A Book of Dartmoor
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Title: A Book of Dartmoor
Author: S. Baring-Gould
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A BOOK OF DARTMOOR
* * * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
THE TRAGEDY OF THE CÆSARS
STRANGE SURVIVALS
SONGS OF THE WEST
A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG
OLD COUNTRY LIFE
YORKSHIRE ODDITIES
OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES
A BOOK OF GHOSTS
THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND RHYMES
A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
A BOOK OF BRITTANY
A BOOK OF CORNWALL
A BOOK OF DEVON
A BOOK OF NORTH WALES
A BOOK OF SOUTH WALES
A BOOK OF THE RHINE
A BOOK OF THE RIVIERA
A BOOK OF THE PYRENEES
* * * * * *
[Illustration: YES TOR]
A BOOK OF DARTMOOR
by
S. BARING-GOULD
With Sixty Illustrations
Second Edition
Methuen & Co.
36 Essex Street W.C.
London
First Published July 1900
Second Edition January 1907
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY UNCLE
THE LATE
THOMAS GEORGE BOND
ONE OF THE PIONEERS OF
DARTMOOR EXPLORATION
PREFACE
At the request of my publishers I have written _A Book of Dartmoor_.
I had already dealt with this upland district in two chapters in my
_Book of the West_, vol. i., "Devon." But in their opinion this wild
and wondrous region deserved more particular treatment than I had
been able to accord to it in the limited space at my disposal in the
above-mentioned book.
I have now entered with some fulness, but by no means exhaustively,
into the subject; and for those who desire a closer acquaintance with,
and a more precise guide to the several points of interest on "the
moor," I would indicate three works that have preceded this.
1. Mr. J. Brooking Rowe in 1896 republished the _Perambulation of
Dartmoor_, first issued by his great-uncle, Mr. Samuel Rowe, in 1848.
The original work was written by a man whose mind was steeped in the
crude archæological theories of his period. The new editor could not
dispense with this matter, which pervaded the work, without a complete
recasting of the book, and this he was reluctant to attempt. He limited
himself to cautioning the reader to put no trust in these exploded
theories. The result is that the reader is tripping over uncertain
ground, never knowing what is to be accepted and what rejected.
2. Mr. J. H. W. Page's _Exploration of Dartmoor_, 1889, is admirable
as a guide. The author, however, was unhappily ignorant of prehistoric
archæology, and allowed himself to be led astray by the false
antiquarianism that had marked the early writers. Consequently, his
book is capital as a guide to what is to be seen, but eminently
unreliable in its explanation of the character and age of the
antiquities.
3. A capital book is Mr. W. Crossing's _Amid Devonia's Alps_, 1888,
which is wholly free from pseudo-antiquarianism. It is brief, it is
small and cheap, and an admirable handbook for pedestrians.
In no way do I desire to supersede these works. I have taken pains
rather to supplement them than to step into the places occupied by
their writers.
The plan I have adopted in this gossiping volume is to give a general
idea of the moor and of its antiquities--the latter as interpreted
by up-to-date archæologists--and then to suggest rambles made from
certain stations on the fringe, or in the heart of the region.
Here and there it has been inevitable that I should twice mention the
same object of interest, once in the introductory portion, and again
when I have to refer to it as coming within the radius of a proposed
ramble.
As a boy I had an uncle, T. G. Bond, who lived near Moreton Hampstead,
and who was passionately devoted to Dartmoor. He inspired me with the
same love. In 1848 he presented me, as a birthday present, with Rowe's
_Perambulation of Dartmoor_. It arrested my attention, engaged my
imagination, and was to me almost as a Bible. When I obtained a holiday
from my books, I mounted my pony and made for the moor. I rode over it,
round it, put up at little inns, talked with the moormen, listened to
their tales and songs in the evenings, and during the day sketched and
planned the relics that I then fondly supposed were Druidical.
The child is father to the man. Years have rolled away. I have wandered
over Europe, have rambled to Iceland, climbed the Alps, been for some
years lodged among the marshes of Essex--yet nothing that I have
seen has quenched in me the longing after the fresh air, and love of
the wild scenery of Dartmoor. There is far finer mountain scenery
elsewhere, but there can be no more bracing air, and the lone upland
region possesses a something of its own--a charm hard to describe, but
very real--which engages for once and for ever the affections of those
who have made its acquaintance. "After all said," observed my uncle to
me one day, when my father had dilated on the glories of the Pyrenees,
"Dartmoor is to itself, and to me--a passion." And to his memory I
dedicate this volume.
My grateful thanks are due to Messrs. R. Burnard, P. F. S. Amery, J.
Shortridge, and C. E. Robinson for permission to employ photographs
taken by them.
S. BARING-GOULD
LEW TRENCHARD, DEVON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BOGS 1
II. TORS 14
III. THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS 29
IV. THE ANTIQUITIES 52
V. THE FREAKS 74
VI. DEAD MEN'S DUST 82
VII. THE CAMPS 97
VIII. TIN-STREAMING 108
IX. LYDFORD 124
X. BELSTONE 144
XI. CHAGFORD 157
XII. MANATON 171
XIII. HOLNE 193
XIV. IVYBRIDGE 209
XV. YELVERTON 220
XVI. POST BRIDGE 241
XVII. PRINCETOWN 259
ILLUSTRATIONS
FULL-PAGE
YES TOR _Frontispiece_
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
A TOR, SHOWING GRANITE WEATHERING _To face page_ 14
From a photograph by J. Shortridge, Esq.
VIXEN TOR " 18
From a photograph by J. Shortridge, Esq.
ROCKS BY HEY TOR " 24
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
THE PEDIGREE OF A TOMB " 56
From a drawing by S. Baring-Gould.
STONE ROWS, DRIZZLECOMBE " 60
From a drawing by S. Baring-Gould.
