330 A FARMER'S YEAR 



canopies that we see erected over tombs, but not more than fifteen 

 inches deep. Whether it was ever larger of course I cannot say. 

 In this little recess is a stone slab about the width of an ordinary 

 bench, out of the centre of which a V-shaped piece had been 

 broken. On lifting this fragment a cavity appeared beneath, and 

 in the cavity lay the skeleton of a man packed in a space of about 

 three feet in length by one foot in width. Here the bones had 

 been arranged in some past age and with great care, the skull 

 being placed in the centre of the pile. Unless the outer wall 

 has been altered it is obvious that the corpse cannot have 

 been laid thus for burial, for even supposing that our ancestors 

 were willing to suffer a decaying body to be packed away above 

 the level of the ground in such a position that the gases arising 

 from it must have percolated into the church — which is possible, 

 for in those days people were not particular — it could not have 

 been accommodated in so small a receptacle. There were no 

 traces of any coffin. The remains arc those of a large man of 

 about fifty years of age, for the teeth seem somewhat worn, and 

 his femurs show that he was old enough to suffer severely from 

 the gout. Whose they can be and how they came here must, I fear, 

 remain a matter for conjecture, though doubtless this is the 

 skeleton of some important person who was buried a very long 

 time ago, since it is quite yellow with age. 



Are these perchance the bones of a Crusader or of a gentleman 

 who was killed in the mediceval French wars, which were collected 

 and sent home in a bag or box for interment in his native place ? 

 Some of them, especially the ribs, are frayed and knocked about 

 at the ends, a fact which would go to sup[)ort such a theory, for 

 this damage might have occurred in the course of long travel. 

 Or is it possible that here are the relics of a saint that once lay 

 before the altar, but in the Reformation times were moved and 

 hidden away in tliis hole to save them from desecration ? It is a 

 mystery, and a mystery it must remain, for the records throw no 

 light upon its secret. Now the slab is cemented down, and if 

 ever it should be lifted again hundreds of years hence, doubtless the 



