PARISH OF 11UDSTONE. 233 



which follows more or less the line of the crest of the hill. There 

 are first three, very near together and standing the furthest to the 

 west, then a single one, and still more to the east another. Some- 

 what to the south-east of the last are two long mounds, almost 

 parallel, their northern ends gradually losing themselves in the 

 surface-level, but connected together at their southern ends by 

 another long mound. Then about half a mile to the east-north- 

 east is a very large barrow, while other three are placed at con- 

 siderable intervals still further to the east. One of this group, that 

 the most towards the west, was almost entirely removed many 

 years ago, when bones are said to have been found in large quan- 

 tities : part also of one of the long mounds was taken away fifty 

 years since in order to fill in a neighbouring chalk-pit, but finding 

 some human bones, the workmen were stopped, leaving it little 

 disturbed except at one end. I opened seven of the round barrows 

 which remained untouched, and also the long mounds. 



The position which the barrows occupy is a very striking one, 

 and must always have been so. The men who raised these funeral 

 mounds looked on the one side over the swelling upland of the 

 wold, bleak, grey, and treeless, their eye taking in on many a dis- 

 tant ridge the burial-places of chiefs of other, though perhaps 

 kindred, tribes ; whilst upon an outcrop of rock, lifting itself out of 

 the valley just beneath them, rose the lofty monolith which now 

 stands in Rudstone churchyard, even then it may be hoar and 

 lichen-covered, and to them equally speechless, as to its origin and 

 meaning, as it is to ourselves at the present day. Or possibly 

 they might look upon it with traditionary knowledge of its purport, 

 or even have helped to raise it from its bed, where, laid ages 

 before, it told of a mighty cataclysm, and how it had wandered far 

 from its original home, borne over the waves on some buoyant ice- 

 ship. There it stood, telling them perchance that at its base was 

 laid to his rest a mightier warrior than him they were entombing 

 on the height above ; or it may have spoken to them as the symbol 

 of a belief, according to which their lives were regulated, and 

 marked the place it stood upon as holy ground. If they looked 

 to the south there was nothing but a dreary tract of marsh-land, 

 which seemed almost interminable, wherein however, amidst the 

 coarse vegetation and brushwood, the deer and the wild swine had 

 their haunt, and where the beaver made a habitation almost equal 

 in point of construction to those they had themselves the skill to 

 form. Beyond was the sea, as yet enlivened by no sail. 



