OF THE B1UTIS11 PERIOD AT WARKSHAJJOH. 159 



iiavc been not less than sixty feet in diameter. Its internal 

 arrangements are of peculiar interest. The southern cist, as we 

 have seen, was connected with the largest urn by a rude kind of 

 flagged path — the use of which it is difficult to conceive. A 

 closer bond of relationship or regard no doubt underlies the cause 

 of its construction. Perhaps husband and wife were thus united 

 even in their last home — perhaps father and son, falling in battle 

 together, in contesting the ford of the Tyne below or above the 

 adjoining "Mote Hill" of Wark,* like Saul and Jonathan on 

 Mount Grilboa, "in death were not divided;" and the survivors 

 perchance deemed that their spirits might in this way hold more 

 intimate communion with each other. But the precise cause 

 of this peculiar connection between cist and urn is confessedly 

 among "the secrets of the grave." The arrangement of the 

 cists is precisely what past experience would suggest, namely, a 

 central, and, probably, in order, earliest interment, then a second 

 on the cast towards the sun-rise, and a third and fourth follow- 

 ing the apparent course of the sun in the heavens, towards the 

 south-east and due south. This arrangement can hardly be dis- 

 associated from the known solar-worship of the ancient Britons, 

 and indeed of every early race of mankind without a revealed 

 religion, which is also exemplified in the circular form of hut- 

 circle and fort alike, having their entrances chiefly on the east. 

 Another reason for the absence of the cists on the noi'th and west 

 is, probably, the natural desire common to all men that their 

 mortal remains should lie not in the shade but in the glad sun- 

 shine in which they had loved to bask in their life-time. Our 



* It is remarkable, that a narrow tract of land on the Birtlcy margin of the North Tyne. 

 opposite to the Mote Hill, has from time immemorial formed part of the parish of Wark. 

 This long tract of rich alluvial soil constitutes the Warkshaugh farm on which the barrow 

 is situated. The name proves, that as far back as the Saxon period, it was attached to the 

 village of Wark, the ancient capital of the royal franchise of Tynedale, although wholly 

 separated from it by a wide, and often impassable river. The fact of the Mote Hill (an 

 elevated platform of natural rock, perhaps, as tradition asserts, improved by artificial 

 means,) having always commanded the excellent ford beneath, one of the best on the North 

 Tyne, may be held to countenance the suggestion of my friend, the Rev. H. Taylor, of Wark 

 Rectory, that in the British period the tribe holding this excellent vantage-ground would be 

 plile to extend their boundaries beyond the river, where no similar place of defence exists in 

 the flat haugh before mentioned. Undoubtedly it would be the scene of many fierce encoun- 

 ters between the hostile septs of aborigines who inhabited the opposite banks of the river. 



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