Mr. J. Hardy on Sepulchral Monuments. 107 



they might have served as a token of distinction between the 

 warrior and the civilian — the hero who died fighting gloriously^ 

 and him who was gathered to his fathers in peace. 



For a long period there existed, at a nearly equal distance 

 between the last-mentioned cairn and the British chesters at Old 

 Penmanshiel, a singular structure, which long defied the con- 

 jectures of the rural antiquary. It was of a horse-shoe shape, 

 hollow in the centre, with a raised ring on all sides except the 

 south-west, where it admitted an entrance nearly on a level with 

 the interior space. Had it been a little larger, it might have been 

 regarded as one of those structures, half-sepulchral, half-judicial, 

 to which, from assemblies of the people being held around them, 

 as being adapted to the simple tribunal ring of their senatus, the 

 Saxons applied the term of mote*. Being but diminutive, it had 

 the reputation of being one of the old kilns employed for drying 

 corn, at a period when meal, rather than unmanufactured pro- 

 duce, formed an object of traffic. On being broken up, however, 

 about 1832, it was found to consist of six or seven graves, formed 

 of huge slabs of rock, and overtopped with a mound of earth and 

 gravel, seemingly derived from the excavated interior. All the 

 graves were empty. It may have served the purpose of a family 

 burying-place, or perhaps once contained the remains of some of 

 the leaders of the people, conveyed thither for interment. On 

 the former supposition, the vacant space at the south-west would, 

 but for some interruption, have been at length filled up, when it 

 would have presented the appearance of the circular barrows in 

 other departments of the islandf. From its vicinity to the old 

 ring fortlet, it would appear to belong to the same class of anti- 

 quities, as were, in all likelihood, the monuments already de- 

 scribed. It is an old opinion that these cairns and tumuli were 

 the memorials of a battle, and that the dead were entombed where 

 they fell. When such an event happened, however, it is more 

 likely that the fallen, instead of being buried in widely scattered 

 localities, would be, as was customary among the Danes and 

 others, consigned to one general tomb J. A soldier^s funeral on 



* Mote, a place of meeting, a convention, a court of justice. 



t Similar barrows have been discovered in various parts of England. 

 King mentions one in Devonshire, containing five skeletons (Mun. Ant. i. 

 309) ; one in Gloucestershire, opened in 17B7, containing at least six bodies 

 (lb. 312) ; and one in Westmoreland, removed in 1/92, in which were six 

 bodies, placed on the ground, in kist-vaens, or stone coffins made of the 

 slate common in that country (lb. p. 321). 



X In 1016, Canute, after a great battle with Edmund Ironside, cast up 

 four hillocks to commemorate the event, two of which being opened, pro- 

 duced great quantities of bones, and chains like bridle-bits. Three mounds 

 were raised after the battle of Cidloden, in 1746. (Rev. J. Ho<Ig8on, in 

 Archrcologia ^liana, i. 7) 



