XII.Holes.

In the village churchyard where as a boy I often played, is a tomb, built up to the height of about five feet, with a slate slab let into the south face, on which is an inscription. In this slab is a hole, and it used to be said among the village boys that any one who looked in through this hole and knocked at the slate would see the dead man within open his eyes. Often have I and my brother peeped in and knocked, but the experiment failed, because, when the eye was applied to the hole, it excluded external light.

Fig. 43.—HOLED TOMBSTONE, BURGHEAD.(From Mitchell’s “The Past and the Present.”)

Fig. 43.—HOLED TOMBSTONE, BURGHEAD.

(From Mitchell’s “The Past and the Present.”)

The monument is still where it was, and is in thesame condition. Whether boys still knock and look in I do not know.[44]

Curiously enough, a somewhat similar practice exists at Burghead, about nine miles from Elgin, which is described by Professor Mitchell in his “Rhind Lectures,” 1880. He says: “There is a memorial slab built into the wall of the burial-ground, called the Chapel Yard, at the south-east corner; it is 35 inches high by 20 inches wide; close above it, and also built into the wall, there is a hewn lintel-like stone, 37 inches long by 1½ inches thick. On the narrow exposed face of this stone there is no sculpturing.

“The woodcut shows the position on the cradle stone (as it is called) of a cup-like hollow, which is quite round 2¼ inches in depth. This hollow has been produced by the children of Burghead, who are in the habit of striking the spot with a beachstone (which is also represented in the woodcut), and then quickly putting their ears to the place, when the sound of a rocking cradle and the crying of a child are said to be heard, as if coming from a cavern deep under ground. I am told that during last century the stone was not visited by children, but by women, who believed that they were to become mothers if they heard the rocking of the cradle and the crying of the child after tapping on the stone.”

What is certainly a curious coincidence is that the pre-historic rude stone ossuaries, dolmens or cromlechs,have very frequently in like manner a hole worked in them.

Trevethy cromlech, in the parish of St. Cleer, Cornwall, has a hole perforating the capstone. The Maison des Fées at Grammont, in Hérault, has a hole bored through the head or western supporter. Another, now destroyed, was at Cahaignes, in Normandy. The covered avenue of Conflans now transferred to the fosse of the Musée, St. Germain, has not only the round hole bored in one upright, but also the stone that closed this opening.[45]

Holes in like manner have been bored in thecromlechs of Avening and Rodmarton. Those in Circassia, in Palestine, and in India, have also holes. Colonel Meadows Taylor found that 1,100 dolmens out of 2,219 in the Dekhan had these holes in them. Similar holes have been observed in the dolmens of Sardinia.

Fig. 44.—DOLMEN WITH HOLE AND PLUG, IN THE CAUCASUS(after Cartailhac).

Fig. 45.—DOLMEN IN THE CRIMEA, WITH HOLE IN THE SIDE(after Cartailhac.)

In a majority of cases these holes will not serve the purpose of giving admission to the interior of the monument, though in some large enough. These megalithic structures were ossuaries; often, no doubt, the dead was laid in one as he had died; but in a great many cases, always where the dead had fallen in battle at a distance from the family mausoleum, his bones were cleaned of flesh and sinew before being brought to it. The bones bear marks of the scraper that cleared them of flesh, and they are not put together in correct position. In like manner the Landgrave Ludwig, husband of St. Elizabeth, died at Otranto, in 1227; his body was boiled to get the flesh off the bones, and then the bones alone were conveyed to Germany, to be interred at Eisenach.

It has often been noticed that along with ordinary interments in barrows, incineration has been practised. This was probably another means of transporting the remains of those who had died at a distance from the family or clan burial mound.

The holes in the dolmens[46]are in many cases toosmall to allow of anyone crawling through to carry within the remains of the last member of the family, who had succumbed and was to be placed in the dolmen. Some other explanation must be sought.

Fig. 46.—THE INNER INCOMPLETE CIRCLE,STONEHENGE,restored.

