124 ON SOME DIGGINGS NEAR BRASSINGTON, DERBYSHIRE. 



if the gallery is not found, this "chamber"* (for thus these 

 recepfacles are termed) can still be distinguished from a cist by 

 having one of its sides open or otherwise imperfect, but it is 

 possible that in such cases the gallery has been destroyed. The 

 cover-mound was oval, heart-shaped, or occasionally quite circular 

 (as those of Mininglow, in the vicinity, and New Grange, Co. 

 Meath), and its base was usually protected by a retaining- wall, 

 defined by a circle of standing stones. A reference to Fig. 17, 

 which gives a section and plan of the New Grange barrow, and 

 enlarged ones of its chamber and gallery, will make the above 

 clearer. P'ig. 18 is the plan of a Scandinavian chamber, that of 

 Uby. It has frequently happened that the mound has dis- 

 appeared, leaving the larger stones standing exposed as a 

 " dolmen." Fig. 19 is an excellent example from Herrestrup, 

 Zeeland ; the finest English ones are Kitt's Cotty House, in 

 Kent, and that of Lanyon, Cornwall. The half-exposed 

 Mininglow chambers, and two at Five Wells, near Taddington, 

 are good examples nearer our doors. 



The Scandinavian chambers (they put ours into the shade in 

 point of size and elaborateness) furnish a clue to the motive of 

 this peculiar mode of sepulture. The researches of Nillson and 

 oiher Northern antiquaries have proved that there is a similarity 

 between them and the half underground huts of some Boreal 

 races, as the Eskimo. In size, shape, in the direction of the 

 gallery — invariably to the south or east — and even in the con- 

 siruction of stalls around the sides of the interior (used by living 

 sleepers in the one case, and occupied by skeletons in the other), 

 the identity is too close to be the result of chance ; these 

 chambers are veritable houses of the dead. And, in some cases, 



* The indefinite usage of the words "cist," " chEimber," and "vault," is 

 detrimental to science. In Bateman, for instance, a cist may be a mere roofless 

 fencing-in of the interment by a surrounding wall, or a box-like receptacle. 

 It seems to the writer that the protection of the interment might be thus 

 conveniently classified : — as guarded, when placed by a large stone, or with a 

 head and a footstone ; as enclosed, when fenced in by a wall ; encysted, when in 

 a box-like receptacle ; and vaulted, when the receptacle is cut into the rock 

 and roofed over as a cist. The term chamber being used exclusively for the 

 receptacle of a long barrow. 



