Notwithstanding the number and variety of sepulchral remains in Ireland, it is strange that the rites and ceremonies attending the disposal of the dead in prehistoric times have not received from Irish archæologists the systematic study they deserve. Unfortunately many of the burial sites have, in the past, been treated in a manner that has left but little data of any scientific value for expert use. The number discovered, of cinerary urns containing human remains has been very great, and establish, beyond a doubt, the fact of the general custom of cremation. Most of these urns have been destroyed, either through the ignorance and stupidity of the discoverers, or the carelessness of the subsequent owners.
Under all human conditions it is necessary that some method should be adopted for the disposal of the dead; but there can be no doubt that the religious sentiment has ever been the predominating factor in all burial customs. The earliest method of disposing of the dead was by simple interment; and even when cremation became general, the practice was never entirely abandoned. Both forms may occur in the same mound; but the general result is that the inhumed remains are found at the bottom, and the cremated remains nearer the surface, which shows these were later in point of time. Where, however, the earliest interments have been burnt bones, inhumed bodies, as at Ballon Hill, may form secondary burials. The result of Canon Greenwell’s explorations in the barrows of Yorkshire showed that out of 379 burials 301 were by inhumation, and in 78 cremated remains were found. Exploration in other parts of England gave similar results.[57] Out of 297 interments in Derby, Stafford, and York, Mr. Bateman found that 124 were of burnt bones; 163 were of ordinary burials, of which latter the bodies in 97 had been placed in a contracted or sitting position. Sir R. C. Hoare found that out of 267 interments in Wiltshire, 214 were of cremated remains, 53 of inhumed, of which the skeletons of 15 were found contracted. In the district of Glasinac is a vast collection of tumuli. ‘Their total number,’ says Dr. Munro, ‘is estimated at 20,000—an estimation which is now regarded as coming far short of the actual number—of which about 1000 have been explored.... The builders of these burial mounds practised both inhumation and cremation, the former being in the proportion of 60 per cent., and the latter 30 per cent., while the remaining 10 per cent. were of a mixed character, i.e., contained both kinds of interments.’[58] In the Hallstatt cemetery in the Noric Alps (which has given its name as a distinctive term to an archæological period, owing to the importance of its ‘grave-goods’), tombs to the number of 993 were examined as far back as 1868. Of these ‘525 contained simple interments; 455 had incinerated human remains; and in 13 the bodies had only been partially burnt before being interred.’[59] Great quantities of implements, domestic articles, and objects for personal use and adornment have been found in both classes of graves.
At Ballon Hill, near Tullow, County Carlow, a number of cinerary urns and great quantities of cremated remains were discovered in 1853, evidently of the pure Bronze Period. This spot has not been identified with any of the great burial-places mentioned in early Irish records. Three skeletons were found a couple of feet beneath an immense boulder, ‘huddled together in a small space not above 2 feet in length.’ At a considerable depth below these, and beneath four granite blocks, a bed of charcoal was reached, containing broken urns of four different patterns. Many perfect urns were found, some of which are among the finest examples yet discovered in Ireland. The urns were placed in stone cists, and also in the earth without any trace of an enclosure. There was evidence of great fires, while deep pits and beds of charcoal were laid bare, showing the extent to which cremation and the attendant funeral rites had been carried out at this spot. The only weapon found was a single dagger blade of bronze.[60] Carrowmore furnishes an instance of a mixed interment, where the inhumed remains were found over the calcined bones. ‘At the lowest level,’ says Colonel Wood-Martin, ‘of the side-stones of the cist a floor or flagging of calpy limestone slabs was found. It was on this—which overlay the undisturbed “till”—that the body or bodies of the primary interment had been originally cremated, portions of the floor showing marks of fire; and semi-burnt wood was found inlaid, with the layer of calcined bones above. It was plainly evident from the floors and burnt bones extending in “pockets” under the side-stones of the cist, that the latter had been constructed over the funeral pyre, and that the calcined remains were the primary interment, and that they had not been placed within an already completed chamber.’[61]