Now, it is remarkable that the circles of upright stones that enclose cairns and stone graves or kistvaens are rarely complete. They have been purposely made imperfect circles, with a gap or a stop in the circle; and we may ask whether the interruption in the circle has some meaning analogous to that of the hole in the stone chest.

Mr. Greenwell, in his “British Barrows,” says:—“The incompleteness of these circles is so frequent a feature in their construction that it cannot be accidental. They have, moreover, been left incomplete in some cases in a way which most evidently shows a design in the operation; as, for instance, where the circle is formed of a number of stones standing apart from each other. The space between two of them has frequently been carefully built up with one large or several smaller stones. The effect of this is to break the continuity, or rather the uniformity, of the circle, and so to make it imperfect. This very remarkable feature in connection with the enclosing circles is also found to occur in the case of other remains which belong to the same period and people as the barrows. The sculptured markings engraved upon rocks, and also upon stones forming the covers of urns or cists, consist in the main of two types, cup-shaped hollows, and circles, more or less in number, surrounding in most cases a central cup. In almost every instance the circle is imperfect, its continuitybeing sometimes broken by a duct leading out from the central cup; at other times by the hollowed line of the circle stopping short when about to join at each end. The connection of these sculptured stones, if so they may be termed, with places of sepulture, brings them at once into close relationship with the enclosing circles of barrows, and it is scarcely possible to imagine but that the same idea, whatever that may have been, is signified by the incomplete circle in both cases.”[47]

Fig. 47.—CINERARY URN WITH HOLES IN THE SIDE, FROM SALISBURY PLAIN.

The great inner ring of trilithons at Stonehenge affects the horse-shoe shape, and is, and always was, incomplete. The outer ring of trilithons is too ruinous for us to be able to state what its original condition was.

The horse-shoe, the incomplete ring, is still regarded as lucky, and a protection against witches. The enchanter who raised spirits was wont to draw a complete circle around him, and the demons raged outside this circle, but could not pass within and hurt him who had conjured them up. If he stepped outside the circle, or broke the continuity of the ring, then the spirits entered and tore him to pieces.

This probably gives us a clue to the signification of the incomplete circle. The complete circle confines a spirit within it, or protects from the entrance ofspirits; an interrupted circle allows spirits to pass to and fro, gives ingress and egress.

The tomb is the house of the dead. He lives in it after some mysterious, not clearly defined fashion. And as a bee-hive hut had its door, so must the hut of the dead have its door. It would be a cruelty to the dead to imprison him; and if the circle be complete, the dolmen closed in on all sides, he could not come in and out at pleasure.

Precisely what the door is to the house, that the mouth is to man; it is the door by which the spirit comes into and goes out of man. With his first inspiration he becomes a living soul; with his last breath he expires—gives up his soul.

The story is well known of the two shepherds who sat together one summer’s day. One fell asleep, and whilst he slept the other saw a bee issue from his lips and creep over a blade of grass that crossed a tiny trickle of water, then fly away among flowers. After an hour the bee returned again in the same way, and re-entered the sleeping man’s mouth. Thereupon he awoke, and told his friend that in dream he had crossed a magnificent bridge over a great river, and had visited Paradise.

Fig. 48.—CRANIAL DISC, WITH HOLE FOR SUSPENSION.

Fig. 49.—CRANIAL DISC, WITH TWO HOLES FOR SUSPENSION.

In the Caucasus, among the Abazas, when a boy dies he is put into a wooden coffinwith a hole in it, and hung up in a tree. Bees are supposed to fly in and out at the hole, and these are taken, no doubt, to be souls visiting the boy, and the soul of the boy going in and out along with them.

I remember some years ago when a person was dying and seemed to find great difficulty in the partingof soul from body, that the nurse went to the window and opened it, whereupon the dying person heaved a sigh, and the spirit took its flight. On asking the reason of this opening of the window, the nurse answered, “You would not have the soul go up the chimney, would you?”

Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his poem “The Gift of the Sea,” refers to this belief:—

“The widow ...Opened the door on the bitter shoreTo let the soul go free.”

