Fig. 52. Round barrow, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
burials of very eccentric or very pious persons[653]. Interment in an upright position has not, however, been of infrequent occurrence. Ben Jonson was so buried at Westminster. The case of the Hobarts, who are buried in a brickwork vault at Blickling, Norfolk, is also often cited. The vertical position was formerly adopted for the interment of captains in the army[654]. The body of Clement Spelman, Recorder of Nottingham, was immured (A.D. 1679) in a pillar in Narburgh church[655]. Many other curious vagaries of custom might be given; one or two instances must suffice. Surrey folk are familiar with Leith Hill Tower, under which lie the remains of Mr Richard Hull, who died in 1772, and whose peculiar opinions led him to stipulate burial in this elevated region[656]. In another instance, a corpse was buried within a flint pyramid at the top of a fir-clad hill near Great Missenden, in Buckinghamshire. A chapter might easily be filled with such particulars, but enough has been said to show that, amid all these eccentricities of habit, there is often an unwitting reversion to primitive methods. The similarities have been revealed only by the labours of the barrow-digger and the antiquary. Not only has the practice of orientation been found to have a very ancient descent, but many quaint usages, ofttimes deemed abnormal, have proved to be genuine survivals. In the next chapter some of these survivals will be considered. Not a little pathos is associated with our knowledge of these details. Bones which had “quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests,” have been unromantically disturbed by the busy archaeologist, and compelled to yield their secret. One cannot withhold sympathy from the investigator who had obtained permission to open a certain barrow, but who pondered and procrastinated, viewing, with indulgent eye, the even outline of the grassy mound. Day by day his pity for the sleeping warrior increased, and he hesitated to thrust his spade into the wind-swept turf, until the opportunity for work had slipped away. One admires the spirit, yet to widen the limits of knowledge that spirit has to be sadly, though judiciously, corrected.
CHAPTER VII
SURVIVALS IN BURIAL CUSTOMS
A discussion of burial customs might, in the absence of a little careful selection of material, tend to become rather gruesome. This may be conceded at the outset, but, fortunately, an impersonal treatment is possible, and one need not even imitate the mournful example of “Old Mortality.” There is nothing morbid in a dispassionate review of customs which, in all ages and among all peoples, seem to have been general, because born of that vicissitude which is the common lot of man. Perhaps, in some measure, the antiquary may be able to reach the standard of stoicism set up by John Earle: “His grave does not fright him [the antiquary], because he has been used to sepulchers, and he likes Death the better, because it gathers him to his fathers[657].”
Already we have spoken of the orientation of graves, and the degradation of the barrow to the grave-mound. Several kindred matters must now receive attention, and in a later chapter, when chariot-burial is considered, our eyes will again be turned backward. For customs are like crystals with several facets; to get a true perception we must, in each case, frequently change our point of view.
A few more instances of the development of funeral monuments may be first noted. It has been shown elsewhere that the churchyard headstone may be traced back, step by step, to the unhewn menhir set up by primitive man on some bleak moorland. Within the last two or three years, there have been discovered in France and Italy remarkable connecting links, in the so-called “statue-menhirs,” prehistoric stones rudely carved
Fig. 53. Inscribed, ornamented, round-headed cross, Sancreed churchyard, Cornwall. In the head of the cross is a figure of Our Lord in relief. The shaft is decorated with interlaced work, and contains a panel with an imperfect inscription.
to represent the human head and trunk[658]. The evidence derived from observing the gradual evolution is corroborated by strange cases of survival. Thus in St Martha’s churchyard, near Chilworth, Surrey, low headstones, untouched by any tool, have been set up in considerable numbers. The slabs are merely masses of ironstone dug out of the Lower Greensand of the hill on which the church is built. Pursuing another line of descent, Mr J. Romilly Allen claimed that a similar kind of coarse monolith had developed into the “wheel-cross” and the “free-standing” cross of Christian churchyards[659] ([Fig. 53] and [Fig. 62]). The dolmen, or “stone-table,” a familiar prehistoric monument, has been replaced by the family vault and the altar-tomb, the ossuary of Brittany, the flat tombstone of the village graveyard, and the sarcophagus of the cathedral[660]. The cromlech, a circle of upright stone pillars, is by some believed to have been the forerunner of the temple and the round church[661]; but this claim may be waived, as not fully proven (cf. [p. 99] supra). More plausible is the theory that the rude, unfashioned grave-stake is represented to-day by the humble wooden cross of our cemeteries[662]. Each of these examples of unconscious imitation and modern survival might be examined at some length, but the theories which they illustrate are now so familiar as to be commonplace. Not quite so well known is the theory that we have derived our custom of placing shrubs on graves from our heathen forefathers of the Bronze Age, who were wont to plant trees on their burial mounds[663]. Mr Grant Allen argued, with some reason, that the pine-trees so frequently found on round barrows in the South of England are survivors of those placed there by the first mound-raisers, since the Scottish pine is not now indigenous to that tract of country[664] (cf. [p. 401] infra).