[723] Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 293-5, 303-4; Folk-Lore, vi, 1895, pp. 14-5. Pitt-Rivers (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iv, 145) suggests that the common form of disk barrows ‘may have arisen through a failure to carry out the original intention’. ‘The first idea,’ he continues, ‘of the mourners ... may probably have been to erect a large monument ... and the ditch in such a case would contain a large area. In the course of a few days, however, the grief may have abated, and laziness supervened, in which case the arrested tumulus would assume the form described. The habit of all primitive peoples ... of lashing themselves up into a frenzy on the occasion of a death, and general excitability upon any uncommon occurrence, followed by a speedy relapse, favours this hypothesis. When, however, a vallum is seen to follow the line of the ditch, this cause cannot be assigned to the particular structure. It may, however, be a form that has become persistent and conventionalized through the cause already mentioned.’ This ingenious theory seems to imply that the motive of laziness only began to operate when disk barrows came into fashion.
The few disk barrows of Derbyshire have no apparent ditches (Vict. Hist. of ... Derby, i, 169). That county also contains barrows constructed differently and of different materials from those which undoubtedly belong to the Bronze Age: their date is uncertain, but may be Romano-British (ib., pp. 186-9; Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, p. 427).
Mr. G. F. Tregelles (Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall, i, 358) thinks that in Cornwall the distinctions between conical, bowl, bell, flat, and ring barrows ‘may be little more than differences in height’.
[724] Journal Brit. Archaeol. Association, xviii, 1862, p. 39; Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., viii, 1879-81, pp. 289, 291-2; x, 1884-5, pp. 305-6; W. C. Lukis, Prehist. Stone Monuments of the Brit. Isles,—Cornwall, p. 6; Archaeologia, lii, 1890, p. 63; Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Ant. and Archaeol. Soc., N. S., i, 1901, pp. 295-9.
[725] Vict. Hist. of ... Derby, i. 169.
[726] The ditches of the Cranborne Chase barrows in Dorsetshire, just outside the frontier of Wiltshire, are sometimes incomplete (A. Pitt-Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iv, 138).
[727] See p. 104, supra.
[728] W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 6-8; Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xi, 1885-7, p. 434. Canon Greenwell (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vi, 1867, p. 339), speaking of a cairn near Crinan in Argyllshire, surrounded by ‘a double circle of stones’, which ‘stood from 3 feet to 5 feet apart, except for a space ... where, in both circles, four stones were found placed close together’, says, ‘This is not an unusual feature in circles which enclose burials; in fact it is, in one shape or another, almost universal.... The object seems to be to make the circle incomplete.... When the circle is made of stones placed close together, or is formed of earth, then one or more openings occur in it.’ On the other hand, Mr. W. C. Borlase (Archaeologia, xlix, 1885, p. 183) found that in Cornwall the stone rings enclosing barrows were almost always continuous.
[729] W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 8.
[730] A. Pitt-Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iv, 138. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (Forty Years’ Researches, p. xxii), referring to the incomplete stone rings or trenches which are found within barrows, suggests that they were intended ‘to mark off ... the sacred spot in which the ceremony and interment were afterwards to be conducted, and that the break in the circle had no other significance than to serve as a place of ingress and egress’.