“The widow ...

Opened the door on the bitter shore

To let the soul go free.”

Again, it has often been noticed that holes have been knocked or bored in funeral urns containing incinerated bones. These have been made purposely, and must have had some signification. I have not myself examined such urns on the spot where discovered; but I have little hesitation in surmising that only such urns have been perforated as have had their mouths covered with another vessel inverted, or with a flat stone, and that the object of this perforation has been to make a door of ingress or egress for the spirit of the dead; that, in fact, it had the same purpose as the hole in the dolmen and the rupture of continuity in the circle.

Of a number of the smaller sized urns or vessels found in the barrows of Salisbury Plain, “a very large proportion are pierced on one side with two holes, from half an inch to two inches apart. There are exceptions with a large number of holes, but the rule is to have two holes on one side only,” says Mr. Long, in his “Stonehenge and its Barrows.” He proceedsto discuss their signification. The holes could not have existed for suspension, and he adopts Sir C. Colt Hoare’s supposition that the perforated urns were incense vessels. But calcined bones have been found in some, and others probably served as caps to the cinerary urns. Almost certainly the people of the barrows knew nothing of incense, and the probability is that these two holes were bored as doors of egress and ingress for the spirit that still tenanted the bones.

Count d’Alviella says in his Hibbert Lectures for 1891, “Numbers of savage peoples suppose that the soul continues to inhabit the body after death, though from time to time it makes excursions into the world of the living. It therefore requires a hole if it is to escape from the enclosure. For this reason it is that, at the death of a relative, the Hottentots, the Samoyeds, the Siamese, the Fijians, and the Redskins, make a hole in the hut to allow the passage of the deceased, but close it again immediately afterwards to prevent its coming back. The Iroquois make a small hole in every tomb, and expressly declare that it is to enable the soul to go out and come in at its pleasure.”

There was another usage of the men of the megalithic monuments which had, apparently, the same idea or conception of spirit as that which induced them to make holes in their dolmens.

In 1873, when the French Association for theAdvancement of Science met in Congress at Lyons, Dr. Prunières produced an elliptical disc of skull which had been found by him inside a human skull that had been trepanned, and which came from a dolmen in Lozère. The disc had been cut out of a human skull by some sharp instrument at an incline. At first sight it appeared probable that this piece came from the skull in which it was discovered, but on close examination it was found that it would not fit the hole trepanned in the skull.

In the same dolmen Dr. Prunières found a second skull that had been trepanned more than once. Attention was now drawn to this remarkable phenomenon—and instances multiplied to prove that the men of the polished stone age, the men who erected Stonehenge and Carnac, were wont to cut holes in their heads.

Fig. 50.—SKULL THAT HAD BEEN TWICE TREPANNED FROM A CAVE IN THE PETIT-MORIN.

Dr. Prunières especially took the matter up. He discovered in the dolmens portions of skulls, circular or elliptical, that had been pierced with holes for suspension, and had been polished by long continued wear. In the Cave de l’Homme-Mort, in Lozère, he exhumed a skull that had a surgical trepanned hole on the sagittal suture. Finally, in the great ossuary of Beaumes Chaudes he discovered as many as sixtycranial discs. Skulls began to turn up elsewhere that had been trepanned, and all of the same epoch. They came from Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Algeria. It was found also that trepanning skulls had been in practice among the aborigines of America. In the Peabody Museum is a skull that has had a hole cut out of it. A mound on the Devil’s River yielded another. Other trepanned skulls were taken out of mounds near Lake Huron and Grape Mound. A skull found in a barrow near the River Detroit had two perforations in it. A sepulchre near Lima yielded a skull that had also been surgically treated in the same fashion. Another came from the basin of the Amazon. There is, however, a marked difference between the American holed skulls and these of the neolithic men of Europe. The American skulls have all been operated on afterdeath, and are found only in male skulls. They were, moreover, made by means of a stone drill which was turned rapidly round. Only one circular perforation in every respect similar to these found in Europe has been noticed in America. We may, therefore, put aside the pre-historic trepannings of America as not connected directly with the subject under consideration. In Europe the majority of the cases show by evident tokens that the operations were performed during life. Of these the greatest numbers of every age and sex have been found in the dolmens of France.

