112 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



are probably those belonging to a domesticated race. The 

 antiquity of the horse in England is yet doubtful ; and if 

 we are to place any reliance on the results of researches in 

 these barrows, we might conclude that horses were very 

 rare, if not altogether unknown, during that period styled 

 the stone age ; but during the metallic period his remains 

 are frequently met with. 



Mr Bateman' concludes, from his researches among 

 the most ancient burial-places, that he does not know in 

 what light the primitive inhabitants of our country may 

 have looked upon the horse, viewed as a creature of suf- 

 ficient importance to be necessary for their use and hap- 

 piness in a future state, but certain it is, that however rude 

 and degraded this belief in another world may have been, 

 the teeth, if not some of the bones, of horses have been 

 found in primitive British tumuli, particularly those of 

 Derbyshire ; and which have no history but their strange 

 contents. 



Two Celtic graves opened in Yorkshire contained 

 skeletons of horses ; and in graves of the Anglo-Saxon 

 period they have also been found.^ The Hon. C. Neville, 

 describing the remains found in a cemetery near Little 

 Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire, in 1 85 i, remarks : ' Mention 

 should here be made of an instance similar to one de- 

 scribed by Sir Henry Dryden (Archasologia, vol. xxxiii.), 

 viz. : the entire body of a horse, interred by the side of his 

 rider, with a perfect iron bit still remaining on its head, 

 and some small stud nails, with fragments of a leather head- 

 stall.' ^ 



' Ten Years' Diggings. " Knoivles. Horae Ferales^ p. 65. 



■^ Saxon Obsequies, p. 9. 



