Byways in British Archaeology

by Walter Johnson

Salt, by the way, was formerly strewn on graves in the North of England. Sir William Turner tells how the grave of an aboriginal Australian savage, who was buried only a little over sixty years ago, contained a varied assortment of articles, not all of quite the same age. The list included a large piece of flint and the handle of a pocket-knife—probably fire agents—a clay pipe, an iron spoon, and the remains of a rusted pannikin[793]. In Bengal, modern graves have revealed such diverse objects as rice, tinfoil coins, pipes, paper houses, and models of boats[794]. Thus the custom under notice, though of isolated occurrence in Britain, has its correlative in other lands. But even in Britain, one hears whisperings of weird customs. A lock of wool used to be placed in the coffins of Wiltshire shepherds. The traditional explanation was that shepherds are often unavoidably absent from church, and the wool was a guarantee that the nature of the man’s calling would not be overlooked at the great assize. But elsewhere we read of the desire to inter some tool or vessel typical of the occupation of the deceased person; and with this habit we might connect the practice, common in Scotland and the North of England, of carving tools and implements on gravestones.

Fig. 61. Roman Sepulchral chest, found at Avisford, Sussex. The chest was formed out of a single block and was covered with a flat slab. The square glass vessel in the middle contained calcined bones. Around this vessel were disposed three earthen vases with handles, several paterae, a pair of sandals, an oval dish, with handle, scalloped round the edge, containing a transparent egg-shaped agate. Three lamps are fixed on supporting projections of stone.

The archaeologist advances to inspect examples of early tombs rich in funeral relics. He pauses a moment to remark the abundance of objects sometimes found in Saxon graves: swords and buckets, rivets and nails, weighing scales and bunches of keys, drinking-cups, brooches, buttons, and many other articles[795]. The Romans, too, besides entombing coins and jewellery, added such objects as sandals, glass vessels, and amphorae[796] ([Fig. 61]). The taste for accumulating grave-gifts can be observed in the earlier Barrow period. A Bronze Age barrow at Aldbourne, Wiltshire, supplies perhaps the most noteworthy example. This grave contained an exceptional number of articles. Besides the “incense-cup,” with its characteristic ornament, the excavators found, among the burnt bones, a small bronze knife and two bronze awls, each tool bearing signs of having passed through the funeral fire. Beads were also discovered, wrought from such different materials as glass-paste, amber, and lignite, and one from the stem of an encrinite. The list further included a large flat ring and a pendant ornament of lignite, a conical button made of shale, a small polished pebble of haematite, and the cast of a cardium shell, presumably in a fossil condition. The flint flakes, the arrow-heads and shards, the bones, tusks, and teeth of animals, which complete the list[797], seem unimpressive by the side of such a collection. Here then, in very early times, we see the system of funeral gifts highly developed. The abundance of objects displayed in the Aldbourne barrow may indicate the burial of someone whose importance was pre-eminent, but in other cases, where the number, rather than the value, of the gifts is noticeable, there seems to have been a desire to supply the deceased person with all things conveniently obtainable. Food, weapons, and charms, ornaments and luxuries were thus provided. Our modern representative relics of this cultural stage furnish a list, meagre by comparison, but still significant by reason of its eclectic character. The same idea, materialized in somewhat different forms, impelled the man of old and the man of yesterday. Belief in a future state, at times modified by fear and faint in its expression, at others amounting to a profound conviction, has tinctured almost all of our funeral ceremonies. Savage and sage, for some thousands of years past, seem to have acted towards the dead in accordance with the word of our English philosopher: “It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man to tell him he is at the end of his nature[798].”