In the Casa da Moura, a dolmen in Portugal, was found a skull on which the operation had been begun, but never completed. It had clearly been worked with a flint scraper. The Baron de Baye found in one of the paleolithic caves of Marne a head that had been twice trepanned.

The great majority of cases of trepanned heads show that those operated upon had lived for many years after the operation. Indeed, it cannot be said that the practice of trepanning is as yet extinct. Dr. Boulongue, in his work on Montenegro, gives a long account of this usage of the natives of the Black Mountain; they have recourse to trepanning on the smallest provocation, simply because they have headaches. He quotes numerous instances of persons who have been trepanned seven and even eight times, without this materially injuring their health.

In the same manner the Kabyles of Algeria cut holes in their heads, usually as a cure for epilepsy.

The first example of pre-historic trepanningwas discovered in 1685. Montfaucon mentions it, but misunderstood it; he supposed that the man with the hole in his head had been wounded in battle, but had recovered. A second example was observed in 1816, and was also misinterpreted. A sepulchral cave had been opened at Nogent-les-Vierges, which contained two hundred skeletons. One of the skulls was found to be trepanned, and the edges of the wound showed evidence of the efforts of Nature to repair the injury. This also was supposed to be a case of wound in battle.

Fig. 51.—TREPANNED SKULL FROM NOGENT-LES-VIERGES(after Cartailhac, La France Préhistorique).

It must, however, be observed that the men thus trepanned lived in the stone age, and that no stone axe or sword could possibly gash away a slice ofskull; that, moreover, the edges of the holes show that they have been laboriously worked through at an incline, the scraper held so as to make the hole convex, widest at the outer surface, and narrowing at the inner surface near the brain.

The hole in the head of the man from the Cave of l’Homme-Mort is peculiarly interesting, as it showed that he had been trepanned during life, and that Nature had done her best to smoothe the rough edges. Then, after death, a flint saw had been used, to further enlarge the hole. The marks of the two operations are quite distinct.

Now what, it may be asked, is the meaning of these holes cut in the head? Various suggestions have been offered, but the most plausible is this—that they were made in cases of epilepsy.

“The art of trepanning,” says Dr. Broca, “was employed exclusively in cases of spontaneous maladies. In all likelihood the operation took place in accordance with certain ideas prevalent relative to nervous complaints, such as epilepsy, idiotcy, convulsions, mental alienations, etc. These affections, which science regards as natural, always struck the imagination of the vulgar, and were attributed to divine or demoniacal possession. Who can say whether trepanning for epilepsy—a practice now almost abandoned, but which was formerly in usage, was not adopted as a means of opening a door by which the demons possessing the patient might be allowed to escape?”[48]

We know how that even in medieval times, the evilspirit exorcised out of a man is represented as a little figure issuing from his mouth. The primitive medicine-men, supposing that the epileptic child was possessed by a spirit, cut a hole in the head, and through this hole conjured the spirit forth. Then the portion of the skull cut away obtained a superstitious value, it had been in contact with a spirit, and so was employed as an amulet. It is, however, quite possible that these discs from the heads were worn by the wives or the mothers of those from whom they were cut, out of sentiment. In some tombs, male skulls have been found stuffed with small bones of children, and not all from the same children; these skulls had been polished by friction, and seem to have been worn hung round the neck, and to have served as a sort of reticule or rather reliquary, in which the widow carried portions of the various children she had borne, who had died, packed away in their father’s skull.

So much, then, for perforations in tombstones, interrupted continuity in circles, and trepanned skulls. All have the same interpretation, the opening of a means of egress for the spirit, and are precisely what the open window means now in a case of death, they are to the dead man what the door is in the house to the living man.

