EARTHWORKS ON SALISBURY PLAIN.
Tumuli, or Barrows, are the most simple kind of sepulchral monument; they consist of a mound of earth or stones raised over the dead.
Sir Richard Colt Hoare thus classifies them in his “History of Wiltshire”:—
1. The Long Barrow. Differing considerably in their construction.
2. The Bowl Barrow. The most ordinary shape.
3. The Bell Barrow. This, from the elegance of its form, seems a refinement on the Bowl Barrow. They abound near Stonehenge.
4. Druid Barrow (1st class). I consider these tumuli were appropriated to the female tribes. The outward vallum with the ditch within is beautifully moulded, and in most instances found to contain small cups, small lance heads, amber, jet, and glass beads.
5. Druid Barrow (2nd class). In external form these resemble the preceding, but their circumference is not so large. The tumulus within rises to a point from the edge of the vallum.
6. Pond Barrow. They differ totally from all others, and resemble an excavation made for a pond. I can form no conjecture as to their use.
7. Twin Barrow. They are not very common, and, by being enclosed in a circle, seem to denote the interment of relations.
8. Cone Barrow. The only one I have seen is at Everley. The tumulus rises immediately from the ditch, and the apex is higher and more pointed.
9. Broad Barrow. Resembles the Bowl Barrow, but is higher and flatter at the top.
Mr. Edgar Barclay, in “Stonehenge,” says:—“The presence of barrows (near Stonehenge) would enable marriages to be celebrated on the spot. A feast at the family tomb was an opportunity for a young woman about to marry to be formally introduced to the domestic worship of the family she was about to enter. That feasts did occur at Stonehenge Barrows we have proofs. We find also that Irish Fairs in honour of the Sun God were held in proximity to extensive burial-places. The arrangement of the avenues, the placing of the cursus, the placing of the sun stone and slaughter stone, the break in the lintel circle, &c.: these characteristics point out to us the probable procedures at times of festival. The midsummer festival solemnized the holy espousals of the Sun God with the land.”
In “The Ruling Races of Pre-historic Times,” Mr. Hewitt says:—“The deer worshippers were the mixed race formed from the union of the sons of the mother-tree, the mother-bear and wolf, the lordly boar and the prolific sow, the mother-cow, the mother-mountain, and father firestone, the people who looked on the Sun God of the equinoxes and solstices as the god who made their crops to grow and who ripened their barley, the seed of life (zi), the Zeus of the Greeks, which gave its name to the Deus of the Latins and the Theos of the Greeks, the Manx god Ji. This father sun god was the god on the grey white horse, the clouds, the white horse in Zend mythology of Tishtrya, the star of the summer solstice which succeeded the golden horned bull of the bull race, as the adversary and conqueror of the black horse, and the black bull or dragon, the cloud which will not give up its rain, which was in Northern mythology the winter frost giant. It was this white horse—the sun god of the limestone, flint, and chalk country—which was the god of Stonehenge, the temple whose ruins still remain to set before us, with absolute certainty of the correctness of the deduction in its main details, the complete ritual of this primæval worship.”
Note.—The white sun horse is still worshipped and fed daily at Kobe, in Japan.
The worshippers of the sun god who built this temple are proved to have belonged to the Bronze age by the number of round barrow tombs within twelve miles of it; and Stukeley (A.D. 1723) counted one hundred and twenty-eight as visible from a hill close by.