EARLY MAN 
Long Meg. This cist is in a field called Whins in the township of 
Maughanby, hence this stone is called the Maughanby Stone. 
The most remarkable cup-marked stone ever discovered in Cumber- 
land or Westmorland was found in 1881 by Dr. M. W. Taylor, F.S.A., 
at Redhills, in the township of Stainton, in Cumberland, about two 
miles from Penrith. It is a large slab of freestone, 5 feet 4 inches in 
length by 3 feet 6 inches in width in the centre, and it varies from 8 to 
13 inches in thickness. It is fully described by Dr. Taylor, who gives 
an illustration.’ It formed the cover of a cist, which had contained an 
interment after cremation. The markings upon it display four types : 
(1) Cup-shaped hollows of various sizes and depths; (2) Central 
hollowed cones surrounded by two concentric circles, each bisected 
by a radial groove; (3) Hollowed channels like gutters running in 
various directions ; (4) Little pits or small pick marks in the stone. 
One of the monoliths known as the Giant’s Grave, at Lacra, 
in south-west Cumberland, has on it a well defined cup mark.” Some 
cup- and ring-marked stones were found at Maryport, in 1887, by Mr. 
J. B. Bailey.® 
We have thus brought together all the known instances of cup, 
ring and groove markings in Cumberland. ‘Two questions arise upon 
them: What do they mean? What is their date? They are not 
peculiar to this county. Dr. Anderson says :— 
They are not confined to Scotland, or even to Britain. They are found in 
Scandinavia, in France, in Germany and Switzerland. They appear on the Con- 
tinent in associations which refer them to the Bronze Age at least, but they also occur 
in associations which show that the custom survived to the late Iron Age, and even in 
a modified form to Christian times.* 
Sir James Simpson and Dr. Taylor would refer their commence- 
ment at least to the late Stone Age. As to what they are, Dr. Anderson 
in another passage says :— 
They are one of the enigmas of archzology. 
Canon Greenwell says :— 
In many cases these markings occur upon rocks, but they have been very 
frequently found upon detached stones of greater or less size, and in a large number of 
instances . . . they are connected with burials after cremation ; sometimes 
covering the deposit of bones, sometimes placed beneath it, and sometimes forming the 
side or cover of a cist within which the bones were deposited. This connection with 
burial, always a sacred rite, seems to bring them within the class of symbolic repre- 
sentations ; in other words, suggests the notion that they are or may have been figures, 
after a very rude and conventional manner, of some object embodying an idea that 
involved the deepest and most esoteric principle of the religion held by these people. 
1 Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archeological Society, 
vol. vi. pp. 110-18 ; Proc. 8.4.8. vol. xvi. p. 438. 
® Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Archeological Society, vol. i. pp. 278-80. 
8 Tbid. vol. ix. pp. 435-8, where an illustration is given. One of the stones of the 
Grayson-lands tumulus, Glassonby (see note, p. 236), is said, on good local authority, to have 
been marked with concentric circles or a spiral (ibid. vol i. pp. 295-9, n.s.). 
4 Scotland in Pagan Times ; The Iron Age, p. 299. 
243 