In a small tumulus at Dysart, County Westmeath, Dr. Dillon Kelly discovered, in 1876, two kistvaens containing skeletons in a contracted position. One was of an irregular pentagon shape, the longest diameter being 3 feet 9 inches, and the depth 2 feet 3 inches. In this there were three animal teeth; and each chamber contained a fine urn of baked clay. Cremated remains were found on the covering stones and round the cists. The burning seems to have taken place over the inhumed bodies, whose heads may, from their sitting position, have come into almost immediate contact with the covering stones. The supposition receives additional weight from the baked look of the tops of the skulls, both of which presented such an appearance over the whole of their vertical aspects.[62]
Urn burials on a larger scale were found at the Hill of Rath, near Drogheda, in 1841. Here remains of some 150 to 200 urns were discovered in an inverted position, each covering a quantity of human bones. They were placed in the earth without any protection, and were in consequence mostly broken by the pressure of the earth. Singly and in small groups urns containing incinerated remains have been found in most parts of Ireland. Worsaae was of opinion that many of the mounds or barrows were places of family sepulture, and that cists containing urns with burial remains found in open fields were those used by the poorer class who had no burial mound in which to place their dead.[63]
We have ample evidence of the antiquity and general practice of cremation in Europe. It was the custom of the Achæans, as Homer tells us, at least 1000 B.C. The remains of Achilles ‘were wash’d in wine and given fit unction,’ and, with the bones of Patroclus, placed in a ‘two-ear’d bowl of gold.’ This was placed in a grave, and over it was raised a ‘matchless sepulchre’ high above the Hellespont. The body of Hector was burned on a mighty pile of wood, and the remains treated with similar observances. Recent archæological opinion ascribes the origin of cremation to the Celtic tribes inhabiting Central Europe. It is urged that the custom would not have arisen among nomadic tribes, but rather among a people living in a land covered with woods and forests. Tacitus says that the Germans ‘simply observe the custom of burning the bodies of illustrious men with certain kinds of wood. They do not heap garments or spice on the pyre. The arms of the dead man, and in some cases his horse, are consigned to the fire. A turf mound forms his tomb. Monuments, with their lofty elaborate splendour, they reject as oppressive to the dead.’ In Denmark cremation became a general practice; and in Scandinavia it was an essential religious custom in the worship of Odin. Professor Montelius thinks that the evidence favours the view that in the north of Europe the Stone Age ended rather before than after 1500 B.C. During it the bodies were always buried unburnt in a recumbent or sitting position, and, as in the British Isles, urns and implements are found with the burial remains.[64]
The Gauls, as we know from Cæsar, burned some of the servants, slaves, and favourite animals of the dead chief, or warrior, in celebrating their funeral rites. Cremation was not practised in Asia Minor, Phœnicia, or Palestine. The Egyptians embalmed their dead, for they believed that as long as the body existed, so long did the soul exist in the spirit world. The Scythians, as Herodotus tells us, did not burn, but buried their dead. They embalmed the body of their king; and ‘they strangle and bury with him one of his concubines, his cook, cup-bearer, groom, lackey, his messenger, and some of his horses, firstlings of all his other possessions, and some golden cups.’ Over all was raised a mound; and ‘this Scythian custom, in its late Greek and Roman imitations, explains the countless tumuli which travellers see to this day in Bulgaria, in the Dobrudscha, in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Southern Russia, as far as the Crimea.’[65] The Thracians either burned or buried their dead, held feasts and games, and raised tumuli. In Illyria and in Bosnia, as we have stated, inhumation and cremation were observed at the same time. Historical evidence goes to show that the Thracians and Illyrians were conquered by the Celtic tribes from the Alps; ‘and as the culture of the early Iron Age in the Danubian region corresponds to that of the Celtic Hallstatt, there is a probability that the practice of cremation, which makes its appearance in the early Iron Age in Bosnia, and which was practised by some Thracians in the fifth century B.C., was introduced by the Celtic conquerors who lived with the Illyrians and Thracian tribes.’[66] Mr. Ridgeway, having carefully considered the methods of disposing of the dead in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, finds that, without exception, ‘inhumation, or some other method of disposing of the body without the use of fire, was universal in early times, and continued so over most of the area down to the Christian era.’ His conclusion is ‘that cremation did not pass into Greece from either Libya, Egypt, or Asia Minor, nor did it originate among the Pelasgians of the islands, nor yet in the mainland.’[67] Whether the practice arose among the Celtic tribes of Central Europe, or was adopted by them, it passed with other customs and things westwards and northwards along the trade routes, and its adoption in Britain and Ireland was merely a matter of time.