We have yet to review, very briefly, three or four interesting subjects which fall within the scope of this already lengthy chapter. The Burial Service of the Anglican Church provides for earth to be cast on the coffin “by some standing by,” while the priest pronounces the solemn words, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” This combination of phrases has been traced to a similar passage in the Sarum Manual, a passage founded in turn, it is supposed, on several Biblical expressions[799]. A little doubt, however, hangs over the ultimate origin of the words of the Commendation, though the precise form of the phrases may be due to Scriptural influence. The idea underlying the words, and its mode of operation, are alike ancient. For my part, I think that the expression plainly points to a time when cremation and inhumation were both familiar to the community; that is to say, some equivalent words were used when the early Christians of Britain had begun to combat, not altogether with success, the system of burning the body. If the words “earth to earth” and “dust to dust” stood alone, it might fairly be argued that the compilers of the earliest Services believed literally in the creation of man from the dust. But the phrase “ashes to ashes” forbids that interpretation. It has, so far as may be known, never been taught that man originally came from ashes, though, figuratively, in moments of contrition, he has declared himself to be “but dust and ashes.” The collocation of the phrases seems to betray a compromise between modes of burial. Parenthetically, we note that the Roman practice, as described by Horace, was to cast earth three times upon the body[800]. Until this was done, the spirit could not enter Elysium. It is probable that a like custom goes back to the Barrow period. Canon Greenwell supposes that, at a barrow funeral, each of the tribesmen carried his portion of earth, probably in a basket[801]. This conjecture receives support from the conduct of certain South African tribes, the members of which share the task of scooping together the material for the burial-mound, using however, for that purpose, the hands alone. The same procedure is followed by Lascars when burying a comrade in a strange land[802].

Let us examine a little further this co-operation of the mourners, as testified by actual survival. As already stated, the rubric directs that the earth shall be cast upon the body “by some standing by,” while the priest repeats the collect or “Commendation.” In practice, the sexton usually throws in the earth, although I feel certain that I have more than once seen the officiating clergyman perform this office. The rubric, as we know it, was formulated in the year 1552. Prior to that date, the soil was cast upon the corpse by the priest[803]. We may take it that this was the more common practice in Mediaeval times. The ceremony was also rendered symbolical in some districts by strewing the earth in the form of a cross[804]. Again, as in the Ritual of Brixen, the priest scattered the earth three times with a shovel[805]. In the Greek rite, too, the lot fell to the priest[806]. Among the Jews, each relative of the dead person threw earth on the coffin[807], and there are records of a like observance in Christian communities[808]. The daily newspapers occasionally report instances of the practice in our own day. Taking these isolated examples, and comparing them with the custom, once common in rural England, of five or six persons assisting the sexton to fill up the grave[809], we can outline a simple hypothesis. The early Christians probably followed their heathen contemporaries in allowing the interment to be a common labour. Afterwards, the throwing in of handfuls of earth—and perhaps of ashes also (cf. [p. 290] supra, concerning charcoal)—was a rite in which many took part, the antiphonal service being chanted during the act. In the later Mediaeval period the priest seems largely to have usurped the office. The Reformation allotted the function once more to the mourners in general, at least nominally, and on rare occasions the right is still exercised. The original meaning is forgotten, and symbolism is evoked to explain the practice. And just as some writers are content to see, in the ashes, merely a symbol of penitence and humiliation, as illustrated in the old Ash Wednesday observances, so other authorities, with what appears to be a short view, deem the earth simply typical of man’s reputed origin and mortality: Hodie mihi, cras tibi. It seems more in accord with facts to recognize the bit of soil thrown into the grave as a vestigial proof of the continuity of habit, weakened to some degree because the ceremony, instead of being generally shared by the mourners, is performed vicariously by the sexton.

The next survival to claim our attention is illustrated by the Lancashire custom, in vogue not further back than the year 1888, of sending a small sheaf of wheat to be distributed, at the time of the funeral, to the relatives of the deceased person[810]. At once the words of the Burial Service, and the Scriptural allusion to the “corn of wheat,” come to mind[811]. The ancient Christians considered wheat to be a symbol of the resurrection of the body, and this idea is exemplified on a gem described by De Montfaucon. The ear of wheat, carved in wood or stone, seems to perpetuate an old pagan belief. The custom, in varied forms, is as widespread as it is time-honoured. At a modern Greek funeral two men were observed carrying each a dish of parboiled wheat to be deposited over the corpse[812]. General Pitt-Rivers quotes Professor Pearson to the effect that the burning of corn on graves was forbidden by the Church in Saxon times[813]. This ban implies that the practice had its roots in pagan soil, so that all that the Christians did was to change the underlying principle. General Pitt-Rivers himself found ears of corn mixed with the sand near a Romano-British grave which contained a skeleton, and he also recorded the finding of charred wheat in contiguity with skeletons belonging probably to the Roman period[814]. Closely connected with these observances is the practice of placing corn and other articles of food on the grave. Instances are multitudinous. In the recesses of the Pamirs, corn, berries, and flowers are the offerings[815]; the Spaniards deposit bread and wine on the anniversary of death; the Bulgarians hold a special Feast of the Dead on Palm Sunday, and eat the remains of the funeral offerings[816]. The subject is, indeed, wide and complicated. At the back of the attenuated ceremony of to-day lies the primitive belief in the life of the dead, with the consequent feasts and sacrifices. The inquiry, upon which we cannot now enter, soon leads us into an investigation of the corn-gods and “gods of cultivation,” which are associated with the religions of primitive folk. For a discussion of these matters, the reader is referred to the exhaustive works of Professor Frazer and Mr Grant Allen.

