Nearly all of the petroglyphs found in the British islands, accounts of which have been published, belong to the class of cup sculptures discussed in Chapter [V], infra, but several inscriptions showing characters not limited to that category are mentioned in “Archaic Rock Inscriptions,” (a) from which the following condensed extract referring to a cairn in county Meath, Ireland, is taken:
The ornamentation may be thus described: Small circles, with or without a central dot; two or many more concentric circles; a small circle with a central dot, surrounded by a spiral line; the single spiral; the double spiral, or two spirals starting from different centers; rows of small lozenges or ovals; stars of six to thirteen rays; wheels of nine rays; flower ornaments, sometimes inclosed in a circle or wide oval; wave-like lines; groups of lunette-shaped lines; pothooks; small squares attached to each other side by side, so as to form a reticulated pattern; small attached concentric circles; large and small hollows; a cup hollow surrounded by one or more circles; lozenges crossed from angle to angle (these and the squares produced by scrapings); an ornament like the spine of a fish with ribs attached, or the fiber system of some leaf; short equiarmed crosses, starting sometimes from a dot and small circle; a circle with rays round it, and the whole contained in a circle; a series of compressed semicircles like the letters ∩ ∩ ∩ inverted; vertical lines far apart, with ribs sloping downwards from them like twigs; an ornament like the fiber system of a broad leaf, with the stem attached; rude concentric circles with short rays extending from part of the outer one; an ornament very like the simple Greek fret, with dots in the center of the loop; five zigzag lines and two parallel lines, on each of which, and pointing toward each other, is a series of cones ornamented by lines radiating from the apex, crossed by others parallel to the base—this design has been produced by scraping, and I propose to call it the Patella ornament, as it strikingly resembles the large species of that shell so common on our coasts, and which shell Mr. Conwell discovered in numbers in some of the cists, in connection with fragments of pottery and human bones; a semicircle with three or four straight lines proceeding from it, but not touching it; a dot with several lines radiating from it; combinations of short straight lines arranged either at right angles to or sloping from a central line; an S-shaped curve, each loop inclosing concentric circles; and a vast number of other combinations of the circle, spiral, line, and dot, which can not be described in writing.
Some of the ancient “Turf-Monuments” of England are to be classed as petroglyphs. The following extracts from the work of Rev. W. A. Plenderleath (b) give sufficient information on these curious pictures:
Although all the White Horses, except one, are in Wiltshire, that one exception is the great sire and prototype of them all, which is at Uffington, just 2½ miles outside the Wiltshire Boundary and within that of Berkshire. * * * The one mediæval document in which the White Horse is mentioned is a cartulary of the Abbey of Abingdon, which must have been written either in the reign of Henry II or soon after, and which runs as follows: “It was then customary amongst the English that any monks who wished might receive money or landed estates and both use and devolve them according to their pleasure. Hence two monks of the monastery at Abingdon, named Leofric and Godric Cild, appear to have obtained by inheritance manors situated upon the banks of the Thames; one of them, Godric, becoming possessed of Spersholt, near the place commonly known as the White Horse Hill, and the other that of Whitchurch, during the time that Aldhelm was abbot of this place.”
This Aldhelm appears to have been abbot from 1072 to 1084, and from the terms in which the White Horse Hill is mentioned the name was evidently an old one at that time.
Now it was only two hundred years before this time, viz, in 871, that a very famous victory had been gained by King Alfred over the Danes close to this very spot. “Four days after the battle of Reading,” says Asser, “King Æthelred, and Alfred, his brother, fought against the whole army of the pagans at Ashdown. * * * And the flower of the pagan youths were there slain, so that neither before nor since was ever such destruction known since the Saxons first gained Britain by their arms.” And it was in memory of this victory that, we are informed by local tradition, Alfred caused his men, the day after the battle, to cut out the White Horse, the standard of Hengist, on the hillside just under the castle. The name Hengist, or Hengst, itself means Stone Horse in the ancient language of the Saxons, and Bishop Nicholson, in his “English Atlas,” goes so far as to suppose the names of Hengist and Horsa to have been not proper at all, but simply emblematical.
The Uffington horse measures 355 feet from the nose to the tail and 120 feet from the ear to the hoof. It faces to sinister, as do also those depicted upon all British coins. The slope of the portion of the hill upon which it is cut is 39°, but the declivity is very considerably greater beneath the figures. The exposure is southwest.
The author then describes the White Horse on Bratton Hill, near Westbury, Wilts, now obliterated, the dimensions of which were, extreme length, 100 feet; height, nearly the same; from toe to chest, 54 feet, and gives accounts of several other White Horses, the antiquity of which is not so well established. He then (c) treats of the Red Horse in the lordship of Tysoe, in Warwickshire, as follows:
This is traditionally reported to have been cut in 1461, in memory of the exploits of Richard, Earl of Warwick, who was for many years one of the most prominent figures in the Wars of the Roses. The earl had in the early part of the year found himself, with a force of forty thousand men, opposed to Queen Margaret, with sixty thousand, at a place called Towton, near Tadcaster. Overborne by numbers, the battle was going against him, when, dismounting from his horse, he plunged his sword up to the hilt in the animal’s side, crying aloud that he would henceforth fight shoulder to shoulder with his men. Thereupon the soldiers, animated by their leader’s example, rushed forward with such impetuosity that the enemy gave way and flew precipitately. No less than twenty-eight thousand Lancastrians are said to have fallen in this battle and in the pursuit which followed, for the commands of Prince Edward were to give no quarter. It was to this victory that the latter owed his elevation to the throne, which took place immediately afterwards.
The Red Horse used to be scoured every year, upon Palm Sunday, at the expense of certain neighboring landowners who held their land by that tenure, and the scouring is said to have been as largely attended and to have been the occasion of as great festivity as that of the older horse in the adjoining county of Berks. The figure is about 54 feet in extreme length by about 31 in extreme height.