Archaic England

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Most spelling variants are retained. Punctuation is occasionally corrected, especially in the index and in footnotes, to maintain consistency.
Figures have been moved to before or after the paragraphs near which they appeared in the text. On occasion, the pagination shown here may be slightly disordered. Internal references to pages have been hyperlinked to the original page. Given the approximate placement of figures, the reader may need to scroll up or down a bit to find the figure.
A Transcriber’s Endnote at the end of this text contains more detailed information about corrections made.
AN ESSAY IN DECIPHERING PREHISTORY FROM MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS, EARTHWORKS, CUSTOMS, COINS, PLACE-NAMES, AND FAERIE SUPERSTITIONS
HAROLD BAYLEY
AUTHOR OF “THE SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY,” “A NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE,” “THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM,” ETC.
“One by one tiny fragments of testimony accumulate attesting such a survival and continuance of folk memory as few men of to-day have suspected.”—Johnson
LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 11 HENRIETTA STREET 1919
TO W. L. GROVES WHO HAS GREATLY AIDED ME
“Of all the many thousands of earthworks of various kinds to be found in England, those about which anything is known are very few, those of which there remains nothing more to be known scarcely exist. Each individual example is in itself a new problem in history, chronology, ethnology, and anthropology; within every one lie the hidden possibilities of a revolution in knowledge. We are proud of a history of nearly twenty centuries: we have the materials for a history which goes back beyond that time to centuries as yet undated. The testimony of records carries the tale back to a certain point: beyond that point is only the testimony of archæology, and of all the manifold branches of archæology none is so practicable, so promising, yet so little explored, as that which is concerned with earthworks. Within them lie hidden all the secrets of time before history begins, and by their means only can that history be put into writing: they are the back numbers of the island’s story, as yet unread, much less indexed.”—A. Hadrian Allcroft.