512 Discovery of Horse-heads. By Dr. E. C. Robertson. 



In his sylvan fastnesses the Celtic inhabitant held his own, nay, 

 for many generations did much more, harrying and robbing his 

 more peaceful neighbours. Eedesdale being a Eegality, with a 

 resident Lord of the Manor supreme, for centuries it was found 

 that " The King's writ runneth not in Eedesdale." Until the 

 time of Bernard Gilpin, the thieves, that is the men of Eedesdale, 

 were probably hardly Christians even by profession. Their clergy 

 and instructors are described by Bishop Fox in 1498 as " wholly 

 ignorant of letters, the priest of ten years standing not know- 

 ing how to read the ritual." In this community of men, ignor- 

 ant, dissolute, accustomed to crime, debarred by laws made 

 specially against them from mixing freely with their neighbours, 

 having only slight connection with the world beyond their own 

 morass-girt vale, and intermarrying amongst themselves, it may 

 be expected that old customs and superstitions lingered longer 

 amongst these fierce Borderers, than elsewhere. The Eedesdale 

 man of the fourteenth century probably still showed in his habits 

 and customs many affinities to his early Aryan progenitor, who 

 in one of the Keltish migrations left the east of the Caspian, and 

 fought his way across the north of Greece and central States of 

 Europe to North Germany and Britain. 



In early times human sacrifice was common and was of course 

 the most solemn of all. Next in honour came the sacrifice of the 

 horse. " In the earliest period (writes Grimm) the horse seems 

 to have been the favourite animal for sacrifice. Our ancestors 

 have this in common with several Slavic and Finnish races, with 

 Persians and Indians ; with all of them the horse passed for a 

 specially sacred animal. Heathendom saw something sacred 

 and divine in the horse and often endowed him with conscious- 

 ness and sympathy in the destiny of man." We have an ex- 

 ample of this in the Iliad, where Achilles has a touching con- 

 versation with Xanthos and Bullios — a parallel case is in the 

 Karling legend of Bayard, and several others in the Northern 

 Sagas might be quoted. The admiration of the Ancients for the 

 horse was supreme. In " Job," that oldest drama, the horse 

 is described in language of marvellous poetic beauty. " His neck 

 clothed in thunder — he swalloweth the ground with fierceness 

 and rage — he smelleth the battle afar off." Paris rushing forth 

 with Hector to battle, Hke a God, is likened by Homer, [Pope's 

 translation] to 



