REPORT ON THE STAPENHILL EXPLORATIONS. L7i7 
the case at Ozingell, Wye Hill, and at Fairford; whilst at 
West Harnham, and at Brighthampton, in Oxfordshire, the head 
pointed to the west. In a few cemeteries, as at Linton Heath, 
and at Girton College and Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, as 
well as at Stapenhill, the direction of the bodies is by no means 
uniform, most of them being apparently interred without any 
regard whatever either to symmetrical arrangement or direction. 
It is dffficult to imagine what ceremonies were practised at 
these interments, but certainly they entailed the use of fire. Fire 
amongst the Pagan races of northern Europe was the great 
resolver of all things, the purifier of the spirit from the earthly 
dross surrounding it; for as the smoke and flame of the funeral 
pyre ascended to the heavens, so might the relatives of the 
deceased imagine that the spirit thus set free winged its flight to 
those happy hunting-grounds where he might unceasingly pursue 
the unending chase, or, in the halls of Thor or Odin, quaft 
draughts illimitable of sparkling mead from the shadowy skulls of 
his conquered enemies. 
In many of these cemeteries ditches several yards in length, and 
from three to nine feet wide, and sometimes reaching a depth of 
six or more feet, occur. Such was the case at Fairford, and at 
Stapenhill, and at first sight it would appear as if these 
cemeteries had originally been surrounded by a moat or ditch. 
I cannot find in any of the reports of explorations of Saxon 
cemeteries which have been published, a detailed account of 
these ditches, and I think it is extremely probable that if any 
cemetery had been encircled by such a moat or other earth- 
work, such a fact would certainly be recorded by at least one 
explorer. 
The only reference by Wylie to the ditch at Fairford Cemetery 
is as follows ;— 
“Came to a spot which caused us much delay in the ex- 
cavations. It was an accumulation of rich soil about three feet 
deep, in which were interspersed fragments of pottery, bones, 
animals’ teeth, etc., that had mostly undergone the action of 
fire. . . . . It seemed the limit of the cemetery in that 
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