18 On the WJiite Horses of Wiltshire. 



Newbury Field Club, " There are other sites within the old Ash down 

 district, which answer the description of the chroniclers, and have 

 evidently been the scene of battles, and I cannot therefore aver 

 positively that the Danes occupied Uffington Castle, and the Saxons 

 Barwell and Alfred Camps, on the night before this great struggle. 

 Nor am I sure (and this is perhaps even greater heresy) that our 

 White Horse was cut out on the hill after the battle. Indeed I 

 incline to believe that it was there long before, and that Ethelred 

 and Alfred could not have spent an hour on such a work in the crisis 

 of 871." On the other hand, in 1738, Dr. Francis Wise, a fellow of 

 Trinity College, Oxford, published a letter to Dr. Mead in which he 

 strongly upholds the Alfred memorial theory, paralleling with it 

 the cutting out of a whole rock into the likeness of herself by 

 Semiramis, and the engravings said to have been made by Hannibal 

 upon the rocks in memory of his exploits. To him appeared an 

 answer, two years later, entitled " The impertinence and imposture of 

 modern Antiquaries displayed by Philalethes Rusticus," — whose name 

 is added in apparently contemporary pen and ink in the British Mu- 

 seum copy to be " Mr. Bumsted," — a not unknown name. (There is 

 however in our own Museum another copy, in which the name of Esplin 

 is given as that of the author.) He says " Though he has Resem- 

 blance enough to be called a Horse as properly as any other Quad- 

 ruped, yet I can not say He is a perfect Picture of a Horse. — As to 

 his Head, it wants a little Repairing. The Rest of His forehead is 

 not so much amiss, especially not at all too short, being from his 

 ears to his withers about 50 of my Paces, i.e., 150 feet. But then 

 he is quite a light hodied one : I may say for a Horse that has lain 

 so long at grass, carries no lody at all ; insomuch that should he 

 take up hill, were I upon the Back of him, 1 should be under terrible 

 apprehensions he would slip through his Girth. If his tail is as it 

 was from the Beginning, it is a plain case he never carried it well ; 

 but just as you have seen a Fox drag his brush when almost down. 

 . . This perhaps might be helped by Nicking, but that being 

 a modern invention, would derogate from his Antiquity, which is all 

 in all." 



Again, " It was one of the wise sayings of our ancestors, even 



