But enough has been written on the subject, perhaps. Yet, on the other hand, it would have been impossible to pass over the lakemen in silence, especially now when the important discoveries of similar lake settlements in East Yorkshire have drawn to the subject the attention of all intelligent English-speaking people.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] There are two distinct kinds of settlement, but we are here dealing with the first or earlier kind.
[3] Herod, v. 16.
[4] The lake tribes of the bronze age, however, not only understood the use of copper and bronze, but were far more proficient in the arts than their predecessors. Some of the textile fabrics found are of the most complicated weaving, and some of the bronze articles are of most exquisite chiselling, though these were probably imported from Italy, with which country the lake dwellers would seem to have had considerable traffic. The earliest specimens of pottery are usually ornamented by mere rude nail scratchings, but those of the bronze period have had their straight lines and curves made by a graving tool. In fact, the later tribes had become lovers of art for its own sake, and even the smallest articles of manufacture were decorated with designs of more or less elaboration and finish.
[5] The products of the soil seem to have been the same amongst the lakemen as amongst Homer's people. Both knew barley and wheat, and neither of them knew rye. In their mode of dressing and preparing barley for food the two peoples concurred. It was not made into bread, but roasted to bring off the husk. And roasted barley is still a favourite article of diet in the Lower Engadine. The Greeks ate it at their sacrifices, and always took supplies of it when starting on a journey. So Telemachus asks his old nurse Eurykleia to fill his goat skin with roasted barley when he sets out in search of his father. And young Greek brides were required to complete the stock of household belongings by providing on their marriage day a roasting vessel for barley.
[6] Those who wish to see pretty well all that can be said on the matter should read the valuable article in The Westminster Review, for June, 1887.
