524 Skeletons found at Ladykirk. By Kev. W. Dobie, M.A. 



we at the present day hang up in our churches the banners 

 gained in battle from a defeated enemy.* 



Whatever was the significance attached to the act by the work- 

 men in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, who constructed the 

 chamber to hold its strange occupants, it is, I think, very plain 

 that in the (so far as I can learn unique) discovery so lately made, 

 has been laid bare in the nineteenth century, a relic or survival 

 of that early " cult " of the horse, the type of the sun, which at- 

 tained its zenith three thousand years ago, in the magnificent 

 rites which accompanied the Aswamhedha or Great Horse sacri- 

 fice of India. The fact of this symbol of the sun having been 

 discovered in a Christian church, erected at a remote time by a 

 rude people, is not more surprising than to read in 2nd Kings, 

 xxiii, of King Josiah taking the horses of the sun and his char- 

 iots from the great temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem. 



* Beneath the eucharistic altar of Notre-Dame, in Paris, were discovered 

 stones with the symbols and imagery belonging to ancient Heathen reli- 

 gion. These votive monuments had evidently been placed there, says 

 Palgrave, " as trophies of triumphant Christianity." 



On Skeletons found at Ladykirk Church, Berwickshire. By 



the Rev. William Dobie, M.A. 

 In opening up a portion of the floor at the east end of Ladykirk 

 Church, whereon would have stood the high altar (had the edifice 

 ever been occupied by the Eoman Catholics), the workmen came 

 upon a mass of human remains lying four feet from the surface, 

 and in the order of individual skeletons, but across each other at 

 every conceiveable angle as if they had been thrown hurriedly 

 into a common grave. Strange to say at the depth of ten feet 

 there was disclosed a plain unpolished freestone flag 2^ft. by 

 2ft., which, being carefully removed, was found to have rested 

 upon a handful or two of soft dust and underneath the dust a 

 flag of dimensions similar to that on the top. The dust seemed 

 to be all that remained of what must many centuries ago have 

 been the body of a child. During the restoration of the church 

 in 1860-1, it was found necessary to erect a scaffolding inside for 

 the purpose of reaching the arched roof, and the workmen, in 

 digging a hole in which to fix their uprights, again came upon 

 human remains and not wishing further to disturb them, other 

 methods were employed by which the work was successfully car- 

 ried out. 



