Considered in relation to the rest of England, the Cotswold Long Barrows form a distinct group, as may be seen from the map. Within this group there are two regions where they are more thickly set: (a) the Swell region; (b) the Avening region.

The broken condition of the bones in these Cotswold Long Barrows is, however, such as to suggest that mere re-burial is not by itself a sufficient explanation. The fractures are often such as would require considerable force; and the fact that different parts of the same bone are found some distance apart proves that the fracture cannot have been caused by any collapse of the superstructure. Moreover the same phenomena have been observed in unrifled and perfect chambers. The period of temporary burial would not have been sufficient to reduce the bones to a friable, mineralised condition, which requires centuries of inhumation. The breaking up of the bones would seem therefore, to have been intentional, and was perhaps of a ritual character. What this ritual was, or what beliefs lay behind the custom of secondary burial we do not know, and we cannot expect to find out by excavation. For an explanation we must look to the accounts of anthropologists who have actually observed this custom being carried out.

It has been suggested that the burial chambers in these Cotswold Long Barrows were modelled upon stone huts used by their builders for habitation. Common sense tells us that people who could build as well as they could would not build only tombs. But not a single one of these hypothetical dwellings has survived in this region; and we have therefore no direct evidence. True, a "round underground hut, formed of dry walling" is said to have existed in the "immediate vicinity" of the Long Barrow called Lamborough Banks (No. 34), in 1865, but for this single instance we have only the authority of the Rev. S. Lysons, whose book, Our British Ancestors, does not inspire confidence.¹ No traces of it now survive, if it ever existed. Canon Greenwell discussed the possibility of his Swell 317 (round) being a hut, and concluded, quite rightly as I think, that it was a burial chamber.

Note 1. His derivation of Hetty Pegier's Tump from two Hebrew words, i.e., Hete, meaning "heat, fire, burning," and "peleg" meaning "distribution," will give some idea of the character of his work. "As far as we can make out any meaning at all from his book, English is Welsh and Welsh is Hebrew," wrote Professor Freeman in a most amusing notice of it (Saturday Review, Nov. 25th, 1865).

The almost complete absence of habitations belonging to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages in England is a most puzzling fact. People who made Long Barrows must have had some form of permanent settlement; yet neither here, nor as we shall see, in Wessex, have any traces whatever been found.¹ Their absence in Wessex is the more strange; for we can hardly regard Avebury and Stonehenge as the work of wandering shepherds.

Note 1. Since this was written some traces have been found in Wiltshire; but full investigation is now taking place.

Nothing that has been found with the primary interments of the Cotswold Long Barrows is inconsistent with the hypothesis that they belong to the late Neolithic Period. No trace of metal and no metal object has ever been found. The discovery of leaf-shaped arrowheads at Notgrove (41), West Tump (52) and Rodmarton (56) is in agreement with Thurnam's attribution^; of this type to the Long Barrow period; no barbed and tanged arrowhead has ever, in this country, been found in a Long Barrow. We are not helped much by the discovery of bone implements at Bown Hill (15), Pole's Wood East (44) and Belas Knap (12); their value is due rather to the paucity of Long Barrow types than to any intrinsic merit. The two beads from Eyford (24)§ and Notgrove (41) respectively, are new since Thurnam's classic article, and they are both likely to prove valuable for purposes of dating.

Pottery. Most of the pottery found in the Gloucestershire Long Barrows is so fragmentary that it is of little use for comparative purposes; moreover most of it has disappeared. The fragment from Nympsfield appCErs to have borne the maggot pattern usually associated with round-bottomed bowls.¹ That from Gatcombe Lodge may have been similarly ornamented; the fragment illustrated in Lysons' letter certainly had a herring-bone device upon it. The "debris of a vessel of very coarse pottery, nearly black" found in the intact northern chamber at Rodmarton (56) was regarded by Thurnam as "the most important find of pottery yet made in the Chambered Long Barrows of this district." It has now been lost; at any rate its present whereabouts are unknown²; but Thurnam had seen it and recorded that it was of identical fabric with that found in the Long Barrow at Norton Bavant, Wilts, J now in the British Museum. A new feature is presented by the flat "bead-rim" of a fragment from Notgrove. (See p. 117).

Note 1. See Mr. R. A. Smith's article in Arch lxii.

Note 2. If it exists it is probably with the rest of Lysons' collection, wherever that may be.

Note 3. Figured in Arch, xlii., p. 195, fig. 4. It should be noted that Thurnam, who always chose his words carefully, compares the fabric, not the shape, of the two vessels.

