More than half a century ago, when the chancel of St Botolph’s church, Boston, was being rebuilt, a quantity of horses’ bones and the jaw-bones of sheep were found under the floor[1221]. Again, we have seen that, on the site of the present St Paul’s Cathedral, a deposit of bones of oxen and other animals was discovered indicating a pagan site[1222] (cf. [p. 83] supra). Secular buildings have also yielded horse remains. In 1895, when Colonel Stanley Scott was taking up the ground floor of a house in North Devon, he discovered, laid in order and well preserved, the skulls of eight horses and ten bullocks[1223]. In Wharfedale, again, under the floor of a house, probably from two to three hundred years old, the workmen took up the skulls of seven horses and a cow[1224]. With these discoveries one naturally associates the Dutch and German customs already mentioned ([p. 440] supra). And, of course, the primitive idea must be connected with that which underlies foundation sacrifices, although complication arises from the unique merit attached to skulls. The foundation sacrifice is widely prevalent, but the burial of skulls is a more specialized custom.
It will be noticed that, of the last two examples, one is recent, and the other comparatively recent, therefore any folk-memory associated with the deposition of the skulls was probably defective. According to popular belief in Ireland, the skulls which are nowadays placed under buildings are intended to “cause an echo.” Just as a public building has, or has not, a horses skull buried beneath it, so will it be good or bad for the purpose of hearing. A certain field which possessed a good echo was commonly believed to have a horse interred in it; the tradition was sound, but it is not known whether the horse was buried for that purpose[1225]. Why, it may be pertinently asked, does a field need a good echo?
On broad grounds, it is sufficiently obvious that the sacrificial idea preceded the economic, yet there must have been a period of overlapping. For not only was some variation of the custom observed, as we shall see, by Mediaeval church builders, but the practice was kept up until our own days. Noticeably has this been the case in the Scottish Presbyterian Church[1226]. When the old Bristol Street meeting-house, in Edinburgh, was being demolished a century ago, eight horse skulls were found concealed in the sounding-board of the pulpit[1227]. Less than half a century back, the same class of object was put under an organ in a parish church in the province of Munster to increase the effect of the music[1228].
The modern theory of the acoustic purpose of the skulls fades as we trace the custom to more remote times. A small chamber in the belfry of Elsdon church, Northumberland, appeared to have been built specially to contain three horse skulls, which had lain piled against each other for hundreds of years[1229]. The masons of old time doubtless imagined that the skulls would make the tones of the bells more resonant, but, “lulled in the countless chambers of the brain” there must have been almost-forgotten memories of these traditional talismans. These sacred and oracular heads, there can be little question, were built into heathen temples before the dawn of history, and the habit was passed on from one generation to another[1230]. Does this theory seem far-fetched? Consider the conditions at Elsdon. Here is a district teeming with earthworks and other British and Roman remains. The population is scanty, the moorland wild and pathless; there was, until recently, little inter-communication among the scattered folk. Hereditary custom held firm sway. Such was the preference for burial in Elsdon churchyard, that corpses were carried many miles over the moors for interment. Yet pagan customs were rife. Well-worship was carried on here until our own times, and not many decades have passed since cattle were driven through the Midsummer bonfires to ward off disease. How much stronger was superstition when the village church of Elsdon was first built! There must have been dark, undisturbed depths of paganism in the lives of the countryfolk. We really know little of the true beliefs of the Mediaeval peasant, as recorded by himself. Even our information about the faiths held by the official classes, though somewhat exiguous, reveals a basis of gross superstition. The gap between the twentieth century and the sixteenth is almost immeasurable as compared with that between the sixteenth century and the Neolithic period.
Let us halt, to draw a comparison from Brittany. Who, in the absence of direct evidence, would have imagined that, in our own generation, a people, nominally Christian, could have been found to set out dishes of cream for the dead on All Souls’ Eve, to employ grave-earth for the cure of fevers, to pour out milk on tombs as a libation, to anoint menhirs with oil and honey, to scatter the ashes of the festival fires over the fields to ensure a fat harvest? Yet all these customs have been practised by the Bretons in recent times. Well-worship, the blessing of oxen at Carnac, the ghastly reverence paid to images personifying Death, and all such rites, we pass by, as being everywhere somewhat persistent. The parallel which I wish to draw is between the Mediaeval Englishman and the more modern Breton. Could we turn back and thoroughly understand the pages of history, I am convinced that even the seventeenth century peasant of the English Cornwall, for example, would be found quite as superstitious as the nineteenth century peasant of the French Cornwall. What is true of Cornwall, holds good for the Highlands of Scotland, for Ireland and Wales, and, in a lesser degree, for the whole of rural England.
To return: the acoustic idea had its birth so far back as Roman times at least, though at that period it was associated with the use of sounding jars. Probably horse skulls were still buried sacrificially, but the purpose was being forgotten. The belief in the efficacy of horse skulls as reverberators seems to have been derived from the employment of these jars, at a rather later time when the sacramental idea concerning skulls was obsolete. About the jars themselves there has been a vast controversy, which, even at the risk of being discursive, we must briefly notice.