With respect to the burial feasts of the prehistoric period, the line of descent might be easily traced. The funeral suppers given by the Greeks and Romans to the relatives of a dead person are frequently referred to by classical authors. Similar feasts are mentioned by our English writers from the time of Robert de Brunne (fl. A.D. 1288-1338) onwards[817]. Huge repasts—shall we not say orgies?—continued in fashion until the eighteenth century at least. Brand relates that, at the funeral of a Highland lord in 1725, not fewer than 100 black cattle and 300 sheep were slain “for the entertainment of the company[818].” Nowadays the feast has dwindled, in most localities, to a glass of wine and a biscuit. But there have been some amazing exceptions. Canon Atkinson, in the earlier years of his incumbency at Danby-in-Cleveland, about the middle of the nineteenth century, found that the “funeral bak’d meats” were held in high esteem. On the death of a villager of importance, invitations were sent out “not merely by the score, but by the hundred. I have myself counted,” he says, “more than three hundred seated in the church on at least four, if not five, different occasions. And the rule is, and, still more, was, that the preponderating majority of these ‘went to the burial’ at the house where the corpse lay, beginning at ten o’clock and continuing to drop in, according to convenience or distance to be traversed, throughout the morning and afternoon till it became time to ‘lift the body’ and make a start for the church. And all these were fed—entertained, rather—at the house of mourning, if it chanced to be that of one of the principal inhabitants.” All day long there were relays of visitors, from a dozen up to a score, smoking and drinking at the house[819]. During the latter part of the entertainment glasses of wine were handed round, with crisp cakes, colloquially known as “averils” or “averil bread[820].” Canon Atkinson traced this word thus: averil, avril, then by transposition, arvil or arvel (= heir-ale). This “heir-ale,” or succession-ale, thus stands for the feast at which the heirs drank themselves into their father’s land. It is interesting to note that this etymology is supported by the highest authorities—for example, by the New Oxford Dictionary.

Whilst insisting on the continuity of custom and folk-memory, as proved by survivals, it would be very unwise to ignore the changes which have been gradually taking place since the Barrow period. Looking, for the moment, at extreme cases, the actual result appears to reveal a wide gap, and for the sake of contrast, I will quote Mr Grant Allen’s fanciful description of the burial of a chieftain in a long barrow on Ogbury Downs, Wiltshire. The passage is long and somewhat ornate, but, because it is probably correct in most of the details, and helps us to “visualize the past,” it shall be given in full. “I saw them bear aloft, with beating of breasts and loud gesticulations, the bent corpse of their dead chieftain: I saw the terrified and fainting wives haled along by thongs of raw oxhide, and the weeping prisoners driven passively like sheep to the slaughter: I saw the fearful orgy of massacre and rapine around the open tumulus, the wild priest shattering with his gleaming tomahawk the skulls of his victims, the fire of gorse and low brushwood prepared to roast them, the heads and feet flung carelessly on the top of the yet uncovered stone chamber, the awful dance of blood-stained cannibals around the mangled remains of men and oxen, and, finally, the long task of heaping up above the stone hut of the dead king the earthen mound that was never again to be opened to the light of day till, ten thousand years later, we modern Britons invaded with our prying, sacrilegious mattock the sacred privacy of the cannibal ghost[821].”