THE PEDIGREE OF A HEADSTONE " 64
From a drawing by S. Baring-Gould.
BOWERMAN'S NOSE " 74
From a drawing by A. B. Collier, Esq.
WHIT TOR CAMP " 97
Planned by Rev. J. K. Anderson, drawn by S. Baring-Gould.
BRENT TOR " 102
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
BLOWING-HOUSE UNDER BLACK TOR " 108
From a drawing by A. B. Collier, Esq.
ON THE LYD " 124
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
HARE TOR " 141
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
NORTH WYKE GATE HOUSE " 152
From a drawing by Mrs. C. L. Weekes.
GRIMSPOUND " 165
From a photograph by C. E. Robinson, Esq.
NEAR MANATON " 171
From a drawing by A. B. Collier, Esq.
HOUND TOR " 175
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
HEY TOR ROCKS " 176
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
LOWER TAR " 190
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
THE CLEFT ROCK " 196
From a photograph by J. Amery, Esq.
YAR TOR " 199
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
THE DEWERSTONE " 220
From a drawing by E. A. Tozer, Esq.
SHEEPS TOR " 225
From a drawing by A. B. Collier, Esq.
PORTION OF SCREEN, SHEEPS TOR " 228
Drawn by F. Bligh Bond, Esq.
ON THE MEAVY " 231
Drawn by A. B. Collier, Esq.
LAKE-HEAD KISTVAEN " 244
From a photograph by R. Burnard, Esq.
STAPLE TOR " 269
From a photograph by J. Shortridge, Esq.
BLOWING-HOUSE ON THE MEAVY " 270
Drawn by A. B. Collier, Esq.
IN THE TEXT
PAGE
FLINT ARROW-HEADS 37
FLINT SCRAPERS 45
A COOKING-POT 46
FLINT SCRAPERS 49
FRAGMENT OF COOKING-POT 50
CROSS, WHITCHURCH DOWN 65
PLAN OF HUT, SHAPLEY COMMON 67
HUT CIRCLE, GRIMSPOUND 69
LOGAN ROCK. THE RUGGLESTONE, WIDDECOMBE 77
ROOS TOR LOGANS 79
COVERED CHAMBER, WHIT TOR 100
CONSTRUCTION OF STONE AND TIMBER WALL 101
TIN-WORKINGS, NILLACOMBE 109
MORTAR-STONE, OKEFORD 111
SLAG-POUNDING HOLLOWS, GOBBETTS 113
SMELTING IN 1556 114
PLAN OF BLOWING-HOUSE, DEEP SWINCOMBE 115
TIN-MOULD, DEEP SWINCOMBE 117
SMELTING TIN IN JAPAN 119
A PRIMITIVE HINGE 133
INSCRIPTION ON SOURTON CROSS 142
INSCRIBED STONE, STICKLEPATH 150
PLAN OF STONE ROWS NEAR CAISTOR ROCK 161
" " GRIMSPOUND 166
" " HUT AT GRIMSPOUND 169
FRAGMENT OF POTTERY 177
ORNAMENTED POTTERY 179
TOM PEARCE'S GHOSTLY MARE 191
CRAZING-MILL STONE, UPPER GOBBETTS 204
METHOD OF USING THE MILL-STONES 205
CHANCEL CAPITAL, MEAVY 237
BLOWING-HOUSE BELOW BLACK TOR 271
DARTMOOR
CHAPTER I.
BOGS
The rivers that flow from Dartmoor--The bogs are their cradles--A
tailor lost on the moor--A man in Aune Mire--Some of the worst
bogs--Cranmere Pool--How the bogs are formed--Adventure in
Redmoor Bog--Bog plants--The buckbean--Sweet gale--Furze--Yellow
broom--Bee-keeping.
Dartmoor proper consists of that upland region of granite, rising to
nearly 2,000 feet above the sea, and actually shooting above that
height at a few points, which is the nursery of many of the rivers of
Devon.
The Exe, indeed, has its source in Exmoor, and it disdains to receive
any affluents from Dartmoor; and the Torridge takes its rise hard by
the sea at Wellcombe, within a rifle-shot of the Bristol Channel,
nevertheless it makes a graceful sweep--tenders a salute--to Dartmoor,
and in return receives the liberal flow of the Okement. The Otter and
the Axe, being in the far east of the county, rise in the range of
hills that form the natural frontier between Devon and Somerset.
But all the other considerable streams look back upon Dartmoor as their
mother.
And what a mother! She sends them forth limpid and pure, full of
laughter and leap, of flash and brawl. She does not discharge them
laden with brown mud, as the Exe, nor turned like the waters of Egypt
to blood, as the Creedy.
A prudent mother, she feeds them regularly, and with considerable
deliberation. Her vast bogs act as sponges, absorbing the winter rains,
and only leisurely and prudently does she administer the hoarded
supply, so that the rivers never run dry in the hottest and most
rainless summers.
Of bogs there are two sorts, the great parental peat deposits that
cover the highland, where not too steep for them to lie, and the swamps
in the bottoms formed by the oozings from the hills that have been
arrested from instant discharge into the rivers by the growth of moss
and water-weeds, or are checked by belts of gravel and boulder. To see
the former, a visit should be made to Cranmere Pool, or to Cut Hill,
or Fox Tor Mire. To get into the latter a stroll of ten minutes up a
river-bank will suffice.
The existence of the great parent bogs is due either to the fact that
beneath them lies the impervious granite, as a floor, somewhat concave,
or to the whole rolling upland being covered, as with a quilt, with
equally impervious china-clay, the fine deposit of feldspar washed from
the granite in the course of ages.
In the depths of the moor the peat may be seen riven like floes of
ice, and the rifts are sometimes twelve to fourteen feet deep, cut
through black vegetable matter, the product of decay of plants through
countless generations. If the bottom be sufficiently denuded it is seen
to be white and smooth as a girl's shoulder--the kaolin that underlies
all.