There is another usage of a hole that has come down to us from primeval man in a very modified form. I refer to the wedding-ring, a piece of perforated metal through which the finger is thrust. The marriage ring is a pledge of fidelity, but it must often have struck English people that it is a very one-sided arrangement when the woman has to wear thebadge of being married, whereas the man wears none. The reason why the man wears no ring is probably to be sought in custom followed from the period when a man had as many wives as he liked, but the woman was debarred from belonging to more than one man.

The passing of the finger through a ring is probably a survival of the practice of passing the entire body through a ring as a symbol of covenant, of entering on new relations, a sort of regeneration into a new family or fraternity. A great number of holed stones remain among pre-historic monuments that were probably so used, for there remained a reminiscence of such usage in tradition. Wherever megalithic remains are found, there also these holed stones are found large enough for the passage of a body; sometimes only of sufficient size for the hand to be passed through.

At Boleit in Cornwall in tolerably close juxtaposition is a circle of 19 upright stones, 75 feet in diameter, “The Merry Maidens;” two menhirs, “The Pipers,” respectively 15 feet and 13½ feet high; another upright stone 11 feet high, 5 barrows, and 3 holed stones.

Fig. 52.—MENANTOL, MADRON.

At Tregaseal, in the same county, are four holed stones in a line, the hole in each 3¼ to 3¾ inches in diameter. At St. Buryan, near a sacred circle, is an upright slab with a hole in it 5¼ inches in diameter. Another holed stone is at Trelew in St. Buryan, the hole5 inches in diameter. Another at St. Just, 6 inches in diameter. Another upright stone 3 feet 3 inches high at Sancreed has in it a hole 3¼ inches in diameter. But there are others far larger. The Tolven near Gweep Constantine has in it a hole 1 foot 4½ inches in diameter, and the Men-an-tol at Madron, which is near Lanyon Cromlech and Boskedrian Circle, and is itself apparently one stone in a ruined circle, has in it a hole measuring 1 foot 6 inches to 1 foot 9 inches in diameter. St. Wilfred’s needle in the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole bored in the natural rock, and girls were wont to be passed through it to prove their virtue. If they stuck in the eye of the needle they were held to be dishonest.

At Chagford in Devon again we find in connection a sacred circle, avenues, and a tolmen, or holed stone 3 feet in diameter. So also on Brimham Moor in Yorkshire; there within the memory of old men, holed stones have been used for passing children through to remove disorders. But the original purpose for which the tolmens were set up is almost certainly to furnish a means for making a covenant, for taking an oath. The woman was passed through the perforated stone before she married, as an assurance to the bridegroom that she was a pure virgin. Those entering on a covenant crawled through the hole one after another, in pledge of their having noarrière pensée, that they took the pledge to each other in full faith. There are several curious passages in the Icelandic sagas that illustrate this custom. The Icelanders were a very different race from the men who erected the megalithic monuments, but their Scandinavian ancestorscame on the traces of the neolithic men, subdued them, and adopted many of their usages. In Iceland there are no holed stones, but the principle of passing through a hole was followed, and it assumed this curious form. A turf was cut so that it held in the ground at both ends, then it was raised in the midst, and those who entered on a covenant of brotherhood with each other crawled under the turf.

A ballad sung by the peasantry in the West of England relates how a gay trooper loved a fair damsel, and married her in military fashion:—

“My sword it is a Damask blade,I bend it in a bow.No golden ring may here be got,So pass thy white hand through.”

“My sword it is a Damask blade,

I bend it in a bow.

No golden ring may here be got,

So pass thy white hand through.”

Here the hoop of steel has taken the place of the holed stone. The golden circlet has, however, become the usual substitute.

