288 holmes: pre-historic remains on rombalds moor. 
worthy of considerable notice, not only because such remains are 
very rare in the district, but as shewing the similarity to many others 
all over the British Isles, of objects, conditions, and stages of art 
and associations. We have the positive fact of cremations, the 
remains being left in the fire, and in other cases collected and placed 
in hand-made urns, ornamented by incised chevi*on lines upon raised 
folds or over-lapings at the mouth. The pottery is very rude, sun- 
dried, and then open fire-burnt, as are so many of the native British 
urns, wherever that tribe or people lived and settled.* The flint 
arrow head is exceedingly interesting, and significant of all the facts 
that such arrow heads are well understood to involve and include. 
And though no similar urns or remains are known of, they may fairly 
be assumed to have really been deposited in other cairns and burial 
places on the moor. Two cairns, known as the Big and Little Skirts 
full of stones, and one, if not two circles of stones near to the grubbing 
stones and shooting tower, were in all probability burial places origin- 
ally, surrounded by upright stones or pillars or covered over by smaller 
stones for protection, notice, or memorial. About a quarter of a mile 
north-west of the shooting tower the large Skirtful of stones 
measures eighty-six feet in diameter, and some six or seven feet high. 
It has a ring of larger stones set in the ground at the circumference, 
and from a hollow in the centre it appears to have been examined, 
without any record of results having been made.f To the north of this, 
the little Skirtful of stones appears, like the other, as though gathered 
by hand, and averaging fourteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Legend 
gives both their names from witches following a giant to pelt him, 
when after extra strides (from Almias Cliffe, four miles ofi") the strings 
of their skirts broke, and so the stones were dropped in heaps as we now 
see them, except much less, from being utilised for roading. Such 
legends assuredly carry their ages beyond the historic period, and 
originating when all knowledge of their real purpose had been lost in 
times still more remote. Other and world wide evidences justify the 
opinion that these are funeral relicts, and that the numerous mounds 
scattered from these cairns to Woofa Bank and Green Crag, are the 
* See Grreenwell's Britisli Barrows, 1878. 
f Since this was written a more careful examination has shewn decisive evidence 
of funeral remains. 
