fourteenth XIII. GEM xiii gemmae , legion, called Gemina ; he MILITAVIT militavit served as a soldier ANN. XVIII annis xviii, eighteen years, SIGN. FVIT Signifer fuit. and was a standard-bearer. H. S. E. Hie situs est. He lies here. (ii) The next instance is that of a family tombstone from the same place, which was intended originally to commemo- rate three persons, being divided into three compartments, but for some reason the third, which was probably intended to bear the name of the husband and brother (?) of those to whom the first two sections belong, has remained unfilled up. In the first compartment appears : D. M. Diis Manibus. To the Gods of the Shades. PLACIDA Placida Placida AN. LV. Annorum lv. , aged fifty-five years, CUR. AG Curam agente erected by the care of CONI. A Conjuge annorum him who was her husband XXX XXX. for thirty years. years in the ranks. His heirs have caused this monument to be erected in accordance with the instructions of his will. He is buried here." THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 139 In the second : D. M. Diis Manibus. To the Gods of the Shades. DEVCCV Deuccu Deuccus S. AN. XV s, annorum xv. aged fifteen years ; CVR. AG curam agente erected by the care of FRATRE. fratre. his brother. (iii) One final instance may be given of an inscription on the coffin of a child, discovered near Holdgate in Yorkshire : d. m. simplici^e. Florentine To the Gods of the Shades of Sim- anime innocentissime plicia Florentina, a most innocent que. vixit menses decem soul, who lived ten months. felicius. simplex, pater fecit Felicius Simplex, her father, of the leg. vi. v. Sixth legion, the Victorious, made this. Approaching still nearer the city the pomcerium would appear, an open space outside the walls which might not be built upon. Mr. Gomme thinks that in the name of the parish of St. Martin's Pomeroy, London, we have a relic of the pomcerium of Londinium, just as the "pummery,"an open space outside Dorchester, may be that of Durnovaria. Before entering the city, the amphitheatre would also be visited, and of these open-air places of amusement we have several good examples in this country, that near Dorchester, known as Maumbury, being the finest. This is an oval earthwork, enclosing a space 218 ft. in length and 163 ft. in width, and has been constructed by excavating the chalk and heaping it up into a rampart 30 ft. high. This rampart is interrupted by two openings at its opposite ends, by which entrance was gained to the interior. It rises gradually to attain its maximum height midway between the openings, and was no doubt once arranged in tiers to accommodate the rows of spectators. In much later days, in fact, in the last century, it was used as the public place of execution, and it is calculated that ten thousand persons have been present in it on such occasions. Another amphitheatre is 140 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN situated near Cirencester, in which the bank, 20 ft. in height, encloses a space 148 ft. by 134 ft. Few vestiges of the seats remain here, though, if we may trust the account of earlier writers, they must have been much more distinct in comparatively recent times. An amphitheatre outside the walls of Caerleon-on-Usk goes by the name of King Arthur's Round Table, and, as we have seen, there is a fourth outside Silchester. The amphitheatre inspected, the ^L Fig. 47. — Roman Gate at Lindum (Lincoln). (Wright.) The figure is reversed, the smaller arch being really to the right of the large one. traveller would next approach the wall, the general structure of which has already been sufficiently described, and enter the city by one of its gates. At Lincoln one of the smaller entrances to the city of Lindum Colonia still remains, and is called the Newport Arch. The original design of this gateway no doubt consisted of a large central archway, with two smaller posterns, one on either side, but of the latter, one has completely disappeared. The main arch consists of twenty-six huge wedge-shaped blocks of stone without any regular keystone, and is 16 ft. in diameter. Passing THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 141 through the gateway and following one of the main streets to the centre of the city, the forum and basilica would be reached. The reader can form a good idea of what these important buildings were like from the following account of those of Silchester, given by Mr. Joyce. The forum pre- sented a straight line of unbroken wall, without a projection, Fig. 48. — Plan of Forum (the square enclosure) and Basilica (the oblong enclosure to the left) at Silchester. The former is separated by an ambulatory from rows of shops and offices, and the latter has a lateral apsidal recess and two apsidal tribunes. (After a plan in the Archceologia. ) having one entrance at some hundred feet from its western termination. Between the