260 YORKSHIRE. EAST RIDIXC1. 



arranged herring-bone fashion on the outside of the vessel, and on 

 the inside of the rim by a series of lozenges (their longer axes 

 touching at the points) placed between two bands of short lines 

 inclining inwards. Seven feet north-north-east of the present 

 centre, but no doubt coincident with the original one, and clearly 

 the primary interment, was the body of a child, scarcely a year old, on 

 its left side, with the head to N. by E. It was placed on the natural 

 surface in a slight hollow, with a direction of west-north-west by east- 

 south-east, 5 ft. long and 3 ft. wide, and lined with wood, which 

 towards the east end was charred. Close to the child, also towards 

 the east end of the hollow, were some of the bones of, apparently, 

 a young woman, placed certainly with some regard to their proper 

 order, but by no means presenting such an appearance as would 

 imply that when the interment took place there had been an entire 

 body. The head was on its left side, but there was no lower jaw 

 with it ; the other bones were in such a position as to show that it 

 had been intended to lay the body on the right side, but there was 

 no left femur, no vertebrae, and none of the bones -of the arms, 

 except the left humerus. The bones still remaining were in such a 

 sound condition as to render it impossible to suppose that those 

 which were wanting had perished by decay, so that there can be no 

 room for doubt that when the child was buried certain parts of the 

 skeleton of another body had been placed in association with it, the 

 bones probably of one removed from some other place of deposit, 

 and possibly those of the mother. 



The size of this barrow was such as (presumably at least) to in- 

 dicate the importance of the person over whose body it had been 

 raised ; and yet there seems every reason to conclude that the person 

 in question was a child of very tender years 1 . Possibly the child 

 may have been the offspring of the -chief of some powerful tribe, 

 destined, if life had been spared, to rule in his turn over the people 

 whose bodily toil contributed to the erection of this gigantic funeral 

 memorial. Nor is the conjecture an improbable one which would 

 regard the bones of the young female as those of the mother, who 

 had died before her child, and whose bones had been disinterred 

 from their previous resting-place in order that they might be laid 



1 Sir R. Colt Hoare records the discovery of the body of a very young child in 

 a deep grave at the centre of a large barrow at Lake. He says, ' The history of this 

 tumulus, which our learned Doctor (Stukeley) would, from its superior size and beauti- 

 ful form, have styled a King Barrow, shows what little regard we ought to pay 

 to system ; for here, at the vast depth of nearly 14 ft., we find only the deposit of an 

 infant, accompanied by a single drinking cup.' Ancient Wilts, vol. i. p. 210. 





