THE FAERY YEAR 



the latter was less advanced the bronze was worked 

 by fire and stone mould, the copper merely beaten 

 to the required form. 



At best we but grope in a twilight of knowledge 

 about the people of the barrows. Sometimes, just 

 as we think we are gaining a clearer view of their 

 roaming lives, some new theory threatens to thicken 

 twilight into darkness once more. We were 

 imagining the old stone man, buried deep in the 

 gravel drift of English rivers dry an aeon since, 

 sealed up with his rude tools of stone among the 

 remains of the great beasts he stalked (or was stalked 

 by) ; and separating him clearly from the new stone 

 man with more human taste and art when we were 

 asked to start afresh, to imagine a connecting-link 

 between the two, a middle stone age man. A very 

 rude flaked flint, which I picked out of a great 

 perplexing store of stones scattered near the newly- 

 opened barrow, is thought by one authority to be 

 the work of the old stone age man, maybe near the 

 time of his wild morning, but others might call it 

 middle stone age. I found it, not in drift, but at 

 the surface, in a land where barrows and dykes 

 abound. 



Elms in Flower 



The elm flowers this year early. Many trees 

 were perceptibly thickening a fortnight since, and 

 now they are wine-red. This red of the elm is 

 one of the colours of the English spring which are 



5 2 



