When the use of bronze was discovered the people still lived on in their lake dwellings. Fire often played havoc with the wooden wattle walls; hence we frequently find a succession of platforms. The first dwelling having been destroyed by flames, a second one was subsequently constructed; and this having shared the same fate, another platform with improved huts was raised upon the ruins of its predecessors. The relics of each habitation show that, as time went on, the pit dwellers advanced in civilisation, and increased the comforts and conveniences of life.
Some of the dwellings of these early peoples belong to the Bronze Age, as do those of the Auvernier settlement in the Lake of Neuchatel; and these huts are rich in the relics of their former inhabitants. At Marin on the same lake the lake dwellers were evidently workers in iron; and the relics, which contain large spear-heads, shields, horse furniture, fibulas, and other ornaments, together with Roman coins, prove that they belonged to the period of which history tells us.
I have described at length these Swiss lake dwellings, although they do not belong to the antiquities of our villages in England, because much the same kind of habitations existed in our country, though few have as yet been unearthed. Possibly under the peaty soil of some ancient river-bed, or old mere, long ago drained, you may be fortunate enough to meet with the remains of similar structures here in England. At Glastonbury a few years ago a lake village was discovered, which has created no small stir in the antiquarian world, and merits a brief description. Nothing was known of its existence previously; and this is an instance of the delightful surprises which explorers have in store for them, when they ransack the buried treasure-house of the earth, and reveal the relics which have been so long stored there.
All that met the eyes of the diggers was a series of circular low mounds, about sixty in number, extending over an area of three acres. Imagine the delight of the gentlemen when they discovered that each of these mounds contained the remains of a lake dwelling which was constructed more than two thousand years ago.
First they found above the soft peat, the remains of a lake long dried up, a platform formed of timber and brushwood, somewhat similar to the structures which we have seen in the Swiss lakes. Rows of small piles support this platform, and on it a floor of clay, or rather several floors. The clay is composed of several horizontal layers with intervening thin layers of decayed wood and charcoal, each layer representing a distinct floor of a dwelling. In the centre of each mound are the remains of rude hearths. The dwellings, of which no walls remain, were evidently built of timber, the crevices between the wood being filled with wattle and daub. In one of the mounds were found several small crucibles which show that the inhabitants knew how to work in metals. Querns, whetstones, spindle whorls, fibulae, and finger-rings of bronze, a horse’s bit, a small saw, numerous implements of horn and bone, combs, needles, a jet ring and amber bead, all tell the tale of the degree of civilisation attained by these early folk. They worked in metals, made pottery and cloth, tilled and farmed the adjoining lands, and probably belonged to the late Celtic race before the advent of the Romans. These lake dwellers used a canoe in order to reach the mainland, and this primitive boat has been discovered. It is evidently cut out of the stem of an oak, is flat-bottomed, and its dimensions are 17 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. The prow is pointed, and has a hole, through which doubtless a rope was passed, in order to fasten it to the little harbour of the lake village.
It will be gathered that these people, whether dwelling in their pit or lake villages, showed so much capacity, industry, and social organisation, that even in the Neolithic Age they were far removed from a savage state, and a low condition of culture and civilisation. They showed great ingenuity in the making of their tools, their vessels of pottery, their ornaments, and clothing. They were not naked, woad-dyed savages. They could spin and weave, grow corn, and make bread, and had brought into subjection for their use domestic animals, horses and cattle, sheep and goats, and swine. They lived in security and comfort, and were industrious and intelligent; and it is interesting to record, from the relics which the earth has preserved of their civilisation, the kind of life which they must have lived in the ages which existed before the dawn of history.
CHAPTER V
CROMLECHS, CAMPS, AND EARTHWORKS
Stone monuments—Traditions relating to them—Menhirs or hoar-stones—Alignements—Cromlechs—Stonehenge—Avebury—Rollright stones—Origin of stone circles—Dolmens—Earthworks—Chun Castle—Whittenham clumps—Uffington—Tribal boundaries—Roman rig—Grims-dike—Legends—Celtic words.
Among the antiquities which some of our English villages possess, none are more curious and remarkable than the grand megalithic monuments of the ancient races which peopled our island. Marvellous memorials are these of their skill and labour. How did they contrive to erect such mighty monuments? How did they move such huge masses of stone? How did they raise with the very slender appliances at their disposal such gigantic stones? For what purpose did they erect them? The solution of these and many such-like problems we can only guess, and no one has as yet been bold enough to answer all the interesting questions which these rude stone monuments raise.
Superstition has attempted to account for their existence. Just as the flint arrow-heads are supposed by the vulgar to be darts shot by fairies or witches which cause sickness and death in cattle and men, and are worn as amulets to ward off disease; just as the stone axes of early man are regarded as thunder bolts, and when boiled are esteemed as a sure cure for rheumatism, or a useful cattle medicine—so these stones are said to be the work of the devil. A friend tells me that in his childhood his nurse used to frighten him by saying that the devil lurked in a dolmen which stands near his father’s house in Oxfordshire; and many weird traditions cluster round these old monuments.
In addition to the subterranean sepulchral chambers and cairns which we have already examined, there are four classes of megalithic structures. The first consists of single stones, called in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, menhirs, a name derived from the Celtic word maen or men signifying a stone, and hir meaning tall. In England they are known as “hoar-stones,” hoar meaning a boundary, inasmuch as they are frequently used in later times to mark the boundary of an estate, parish, or manor. There is one at Enstone, Oxfordshire, and at Wardington, Warwickshire. Possibly they were intended to mark the graves of deceased chieftains.
The second class consists of lines of stones, which the French call alignements. Frequently they occur in groups of lines from two to fourteen in number, Carnac, in Brittany, possesses the best specimen in Europe of this curious arrangement of giant stones.
The third class of megalithic monuments is the circular arrangement, such as we find at Avebury and Stonehenge. These are now usually called cromlechs, in accordance with the term used by French antiquaries, though formerly this name was applied in England to the dolmens, or chambered structures, of which we shall speak presently. According to the notions of the old curator of Stonehenge the mighty stones stood before the Deluge, and he used to point out (to his own satisfaction) signs of the action of water upon the stones, even showing the direction in which the Flood “came rushing in.” The Welsh bards say that they were erected by King Merlin, the successor of Vortigern; and Nennius states that