Attempts have been made to connect the noun “barrow” with the verb “to bury,” but the relationship cannot really be upheld. The primary notion involved in “barrow” was that of a height, while “to bury” was associated with concealment or covering. The word “barrow,” it may be remarked, went out of use in English literature before A.D. 1400, but it survived locally in dialects, and was ultimately taken back into the nomenclature of archaeology[665]. But, though philology forbids us to bind these two words together, the actual continuity between mound-burial and pit-burial, as we have seen, has never been completely broken. Something has been said about the later development of barrows and megaliths; it is now desirable to trace the earliest representatives of our wooden coffin. To begin with, we notice that coffins did not come into universal use until a little over two centuries ago. This is proved by numerous terriers and by minutes of parish vestries. In London, it is true, burial in the simple winding-sheet seems to have been discarded so far back as the early years of Elizabeth, but in remote districts the custom lingered much later. Thus in the Isle of Man, down to the early part of the eighteenth century, the bodies of the poor were wrapped in a blanket fastened with a skewer, and were carried on a bier to the grave. A hundred years afterwards, coffinless burials survived to a considerable extent in county Wexford. Sir R. Phillimore quotes Lord Stowell’s dictum that funerals were either “coffined” or “coffinless,” and were charged for accordingly. The use of coffins is extremely ancient, but at first the custom was by no means common[666]. There appears, in fact, to have been no real uniformity in this, as in many other practices, since the earliest days of English Christendom. And in this lack of system we find at once an approximation to the customs of the barrow period, when corpses were either enclosed, or buried without a cist, the exact reason for the difference of treatment being not always explicable by the general ideas held at the time.
Lest there should still be any doubt of the antiquity of coffins, it is necessary to recall those coffins of the Middle Ages ([Fig. 54]), often hewn out of a single block, and familiar to persons who have inspected the relics of ruined abbeys and the nooks and corners of our existing parish churches. These stone coffins are obviously the representatives of prehistoric tombs, though they may not be in the true British line of descent. Rather do they suggest the Roman coffins of stone, lead, or brick (Figs. [55] B, [56]). Occasionally, Roman coffins of stone are
Fig. 54. Mediaeval stone coffins. A. From Wellesbourne churchyard, Warwickshire (Bloxam’s Mon. Archit.). There is a hole in the bottom of the coffin, as in the prehistoric specimen from Gristhorpe ([Fig. 55] B). An almost exact replica of this coffin may be seen in the Guildhall Museum, London, associated with a thirteenth century lid bearing a foliated cross. B. From Eynesford church, Kent. This specimen has a raised head-rest.
found, covered with a lid of undoubted Saxon workmanship, proving that there had been a re-adaptation. We note, in passing, that the stone coffin must be carefully distinguished from those hog-backed or coped stones which were employed as grave covers in early Christian times, and to which Mr Romilly Allen assigned a Saxon or Scandinavian origin[667]. With respect to the wooden coffin, commonly adjudged as of Christian design, there is occasionally some difficulty. At Colchester, wooden coffins have been found associated with leaden ones,
Fig. 55. A. Prehistoric coffin, formed of a hollowed oak trunk, found in a barrow at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough. The bark is still adhering to the timber. A hole (3´´ × 1´´) has been cut in the bottom of the coffin. The relics indicated that the grave probably belonged to the Bronze Age. (After T. Wright.)
B. Roman coffin of baked clay, Aldborough, Yorkshire. (After T. Wright.) The shapes of such coffins are rather variable.