On the hillsides, and in the bottoms, quaking-bogs may be lighted
upon or tumbled into. To light upon them is easy enough, to get out
of one if tumbled into is a difficult matter. They are happily small,
and can be at once recognised by the vivid green pillow of moss that
overlies them. This pillow is sufficiently close in texture and buoyant
to support a man's weight, but it has a mischievous habit of thinning
around the edge, and if the water be stepped into where this fringe
is, it is quite possible for the inexperienced to go under, and be
enabled at his leisure to investigate the lower surface of the covering
_duvet_ of porous moss. Whether he will be able to give to the world
the benefit of his observations may be open to question.
The thing to be done by anyone who gets into such a bog is to spread
his arms out--this will prevent his sinking--and if he cannot struggle
out, to wait, cooling his toes in bog water, till assistance comes. It
is a difficult matter to extricate horses when they flounder in, as
is not infrequently the case in hunting; every plunge sends the poor
beasts in deeper.
One afternoon, in the year 1851, I was in the Walkham valley above
Merrivale Bridge digging into what at the time I fondly believed was a
tumulus, but which I subsequently discovered to be a mound thrown up
for the accommodation of rabbits, when a warren was contemplated on the
slope of Mis Tor.
Towards evening I was startled to see a most extraordinary object
approach me--a man in a draggled, dingy, and disconsolate condition,
hardly able to crawl along. When he came up to me he burst into tears,
and it was some time before I could get his story from him. He was a
tailor of Plymouth, who had left his home to attend the funeral of a
cousin at Sampford Spiney or Walkhampton, I forget which. At that time
there was no railway between Tavistock and Launceston; communication
was by coach.
When the tailor, on the coach, reached Roborough Down, "'Ere you
are!" said the driver. "You go along there, and you can't miss it!"
indicating a direction with his whip.
So the tailor, in his glossy black suit, and with his box-hat set
jauntily on his head, descended from the coach, leaped into the
road, his umbrella, also black, under his arm, and with a composed
countenance started along the road that had been pointed out.
Where and how he missed his way he could not explain, nor can I guess,
but instead of finding himself at the house of mourning, and partaking
there of cake and gin, and dropping a sympathetic tear, he got up on to
Dartmoor, and got--with considerable dexterity--away from all roads.
He wandered on and on, becoming hungry, feeling the gloss go out of his
new black suit, and raws develop upon his top-hat as it got knocked
against rocks in some of his falls.
Night set in, and, as Homer says, "all the paths were darkened"--but
where the tailor found himself there were no paths to become obscured.
He lay in a bog for some time, unable to extricate himself. He lost
his umbrella, and finally lost his hat. His imagination conjured up
frightful objects; if he did not lose his courage, it was because, as a
tailor, he had none to lose.
He told me incredible tales of the large, glaring-eyed monsters that
had stared at him as he lay in the bog. They were probably sheep, but
as nine tailors fled when a snail put out its horns, no wonder that
this solitary member of the profession was scared at a sheep.
The poor wretch had eaten nothing since the morning of the preceding
day. Happily I had half a Cornish pasty with me, and I gave it him. He
fell on it ravenously.
Then I showed him the way to the little inn at Merrivale Bridge, and
advised him to hire a trap there and get back to Plymouth as quickly as
might be.
"I solemnly swear to you, sir," said he, "nothing will ever induce me
to set foot on Dartmoor again. If I chance to see it from the Hoe, sir,
I'll avert my eyes. How can people think to come here for pleasure--for
pleasure, sir! But there, Chinamen eat birds'-nests. There are depraved
appetites among human beings, and only unwholesome-minded individuals
can love Dartmoor."
There is a story told of one of the nastiest of mires on Dartmoor, that
of Aune Head. A mire, by the way, is a peculiarly watery bog, that lies
at the head of a river. It is its cradle, and a bog is distributed
indiscriminately anywhere.
A mire cannot always be traversed in safety; much depends on the
season. After a dry summer it is possible to tread where it would be
death in winter or after a dropping summer.
A man is said to have been making his way through Aune Mire when he
came on a top-hat reposing, brim downwards, on the sedge. He gave it a
kick, whereupon a voice called out from beneath, "What be you a-doin'
to my 'at?" The man replied, "Be there now a chap under'n?" "Ees, I
reckon," was the reply, "and a hoss under me likewise."
There is a track through Aune Head Mire that can be taken with safety
by one who knows it.
Fox Tor Mire once bore a very bad name. The only convict who really
got away from Princetown and was not recaptured was last seen taking a
bee-line for Fox Tor Mire. The grappling irons at the disposal of the
prison authorities were insufficient for the search of the whole marshy
tract. Since the mines were started at Whiteworks much has been done
to drain Fox Tor Mire, and to render it safe for grazing cattle on and
about it.
There is a nasty little mire at the head of Redaven Lake, between
West Mill Tor and Yes Tor, and there is a choice collection of them,
inviting the unwary to their chill embraces, on Cater's Beam, about the
sources of the Plym and Blacklane Brook, the ugliest of all occupying
a pan and having no visible outlet. The Redlake mires are also disposed
to be nasty in a wet season, and should be avoided at all times. Anyone
having a fancy to study the mires and explore them for bog plants will
find an elegant selection around Wild Tor, to be reached by ascending
Taw Marsh and mounting Steeperton Tor, behind which he will find what
he desires.
"On the high tableland," says Mr. William Collier, "above the
slopes, even higher than many tors, are the great bogs, the sources
of the rivers. The great northern bog is a vast tract of very
high land, nothing but bog and sedge, with ravines down which the
feeders of the rivers pour. Here may be found Cranmere Pool, which
is now no pool at all, but just a small piece of bare black bog.