Man’s belief in a spiritual existence was, as we have already pointed out, the cause of that respect for the dead, which has shown itself in the countless sepulchral monuments scattered all over the world from prehistoric times down to our own days. To house the dead and hold the spirit entombed was the idea that once prevailed, and does so still among savage tribes. Immense cromlechs, cairns, and mounds of earth were raised above the dead, not only to house the spirit fittingly, but to prevent its return to earth; and strange customs still survive among primitive races to puzzle the dead should they attempt to return to their old habitations. It was a belief, too, among the Celtic tribes, as it has been among other races, that the spirit of the dead chief would keep watch and ward over them, and hence the burial-mound was sometimes raised close to or within the ring-wall of the camp. We are told that Eoghan Bel, King of Connaught, having received his death-wound in the Battle of Sligo, ordered that his grave should be dug in the side of his rath, and his body buried ‘with his red spear in his hand and his face to the north.’[68] The site overlooked the pass traversed by the Ulstermen in their accustomed raids; and the burial was so effective in terrifying these foes that they made a special incursion, exhumed the body, and buried it with its face downwards on the shores of Lough Gill. King Laoghaire[69] was buried, as we have already mentioned, in the south-east external side of the rampart of Rath Laoghaire, Tara, with his weapons upon him, and ‘his face towards the Lagenians in the attitude of fighting with them.’[70] (See [p. 50].)
The dead were believed to require servants, food, raiment, weapons, and a home such as they did in life; and hence the quantity of ‘grave-goods’ of early races, so important to the archæologist, discovered in many burial-mounds and tombs. Small fictilia, which are considered food-vessels by some, are commonly found with body burials, the offering of food and libations to the dead being a primitive custom, which still exists in many heathen lands, and has its survival in some Christian practices down to our own time. When inhumed, the dead chief was laid in the grave, or within the chambered tumulus, clad in full apparel, with his ornaments and weapons, and servants to attend him. We have references to the burial of warriors with their weapons in Irish MSS. Dr. Sullivan quotes the following:—‘Dearg Damhsa, the druid, made a capacious yellow-sodded Fert for Mogh Neid on the plain, and he buried him in it with his arms, and with his clothes, and with his armour.’ And from the Book of Lecan he cites this:—‘He killed Feradach after that, the good son of Rocuirp; according to rule, and until his death, he brandished his arms which are under the Duma of the beautiful Carn. Feradach was killed at the Battle of Carn Feradaig, and this here is Feradach’s Fert.’[71]
In cremation the old neolithic practice was changed with the newer conception of the relation between the soul and body. This belief was that the soul could not pass into the spirit world until the body had been destroyed by burning. Total separation was necessary, and the quickest and most effective method was through the medium of fire. The practice was probably an evolutionary one, as in France the process of the natural destruction of the flesh from the bones, before the latter were burned, seems in the first instance to have been adopted. Until the body was destroyed the spirit haunted its local habitation; and the Homeric idea, shared by the Celt and Norse, was that, when the earthly tabernacle was consumed, the soul departed for ever to the world of shades.