To take a Roman example first: along the seats of the Coliseum there was a peculiar arrangement of horizontal pots, which Sir E. Beckett (Lord Grimthorpe) believed were intended to augment the sound. As a result of experiment, this authority found that the vessels acted much in the same way as would a series of short, wide tubes, if presented to a hemispherical bell when this was struck[1231]. Vitruvius mentions brazen vessels, perhaps comparable to the gong or kettle-drum, as being in use in Roman theatres. Some writers have thought that the purpose was to make the voices of the actors more distinct, others consider that the vessels were accessories in the imitation of thunder.
Coming to Mediaeval times, we find that the church of the Celestins at Metz was furnished (A.D. 1439) with jars, expressly to improve the chanting, but it is affirmed that experience showed them to be useless. Mr Gordon M. Hills, in a valuable paper on this subject, says that the jars were “a great disfigurement to the building, the marvel of all beholders, and the jest of fools[1232].” There are other Continental records of acoustic jars from Strasburg, Angers, Paris, and other places. L’Abbé Cochet discovered numerous specimens in the churches of Upper Normandy, together with “cornets” of baked earth in the church of St Blaise, at Arles. Illustrations of some of these are given in Cochet’s paper in the Gentleman’s Magazine[1233], and the statement is made that similar “cornets” are found in the interior walls and vaults of many churches in Sweden, Denmark, and Russia[1234]. Didron, after referring to specimens from the two first-named countries, and to those discovered at Arles and Metz, decides against the acoustic hypothesis: “Ce mode [d’acoustique] me semblait aussi puéril qu’inefficace[1235].” And, seeing that the men of the Middle Ages made bells and organs so commonly, why, he asks, are not the sounding “poteries” of more frequent occurrence[1236]?
In England, notable finds of jars are on record, though the number of churches concerned is but a trivial percentage of the whole. At St Clement’s, Sandwich, the jars were built into the walls of the chancel, overlooking the altar[1237]. At Barkway, Hertfordshire, they were likewise embedded in the chancel wall, but on the floor level[1238]. They are also found in the thickness of the wall, a few inches below the floor level, as at Fountains Abbey, where they had been placed at the base of the old choir screen. The Fountains vases lay on their sides, and both in and around them there was an abundance of charcoal. The charcoal, it is conjectured, may have had no more mysterious origin than a fire which occurred at the Dissolution[1239]. Jars, supposed to be of Romano-British make, were found on the top of the chancel wall at East Harling, Norfolk; in each case the mouth of the jar faced the interior of the chancel. For a long time a coating of lath and plaster had concealed these curiosities[1240], and one is led to wonder whether other jars may not, even now, lie hidden elsewhere. The gables of Newington church, Kent, yielded three jars. Other records come from Fairwell (Staffs.), Denford (Northants.), St Peter’s Mancroft and St Peter-per-Mountergate in Norwich, Upton, near Newark, and from Youghal, in Ireland[1241]. But the greatest collection of all was uncovered at the village church of Leeds, near Maidstone, in 1878. Altogether, about fifty earthenware pots were revealed. They were found on the top of each wall of the nave, below the wall plate. The walls and oaken roof belonged to the fifteenth century. The best judges at first declared that the vessels were of Romano-British manufacture, and dated a thousand years earlier than the fabric. This would seem to indicate that a series of urns had been discovered in the neighbourhood, and pressed into service by the Mediaeval masons. Later expert opinion, however, declares that the jars, though possessing some Celtic characteristics, are of Mediaeval date. The bodies of the jars were cylindrical, and about 8 or 9 inches in diameter, while the mouths narrowed to 3 or 4 inches. The height averaged 10-12 inches. The bottom of each jar was convex and perforated. Mr Hills calls attention to some perplexing general considerations. The jars are of any form and every form, they are old and new, they are placed, as if at hazard, from the floor to the roof. He therefore concludes that the intentions were several, although he does not himself suggest any other purpose to supplement the acoustic theory[1242]. In such a matter as this, difference of purpose, variety in underlying belief, changeable custom according to locality, confused folk-memory and tradition, need cause the antiquary no surprise. The prime motive having vanished, the custom is bereft of its full meaning, and the course of development runs along divergent rather than parallel lines. Two other discoveries which seem to favour the acoustic theory may be given—those at Ashburton, in Devon (1838), and Luppitt, also in Devon (1880). The Ashburton jars ([Fig. 88] A), though convex at the base, and exhibiting chevron ornament, are assigned not to the Late-Celtic period, but to the close of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century. The jars from Luppitt ([Fig. 88] B) are comparable to those found at Leeds. They were apparently made especially for insertion in a wall, as they are flattened a little in one portion. They probably belong to the fifteenth century[1243].
This question of “acoustic jars” has been dilated upon because it seems to involve an indirect derivative of the skull superstition, and one is induced to outline the story, however roughly and tentatively. We start with a period when the horse cult is rife, and when solemnity is the note of the priest and soothsayer. At a later date, a horse, or among some peoples, an