Writers of Dartmoor guide-books have been pleased to make much of
this Cranmere Pool, greatly to the advantage of the living guides,
who take tourists there to stare at a small bit of black bog, and
leave their cards in a receptacle provided for them. The large bog
itself is of interest as the source of many rivers; but there is
absolutely no interest in Cranmere Pool, which is nothing but a
delusion and a snare for tourists. It was a small pool years ago,
where the rain water lodged; but at Okement Head hard by a fox was
run to ground, a terrier was put in, and by digging out the terrier
Cranmere Pool was tapped, and has never been a pool since. So much
for Cranmere Pool!
"This great northern bog, divided into two sections by Fur Tor and
Fur Tor Cut, extends southwards to within a short distance of Great
Mis Tor, and is a vast receptacle of rain, which it safely holds
throughout the driest summer. Fur Tor Cut is a passage between the
north and south parts of this great bog, evidently cut artificially
for a pass for cattle and men on horseback from Tay Head, or Tavy
Head, to East Dart Head, forming a pass from west to east over
the very wildest part of Dartmoor. Anyone can walk over the bogs;
there is no danger or difficulty to a man on foot unless he gets
exhausted, as some have done. But horses, bullocks, and sheep
cannot cross them. A man on horseback must take care where he goes,
and this Fur Tor Cut is for his accommodation."[1]
The Fur Tor Mire is not composed of black but of a horrible yellow
slime. There is no peat in it, and to cross it one must leap from one
tuft of coarse grass to another. The "mires" are formed in basins of
the granite, which were originally lakes or tarns, and into which
no streams fall bringing down detritus. They are slowly and surely
filling with vegetable matter, water-weeds that rot and sink, and
as this vegetable matter accumulates it contracts the area of the
water surface. In the rear of the long sedge grass or bogbean creeps
the heather, and a completely choked-up mire eventuates in a peat
bog. Granite has a tendency to form saucer-like depressions. In the
Bairischer Wald, the range dividing Bavaria from Bohemia, are a number
of picturesque tarns, that look as though they occupied the craters of
extinct volcanoes. This, however, is not the case; the rock is granite,
but in this case the lakes are so deep that they have not as yet been
filled with vegetable deposit. On the Cornish moors is Dosmare Pool.
This is a genuine instance of the lake in a granitic district. In
Redmoor, near Fox Tor, on the same moors, we have a similar saucer,
with a granitic lip, over which it discharges its superfluous water,
but it is already so much choked with vegetable growth as to have
become a mire. Ten thousand years hence it will be a great peat bog.
I had an adventure in Redmoor, and came nearer looking into the world
beyond than has happened to me before or since. Although it occurred
on the Cornish moors, it might have chanced on Dartmoor, in one of its
mires, for the character of both is the same, and I was engaged in the
same autumn on both sets of moors. Having been dissatisfied with the
Ordnance maps of the Devon and Cornish moors, and desiring that certain
omissions should be corrected, I appealed to Sir Charles Wilson, of the
Survey, and he very readily sent me one of his staff, Mr. Thomas, to
go over the ground with me, and fill in the particulars that deserved
to be added. This was in 1891. The summer had been one of excessive
rain, and the bogs were swollen to bursting. Mr. Thomas and I had been
engaged, on November 5th, about Trewartha Marsh, and as the day closed
in we started for the inhabited land and our lodgings at "Five Janes."
But in the rapidly closing day we went out of our course, and when
nearly dark found ourselves completely astray, and worst of all in a
bog. We were forced to separate, and make our way as best we could,
leaping from one patch of rushes or moss to another. All at once I
went in over my waist, and felt myself being sucked down as though an
octopus had hold of me. I cried out, but Thomas could neither see me
nor assist me had he been able to approach. Providentially I had a long
bamboo, like an alpenstock, in my hand, and I laid this horizontally on
the surface and struggled to raise myself by it. After some time, and
with desperate effort, I got myself over the bamboo, and was finally
able to crawl away like a lizard on my face. My watch was stopped in
my waistcoat pocket, one of my gaiters torn off by the suction of the
bog, and I found that for a moment I had been submerged even over one
shoulder, as it was wet, and the moss clung to it.
On another occasion I went with two of my children, on a day when
clouds were sweeping across the moor, over Langstone Moor. I was going
to the collection of hut circles opposite Greenaball, on the shoulder
of Mis Tor. Unhappily, we got into the bog at the head of Peter Tavy
Brook. This is by no means a dangerous morass, but after a rainy season
it is a nasty one to cross.
Simultaneously down on us came the fog, dense as cotton wool. For
quite half an hour we were entangled in this absurdly insignificant
bog. In getting about in a mire, the only thing to be done is to leap
from one spot to another where there seems to be sufficient growth of
water-plants and moss to stay one up. In doing this one loses all idea
of direction, and we were, I have no doubt, forming figures of eight
in our endeavours to extricate ourselves. I knew that the morass was
inconsiderable in extent, and that by taking a straight line it would
be easy to get out of it, but in a fog it was not possible to take a
bee-line. Happily, for a moment the curtain of mist lifted, and I saw
on the horizon, standing up boldly, the stones of the great circle that
is planted on the crest. I at once shouted to the children to follow
me, and in two minutes we were on solid land.
The Dartmoor bogs may be explored for rare plants and mosses. The
buckbean will be found and recognised by its three succulent sea-green
leaflets, and by its delicately beautiful white flower tinged with
pink, in June and July. I found it in 1861 in abundance in Iceland,
where it is called _Alptar colavr_, the swan's clapper. About Hamburg
it is known as the "flower of liberty," and grows only within the
domains of the old Hanseatic Republic. In Iceland it serves a double
purpose. Its thickly interwoven roots are cut and employed in square
pieces like turf or felt as a protection for the backs of horses that
are laden with packs. Moreover, in crossing a bog, the clever native
ponies always know that they can tread safely where they see the white
flower stand aloft.
