CRANBORNE THE SO-CALLED CASTLE. 135 



in from the incursion of idle and noisy folk, as are our law 

 courts, and in some, or many, cases by a ring, bank, or some 

 other fence, which has long since perished. There is a fine Cor 

 at Knowlton, and in Cornwall are others, called the Bounds, in 

 which were acted the old Miracle Plays, and which had benches 

 for onlookers around the slopes of the banks. This fence and 

 its ground was usually called the Cor or King, and the Welsh still 

 call Stonehenge "y cor-gawr," the Giant's ring. The word 

 Cruc (Creek) is now become in English Creech, as at Creech 

 Knowle (Purbeck), Evercreech (Somerset). 



I believe, therefore, that the so-called Cranborne Castle was a 

 British Cor., with its court mound, and that it was the court 

 of Common Law of the British Hundred (Cantrev) of Cran- 

 borne. It is very likely that the Saxons and later English used 

 the British Court mounds for Hundreds' Courts, and I should be 

 thankful to any fellow-member of the club who might know that 

 any constable was wont to hold or proclaim the Hundreds 

 Court at any old earthwork. 



There is what I deem to be a British Court mound at Marl- 

 borough, and I believe that the great mound Silbury (Wilts) is 

 another. The smaller district courts (Grorseddau), called Chair 

 Sessions, were holden under the presidency of a Chair Bard ; a 

 Bard graduated and so qualified to take the Bench, and sit as a 

 Judge in Common or Bardic Law Chair-Sessions which were 

 usually holden monthly, and might be holden at any quarter of 

 the moon, and so weekly law times were sun and moon times ; 

 and I believe that the Druids taught the people, and had 

 religious service once every quarter of the moon, and so far the 

 Britons had weeks, and a kind of sabbaths which brought them 

 willing to take the Christian Sabbath. 



A Chair Session might, in bad weather, be holden under eover ; 

 but the Britons would not have any closed court. The cry at 

 the opening of a Gorsedd was " Truth against the world, and in 

 the face of the sun." 



The Tinwald Hill in the Isle of Man is a sample of a "cruc 

 y gorsedd" still in use. 



