15 



sociation that he had found in excavations at Crauborne Chase bodies 

 buried without the liead. If we were ignorant of the practices of other 

 races we should be at a loss to account for such interments. As it is, we 

 ask ourselves whether these bodies are those of strangers whose heads have 

 been sent back to their own land, or their own tribe, in order to be united 

 in one general cemetery with their own people ; or whether the heads 

 were cut off and preserved by their immediate relatives and brought into 

 the circle at their festive gatherings to share the periodical solemnities of 

 the clan. Both these are savage modes of dealing with the dead, one of 

 which, indeed, left traces in Roman civilisation at its highest development. 

 The knowledge of them puts us upon inquiry as to other burials of the 

 prehistoric inhabitants of this country, which may help us in reconstruct- 

 ing their worship and their creed. I for one do not despair of recovering, 

 by careful comparison of the relics preserved to us in the ancient monu- 

 ments with the folklore of the existing peasantry and of races in other 

 parts of the earth, at least the outlines of the beliefs of our remote 

 predecessors. 



Any such c(jnclusions, however, must be founded on the essential unity 

 that science has, during the last thirty years, unveiled to us in human 

 thought and human institutions. This unity has disguised itself in forms 

 a,s diverse as the nationalities of men. And when we have succeeded in 

 piecing together the skeleton of our predecessors' civilisation, material and 

 intellectual, we are confronted by the further inquiries : What were the 

 specific distinctions of their culture ? and How was it influenced by those 

 of their neighbours or of their conquerors ? This is a question only to be 

 determined, if at all, by the examination of the folklore of the country. 

 We may assume that the physical measurements, descriptions, and por- 

 traits of the present inhabitants will establish our relationship to some of 

 the peoples whose remains we find beneath our feet. And it will be 

 reasonable to believe that, though there has been a communication from 

 other peoples of their traditions, yet that the broad foundation of our folk- 

 lore is derived from our foi'efathers and predecessors in our own land. In 

 Gloucestershire itself we have strong evidence of the persistence of tradi- 

 tion. Bisley Church is said to have been originally intended to be built 

 several miles off, ' but the Devil every night removed the stones, and the 

 architect was obliged at last to build it where it now stands.' This is, of 

 course, a common tradition. The peculiarity of the case is that at Bisley 

 its meaning has been discovered. The spot where, we are told, ' the 

 church ought to have been built was occupied formerly by a Roman villa ; ' 

 and when the church was restored some years ago ' portions of the mate- 

 rials of that villa were found embedded in the church walls, including the 

 altars of the Penates, which are now, however, removed to the British 

 Museum.' ' Here, as Sir John Dorington said, addressing this Society 

 some years ago at Stroud, is a tradition which has been handed down for 

 fifteen or sixteen hundred years. This is in our own country, and it may 

 be thought hard to beat such a record. But at Mold, in Flintshire, there 

 is evidence of a ti'adition which must have been handed down from the 

 prehistoric iron age — that is to say, for more than two thousand years. 

 A cairn stood there, called the Brxjn-yr-EUyllon, the Hill of the Fairies. 

 It was believed to be haunted ; a spectre clad in golden armour had been 



' Gloucestersldre JS. 4- Q. vol. i. p. 390 quoting an article in the Building Nen\^. 

 See also Sir John Dorington's Presidential Address, Tratis. B. <<• G. Arch. tsuc. vol. v. 

 p. 7. 