The most important (because the most perfect) piece of Neolithic pottery from the Cotswolds is the vessel¹ found at the eastern end of Pole's Wood South (45). It was not associated with an interment, but "was found just over the facing of the north 'horn,' near to its eastern extremity, and not much below the present surface of the mound." (Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 523). Mr. R. A. Smith describes it as "4 inches high, the ware pinkish brown, fairly thin and hard, with a fair proportion of grit; and the ornamentation consists of curving but irregular groups of lines made with a toothed stick. Though the ware is comparatively thin, and the bottom flat, the profile recalls that of the Neolithic bowls, and is distinct from any recognised Bronze Age type." (Arch. Ixii, 347, fig. 14). It will be seen from the drawing (reproduced here, by kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries, on p. 128), that the bottom, though less rounded than that of the vessels from Peterborough and Mortlake, is hardly flat; it would be more correct to describe it as "rounded."

Note 1. Now in the British Museum, Wall-case 18.

In the Royce Collection at Stow-on-the-Wold is a large piece of a small plain round-bottomed vessel with straight unmoulded lip. It has no label; but its paste has the characteristic admixture of pounded fossil shell noted by Thurnam as characteristic of Neolithic pottery in certain districts. It was probably found in one of the Long Barrows in the Swell district excavated by Royce; but in the absence of any label its value is slight.

Roman Rifling. The fact that the Romans rifled barrows has long been known. The evidence from this region is confirmatory. The finds consist of (i) Bown Hill [coin of Germanicus]; (2) Hetty Pegler's Tump [coins of the "three sons of Constantine"]; (3) Randwick [Roman horse-shoe and potsherds]; (4) Windmill Tump, Rodmarton [coin of Claudius Gothicus]; (5) Hoar Stone, Enstone [Roman pottery]¹. In all these barrows the position in which the Roman remains were found proved that the mound had been dug into during the Roman occupation.

In several of the Long Barrows secondary burials of the Saxon period have been found in the upper part of the mound or cairn. There would seem to be no object in making more than a passing reference here to this practice, since its occurrence is noted in the detailed descriptions, and it seems to have little bearing on our subject.

Note 1. See also Pen-y-Wyrlod (7), Brecknockshire.

A third instance of a burial-cist of the Bronze Age was described by Canon Greenwell (Arch. Lir, 70). It was in a barrow at Snowshill in the north of Gloucestershire. "At the centre, and partly sunk below the level of the natural surface, was a cist formed of four slabs of stone set on edge, with a single stone for a cover. It was 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2| feet deep. It contained the much decayed skeleton of, presumably, a man, with whom were associated two bronze daggers, a bronze pin, and a perforated axe-hammer of stone." (Illustrated there in Figs. 31 - 34). These objects all belong to the end of what may be called the knife-dagger period. One of the daggers had a socket of the Arreton type. It will be observed that all resemblance to a chamber has vanished, the cist being of the type commonly found throughout Britain during the Early Bronze Age.¹

Note 1. The exact range in time of this type of cist is uncertain. It was in common use during the beaker period, and occurs even in certain late Long Barrows; and it seems to have lasted on until the Early Iron Age in some districts. It was, however, essentially a Bronze Age, not a Neolithic, type in this country.

A few observations on structure may be added to those in the introduction to the first part. Some of them have been suggested by helpful criticisms of the earlier publication, particularly those of Dr. Ashby and Mr. J. G. Wood, though it is only right to add that the points raised by them were not overlooked when I visited the sites in 1 920-1.

An actual instance of "mixed" structure occurs at Hetty Pegler's Tump, Uley. Here, out of the seventeen uprights forming the passage and chambers, eight directly support the capstones, and the remaining nine are separated therefrom by corbelling. The Rev. R. Jowett Burton of Chalford, to whom I am indebted for these observations, adds: "The stones between the uprights and capstones are wedges to fill in the uneven top of the upright." A similar mixture occurs in the north chamber at Gatcombe Lodge, where all except one upright are separated from the single huge capstone by corbelling. At Rodmarton there is walling or corbelling between all the uprights and capstones in both the north and south chambers. If then, we assume corbelling to be evidence of lateness of date, Rodmarton will be later than Uley, and Gatcombe Lodge will be intermediate. This conclusion is in agreement with the argument from plan set out in Professional Paper, No. 6, p. 4, where priority is postulated for the true (Uley) over the false (Rodmarton) passage-grave type.

"Dolmens" which are at present free-standing, often give an impression of greater height and size than those which are covered up. That this impression is misleading can be proved by measurements. The available material has been given wherever possible, in the text. In some instances, however, the height of uprights is less than it should be because the debris of excavation or natural silting from the mound has covered their bases.

Dry Walling and Uprights. It is natural to suppose that dry walling gradually superseded uprights, just as the corbelled arch may have superseded the capstone. But there is no proof that it did so. Ortholithic building was in use during the Bronze Age, though hardly on a megalithic scale, and dry walling replaced the usual upright slabs in some of the chambers at Notgrove- a barrow of the true passage-grave type - and at Belas Knap. When once dry walling had been invented and used to fill the interstices between the uprights themselves and between these and the capstone, the use of upright slabs became unnecessary, but it continued.

