“Cold’s the mould at choir-back,
Cowers beneath it Jón Flak,
Other men lie East and West,
Every one but Jón Flak,
Every one but Jón Flak.”
And no rest was obtained until the body was taken up and buried in the proper position[612]. A study of comparative customs will, however, furnish us with departures from the British plan, although haphazard alinements seem to be exceptional. Thus, some Australian tribes allow the head to front the West, others the East. The Samoans, the Fijians, and the North American Indians place the head to the East; this was also the practice of the Peruvians. Some South American tribes and the old Ainus of Yesso made their dead face the sunrise[613]. Plainly, while all these instances involve alinement of the corpse, they illustrate the two opposing ideas mentioned in the last chapter,—that of darkness and death, connected with sunset, and that of resurrection and new life, typified by sunrise. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia, remarks: “The Persians lay North and South: the Megarians and Phoenicians placed their heads to the East; the Athenians, some think, towards the West, which Christians still retain. And Beda will have it to be the posture of our Saviour[614].”
Various Greek authors attest the practice of orienting graves before the time of Solon (died c. B.C. 558)[615]. Setting this evidence aside, and restricting the inquiry chiefly to our own country, we have good reason to believe that there has been continuity of custom from the Saxon period at least. Mr Romilly Allen asserts that the East-to-West position was usual in the early days of Christianity. Further it was formerly suggested by Mr Reginald A. Smith that, wherever East-to-West graves are met with in Saxon cemeteries, they indicate the burial-places of Christians, in contrast to the tombs of the heathen. But the discoveries at Mitcham, in Surrey, of a large number of skeletons carefully orientated, break the rule, since Mr Smith himself shows that the burials were of pre-Saxon date, while the associated relics point to pagan interment. Again, a cemetery which was discovered at the Roman “level” in Bishopsgate Street, London, contained bodies laid East and West. Since no pagan objects were associated with the skeletons, we may perhaps conjecture that the burials were those of Christians[616]. But the most common position of skeletons in Roman cemeteries, according to Wright, is found to be East and West; usually, though by no means always, the feet are towards the East[617]. This generalization must now be considered too confident. There is the further complication that some of the cemeteries contain burnt, as well as unburnt bodies, suggesting a mingling of pagan and Christian burials.
We next take the pre-Roman period. Two examples from France will serve to illustrate one stage. A cemetery at Charvais, belonging to the earliest Iron Age, contained more than seventy graves, all but two or three of which were so oriented that the head lay at the West end[618]. Out of five graves excavated at Pleurs, in the department of Marne, three exhibited a like arrangement[619]. Examples might be multiplied, so far as the Continent is concerned; the position of the skeleton in English interments of the Iron Age unfortunately seems not to have been much noted by investigators. Even the excellent Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age does not furnish much information about British orientation, the main cause, doubtless, being the neglect of the excavators to record such details. One remarkable interment, at Kilham, near Driffield, in the East Riding, is worthy of notice. The grave contained the remains of a man, with the head placed at the West end; on each side of the body a goat had been laid, with a similar orientation[620]. Mr J. R. Mortimer, who, in 1897, conducted a series of excavations at Kilham, gave this summary respecting the disposition of the skeletons. Of twenty burials, eleven bodies had the head towards the North, five towards the South, and only four West[621]. At the Late-Celtic cemetery at Harlyn Bay, Cornwall, the majority of the skeletons, which were contracted, lay on their left sides, and faced the East. This evidence, which might be supplemented, plainly shows that the placing of corpses East and West was not uniformly observed during the Early Iron Age.
But we must widen the scope of the inquiry, for it is necessary to remember that the round barrows of the Bronze and Aeneolithic periods, and the long barrows of the Neolithic Age, were nothing but huge graves. Mr Mortimer’s excavations in the round barrows of Yorkshire led him to the conclusion, that, while no rule could be formulated concerning the alinement of the body, “the most prevalent position of the head [was] to the West and the East[622].” Canon Greenwell’s explorations revealed a like absence of regularity in the position of round-barrow skeletons, though the tables which he furnishes indicate a tendency to an East-and-West approximation. One of his results is of great interest. He found that, wherever the head of the skeleton pointed, roughly speaking, towards the West, the body had generally been laid on its right side; where the head was towards the East, the body was usually resting on its left side[623]. The inference has therefore been drawn that the corpse was made to face, not merely the sun, but the position of the sun in the sky at the time of burial. This opinion has been widely held until recent years, but it is now becoming customary to heap ridicule upon it[624]. The scoffers should, however, in fairness, consider collateral testimony.