The golden asphodel is common, and remarkably lovely, with its shades
of yellow from the deep-tinted buds to the paler expanded flower. The
sundew is everywhere that water lodges; the sweet gale has foliage of
a pale yellowish green sprinkled over with dots, which are resinous
glands. The berries also are sprinkled with the same glands. The
plant has a powerful, but fresh and pleasant, odour, which insects
dislike. Country people were wont to use sprigs of it, like lavender,
to put with their linen, and to hang boughs above their beds. The
catkins yield a quantity of wax. The sweet gale was formerly much
more abundant, and was largely employed; it went by the name of the
Devonshire myrtle. When boiled, the wax rises to the surface of the
water. Tapers were made of it, and were so fragrant while burning, that
they were employed in sick-rooms. In Prussia, at one time, they were
constantly furnished for the royal household.
The marsh helleborine, _Epipactis palustris_, may be gathered, and the
pyramidal orchis, and butterfly and frog orchises, occasionally.
The furze--only out of bloom when Love is out of tune--keeps away from
the standing water. It is the furze which is the glory of the moor,
with its dazzling gold and its honey breath, fighting for existence
against the farmer who fires it every year, and envelops Dartmoor in
a cloud of smoke from March to June. Why should he do this instead of
employing the young shoots as fodder?
I think that as Scotland has the thistle, Ireland the shamrock, and
Wales the leek as their emblems, we Western men of Devon and Cornwall
should adopt the furze. If we want a day, there is that of our apostle
S. Petrock, on June 4th.
By the streams and rivers and on hedge-banks the yellow broom blazes,
yet it cannot rival in intensity of colour and in variety of tint the
magnificent furze or gorse. But the latter is not a pleasant plant to
walk amidst, owing to its prickles, and especial care must be observed
lest it affix one of these in the knee. The spike rapidly works inwards
and produces intense pain and lameness. The moment it is felt to be
there, the thing to be done is immediately to extract it with a knife.
From the blossoms of the furze the bees derive their aromatic honey,
which makes that of Dartmoor supreme. Yet beekeeping is a difficulty
there, owing to the gales, that sweep the busy insects away, so that
they fail to find their direction home. Only in sheltered combes can
they be kept.
The much-relished Swiss honey is a manufactured product of glycerine
and pear-juice; but Dartmoor honey is the sublimated essence of
ambrosial sweetness in taste and savour, drawn from no other source
than the chalices of the golden furze, and compounded with no
adventitious matter.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Dartmoor," in the _Transactions of the Plymouth Institution_,
1897-8.
CHAPTER II.
TORS
Dartmoor from a distance--Elevation--The tors--Old
lake-beds--"Clitters"--The boldest tors--Luminous moss--The
whortleberry--Composition of granite--Wolfram--The "forest" and
its surrounding commons--Venville parishes--Encroachment of
culture on the moor--The four quarters--A drift--Attempts to
reclaim the moor--Flint finds--The inclosing of commons.
Seen from a distance, as for instance from Winkleigh churchyard, or
from Exbourne, Dartmoor presents a stately appearance, as a ridge of
blue mountains rising boldly against the sky out of rolling, richly
wooded under-land.
But it is only from the north and north-west that it shows so well.
From south and east it has less dignity of aspect, as the middle
distance is made up of hills, as also because the heights of the
encircling tors are not so considerable, nor is their outline so bold.
Indeed, the southern edge of Dartmoor is conspicuously tame. It has
no abrupt and rugged heights, no chasms cleft and yawning in the
range, such as those of the Okement and the Tavy and Taw. And to the
east much high ground is found rising in stages to the fringe of the
heather-clothed tors.
[Illustration: A TOR, SHOWING WEATHERING OF GRANITE]
Dartmoor, consisting mainly of a great upheaved mass of granite, and of
a margin of strata that have been tilted up round it, forms an elevated
region some thirty-two miles from north to south and twenty from east
to west. The heated granite has altered the slates in contact with it,
and is itself broken through on the west side by an upward gush of
molten matter which has formed Whit Tor and Brent Tor.
The greatest elevations are reached on the outskirts, and there, also,
is the finest scenery. The interior consists of rolling upland. It has
been likened to a sea after a storm suddenly arrested and turned to
stone; but a still better resemblance, if not so romantic, is that of
a dust-sheet thrown over the dining-room chairs, the backs of which
resemble the tors divided from one another by easy sweeps of turf.
Most of the heights are crowned with masses of rock standing up like
old castles; these, and these only, are tors.[2] Such are the worn-down
stumps of vast masses of mountain formation that have disappeared.
There are no lakes on or about the moor, but this was not always so.
Where is now Bovey Heathfield was once a noble sheet of water fifty
fathoms deep. Here have been found beds of lignite, forests that have
been overwhelmed by the wash from the moor, a canoe rudely hollowed
out of an oak, and a curious wooden idol was exhumed leaning against a
trunk of tree that had been swallowed up in a freshet. The canoe was
nine feet long. Bronze spear-heads have also been found in this ancient
lake, and moulds for casting bronze instruments. A representation of
the idol was given in the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_
for 1875.
The new Plymouth Reservoir overlies an old lake-bed. Taw Marsh was also
once a sheet of rippling blue water, but the detritus brought down in
the weathering of what once were real mountains has filled them all
up. Dartmoor at present bears the same relation to Dartmoor in the far
past that the gums of an old hag bear to the pearly range she wore when
a fresh girl. The granite of Dartmoor was not well stirred before it
was turned out, consequently it is not homogeneous. Granite is made up
of many materials: hornblende, feldspar, quartz, mica, schorl, etc.
Sometimes we find white mica, sometimes black. Some granite is red, as
at Trowlesworthy, and the beautiful band that crosses the Tavy at the
Cleave; sometimes pink, as at Leather Tor; sometimes greenish, as above
Okery Bridge; sometimes pure white, as at Mill Tor.