The Presence of Suitable Stone. That the presence or absence of suitable stone had no influence upon the distribution of Long Barrows is certain. Suitable stone occurs in Gloucestershire west of the Severn, and in a great many other parts of Sheet 8; but Long Barrows are absent. On the other hand, when they could not get suitable stone, they made a wooden chamber and an earthen mound, as we shall see when we come to deal with Sheet 1 1 . There are, in fact, more Long Barrows of this earthen kind than of the stone-chambered type. Lastly, we may refer under this heading to a curious fact which remains to be explained. The distribution of Long Barrows is not a complete guide to the distribution of population during the Long Barrow period. For there were settlements in that huge eastern region where Long Barrows are absent - probably on the banks of the Thames at Wallingford, Hedsor and Mortlake, and certainly on the shore of the Fens at Peterborough. The discovery of neolithic pottery at all these places makes it reasonable to infer settlement there. Moreover, the people used exactly the same kind of round-bottomed pottery as that which was found in the West Kennet Long Barrow and, if we may judge from a single lost fragment badly drawn, in the Nympsfield Long Barrow. Why did they not make Long Barrows ?

Orientation. With one exception- Belas Knap- the "business end" of the Long Barrows within this area is to the east, north-east, or south-east. It is also invariably higher and broader than the other end.

Ditches. There is no evidence for the presence of side-ditches accompanying any of the barrows in this area, except the two in Berkshire - Wayland's Smithy [Map] and Churn - which belong properly to the Wessex series where such ditches are the rule. In some of the Gloucestershire instances which occur on apparently virgin down - Selsley Tumps, Coberley and Lodge Park, for instance - this absence of ditches appears to be certainly an original feature and not due to subsequent silting up. This is a very natural result of the geological conditions. To get the necessary materials for the mound or cairn deep excavation was unnecessary. Shallow surface clearance of the upper disintegrated oolitic layers was enough. It was a waste of time to attempt quarrying the deeper, unweakened strata. In chalk districts, on the other hand, not only is the rock itself much softer, but its hardness does not increase in the same proportion as lower strata are reached. It gets more compact, of course, but is still workable with rude implements - as the great ditch at Avebury proves.

Working, Sculpture. With the possible exception of the shelf on one of the uprights at Belas Knap, q.v., there is no proof of the working of the stones composing these Long Barrows. Nor have cup-and-ring marks been observed anywhere in this area. It is also not unlikely that the port-hole¹ stones at Belas Knap may have been artificially chipped in some cases; but this is conjectural. There is no certain means of distinguishing artificially chipped oolite from that which has been chipped or broken by natural means. Since, however, some of the holed stones of other regions have certainly been produced artificially, there seems no reason to suppose that some of the Cotswold examples may not have been intentionally chipped. The point is really hardly worth discussing.

Note 1. For further information about these port-holes see my O. S. Professional Paper No, 6, p. 5 and note on p. 73 of this book (under Belas Knap).

How comes it that we find spread over a large part of the Old World so many symbols of a common cult ? The symbols are a little different in details in each region, but there is sufficient resemblance to prove an ultimate community of origin. Let us, following anthropological methods, take one instance from the modern world, and, projecting ourselves as far into the future as before into the past, imagine the archaeologist of about A.D. 4844 reviewing the results of excavation. He finds, in the Old World, in the Early Scientific Period, the survivals of three main cults, agreeing (so far as he can judge from church-plans and the discovery of "cult objects") in general outlines, but differing in details. He argues from this a religion that was once common and undivided and that originated at one time and in one place. As time went on, this religion, he will reason, developed local peculiarities - evolved in fact, like any other living organism - until finally there appeared little in common between each, except certain fundamental facts. Their relations are found to be those of distant cousins descended from a common ancestor. That was, in my opinion, exactly the relation between the megalithic cults of, say, England, Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. Each branch - or cult-region - may have been influenced to some extent by the other, through trade or migration; but, generally speaking, each evolved along independent lines from a common origin to a different conclusion.

Strictly speaking, the human remains should be dealt with under this heading. I do not, however, propose to do so, as I am not competent to discuss the anatomical side of the evidence. I shall merely call attention to two facts (i) the confirmation of Thurnam's dictum (based of course, on some of the evidence here recited); (3) the remarkable evidence of violent deaths provided by the skulls from Belas Knap. It is strange that Thurnam did not refer to this; to my mind the evidence is clear and convincing. The skulls have not all been described, and should most certainly be examined by an expert, preferably a police surgeon. (A summary of different views on "Neolithic Man" with full references, will be found in Rice Holmes' Ancient Britain (1907) pp. 393-409).