entrance and that western end rose the basilica, towering over all the other buildings, and over the forum itself. Against this wall of the basilica, close to the intersection of the two great viae, was an in- scription in honour of the local god, the Segontian Hercules. The forum proper was, therefore,, on the left hand at 142 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN entering by this northern doorway, and the basilica and council-chambers on the right. Confining ourselves first to the forum, properly so called, and excluding for the present any other buildings which lie within its plan, the visitor, immediately upon passing through the entrance, would have found himself standing in an ambulatory, which stretched away to his left hand, and might be followed, without a break, completely round three sides of the entire edifice, making the circuit until it arrived on the southern side, at an exit corresponding to the doorway on the north ; any one walking along it, however, must pass by the great entrance, which was at the centre of the eastern side. The range of the shops extended the whole way along the inner part of this ambulatory, forming a sort of bazaar, except on the south side, where the rooms were larger, and had other uses. Within the range of shops, again, was a second line of ambulatories, enclosing on three sides the great central court or quadrangle of the forum. The general plan may, therefore, be described as a rectangular court, encompassed round three of its sides by symmetrical ranges of not very lofty buildings, which contained a double row of ambula- tories, having between their lines a series of chambers, used for shops or for public business. The fourth side of the central court was formed by the side wall of the basilica, which extended its whole length. The range of rooms lying between the double range of ambulatories, on the south side, was not used for shops, but for the offices of the public departments, to which there would be perpetual resort out of the forum. These rooms are more stately in size, and were probably loftier than the shops ; they also are only five in number, and are distinguished, by their arrangement, as a group constructed for an especial purpose. The central and the two end rooms (all alike in size) are rectangular, but those on each side of the central room have semi-circular ends, implying that they were built for the THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 143 reception of boards or committees, with a president and assessors. In this group of public offices the business of the redile, quaestor, and the revenue was carried on. The inner ambulatories at each side opened into the basilica, and there was most likely also an entrance to it from the central court. Passing now, therefore, out of the forum proper into the basilica, the first particular which at once arrests the attention is its magnitude. Including the two tribunals, which face each other at the extreme ends, this basilica extended entirely across the forum. Its total length consequently, measuring from the outside of its north end to the outside of its south end, was not less than 276 ft.; or, omitting the tribunals altogether, the central space was about 230 ft. long by 60 ft. wide. This, however, by no means fills up the plan between the wide party wall next the forum and the west exterior wall. All along the whole west side of the basilica were spacious chambers (to certain of which uses have been assigned from the articles found within them), that at the centre being un- equivocally the curia, or principal hall of council. This latter was quite open to the basilica along its entire front, was always a lofty room, and at Silchester was ascended by two steps ; the back of it was formed by a wide shallow semi- circle, so as to accommodate a large council board, and it was lined with a dado of white Italian marble sawn in thin slabs, and secured by small iron clamps. The largest room, however, along this range was a great apartment, 60 ft. long, which occupied the northern end, and to which, from the connection Vitruvius mentions between merchants and basilicas, the name of the Hall of Merchants has been assigned. It must not be forgotten that of the spacious chambers nothing remains but the outline of their several floors. To revert to the great basilica itself, it might with propriety be described as consisting really of two courts, placed end to end. No septum or division, nor any indica- 144 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN tion whatever of one, has been discovered, but the dimen- sions (that is to say, the length as compared with the breadth) almost indicate that such was the purpose of its original designer. A Roman basilica was Jbuilt upon such a plan that, its iiave or central area (which was very lofty) had on either hand an aisle in two stories. The lower