The granite is of very various consistency, and this has given it an
appearance on the tors as if it were a sedimentary rock laid in beds.
But this is its little joke to impose on the ignorant. The feature is
due to the unequal hardness of the rock which causes it to weather in
strata.
The fine-grained granite that occurs in dykes is called elvan, which,
if easiest to work, is most liable to decay. In Cornwall the elvan
of Pentewan was used for the fine church of S. Austell, and as a
consequence the weather has gnawed it away, and the greater part has
had to be renewed. On the other hand, the splendid elvan of Haute
Vienne has supplied the cathedral of Limoges with a fine-grained
material that has been carved like lace, and lasts well.
The drift that swept over the land would appear to have been from west
to east, with a trend to the south, as no granite has been transported,
except in the river-beds to the north or west, whereas blocks have
been conveyed eastward. This is in accordance with what is shown by
the long ridges of clay on the west of Dartmoor, formed of the rubbing
down of the slaty rocks that lie north and north-west. These bands all
run north and south on the sides of hills, and in draining processes
they have to be pierced from east to west. This indicates that at
some period during the Glacial Age there was a wash of water from the
north-west over Devon, depositing clay and transporting granite.
On the sides of the tors are what are locally termed "clitters" or
"clatters" (Welsh _clechr_), consisting of a vast quantity of stone
strewn in streams from the tors, spreading out fanlike on the slopes.
These are the wreckage of the tor when far higher than it is now,
_i.e._ of the harder portions that have not been dissolved and swept
away.
"The tors--Nature's towers--are huge masses of granite on the top
of the hills, which are not high enough to be called mountains,
piled one upon another in Nature's own fantastic way. There may be
a tor, or a group of tors, crowning an eminence, but the effect,
either near or afar, is to give the hilltop a grand and imposing
look. These large blocks of granite, poised on one another,
some appearing as if they must fall, others piled with curious
regularity--considering they are Nature's work--are the prominent
features in a Dartmoor landscape, and, wild as parts of Dartmoor
are, the tors add a notable picturesque effect to the scene. There
are very fine tors on the western side of the moor. Those on the
east and south are not so fine as those on the north and west. In
the centre of the moor there are also fine tors. They are, in fact,
very numerous, for nearly every little hill has its granite cap,
which is a tor, and every tor has its name. Some of the high hills
that are tor-less are called beacons, and were doubtless used as
signal beacons in times gone by. As the tors are not grouped or
built with any design by Nature to attract the eye of man, they are
the more attractive on that account, and one of their consequent
peculiarities is that from different points of view they never
appear the same. There can be no sameness in a landscape of tors
when every tor changes its features according to the point of view
from which you look at it. Every tor also has its heap of rock at
its feet, some of them very striking jumbles of blocks of granite
scattered in great confusion between the tor and the foot of the
hill. Fur Tor, which is in the very wildest spot on Dartmoor, and
is one of the leading tors, has a _clitter_ of rocks on its western
side as remarkable as the tor itself; Mis Tor, also on its western
side, has a very fine clitter of granite; Leather Tor stands on the
top of a mass of granite rocks on its east and south sides; and Hen
Tor, on the south quarter, is surrounded with blocks of granite,
with a hollow like the crater of a volcano, as if they had been
thrown up by a great convulsion of Nature. Hen Tor is remarkable
chiefly for this wonderful mass of granite blocks strewn around
it. All the moor has granite boulders scattered about, but they
accumulate at the feet of the tors as if for their support."[3]
[Illustration: VIXEN TOR]
Here among the clitters, where they form caves, a search may be made
for the beautiful moss _Schistostega osmundacea_. It has a metallic
lustre like green gold, and on entering a dark place under rocks, the
ground seems to be blazing with gold. In Germany the Fichtel Gebirge
are of granite, and the Luchsen Berg is so called because there in the
hollow under the rocks grew abundance of the moss glittering like the
eyes of a lynx. The authorities of Alexanderbad have had to rail in
the grottoes to prevent the _gold moss_ from being carried off by the
curious. Murray says of these retreats of the luminous moss:--
"The wonder of the place is the beautiful phosphorescence which is
seen in the crannies of the rocks, and which appears and disappears
according to the position of the spectator. This it is which has
given rise to the fairy tales of gold and gems with which the
gnomes and cobolds tantalise the poor peasants. The light resembles
that of glow-worms; or, if compared to a precious stone, it is
something between a chrysolite and a cat's-eye, but shining with a
more metallic lustre. On picking up some of it, and bringing it to
the light, nothing is found but dirt."
Professor Lloyd found that the luminous appearance was due to the
presence of small crystals in the structure which reflect the light.
Coleridge says:--
"'Tis said in Summer's evening hour,
Flashes the golden-coloured flower,
A fair electric light."
In 1843, when the luminosity of plants was recorded in the _Proceedings
of the British Association_, Mr. Babington mentioned having seen in the
south of England a peculiar bright appearance produced by the presence
of the _Schistostega pennata_, a little moss which inhabited caverns
and dark places: but this was objected to on the ground that the plant
reflected light, and did not give it off in phosphorescence.[4]
When lighted on, it has the appearance of a handful of emeralds or aqua
marine thrown into a dark hole, and is frequently associated with the
bright green liverwort. Parfitt, in his _Moss Flora of Devon_, gives it
as _osmundacea_, not as _pennata_. It was first discovered in Britain
by a Mr. Newberry, on the road from Zeal to South Tawton; it is,
however, to be found in a good many places, as Hound Tor, Widdecombe,
Leather Tor, and in the Swincombe valley, also in a cave under Lynx
Tor. If found, please to leave alone. Gathered it is invisible; the
hand or knife brings away only mud.