The animals included in the primary burials are ox (bos longifrons and primigenius) sheep, pig, goat, horse, dog, red deer, roe deer (I give the English names, as in most cases the Latin name of the species was not given in the original account). The evidence for the presence of the horse is clear, and I must take this opportunity of calling attention to the fact, since in a previous work (Man and His Past, 1920, p. 125) I questioned the fact.

The pig seems to have played an important part in the life of these times. In several instances the lower jaw of a pig was found in close association with primary interments - in Hetty Pegler's Tump (31), Cow Common (21), Pole's Wood South (45), and perhaps at Randwick (47). In the first barrow a perforated boar's tusk was found.

No evidence of the contemporary neolithic flora has been obtained from the Long Barrows of the district.

Both Stone Circles and Long Barrows had a religious character, and it is one of the objects of these researches to discover evidence of the beliefs and ritual of their makers. It is an exceedingly difficult task; and here, for once, excavation helps us little. The best clues are in the customs and traditions which have been recorded about individual monuments. But the passing of three or four thousand years and the disturbing influence of at least five invasions¹ have both wrought much havoc.

Note 1. See Note p. 44.

Another connecting link with the south is in the name Gwal-y-filiast - the Greyhound's Lair. Are we to see in this a connection with the Dog of Death¹, whose memory is not yet extinct in Devon and Cornwall ? Our present hold upon him is so slight that we must postpone further dealings with him until that region is investigated.

Note 1. See Colonel de Guerin, op. cit., p. 36.

Links with the south and east are provided by the name "giant" associated with megalithic monuments. Only one instance of this association occurs in this region, but there must be many more hidden in tithe maps and in the memories of a few countrymen of the old sort. Near Bisley are two upright slabs, the remains of a Long Barrow, called the Giant's Stones, and the field adjoining that in which they stand is called Giant's Ground. The Tombe dei Giganti of Sardinia, which are nothing but chambered Long Barrows of a particular type, are instances from the south; and in the east we find the Hunenbedden and Jasttestuer of Holland and Denmark. The significance of the term is difficult to determine; how old is it ? We know that in England it has a respectable antiquity, for Geoffrey of Monmouth records the old name of Stonehenge as being "chorea gigantum" ("chorea" there is probably a Latinization of "gorsedd.") This very natural attribution of huge oblong graves and the like to huge men is not likely to have been made by the people who set them up. It is more likely that it dates from a time when the megalithic religion- if one may be so bold as to speak of such - was already fading away.

A similarly late origin may be given to the tale about Wayland's Smithy and the invisible blacksmith. It is a tale of the Iron Age, not of the Stone Age. The presence of an important Iron Age camp on Uffington Hill close by, and of pits of the same period immediately to the north east, is quite sufficient to account for the legend. A similar tale is said to have been recorded by Pytheas about Stromboli, the Forge of Vulcan [Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 761; Schol. Callim. Hymn. Dian. 47; references quoted by Sir Clements Markham in Geographical Journal, vol. i (June, 1893), p. 523, where an excellent account of Pytheas' voyage and discovery of Britain in the 4th century B.C. is given].

The Long Stone at Minchinhampton provides us with yet another clue to ancient practices; it is said that ricketty children were passed through the hole in it to cure them. The existing hole is much too small to allow of this, but the custom may have prevailed when the burial chamber was more perfect. Speaking of La Pierre Percee in Guernsey, Colonel de Guerin says¹:- "Pierced megaliths were considered to possess medical virtues, and in France have frequently been Christianised by being dedicated to some saint. They are resorted to even at the present in many parts by sufferers from various maladies, who either rub the part affected against the stone, or pass the diseased limb through the hole in the hopes of cure." There is no reason to suppose that the hole in the Long Stone is artificial, and it is certainly not analogous to the perforated stones found in certain burial-chambers. It is however, brought into direct connection with them by this custom.²

Note 1. Op. cit., p. 34.

Note 2. For perforated stones in Scotland, see D. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals, 1863, pp. 142-146; in Cornwall, R. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 1881, pp. 171, 299. other instances in Folk Memory, by W. Johnson (Oxford 1908), pp. 127-8.