We will now consider some holes of a different description, that are not actual perforations. A custom very general in Roman Catholic countries must have struck travellers: it is that of placing cups, basins, or other concave vessels on graves. The purpose is that they may be filled with holy water—or if not with that, then with the dew of heaven. The friends, kindred, or charitable as they pass dip a little brush in the basin and sprinkle the grave with the water. This is a symbolic act, nothing more. It means that the visitor to the grave wishes well to the dead, and offers a prayer for the refreshment ofthe departed soul. That soul may be in purgatory, and he who sprinkles the grave knows that no drops of water thrown on the mound can slake the fire that tortures the soul, but he acts as though he thought that the soul still tenanted the body, and could be refreshed by the water thrown on his grave. I do not believe this usage to have received any formal sanction; it is a survival of a much earlier usage that has been given an altered signification. It is not a rational proceeding, but is not one particle more irrational than our putting wreaths and crosses of flowers on the graves of those we have loved. I remember a daughter planting ferns of many sorts round her mother’s tomb, “because mother was so very fond of ferns.” But those who thus act, when they consider, know well enough that what lies underground is the decaying husk, and that the soul, the true being, is elsewhere. Nevertheless, the mind, by force of custom and natural tendency, persists in associating soul with body after death, and the dead lady was given her ferns because they continued to give her pleasure, whilst lying in her grave, precisely as the Tartar chief is given his horse and his wives slain and laid about him in his cairn.

The original signification of the basin or cup on the tomb was that of a vessel to contain the drink supplied to the dead. The dead man continued to eat and drink in his cairn or dolmen, and the relatives supplied him with what he required.

In the British tumuli, hollows beside the dead are of common occurrence. Mr. Greenwell says: “It is of frequent occurrence to find holes, sunk below thenatural surface, within the area of a barrow, and not usually in close proximity to any interment, though in some instances such has been found to be the case. Sometimes as many as four or five have been met with in a single barrow. They are of various sizes, and differ in shape, but they are generally circular, about 1½ feet in diameter, and the same in depth. In the greater number of cases they are filled with the ordinary materials of which the mound itself is composed, and contain nothing besides; but at other times pieces of animal, and much more rarely of human bones, charcoal, potsherds, and burnt earth, and stone are found in them.... It has suggested itself to me, that they may have been made as receptacles of food or of some other perishable material, and that they answered the same purpose as the vessels of pottery are supposed to have done, which are such frequent accompaniments of a burial. Their not being usually placed in close contact with the body is a fact not perhaps very consistent with this explanation of their purpose, but I am unable to offer any one more suggestion.”

I differ from Mr. Greenwell in one point only—that these basins being at a distance from the body may be inconsistent with the explanation he proposes. On the contrary, I conceive that these cup-like hollows were at the circumference of the original mound, and were often replenished with food or drink. As the mound spread through the action of rain, or as other interments were made in it, and it was enlarged, these basins became buried.

Fig. 53.—DOLMEN AT LARAMIERE (LOT), WITH CUP HOLLOW ON COVERER.

The parkin cakes baked in Yorkshire in November, the simnel or soul-mass cakes of Lancashire, thegauffresbaked at All Souls-tide in Belgium, are all reminiscences of the food prepared and offered to the dead at All Souls, the great day of commemoration of the departed. Not only did the living eat the cakes, but they were given as well to the dead. In Belgium the idea still holds that the pancakes orgauffresavail the souls; but through a confusion of ideas, the ignorant suppose that the living by eating them satisfy the dead, and as these pancakes are very indigestible, it is customary to hire robust men to gorge themselves ongauffresso as to content the departed ones with a good meal. A has a dear deceased relative B. In order that B may be well supplied with pancake, A ought to eat a plentiful supply; but A shrinks from an attack of indigestion, which a surfeit would bring on, so he hires C to glut himself ongauffresin his room.

The Flemish name for these cakes are “zielen brood” or soul-bread. “At Dixmude and its neighbourhood it is said that for every cake eaten a soul is delivered from purgatory. At Furnes the same belief attaches to the little loaves called ‘radetjes,’ baked in every house. At Ypres the children beg in the street on the eve of All Souls for some sous wherewith ‘to make cakes for the little souls in purgatory.’ At Antwerp these soul-cakes are stained yellow with saffron, to represent the flames of purgatory.”[49]In the North of England all idea as to theconnection between these cakes and the dead is lost, but the cakes are still made. This custom is a transformation under Christian influence of the still earlier usage of putting food on the graves. When food and drink were furnished to the dead, then necessarily the dead must have their mugs and platters for the reception of their food, and the basins scooped in the soil of a barrow in all likelihood served this purpose.