But what all are welcome to go after is that which is abundant on every
moorside--but nowhere finer than on such as have not been subjected
to periodical "swaling" or burning. I refer to the whortleberry. This
delicious fruit, eaten with Devonshire cream, is indeed a delicacy. A
gentleman from London was visiting me one day. As he was fond of good
things, I gave him whortleberry and cream. He ate it in dead silence,
then leaned back in his chair, looked at me with eyes full of feeling,
and said, "I am thankful that I have lived to this day."
The whortleberry is a good deal used in the south of France for the
adulteration and colouring of claret, whole truck-loads being imported
from Germany.
There is an interesting usage in my parish, and I presume the same
exists in others. On one day in summer, when the "whorts" are ripe, the
mothers unite to hire waggons of the farmers, or borrow them, and go
forth with their little ones to the moor. They spend the day gathering
the berries, and light their fires, form their camp, and have their
meals together, returning late in the evening, very sunburnt, with very
purple mouths, very tired maybe, but vastly happy, and with sufficient
fruit to sell to pay all expenses and leave something over.
If the reader would know what minerals are found on Dartmoor he must go
elsewhere.
I have a list before me that begins thus: "Allophane, actinolite,
achroite, andalusite, _apatite_"--but I can copy out no more. I
have often found _appetite_ on Dartmoor, but have not the slightest
suspicion as to what is apatite. The list winds up with wolfram, about
which I can say something. Wolfram is a mineral very generally found
along with tin, and that is just the "cussedness" of it, for it spoils
tin.
When tin ore is melted at a good peat fire, out runs a silver streak
of metal. This is brittle as glass, because of the wolfram in it. To
get rid of the wolfram the whole has to be roasted, and the operation
is delicate, and must have bothered our forefathers considerably. By
means of this second process the wolfram, or tungsten as it is also
called, is got rid of.
Now, it is a curious fact that the tin of Dartmoor is of extraordinary
purity; it has little or none of this abominable wolfram associated
with it, so that it is by no means improbable that the value of tin as
a metal was discovered on Dartmoor, or in some as yet unknown region
where it is equally unalloyed.
In Cornwall all the tin is mixed with tungsten. Now this material has
been hitherto regarded as worthless; it has been sworn at by successive
generations of miners since mining first began. But all at once it
has leaped into importance, for it has been discovered to possess a
remarkable property of hardening iron, and is now largely employed
for armour-plated vessels. From being worth nothing it has risen to a
rapidly rising value, as we are becoming aware that we shall have to
present impenetrable sides to our Continental neighbours.
Dartmoor comprises the "forest" and the surrounding commons, as
extensive together as the forest itself. "What have you got on you,
little girl?" asked a good woman of a shivering child. "Please, mem,
first there's a jacket, then a gownd, and then comes Oi." So with
Dartmoor. First come the venville parishes, next their extensive
commons, and "then comes Oi," the forest itself.
The venville parishes are all moorland parishes--Belstone, Throwleigh,
Gidleigh, Chagford, North Bovey, Manaton, Widdecombe, Holne,
Buckfastleigh, Dean Prior, South Brent, Shaugh, Meavy, Sheeps Tor,
Walkhampton, Sampford Spiney, Whitchurch, Peter Tavy, Lydford,
Bridestowe, Sourton. There are others, standing like the angel of
the Apocalypse, with one foot on the moorland, the other steeped in
the green waves of foliage of the lowlands; such are South Tawton,
Cornwood, and Tavistock. Others, again, as Lustleigh, Bridford,
Moreton, Buckland-in-the-Moor, Ilsington, and Ugborough, must surely
have been moorland settlements at one time, and Okehampton itself is
as distinctly a moor town as is Moreton, which tells its own tale in
its name. But all these have their warm envelope of arable land, groves
and woods, farms and hamlets. Such have their commons, over which every
householder has a right to send cattle, to take turf and stone, and,
alas! with the connivance of the other householders, to inclose. This
inclosing has been going on at a great rate in some of the parishes.
For instance, common rights are exercised by the householders of South
Zeal over an immense tract of land on the north side of Cosdon. Of late
years they have put their heads together and decided, as they are few
in number, to appropriate it to themselves as private property, and
inclosures have proceeded at a rapid rate.
In Bridestowe there is a tract of open land on which the poor cotters
have, from time immemorial, kept their cows. But they are tenants, and
not householders, and have consequently no rights. The seven or eight
owners have combined to inclose and sell or let for building purposes
all that tract of moor, and the cotters have lost their privilege of
keeping cows. What we see now going on under our eyes has been going
on from time immemorial. Parishes have encroached, and the genuine
forest has shrunk together before them. The commons still exist, and
are extensive, but they are being gradually and surely reduced. "Then
comes Oi!" Look at the map and see of what the forest really consists.
It surely must have been larger formerly.
On the forest itself are a certain number of "ancient tenements,"
thirty-five in all. These are of remote antiquity. On certainly most of
them, probably on all, the plough and the hoe turn up numerous flint
tools, weapons, and chips--sure proof that they were settlements in
prehistoric times. These tenements are at Brimpts, Hexworthy, Huccaby,
Bellever, Dunnabridge, Baberry, Pizwell, Runnage, Sherberton, Riddons,
Merripit, Hartland, Broom Park, Brown Berry, and Prince Hall. These
were held--and some still are--by copy of the Court Roll, and the
holders are bound to do suit and service at the Court. It is customary
for every holder on accession to the holding to inclose a tract of a
hundred acres, and this inclosure constitutes his newtake.