There is a widespread popular idea that "megalithic" stones of all kinds are so firmly fixed in the ground that they cannot be moved; that they extend as far below the ground as they do above, or further; and that attempts to move them in the past have failed completely, the tackle having broken at the first pull, or have been followed by evident signs of supernatural wrath. I was told that the Hoar Stone at Swell was thus firmly fixed, ten feet below the ground. A similar legend is attached to the Whispering Knights, and we shall come across it again in other regions. The "excavation" of Ty Illtyd in the 17th century is said to have been discouraged by thunder and lightning, a very common tale which I have often heard told of round barrows in Wessex. Of course all these stories are devoid of any basis in fact. The ease with which the stones can be moved, and have in many cases been moved, will be clear to readers of the following notes. Nothing indeed, is so strange as the very shallow depth of the holes in which the stones usually stand (those of Avebury are often barely a foot or two in the ground). There is also an idea that it brings bad luck to move them, an idea which is of course, incompatible with the stories of immovability. One cannot help wondering whether there may not linger in these tales some dim remembrance of the great hauling and pulling which must have taken place when the monuments were erected. There is a suggestive persistence in the accounts of powerful teams of horses harnessed to uproot the stones; and may not the primitive ropes have often given way under the strain ?

Stories of underground passages are told of the barrows at Lodge Park and Lamborough Banks. The significance of these is doubtful.

I was told that soldiers were thought to be buried in the Long Barrow at Blackquarries Hill. This- and the equivalent of "men killed in battle is the usual belief of the origin of nearly all barrows. It seems to be a natural explanation invented to account for burials not in consecrated ground. The countryman cannot imagine a time when his village church was not; and it was only in times of war that men would be buried in so unorthodox a place.

A curious story is attached to the field next (on the north) to that in which Woodbarrow is situated. It is called Royal Oak, and I was told by an old countryman (Frederic Norman, of Chedworth) that the name was applied to an oak in the adjacent wood which broke into leaf "a fortnight afore the rest." The story may have no connection with the barrow, but I cannot help thinking that it has.

It is difficult to see any other than the obvious meaning in the rhyme relating to the King Stone at Rollright:-

If Long Compton thou canst see¹

Then King of England shalt thou be.

This is now possible, since the Long Barrow which obstructs the view northwards has had its height reduced by ploughing. But the King Stone is not yet King of England.

A parallel may be cited from not far off in Northamptonshire. Speaking of the tradition of a battle between Saxons and Danes at Danesmore, Northants, Hamper says:-¹ "the people there have a notable rhime, which they make the Danes to say upon the point of battle.'Tis this:-

If we can Padwell overgoe

And Horestone we can see,

Then Lords of England we shall be.

Padwell is a noted flush spring in Edgcote grounds; Horestone, a famous old stone on the borders of Warwickshire in Wardlinton field (co. Oxon)."

Note 1. Arch. XXV, 54, quoting "Morton, p. 542."

A similar type of story is quoted in Leland's Collectanea (Hearne, 1774, vol. 3, p. 91):- The ancient ford of Rithpencarn "ad quod publica strata ducebat" across the Nant-pentarn near Newport, Monmouth; "de quo Merlinus Sylvester mentionem faciens, in haec verba prorupit:- 'Cum fortem lentiginosum in dextrales Britones irruere videris, si Rithpencarn transierit, Cambriae vires noveris enervare.'"

The Folklore of the Rollright district has been so fully described by Sir Arthur Evans that I have decided, with his permission, to reprint verbatim that portion of his article (including footnotes) on the Rollright Stones.¹

Note 1. Folklore, Vol. vi, 1895, pp. 18-33.

"The Witch-Elder still watches over the victims of her magic. As to the exact position of the tree, however, the tradition is shifting. According to some accounts it used to stand in the field not far from the dolmen called the "Whispering Knights." Some say that it was near the circle, but was blown down not many years ago. Others say that it is be to found in the hedge by the road not far from the Kingstone, or further in the field beyond the mound, where an elder bush that stood by a large stone was some years since pointed out to a friend as "the Witch." As a matter of fact the elder still grows in luxuriant clumps along every hedgerow and wherever a waste patch is to be found in the country round. When the district was wilder the stones must have been surrounded by a dense elder thicket. Indeed the idea may well have grown up that Dame Elder had turned the King and his army into stone for molesting 'her ancient solitary reign.

"The proof that the elder is a witch is that it bleeds when it is cut. And with regard to this I came upon a remarkable tradition, which an old woman, the wife of a man of eighty, told me she had heard many years ago from her husband's mother. On Midsummer Eve, when the 'eldern tree' was in blossom, it was the custom for people to come up to the King-stone and stand in a circle. Then the 'eldern' was cut, and as it bled 'the King moved his head.'¹ It is to be observed that this breaking of the spell by blood-letting itself fits on to a very widespread superstition regarding witches, of which I found many surviving expressions in the neighbouring village of Long Compton. They say there that if you only draw her blood, 'be it but a pin's prick,' the witch loses all power for the time.

Note 1. This turning round of the King-stone is paralleled by many French legends, the favourite time being mid-day or at the sound of the Angelus.

