Discovery of Horse-heads. By Dr. E. C. Robertson. 523 



memory of the early colonists of Britain — tlie ''sacred island," 

 where the priests were in Pliny's day so learned in the magic of 

 the East, as even to bear the reputation of having sent its wis- 

 dom to Asia, instead of owing it to importation from the East. 



The dominion of Eome with the introduction of its own gods 

 and mythology supplanted the ancient laws, customs, and religion 

 of Britain — the Druids were exterminated and their religion died 

 with them. Eemains of it stiU. existed at the time when the pure 

 Christian faith overturned it, replacing pagan rites and sacrifices 

 by the pure " evangel " of Christ. In the seventh century 

 Christianity prevailed in the Northumbrian highlands, and a 

 church at Elsdon then arose. At that early period in the history 

 of Christianity in England, many pagan superstitions and acts 

 of worship were mixed with the simple rites of the new religion, 

 and as I have mentioned before, the tolerance of the early church 

 for the practices of Heathendom was very great. It seems to me 

 to be within the pale of probability, that at the installation of 

 the first church in Elsdon, the sacrifice of a horse as an act of 

 sanctification of the building may have taken place. It was a 

 sacrifice common in early times at the raising of buildings, and 

 being in solemnity next to the human, what more likely than for 

 it to be used by the half-savage and newly, and but partially, 

 converted inhabitants of this wild district. And as the Gauls 

 were described not many centuries before as fixing the heads of 

 horses on high, as an act of worship and veneration for their 

 gods, what more likely, than that their kinsmen here should, 

 even perhaps with the approval of the missionaries, show their 

 veneration towards their newly acquired religion, by fixing the 

 heads of the sacrificed horses on the church. The practice thus 

 commenced in faith, would naturally be repeated with less and 

 less belief in or understanding of its significance, as oft as a new 

 church arose on the ruins of the old, untH at last in the fifteenth 

 or sixteenth century, we find the rite still in practice, as shewn 

 by the preparation of a chamber in the belfry of the church, 

 specially constructed to hold the horse heads.* Or the horse 

 heads may have been considered as emblems of Pagan sun wor- 

 ship, and the three heads of the animal so especially sacred to 

 Heathendom may have been raised aloft in the church tower, as 

 a sign of the victory of the Tri-une God over Paganism, even as 



* The present church belongs to about the year A.D. 1400 ; the spire may 

 be of even later date. 



