By the Rev. W. C. Lukis. 



165 



be thought desirable to retain the word, then it would be better to 

 call chambered tumuli alone cromlechs, and all other barrows 

 tumuli. A great deal of confusion has arisen from the want of a 

 proper generally recognized nomenclature among European anti- 

 quaries. Mr. Worsaae himself appears to have no very definite 

 idea upon the subject, for he remarks : " In the west of Europe 

 there appears not to have been any transition from the cromlech to 

 the barrow ; they are totally different," (p. 132.) He never would 

 have made such a remark if he had held the view I have been 

 endeavouring to set forth and explain, viz. that there is no such 

 thing as a " cromlech " per se ; and that the sepulchral chambers, 

 which are now so denominated, had originally no existence apart 

 from the covering mound. The late Mr. Kemble gives us inci- 

 dentally a negative proof of this fact, although his remarks are 

 intended to show that the Anglo-Saxons "attached no special 

 importance to these stone structures," i.e. supposing them to have 

 visibly existed. He writes in vol. xiv., p. 129 of the Archaeological 

 Institute, on "Notices on Heathen Interments in the Codex Diplo- 

 maticus ; " : — " I think when we bear in mind how very numerous 

 and widely spread over all England were the stone-beds, Circles, 

 Dolmens, and the like, that the very rare notices of them in these 

 Documents is strange and unintelligible. Although it does occur, 

 and more frequently than is generally supposed, it yet bears no 

 proportion at all to the number of references which was made to 

 barrows. I must confess that this appears to me to prove that the 

 Saxons attached no special importance to these stone structures, 

 and did not look upon them as anything peculiarly sacred or 

 extraordinary ; not more in short than they did any single stone 

 or set of stones of great size and venerable antiquity. To these 

 we well know they, in common with all Teutonic populations, did 

 devote a civil and religious observance ; but I can find very few 

 indications that the Saxons saw any difference between the crom 

 lechs and any other stones, — nothing at any rate to show that they 

 considered them with any peculiar reverence." If the view I have 

 taken be correct, which there can be no reasonable doubt of, 

 then the absence of allusions in Anglo-Saxon documents to 