Fig. 54.—CUP-MARKINGS, CROMLECH, S. KEVERN.

In like manner there are basins cut on some of the dolmens, and other depressions that were natural were employed for the same purpose. On the coverer of a dolmen close to the railway at Assier, in the Department of Lot, is such a rock basin, natural perhaps, but if natural, then utilised for the purpose of a food or drink vessel for the dead. Another dolmen in the same department, at Laramière, has one distinctly cut by art at the eastern extremity of the covering stone. Inside dolmens and covered avenues stones have been found with cup-like hollows scooped out in them. These served the same purpose, and were in such monuments as were accessible in the interior,as, for instance, those stone basins found in the stone-vaulted tombs on the banks of the Boyne, near Drogheda, with their singular inscribed circles. Whereas such dolmens as could not be entered had the food or drink basins outside them.

“The Three Brothers of Grugith,” a cromlech or dolmen at S. Kévern, in Cornwall, has eight cup-like hollows on the coverer and one in one of the uprights. They vary from 4 to 6 inches in diameter and are 1½ inches deep.

The cup-like holes found so frequently in connection with palæolithic monuments may probably be explained in this way. Originally intended as actual food receptacles or cups for drink, they came in time to be employed as a mere form, and no particular care was taken as to the position they occupied. Thus, very often an upright stone has these cup-marks on it; sometimes they are on the under surface of a covering stone. They belong to the period of the rude stone monuments. With the advent of bronze they gradually disappear. They are not found always associated with interments, though generally so, and it is probable that the stones bearing them which do not at present seem to be intended to mark the place of an interment may have done so originally.

We know that in a great number of cases a meresymbol was taken to serve the purpose of something of actual, material use. Thus, the Chinese draw little coats and hats on paper and burn them, and suppose that by this means they are transmitting actual coats and hats to their ancestors in the world of spirits. In Rome, at certain periods, statuettes were thrown into the Tiber: these were substitutes for the human sacrifices formerly offered to the river. Probably the custom of giving food and drink to the dead gradually died out among the palæolithic men, but that of making the cups for the reception of the gifts remained, and as their purpose was forgotten, the stones graven with the hollows were set up anyhow.

The question has been often raised whether the rock-basins found on granite heights are of artificial origin. It is perhaps too hastily concluded that they are produced by water and gravel rotating in the wind. No doubt a good many have this origin; but I hardly think that all are natural, and it is probable that some have been begun by art and then enlarged by nature, and also that natural basins may have been used by the palæolithic men as drink or food vessels for the gods or spirits in the wind.

Fig. 55.—MENHIR, LEW TRENCHARD.

About twelve years ago I dug up amenhirthat had lain for certainly three centuries under ground, and had served on one side as a wall for the “leat” or conduit of water to the manorial mill. There was no mistaking the character of the stone. It was of fine grained granite, and had been brought from a distance of some eight miles. It was unshaped atthe base, and marked exactly how much of it had been sunk in the ground. It stood when re-erected 10 feet 10 inches above the surface. The singularfeature in it is this. At the summit, which measures 15 inches by 12 inches, is a small cup 3 inches deep sunk in the stone, 4½ inches in diameter, and distinctly artificial. Now, that the monolith had been standing upright for a vast number of years, was shown by this fact, that the rain water, accumulating in the artificial cup, driven by the prevailing S.W. wind, had worn for itself a lip, and in its flow had cut itself a channel down the side of the stone opposite to the direction of the wind to the distance of 1 foot 6 inches.

Fig. 56.—THE CUP ON THE TOP.

Fig. 57.—SECTION OF THE CUP.

