By the Rev. Canon Jackson, F.8.A. 289 
as soon as they had used all the water they had got. With this 
explanation one can make sense of an encampment on Cley Hill, 
which without it is not very intelligible. Material for posts, palisades, 
and wicker work might have been had to any amount in Selwood 
Forest, which ran for twenty miles along the foot of the hill, and 
water also in abundance at the springs in Corsley, especially at 
Sturford, also close at the foot. 
That, then, is one of the uses to which we are sure, from the 
military earth-works left, our Cley Hills, Scratchburies, and Yarn- 
buries, must have been put. 
There were other uses, such as we read of in the Bible about the 
“ Hieh Places” in the East. In the Prophetic buoks, particularly, 
_ the Israelites are continually being rebuked for their leaning towards 
the worship they found in the country they had come to—the 
abominations, as the Prophets call them, 2x high places. Among the 
popular customs of our own country, there are many vestiges of 
~ heathen worship upon ‘high hills: probably the worship of the sun 
or various heathen deities. But when this country was Christianized, 
the name of the heathen deity was by degrees supplanted by that of 
a Christian Saint; and the hill continued to be frequented for some 
festival belonging to the new national religion. 
_ There are several hills in the county of Wilts where the people 
on certain holidays used—and do still use—to go up and hold some 
kind of revel. At Martins-hill, near Marlborough, the youth 
of that neighbourhood were accustomed to go up on Palm Sunday 
and slide down the precipitous escarpment on horses’ skulls, as a 
kind of sledge. Cley Hill also had its revel. This was on Palm 
Sunday, and was probably a relic of the procession which on that 
day used to be made before the Reformation. I have seen it men- 
tioned that this gathering took place in order to keep up the bound- 
aries of two parishes that cross the hill; but the day fer that custom 
was usually Holy Thursday. Whatever it was, the custom led to 
riot and abuse, and was discontinued. It still continues at the 
celebrated mound of Silbury, near Marlborough, and at other places 
in Wilts. (Wilts Arch. Mag., vii., 180.) 
In the adjoining county of Somerset (as I observed lately in a 
y¥2 
