THE HILL- FORTRESS CALLEb EGGARDUN. 4! 



supernatural agencies. The symbol of divine aid might be a 

 bird's feather, a tuft of hair from an animal, a black stone, or a 

 translucent pebble.* 



Speaking of Ophelia's " shards, flints, and pebbles," Thomas 

 Bateman, the opener of 400 barrows, says, " Fragmentary 

 pottery, flints, and pebbles have been all but universally present 

 in the tumuli. 



" The presence of chippings and instruments of flint, and 

 pebbles foreign to the soil, occurred in such situations as clearly 

 indicate that they are not fortuitous accompaniments to the 

 barrow, but were placed there as a kind of offering to the shades 

 of the deceased. 



" On opening a barrow on the Kenslow Farm .... on 

 the breast of the entire skeleton lay a circular fibula of bronze. 

 There was also a large quartz pebble and a fragment of pottery 

 of red clay. 



" Between the bodies was placed an axe of basalt in a decom- 

 posed state and broken in the middle. In the same situation 

 was found a porphyry-slate pebble, highly polished, of very 

 singular shape, 4^ inches in length, the sides triangular and 

 tapering towards the ends."f 



In a barrow at Ringham Lowe, in 1821, Bateman found 

 fragments of two dark-coloured vases, a spear-head and some 

 flakes of flint, and a pebble [now submitted for inspection, 

 H. C. M.]. 



Mr. Rooke, who opened a barrow on Fin Cop, Derbyshire, in 

 1795, found a skeleton face downwards. "On the top of the 

 skull was a piece of black Derbyshire marble dressed into an 

 oblong, 2 feet by nine inches broad and 6 inches thick. In the 

 kistvaen was a circular stone, polished, and of a yellowish 

 colour. On one of the urns was a smooth stone foreign to the 

 soil. This kind of stones may have been preserved as valuable 

 amulets." 



* Alice C. Fletcher, Totemism. 

 f Bateman, Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire, pp. 14, 29, 50. 