story of the aisle was formed by a colonnade of large pillars, and the upper by a gallery behiridCa parapet, having along its front a range of smaller pillar s, ;; which stood symmetrically over the large ones. The colonnade below had thus to support an enormous weight, and it was usual to give strength and firmness to the bases of the columns by placing them upon a massive substructural wall, which wall, built beneath the floor of the basilica, kept all the columns true to the level, and greatly aided them to bear the superincumbent pressure without sinking. At Silchester nave and aisles are obliterated, the splendid colonnade is represented by a few blocks of weather-worn shafts and by some fragments of well-wrought capitals ; but the massive substructural wall on one side of the basilica, which sup- ported its long range of pillars, remains embedded still in the ground, and is no less than 5 ft. wide. Of the corresponding wall, upon the oppposite side of the centre, not the slightest vestige has been recovered, though care- fully sought for. Portions of shafts of two sizes (as might be expected) lay about among the debris in the centre. The diameter of the largest was 3 ft., that of the smaller, 1 ft. 10 in. Parts of two bases have also been met with, one of them having the torus mouldings fairly marked still, but both being more or less defaced. Fragments of capitals of a very enriched style and excellent workmanship have also been discovered, but unfortunately no pieces of sculp- ture and only a few fragments of inscriptions have come to light. Much curious ironwork has been from time THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 145 to time found in the forum, amongst other things, the keys of the shops in the ambulatories, the styli with which the tradesmen kept their accounts, door-hinges (one especially, which appears to be made to keep a door closed by a spring at the back), snap-lock bolts, rings in pairs for the handles of double doors, nails of every size and shape. A small iron axe, knife-blades of various sizes, the hooks of the butchers' steel-yards found in the shops of the butchers, and the blade of an oyster-knife in the fishmonger's. The bronze articles consist principally of fibulae of various patterns — small armlets, pieces of a chain-bracelet with a Fig. 49. — Roman Pottery from Castor (Durobrivoe). (Wright.) Fig. 50. — Roman Pottery from Upchurch. (Wright. ) snap, some playthings, such as a toy-anchor and tiny game- cock, a quaint little long-legged horse, meant apparently to rock by balancing on a small sphere of metal (though none now exists), a tiny axe (probably one of a set of pendent ornaments), a scale-bottom, some very small hand-bells, toilette implements and studs of curiously modern shape. Besides the shops incidentally mentioned here in the last chapter, the visitor would probably find one or more devoted to the sale of the various fictile wares made or im- ported by the Romans. Of pottery, two kinds appear to have been made in this country, that of Upchurch on the K 146 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN Medway, which was of a blue-black colour and hard in texture, and that called Durobrivian, from its place of manufacture (Durobrivse, or Castor in Northamptonshire). This was of a superior character to the other ware, being better designed and often ornamented in white relief with hunting scenes and other groups of figures or animals. Its colour was generally bluish or slaty, though vases of a dark copper hue have also been found. The potteries of this district must have been very numerous, since they are said to have extended for twenty miles along the river Nen, Fig. 51.— Samian Pottery. (Wright.) and to have employed at least 2000 men. A still more beautiful form of pottery found in quantities in Britain was the Samian ware. This does not appear to have been made in this country but was imported from abroad, is of a fine red colour and has a highly polished surface. It was evidently much valued by its possessors, for we find pieces which have been accidentally broken and afterwards mended with rivets, just as a valuable piece of porcelain might be treated to-day. This ware is ornamented with raised patterns representing trees, animals, hunting and mythological scenes. Of one or other of these kinds of pottery the most varied THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 147 articles might be purchased, from a baby's bottle, for such an article has been found at Colchester, to large and beautiful bowls and dishes. Terra-cotta statuettes manufactured at Richborough, glass cups, bowls and beads, would perhaps have been found in the same shop. Another store which the traveller might visit was that of the local apothecary. The elaborate surgical instruments, some of them so strikingly like those still in use, which have been discovered at