By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



181 



[monument of some mighty warrior, is not so easy to determine. 



Mr. W. Long in his admirable article on Abury (the most compre- 

 hensive, lucid, and accurate account which I have ever seen on the 

 [subject), records the tradition, which Stukeley too hastil} 7 seized, of 

 | an iron bit being discovered, supposed to belong to the horse buried 

 (with its master : 1 and there is at this day a local tradition that a 

 [horse and rider, the size of life, and of solid gold, yet remain below; 

 land though this of course bears on its face evidence of the vulgar 

 [notion that the precious metals 2 alone must be the object of so 

 [much search and expense in opening tumuli, yet it is a curious 

 circumstance that the tradition embodies a fact, that it was the 

 custom of barbarians to bury horses with deceased chieftains, as is 

 not only distinctly stated by Herodotus 3 of the ancient Scythians, 



near Warminster (Ancient Wilts, ii, 80). To which I may add that the custom 

 I still prevails, not only with regard to Silhury, which is to this day thronged 

 J every Palm Sunday afternoon by hundreds from Avebury, Kennet, Overton arid 

 1 the adjoining villages, but that the same thing occurs at Martinsall and several 



other eminences in North Wilts. 



1 Wiltshire Magazine, vol. iv, p. 339. Stukeley's Abury, p. 41. Sir. R. C. 

 i Hoare's Ancient Wilts, ii, 81. 



2 Until Matlow or Mattilow Hill, the large and well known tumulus of 

 Cambridgeshire was examined in 1852, under the superintendence of the Hon. 

 R. C. Neville, afterwards Lord Braybrooke, the popular tradition, implicitly 

 believed among the labouring classes thereabouts for many years was, that it 



j contained a gold coach. I may also here remark in passing, that though, with 

 such unusual allurements to whet their curiosity, that tumulus had been more 



I than once explored, (shafts having been driven horizontally on the Eastern side, 



i and sunk perpendicularly from the top,) it was not till Lord Braybrooke turned 

 it over regularly from end to end, advancing from the Southern extremity that 

 human bones, and urns, (which he describes as resembling those so frequently 



: taken from the large Wiltshire tumuli) were discovered near the Eastern, 

 Western, Southern, and South- Western extremities. [Archaeological Journal, 

 ix., 226.] 



3 Melpomene, cap. 71. Compare with this description of the burial of a 

 Scythian King by Herodotus, the following account of the burial of Harald the 

 Dane. " King Ring searched for the corpse, when he had proclaimed a truce : 

 a great mound was then raised, and the horse which had drawn Harald duriug 

 the battle was harnessed to the car, and so the Royal corpse was drawn into the 

 mound. There the horse was killed, and the mound carefully closed and pre- 

 served, and King Ring remained sole governor over the whole kingdoms of 

 Norway and Sweden." [Anders Pryxeli's Sweden. Lost Solar System of the 

 Ancients discovered, ii., 252. Archeeologia, vol. xxx., art. xxi. Rawlinson ; s 

 Herodotus, iii., 62.] 



