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name for them is hones or hills : and as there is a peculiar 
appropriateness in the term houe — it is of northern or so- 
called Danish origin, and means a hill raised over the dead, 
a very common expression in the old iNorse records being 
" And so and so was honed in such and such a place " — I 
shall, for the most part, use that word, or the word grave- 
hill, in preference to either tumulus or barrow. 
The larger houes vary in dimensions from two-and-a-half 
or three feet, to twelve or fourteen feet in height ; and from 
thirty to ninety feet in diameter. One very large pile of the 
kind in my district can scarcely be less than one hundred 
and fifty to one hundred and eighty feet across. Perhaps, if 
an average measurement were desired, forty-five to fifty feet 
over, by four-and-a-half to six feet in height, might be given 
as such, at all events approximately. The smaller houes are 
twelve to eighteen or twenty feet over, by one-and-a-half to 
two feet high. These latter are, without any exception, so 
far as my experience — and that of more than one fellow- 
labourer in the same field — goes, entirely barren of any 
remains certainly betokening an interment. Composed of 
stones roughly piled together, often by the side of, or above, 
a large rock slab that has been a fixture in the soil since the 
day it was dropped in its place by the hitherto suspending 
ice, and with the sand from the moor-surface heaped over 
them and interpenetrating the whole structure, it is only the 
presence of divers small fragments of charcoal which gives 
any hint beyond that furnished by the shape of the pile and by 
analogy, that they have been raised for sepulchral purposes. 
The only work of man's hand that I have seen procured from 
one of them was a remarkably fine specimen of the so-called 
" thumb-flint. " Another barrow- digger, after opening a very 
considerable number, told me that he had only in one instance 
obtained anything from one of these small houes, and that 
was a small and rude urn. 