Pompeii, have not as yet been met with in Britain, though a surgical lancet has been found at Uriconium. At several places, however, stamps have been found which were used by oculists to mark the wax on the tops of their pots of Fig. 52. — Oculist's Stamp. The inscription is for an ointment — " Ad Cicatrices et Aspritudines " — for scars and roughnesses. (Scot. Ant. Mus.) ointment. One of these, discovered also at Uriconium, betrays the same touching belief in the efficacy of his remedy to cure all ills that marks the patent medicine man of our own time. It is circular and bears an inscription, which, translated reads : " The dialibanum (or eye-salve) of Tiberius Claudius, the physician, for all complaints of the eyes, to be used with eggs." Another found at Bath belonged to a physician called Titus Junianus, and bore a different inscription on each of its four sides, so as to be used for the stamping of pots of ointment of various qualities. The first of these seems to have been employed in cases of cataract, the second is a cerusomae- 148 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN linum, or golden ointment, the third probably an astringent eye lotion made of galls or some part of the oak, and the fourth is more doubtful in its meaning, but is said to be " delicta a medicis," or as we should now put it, "recom- mended by the faculty." Passing to another part of the city the visitor would probably be anxious to inspect the baths, so essential a feature of every Roman town. So devoted were the Romans to their baths that il is said that there were at one time as many as 850 of these establishments in the city of Rome, and that some of them were capable of accommodating several thousand bathers. The Roman bath closely resembled the Turkish bath of to-day, which is indeed its lineal descendant. The arrangement of such a bath is sufficiently well known to render any descrip- tion of its ancient representative unnecessary, so that it will suffice to say that in addition to the processes with which we are familiar the bather was oiled all over in the apody- terium, a large chamber where he left his clothes, and that an additional room, called the sphaeristerium, was provided in which games were played and athletic exercises performed. One of the most celebrated of the Romano-British baths is that at Bath, a place long noted for its constant supply of hot water, charged with salts of great benefit in gouty ailments. The Britons, who appear to have known these waters before the coming of the Romans, had placed them under the patronage of one of their goddesses named Sul. This personage was equated by the Romans with Minerva, and altars dedicated to the goddess under the double name, " Dese Suliminervae," have been found at Bath. Large portions of the Roman baths have been uncovered, including an oblong bath with steps leading down into it, on which the bathers could sit, which measured &$ ft. by 30 ft., and a circular bath 25 ft. in diameter. At Silchester extensive baths have also been exposed, no less than sixteen THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 149 150 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN chambers having been laid bare. Amongst these are the prsefurnium, or furnace, where the heat for the sweating- rooms and water was obtained, chambers with hypocausts beneath them, a large apodyterium, and a swimming-bath. The modern visitor to any town cannot be said to have fully explored it until he has seen its principal churches, and our traveller would find numerous temples in any city which he visited, though few traces of such now exist. We know, however, from history that there was a temple to Claudius at Camulodunum (Colchester), and an inscription com- memorates the building of another to Neptune and Minerva at Regnum (Chichester). The remains of a temple to Suliminerva at Bath are of a debased Corinthian style of architecture, and others have been discovered at Caerleon, Silchester and elsewhere. Various inscriptions which have been discovered tell us of the foundation or restoration of temples which have now disappeared. Besides this there are numerous altars with inscriptions dedicating them to Roman or British divinities, such as that discovered at Tarraby on the Roman wall, the inscription of which when translated reads : " The second sacred Augustan Legion, under the charge of ^Elianus, Commander-in-Chief of the Second Legion, Oppius Felix being his Deputy Lieutenant, dedicate this altar to Mars, the great local Deity ; and took care to have it set up." Two others found at Chester are dedicated respectively to " Nymphis et Fontibus " (the nymphs and fountains) and " Genio loci " (the genius of the place). Perhaps one of the most interesting buildings, however, of a religious character, is the early Christian basilica recently discovered at Silchester. This small edifice stood east