INTKODUCTION. 



The almost universal custom of raising a mound, the so-called 

 barrow ^, over the buried dead, to mark the place where they were 

 laid in the grave, has been variously discussed, and by many 

 different writers. Notices of the practice have been so often col- 

 lected from the works of Greek and Latin authors and other sources, 

 that it is not necessary for me to enter upon any general considera- 

 tion of the subject, except in very brief terms. 



This form of memorial, monumentum are perennius, as ancient as 

 it has been lasting, is found in almost all parts of the globe, from 

 the extreme West of Europe to the Eastern limit of the continent 

 of the New World. Barrows, under diverse names, line the coasts 

 of the Mediterranean, the seats of ancient empires and civilisations, 

 before whose rise they were in existence, and whose decay they 

 have witnessed and outlived. So numerous are they, that they 

 spread like a covering over the wide plains, the Steppes of Northern 

 Asia, from the Euxine almost to the Icy Sea, where a few wandering 

 nomads now feebly represent a population . which was once large, 

 wealthy, and powerful. The continent of India possesses them in 

 abundance, and their buried contents present an identity in many 

 particulars so close with those of Britain, that some have considered 

 it as affording a proof of a near connection between the two peoples 

 who erected them. Egypt knows them as the sepulchres of her 

 early kings, and the Pyramids have remained, an unchanging legacy 

 from the dead, when the wisdom of her learned exists only in the 

 oft transmuted knowledge of many an alien race, and when her 

 religion, her literature, her art, almost her language, the living 

 expressions of a nation's being, have all but passed away and been 

 forgotten. The red man of America still places his dead beneath 



^ I have preferred to use the English harrow rather than the Latin tumulus, on 

 account of the word being in the vernacular, and because tumulus does not neces- 

 sarily imply a sepulchral mound. 



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