"For the 'eldern-tree' to bleed it must be in blossom. The more sceptical spirits amongst the country people explain the matter by the catch, 'If you cut the elder with your hand on it, it will bleed,' but among the children at least the more literal belief in the bleeding elder has not died out. An old man of Little Rollright told me that some years ago he was up by the stones and a ploughboy asked him whether it was really true that the elder-tree bled if it was cut. . 'Lend me your knife,' said the old man, and forthwith stuck it into the bark. 'Won't you pull it out ?' said the boy. 'Pull it out yourself !' was the reply, but the boy was too scared to do so. It was only at last, as they were about to go home for the night, that the boy, fearful that he would lose his knife altogether, approached the tree 'tottering with fright and all of a tremble,' and snatching it out, rushed away without waiting to see whether the tree bled or not.

In these interesting superstitions we see traces of a time when the elder-tree was itself regarded as a supernatural being, a Tree-Goddess akin to the Dryads of old, before human witchcraft was called in to explain this survival of primitive animism. The idea of the sacred tree bleeding when injured is very widespread, and recalls the oak of Ceres described by Ovid¹:

"Cujus ut in trunco fecit manus impia vulnus

Hand aliter fluxit discussa cortice sanguis

Quam solet, ante aras ingens ubi victima taums

Concidit, abrupta cruor e cervice profundi."

Note 1. Met., vm., 743.

"The special superstitions attached to the elder are perhaps explained by the effects of drinks such as are prepared from its berries¹ and blossoms. We learn from one of Andersen's fairy tales that those who drink of elder-flower tea see the 'Elder Mother' (Hyldemoer) herself in their dreams, seated amidst her sweet-scented flowers and foliage. In Denmark the tree itself has been seen to move about in the twilight. In Nether-Saxony before undercutting an elder, it was usual to go down on bended knees and pray as follows: 'Dame Elder, give me some of thy wood, and I will give thee some of mine when it grows in the forest.'² In Ireland the elder is regarded as unholy. Of the early association of this tree with witchcraft in this country, a record is preserved in the canons of King Eadgar³, which speak of the 'vain practices that are carried on with elders.

Note 1. The blood-red berries themselves partly account for the lingering on of the superstitious belief in the quasi-human life of elder trees. In parts of Essex the dwarf-elder is called "Dane's blood."

Note 2. Arnkiel, i., 179. Thorpe, N. Myth, n, 168: "As I in my younger days have heard I'd seen." See on the Elder Cult, R. Perrott, "Gleanings of Legendary Mythology," in Arch. Comb., 1863, 226. In Sudermanland, Sweden, the juniper bleeds when cut. The belief in the magical virtues of elder-springs is widespread in England and elsewhere.

Note 3. Cap, i6. Thorpe, ii, 248.

"The fairies dance round the King-stone of nights. Will Hughes, a man of Long Compton, now dead, had actually seen them dancing round. 'They were little folk like girls to look at.' He often told a friend who related this to me about the fairies and what hours they danced. His widow, Betsy Hughes, whose mother had been murdered as a witch, and who is now between seventy and eighty, told me that when she was a girl and used to work in the hedgerows, she remembered a hole in the bank by the King-stone, from which it was said the fairies came out to dance at night. Many a time she and her playmates had placed a flat stone over the hole of an evening to keep the fairies in, but they always found it turned over next morning.

"Chips were taken from the King-stone 'for luck,' and by soldiers 'to be good for England in battle.' Betsy Hughes told me that her son, who had gone to India as a soldier, had taken a chip with him, 'but it brought him no luck, for he died of typhus.' A man told me that he had been offered as much as a pound for a chip at Faringdon Fair; and the Welsh drovers who used to trench the road with their cattle before the railway was made, used continually to be chipping off pieces, so that formerly the stone was much bigger than it is now.¹ A man at Great Rollright gave me a chip that he had kept in his house for years.

This is corroborated by a writer in Notes and Queries (1859, p. 393 ) who on visiting Rowldrich was informed by his local guide that the stones were daily diminishing "because people from Wales kept chipping off bits to keep the Devil off."

"Notwithstanding the prevalence of this practice there were many who held that to do an injury to the stones was fraught with danger. In Wales one of the most frequent punishments that falls upon those who thus transgress against the stones is the breaking down of the transgressor's waggon¹, and this belief still survives at Rowldrich. A ploughman informed me that one day a man who was driving along the road from Banbury swore to a friend who was with him that he would carry off a chip of the King-stone 'though his wheel locked.' He got down from his cart and chipped a piece off the stone, but when he tried to drive on he found that one wheel was locked in such a way that nothing he could do would make it go round again.

Note 1. Cf. Barnwell, "On some South Wales Cromlechs," Arch. Comb., 1872, p. 135.