First, it is well to note an actual record of careful orientations. For example, it is not contested that, in the round barrows of Wiltshire there is a strong tendency for the body to face the South[625]. If the theory just mentioned be correct, the corpse had, in the Wiltshire graves, been placed with the face towards the midday sun, implying a possible, but not demonstrable intention, with some fixity of custom. General Pitt-Rivers, who believed that the Saxons arranged the body with the head towards the rising sun, examined 31 Saxon graves at Winkelbury. He discovered that, while the skeleton was always alined towards an Eastern point, the exact axis varied from E. 19° S. to E. 28° N., but was usually towards the North. Supposing that his theory were valid, he admitted, with great candour, that all but two of the bodies must, from their positions, have been buried in summer. Here, again, we meet a possible, but certainly not provable, adherence to a custom.
Let us now look at Mr Mortimer’s valuable tables, which are found on the page of his book to which reference has just been made. From an examination of 383 interments, Mr Mortimer obtained these results:
| Bodies lying on the right side | 178 |
| ””” left side | 103 |
| ””” back | 68 |
| ””” chest | 3 |
| Position not known | 31 |
The 31 unascertained positions must be ignored. The 71 instances in which the body lay on its back or chest are obviously testimony against the “face-to-sun” hypothesis. Moreover, of the 281 remaining cases, only 61 will be found to have the head pointing North-East, South-East, or in intermediate directions. At first sight, this summary is fatal to the theory. But the question is not easily settled. Other details must be known concerning each individual interment, and these are, to some extent, lacking. It is evident that a corpse may occupy any one of numerous linear positions, and may lie on either its right or left side, and yet face the sun at some time of the day. For the sun constantly changes its position in the course of its daily journey, and also alters its points of rising and setting. The consequence is, that a body lying on its left side might have its head directed to any point from North-East round to North-West approximately, and nevertheless face the sun. If we do not know the season, or the hour, of the interment, we cannot assert that the corpse did not so face the sun. Similarly, if the deceased tribesman were placed on his right side, he might, broadly speaking, occupy any position from East round to West, and yet fulfil the condition. Now the tables show that 245 out of the 281 bodies might conceivably have been laid as the theory supposes. Mr Mortimer gives Greenwell’s list for comparison: it supplies details of 234 bodies. Of these bodies, 112 lay on the right side, and 122 on the left—there is no reference to other positions. An inspection of the columns reveals that about 200 cases might support the “face-to-sun” theory.
It would be highly undesirable to press the facts further than is necessary to appeal for a suspended verdict. The “face-to-sun” hypothesis was never meant to be more than a possible explanation, but it has the virtue of accounting for many instances in which the skeleton lies, not due East and West, or North and South, but obliquely, at some intermediate horizon. And, at least, the alinement of the head, if not the face, towards the sun, is not peculiarly a British feature of prehistoric burials. Among the Tlingits, or Tlinkits, of South Alaska, the corpse was buried with the head towards the sun, so as to allow the soul of the deceased person to return; if the body were laid in the contrary direction, the spirit could never come back. Professor Frazer, who records this custom, asserts that other totemistic peoples inter their dead, according to fixed rules, with the head towards particular points of the compass. Professor E. B. Tylor has also collected abundant testimony corroborative of such customs. In places widely sundered geographically there has existed a strong desire to bury the dead “in the path of the sun[626].” Recently, too, Dr A. W. Howitt has discovered, just in time, at the Australian station of Wotjo, an isolated tribe which still preserves the custom. The arrangement of the head of the corpse is determined by the class and totem of the deceased person, and the direction is fixed by reference to the rising sun. The practice is nearing extinction, for, although Dr Howitt was able to secure sufficient information from the natives to construct a kind of burial compass, they could give him no reason for the varying dispositions. The only explanation proffered was: “Oh, that is what our fathers told us.” Such a man was buried in such a way because he was “nearer to us” than the others[627]. The folk-memory of this tribe will soon become a mere echo of tradition, and the task of reconstructing these primitive burial customs will grow increasingly difficult as each aboriginal patch of the earth’s surface becomes influenced by civilization.