What can this cup have been intended for? It is probable that it was a receptacle for rain water, which was to serve for the drink of the dead man above whom the monolith was erected. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, one of the highest authorities on such matters, was with me at the time of the re-erection of this monolith, and it then occurred to him that the holes at the top of so many of the Brittany menhirs, in which now crosses are planted, were not made for the reception of the bases of these crosses, but already existed in the menhirs, and were utilised in Christian times for the erection therein of crosses which sanctified the old heathen monuments.Some upright stones have the cup-hollows cut in their sides, so that nothing could rest in them; but I venture to suggest that these may be symbolic cups, carved after their use, as food and drink receptacles, had been abandoned.

Fig. 58.—THE FURROW DOWN THE SIDE.

Mr. Romilly Allen, in a paper on some sculptured rocks near Ilkley in Yorkshire,[50]that have these cup-hollows, says, “The classes of monuments on which they are found are as follows:—

“From the fact of cup-markings being found in so many instances directly associated with sepulchral remains, I think it may fairly be inferred that theyare connected in some way or other with funeral rites, either as sacred emblems or for actual use in holding small offerings or libations.”

Mr. Romilly Allen is, I believe, quite right in his conjecture, which is drawn from observation of the frequency with which these cup-hollows are associated with sepulchral stones. But it must be remembered that a libation is the last form assumed by the usage of giving a drink to either the dead or to a god. The conception of a sacrifice is comparatively modern, the primitive idea in connection with the offering of a liquid is the giving of some acceptable draught to some being who is in the spirit world.

The fact, and it is a fact, that these cup-markings are found on Christian tombstones, shows how the old habit continued to find expression after the meaning which had originated it was completely lost.[51]

These singular cup-markings are found distributed over Denmark, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Switzerland.

Fig. 59.—CUP-MARKINGS IN STONE AT CORRIEMONY.(From Mitchell’s “The Past and the Present.”)

All cup-hollows cannot indeed be explained as drink vessels for the dead. Those, for instance, carved in the slate at a steep incline of the cliffs near New Quay in Cornwall, and others in the perpendicular face of the rock also in the same place cannot be so interpreted, but their character is not that altogether of the cup-markings found elsewhere. The hollowsare often numerous, and are irregularly distributed. Sometimes they have a channel surrounding a group. That they had some well-understood meaning to the people of the neolithic age who graved them in the rock cannot be doubted. It is said that in places grease and oil are still put into them by the ignorant peasantry as oblation; and this leads to the conclusion that, when first graven, they were intended as receptacles for offerings.

One day, in a graveyard in the west of England, I came on an old stone basin, locally termed a “Lord’s measure,” an ancient holy-water vessel,[52]standing under the headstone, above a mound that covered the dust of someone who had been dearly loved. The little basin was full of water, and in the water were flowers.

Fig. 60.—A “LORD’S MEASURE,” CORNWALL.

As I stood musing over this grave, it was not wonderful that my mind should travel back through vast ages, and follow man in his various moods, influenced in his treatment of the dead by various doctrines relative to the condition of the soul.

Here was the cup for holy water, itself a possible descendant of the food-vessel for the dead. And now it is used, not to furnish the dead with drink and meat, but with flowers. And it seemed to me thatman was the same in all ages, through all civilisations, and that his acts are governed much more by custom than by reason. Is it not quite as irrational to put flowers on a grave as to put on it cake or ale? Does the soul live in the green mound with the bones? Does it come out to smell and admire the roses and lilies and picotees? The putting flowers on the grave is a matter of sentiment. Quite so—and in a certain phase of man’s growth in culture the food-vessel was cut in stone as a mere matter of sentiment, even when no food was put in it.

There are many of the customs of daily life which deserve to be considered, and which are to us full of interest, or ought to be so, for they tell us such a wondrous story. If I have in this little volume given a few instances, it is with the object of directing attention to the survivals of usage which had its origin in ideas long ago abandoned, and to show how much there is still to be learned from that proper study of mankind—Man.

Archæology is considered a dry pursuit, but it ceases to be dry when we find that it does not belong solely to what is dead and passed, but that it furnishes us with the interpretation of much that is still living and is not understood.

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