"A curious kind of sanctity seems to linger about the spot. As one of my informants - a well-to-do farmer of the neighbourhood - was going along the road at the top of the hill one Good Friday, he met a labouring man that he knew, who stopped him and said, 'Where do you think I be going ? Why, I be a going to the King-stones, for there I shall be on holy ground.' The man who told me this said that 'Some think the place was consecrated ground in the old Romish days.' It appears, moreover, from a passage in Stukeley, that the oblong hollow by the King-stone was in old times a place of festal pilgrimage. Stukeley¹ relates that near the 'Archdruid's Barrow,' as he calls the mound, 'by that called the King-stone, is a square plot, oblong, formed on the turf. Hither on a certain day of the year the young men and maidens customarily meet and make merry with cakes and ale.' He himself suggests that 'this seems to be the remain of the very ancient festival here celebrated in memory of the interr'd for whom the long barrow and temple were made.' However this may be, it seems highly probable that the Midsummer's Eve gathering described to me by the old woman, when the blossoming elder was cut, and the merrymaking described by Dr. Stukeley, were one and the same festival.

Note 1. Abury, p. 13

"Similar stories of megaliths returning to the place whence they had been removed by impious hands are also rife in France. Thus a holy stone in Poitou carried away by the people of the district during the Revolution returned next day of itself. With reference to this M. Salomon Reinach¹ appositely compares the ancient legend of the Penates, who when transported from Lavinium to Alba returned to their own home.

Note 1. Op, dt., p. 344; Varro de lingua latina, v. 144.

"Perhaps, however, the most interesting feature in the Rollright folklore, so far as concerns the 'Whispering Knights,' is that the dolmen has become to the young girls of the neighbourhood a kind of primitive oracle. At least it has been so used within the memory of man. Old Betsy Hughes, of whom mention has already been made, informed me that years ago, at the time of the barley harvest, when they were often out till dusk in the fields near the 'Whispering Knights,' one of the girls would say to another 'Let us go and hear them whisper.' Then they would go to the stones and one at a time would put her ear to one of the crevices. But 'first one would laugh and then another,' and she herself never heard any whispering. Another old crone told me that the stones were thought to tell of the future. 'When I was a girl we used to go up at certain seasons to the 'Whispering Knights,' and climb up on to one of the stones to hear them whisper. Time and again I have heard them whisper - ^but perhaps, after all, it was only the wind.' Who that has stood on the wooded steep that overhangs the ruined sanctuary of Dordona, and has heard the breeze rustling through the prickly leaves of its immemorial oak-wood, will not understand this primitive impression ?

Whispering stones of the same kind are known in the Pyrenees¹; and in other parts of France megalithic blocks are known to sing or talk, like the Pierre qui chante of the Yonne, and the two menhirs known as Fistillerien on the Isle of Sein². It looks as if primitive oracles of this nature had once been widely diffused in the Celtic and Iberian lands.

Note 1. In the Glen of Larboust, Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 1877, pp. 241, 242, 244.

Note 2. S. Reinach, Les Monuments de pierre brute dans le langage et les croyances populaires." (Rev. Archéologique, 1893, pp. 337, 344).

"Some of the tales about Rollright appear already in i6th and 17th century writers. Camden's allusion has already been quoted. Stukeley¹ repeats Camden's story of the men turned into stone, etc., and says, 'This story the country people for some miles round are very fond of, and take it very ill if anyone doubts of it: nay, they are in danger of being stoned for their unbelief. They have likewise rhymes and sayings relating thereto.' Further on² he says, 'The people who live at Chippin Norton and all the country round our first described temple of Rowldrich affirm most constantly, and as surely believe it, that the stones composing this work are a king, his nobles, and Commons turned into stones. They quote an ancient proverb for it concerning that tali stone called the King-stone:

If Long Compton thou canst see,

Then King of England shalt thou be.

Note 1. Abury, p. 13.

Note 2. Abury, p. 83.

"Stukeley himself notices that 'the very same report remains at the Druid temple of Stanton Drew,' Somersetshire. 'This noble monument is vulgarly called the Weddings; and they say'tis a company at a nuptial solemnity thus petrify'd. In an orchard near the church is a cove [Map] consisting of three stones like that of the northern circle in Abury or that of Longstones; this they call the parson, the bride, and bridegroom. Other circles are said to be the company dancing; and a separate parcel of stones standing a little from the rest are call'd the fidlers, or the band of musick.'

"Stonehenge, regarded as the 'Giants' Dance,' 'Long Meg and her Daughters,' near Penrith, and 'The Nine Ladies' near Bakewell in Derbyshire, are other English examples of the same kind of tradition that at once suggest themselves. The stone alignments of Carnac and Ashdown are armies turned into stone. Classical parallels, such as the transformation into rocks of the Sidonian maids, companions of Melicertes¹, or of Niobe and her daughters, or biblical, such as Lot's wife turned into the pillar of salt, illustrate the same idea. But in the case of the megalithic blocks composing the stone circles of primeval days, this ever-recurring tradition of their having been originally human beings turned into stone is in all probability, in some sense, coeval with the monuments themselves.