and west, and consisted of a central portion 29 \ ft. long and 10 ft. wide, with a semicircular apse at the west end. North and south of this were two narrow aisles only 5 ft. wide, terminating westwards in some- what wider chambers or quasi-transepts ; the northern of these THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 151 was cut off from the aisle by a thin partition wall. The eastern end of the building was covered by a porch, extend- ing the whole width of the three main divisions. The central division retains considerable portions of its floor of coarse red-tile tessarae, or cubes, with, just in front of the apse, a panel 5 ft. square of finer mosaic. The design of this panel consists mainly of four squares filled with black and white checkers, around which is a border of red and black tessarae with an outer edging of white. " It is generally assumed," says the account by Mr. St. John Hope, from which the above facts have been extracted, " that in a church like this, with the altar at the west end instead of the east,* the celebrant stood during Mass behind the altar and facing eastwards, this eastward position being the essential thing, and not the position of the altar in the building. The clergy were arranged in a semicircle around the apse, behind the celebrant, and the deacons stood in front and on either side. The choir of singers occupied the western part of the nave. " The state here of the red tesselation of the nave and apse raises, however, some unexpected difficulties. In the first place, there is so little room between the mosaic panel and the apse wall that there cannot have been any seat here for the clergy. In the next place, the floor of the apse, which extends right up to the wall, not only shows no signs of wear, but the edges of the tessarae are so sharp that it is quite certain that they cannot have been walked upon for even a very short period. The mosaic panel is also not worn at all. East of the panel, on the other hand, the red tessarae are considerably worn, and those on each side also show * There can be no reasonable doubt that the altar stood upon the panel of fine mosaic in front of the apse, and that it was at first a wooden table. Some small patches of pink cement upon the surface of the mosaic seem, however, to show that the wooden altar was replaced at a later time by a more substantial one in stone or marble. 152 LIFE IN EARLY BRITAIN signs of wear. The eastern position of the celebrant was so universally the custom of the Church that the floor ought certainly to show traces of wear on the west side of the altar, but this it does not, and the conclusion therefore seems inevitable that the apse floor had been relaid just before the destruction of the building (which is unlikely), or that the tessarse were effectually protected by being con- stantly covered by a mat or carpet. " To the east of the church is a tile foundation about 4 ft. square. This is clearly the place of the labrum, or laver, in which the faithful used to wash their hands and faces before entering the church, and the shallow pit in front was pro- bably covered by a pierced stone, and served to carry off the waste water. The water itself could • be obtained from the well west of the church, to which, as there are no other buildings near, it seems to have belonged." It is probable that in many of the cities the traveller might have found a theatre, but only in one, Verulamium, or St. Albans, have any remains of. such a building been dis- covered. This theatre was a little over 190 ft. in diameter. Its two outer walls were on the plan of a Greek theatre, comprising 240 degrees of a circle, and between them was a corridor 9 ft. wide. This was not continuous all round, but was interrupted by stairs and walls. The stage was 46 ft. long and 8 ft. 9 in. deep. At its east side was a room with a coarse tesselated pavement, which was set apart for the players — in fact, the green room. The walls were painted in fresco after the manner customary to such buildings, and when discovered the colours were quite fresh. In Silchester a range of buildings has been discovered, which has been conjecturally called the cavalry barracks. Whether such was its real purpose or not, there can be no doubt that these large cities must have been provided with accommodation for the soldiers stationed in them. From THE ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN 153 w in *± -m <*j .JJ flJ OJ £0 b 3 a a -c .a ^ o +-> . H m fl oi rf - 2 ts I ■ a I - gj 3 a ^j > a 3 ^ « s ^ W < H <* ~ r. jj D — '. m e o « 3?> s ■ _j oj ^ T3 h4 OJ £, _ £ -d 'S nd g O J3 S *s 3 S 2 g -£- rt ft ^ rt ^ w ■£ <-< § S^ 8.3 .§ w o> rt 775 -3 u (-< rt 3 ■£ *? •" " (U 3 3 >-, O " 5 o ?s ft • S a « ^ 2 .a g x : a 3 m ■§ 5J.S ; 8 & S, 1 H I^ 3°i W w a <" O 3 j_, . 3 t/i u r; ° s b ■>-' s ^ S & ft O r^ ^ « .Q 3 - rt Co. London &■» Edinburgh W 95 ryuu N v.t V