106 Mr. J. Hardy on Sepulchral Monuments. 



by about five rows of the usual herring-bone indentations*. The 

 girt is nearly uniform from the mouth to the second ridge; after 

 which the urn suddenly slopes, and narrows in a conical manner. 

 The bottom was fractured by the plough striking on it, it being 

 the part that was uppermost, the mouth having been applied to 

 the ground. It contained only ashes and calcined bones, of 

 which a fragment of a rib was still entire f. These urns were, 

 in all likelihood, of a kind sui generis, peculiar to the race that 

 used them, without being, as has been supposed, borrowed by 

 imitation from the Romans, whose footing in the district appears 

 never to have been so permanent as to induce the inhabitants to 

 adopt changes in customs so tenaciously held, as those that 

 respect the obsequies for the dead, united as they were with re- 

 ligious rites and scruples, with which the Romans rarely inter- 

 fered. We know that in Caesar's time, cremation of the dead 

 was customary among the Gauls, who were in many respects at 

 one with the Britons in their customs and observances J ; and 

 this mode of sepulture is found to have been practised in remote 

 parts of the Highlands, to which the Roman invader never had 

 access §. It is also worthy of remark, that the urns were placed, 

 as the want of a base in the bottom part indicates, in a reversed 

 position. In this respect they agree with those " sundrie earthen 

 pots" found in Anglesea, mentioned by Harrison, which were 

 " set with the mouthes downeward, contrarie to the vse of other 

 nations, which turned the brims upwards ||." As the two kinds 

 of sepulture — that in which the body was inhumed entire, and 

 that, in which, after being burned, the ashes were enclosed in an 

 urn — prevailed in close contiguity, it may be surmised that they 

 may have been coetaneous ; the one kind or the other being, as 

 among the early Romans, matters of choice or convenience^. Or 



* King, in his Munimenta Antiqua, i. 309, mentions several urns with 

 this zigzag kind of decoration, found in Devonshire and elsewhere ; and 

 justly remarks, that their rough rudeness and simplicity of ornament dis- 

 countenance the idea of their Roman origin. 



t See an account by Dr. Johnston of similar urns found at Murton, near 

 Berwick-on-Tweed, in the Proceedings of the Club, vol. i. p. 53. The left- 

 hand figure gives a general idea of the form of that which I am describing. 



J Cajsar, De Bell. Gall. 1. vi. c. 19. 



§ Huddleston, Edinburgh Magazine, Dec. 1818, p. 525. 



|| Holinshed's Chronicles, i. 64. Descript. of England by W. Harrison, 

 chap. 10. Urns, similarly placed, have been noticed in Northumberland. 



1[ According to Plutarch ( Vit. Num.), Numa directed his body not to be 

 burned, whence we may conclude that cremation of the dead was practised 

 at that early period of Roman history. The Danes, also, have an sera in 

 their history, dating from the time when burning of the dead was abolished, 

 and the introduction of tumuli, in which dead bodies were placed uncon- 

 sumed. The previous age was known as Brandalter, or age of burning. The 

 alteration took place in the reign of Dan the Magnanimous, the sixth king 

 of the race of Odin, a.d. 270. (Menzel's Hist, of Germany, i. 264.) 