Note 1. Ovid, Met.j IV, 549 seqq. Dr. Stukeley cites this parallel.

"For the best commentary on these traditions we have in fact only to turn to certain parts of our Indian dominions, where megalithic piles in every respect the counterparts to those erected in Britain in prehistoric times are set up by the native tribes to this day. In their beliefs the connexion between the erection of these great stone monuments and the cult of departed spirits is brought out at every step. In some cases the setting up of these stones is not a mere honorary act, but the stone itself in some mysterious way personifies the departed and absorbs, as it were, his ghost. The Khassias, for instance, a very wild jungle tribe of Bombay, set up a tall rough slab of stone near the house representing the deceased, to which they make daily oblations. In their eyes, then, it is the actual person, as it were, in a stony form. So too the dolmens are in some parts regarded as themselves the deified spirit of the departed, and thus as a demon or god.

"We have moreover an interesting trace of the former prevalence of such ideas in Western Europe in a passage of Aristotle referring to the sepulchral rites of the Iberians, the representatives of the older pre-Celtic population of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, from whom in a large measure the Celts themselves seem to have taken over their megalithic cult. Aristotle says¹ that the warlike Iberians set pointed stones round their graves, and that each of these stones placed round a warrior's grave represented a slain enemy.

Politics, III, 2.

"It is only by going back within the primitive circle of such ideas as these that we can hope to find the clue to the ancient lore which is still handed on by these Oxfordshire villagers. The recurring tradition of the baker who brings small loaves, one for each stone and then tries to count them- may it not go back to the times when offerings of small cakes and food offerings were still made as in India at the present day to such hoar-stones. The stones in this primitive belief had a being of their own - they might indeed be regarded, and often were regarded- as the stony dwelling places of souls that once were human. Could human kindness, then, refuse them such small offerings of food ? There, too, on the parched hill-top, how often might they pant for the water brooks below ! What more natural than that when the darkness of night threw over them its invisible mantle - at the hour when spells are broken - they too should snatch a momentary life and hasten down to quench the thirst of ages ?"

The present state of the Long Barrows is deplorable; and the future state of most of them will be still more so, unless measures are at once taken to preserve them. It is not enough to have scheduled some of them under the Ancient Monuments Act, excellent though that is. That protects them from their owners, but not from the casual visitor. To guard against the latter, only one really satisfactory method has been devised - an unclimbable iron railing. Unsightly though it is, it is yet no more so than the carved names of visitors or the remains of their cooking-places. That this destruction by trippers is really happening to-day was brought home to me at Belas Knap, where the capstone of the portal and once perfect wall - perhaps the oldest stone wall in England- which I saw on my first visit in 1920, had suffered irreparable damage when Mr. Herdman and I visited the barrow in 1922. We protect our ancient castles, and rightly, though they are relics of a regime that one might think better forgotten; but are we to allow the graves of our earliest ancestors to be desecrated without taking effective measures to preserve them? Surely these far older monuments deserve preferential treatment ! They are the oldest structures we have - far older than castle-mound or Roman road, older than hill-top camp or bronze age barrow, as old perhaps as Stonehenge itself.

NOTE. - The five invasions which affected the south of England are those of the Beaker-folk, the Celtic peoples, the Romans, the Saxons and the Normans. Not all of them were equally destructive of that continuity of country life which is essential for the survival of primitive ideas. The greatest breaks were caused probably by the Celtic invaders, and by the Saxons. It is in regions which have been least invaded, or more precisely where alien settlement has been rare - such as the so-called "Celtic fringe," - it is here that folk-lore is most abundant. Not the least of the difficulties of using folk-lore to reconstruct primitive religion is the difficulty of unstratifying the layers of tradition in a region like Wessex, where each invasion has left its deposit. Some go back no further than the Middle Ages; I suspect a mediaeval (or at any rate post-Roman) origin for those tales which are identical in trivial details and nomenclature and which are told of similarly named sites geographically distant from each other. The story attached to Hangman's Stones is of this type (See Notes and Queries 12 S., xi, 50-52). The stories of supernatural frustration of building probably go back no further than the Saxon period. Recently extinct cults, such as that of the stag-masked dance, may have a palaeolithic origin (See Trans. Preh. Soc. East Anglia, Vol. iii, 1921 , p. 457). But it is dangerous to generalise in the present state of our knowledge. The task of classifying folk-lore according to its origin is one for future investigators. It cannot profitably be undertaken until the main culture-periods and culture-circles have been determined. It is thus dependent upon the progress of prehistoric archaeology which (I say it in no disparaging sense) has only just begun to emerge from what, following Professor Sir Flinders Petrie, one might call its archaic period. (See his Revolutions in Civilization, Harper Bros., 3/6).