64 THE CELTIC TUMULI OF DORSET. 



" The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years," was enriched with 

 two sets of triple lines or ribs converging from each side to meet 

 towards the point. Its length was llf inches. It lay at the 

 bottom of a deep cist in a bed of bones and ashes, below the level 

 of the ground, accompanied by two other blades of the smaller 

 kind.* Above them was an urn inverted. This barrow was of no 

 great size, but remarkable for the fact of being protected at top by 

 several very large blocks of sandstone. 



But how may the fact be explained that these bronze dagger- 

 blades have been obtained with less frequency in this county than 

 in Wiltshire 1 May it not be found in the received opinion that 

 Wiltshire was peopled by an early colony of the Belgae, to whom 

 indeed the erection of Stonehenge is usually attributed ; a people 

 more advanced in culture and commercial enterprise than the 

 Keltae whom they had dispossessed, conquered, and absorbed 1 The 

 BelgaB were the merchants who traded between this country and 

 Gaul. But still the question arises, in what country were these 

 bronze blades wrought 1 ? We do not believe they were manu- 

 factured in Gaul, but were carried through Gaul, in the routes of 

 commercial intercourse, from the Phoenician and later Greek 

 colonies of Gaul and Spain to the shores of the British Channel. 

 There can be no doubt that the art of metallurgy was known in 

 Britain from an early period, for we have had numerous discoveries 

 of the celt-moulds in which the bronze celts of the Britons were 

 cast ; f but I am not aware of one recorded instance of the discovery 

 of the mould of a bronze dagger-blade. It may be thought that 



* It is important to notice an error in the text (C.T.) that these blades 

 were iron. We have Mr. Shipp's authority for stating they were bronze. 

 His sketch and description is published in the Journal of the Britist Arch. 

 Assoc., Vol. 2, p. 98. It was fortunate that this gsntleman thus recorded 

 the discovery, as this beautiful dagger was, not long after, destroyed in an 

 accidental fire of the owner's premises. 



t Mr. Warne was shewn by Dr. Croker, of Bovey Tracy, Devon, two 

 moulds for casting bronze blades of a spear or sword, which were found in 

 a bed of a stream in his district, in 1851. The one was 2ft. in length ; the 

 other 1ft. 9in., and each mould weighed 721bs. 