The forest belongs to the Prince of Wales, but I believe has never been
visited by him. Were he to do so, he would be surprised, and perhaps
not a little indignant, to see how his tenants are housed. A forest
does not necessarily signify a wood. It is a place for wild beasts. The
origin of the word is not very clear. Lindwode says, "A Forest is a
place where are wild beasts; whereas a Park is a place where they are
shut in." Ockam says, "A Forest is a safe abode for wild beasts," and
derives the word from _feresta_, _i.e._ a place for wild creatures. It
was, in fact, a tract of uninclosed land reserved for the king to hunt
in, and a _chase_ was a similar tract reserved by the lord of the manor
for his own hunting.
[Illustration: ROCKS NEAR HEY TOR]
It is more than doubtful whether Dartmoor was ever covered with trees.
No doubt there have been trees in the bottoms, and indeed oak has been
taken from some of the bogs; but the charcoal found in the fire-pits
of the primitive inhabitants of the moor in the Bronze Age shows that,
even in the prehistoric period, the principal wood was alder, and that
such oak as there was did not grow to a large size, and was mainly
confined to the valleys that opened out of the moor into the lowlands.
Up these, doubtless, the forest crept. Elsewhere there may have been
clusters of stunted trees, of which the only relics are Piles and
Wistman's Wood. There were some very fine oaks at Brimpts, and also
in Okehampton Park, but these were cut down during the European war
with Napoleon. After the wood at Brimpts had fallen under the axe, it
was found that the cost of carriage would be so great that the timber
was sold for a mere trifle, only sufficient to pay for the labour of
cutting it down.
The forest is divided into four quarters, in each of which, except
the western, is a pound for stray cattle. Formerly the Forest Reeve
privately communicated with the venville men when he had fixed a day
for a "drift," which was always some time about midsummer. Then early
in the morning all assembled mounted. A horn was blown through a holed
stone set up on a height, and the drift began. Cattle or horses were
driven to a certain point, at which stood an officer of the Duchy on
a stone, and read a proclamation, after which the owners were called
to claim their cattle or ponies. Venville tenants removed them without
paying any fine, but all others were pounded, and their owners could
not recover them without payment of a fine.
The Duchy Pound is at Dunnabridge, where is a curious old seat within
the inclosure for the adjudicator of fines and costs. It is apparently
a cromlech that has been removed or adapted. The Duchy now lets the
quarters to the moormen, who charge a small fee for every sheep,
bullock, or horse turned out on the moor not belonging to a venville
man, and for this fee they accord it their protection.
A good deal of money has been expended on the reclaiming of Dartmoor.
Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Usher of the Black Rod, was Warden of the
Stannary and Steward of the Forest for George IV. when Prince of
Wales. He fondly supposed that he had discovered an uncultivated land,
which needed only the plough and some lime to make its virgin soil
productive. He induced others to embark on the venture. Swincombe and
Stannon were started to become fine farm estates. Great entrance gates
were erected to where mansions were proposed to be built. But those
who had leased these lands found that the draining of the bogs drained
their pockets much faster than the mires, and abandoned the attempt
which had ruined them. Others followed. Prince's Hall was rebuilt with
fine farm buildings by a Mr. Fowler from the north of England, who
expended his fortune there and left a disappointed man. Before him
Sir Francis Buller, who had bought Prince's Hall, planted there forty
thousand trees--such as are not dead are distorted starvelings. Mr.
Bennett built Archerton, near Post Bridge, and inclosed thousands of
acres. He cannot have recovered a sum approaching his outlay in the
sixty years of his tenancy. The fact is that Dartmoor is cut out by
Nature to be a pasturage for horses, cattle, and sheep in the summer
months, and for that only. In the burning and dry summers of 1893,
1897, and 1899 tens of thousands of cattle were sent there, even from
so far off as Kent, where water and pasturage were scarce, and on the
moor they both are ever abundant.
Tenements there must be, but they should be in the sheltered valleys,
and the wide hillsides and sweeps of moor should be left severely
alone. As it is, encroachments have gone on unchecked, rather have been
encouraged. Every parish in Devon has a right to send cattle to the
moor, excepting only Barnstaple and Totnes. But the Duchy, by allowing
and favouring inclosures, is able to turn common land into private
property, and that it is only too willing to do.
Happily there now exists a Dartmoor Preservation Society, which is
ready to contest every attempt made in this direction. But it can do
very little to protect the commons around the forest--in fact it can
do nothing, if the freeholders in the parishes that enjoy common rights
agree together to appropriate the land to themselves--and for the poor
labourer who is able to buy himself a cow it can do nothing at all, for
his rights have no legal force.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The Welsh _twr_ is a tower; _twrr_, a heap or pile. From the same
root as the Latin _turris_.
[3] COLLIER, _op. cit._
[4] HARDWICKE'S _Science Gossip_, 1871, p. 123.
CHAPTER III.
THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS
Abundance of remains of primeval inhabitants--No trace of
Briton or Saxon on Dartmoor--None of Palæolithic man--The
Neolithic man who occupied it--Account of his migrations--His
presence in Ireland, in China, in Algeria--A pastoral
people--The pottery--The arrival of the Celt in Britain in
two waves--The Gael--The Briton--Introduction of iron--Mode
of life of the original occupants of the moor--The
huts--Pounds--Cooking--Tracklines--Enormous numbers who lived on
Dartmoor--A peaceable people.
Probably no other tract of land of the same extent in England contains
such numerous and well-preserved remains of prehistoric antiquity as
Dartmoor.
The curious feature about them is that they all belong to one period,
that of the Early Bronze, when flint was used abundantly, but metal was
known, and bronze was costly and valued as gold is now.
Not a trace has been found so far of the peoples who intervened between
these primitive occupants and the mediæval tin-miners.
If iron was introduced a couple of centuries before the Christian era,
how is it that the British inhabitants who used iron and had it in
abundance have left no mark of their occupancy of Dartmoor? It can be
accounted for only on the supposition that they did not value it. The
woods had been thinned and they preferred the lowlands, whereas in
the earlier period the dense forests that clothed the country were too
close a jungle and too much infested by wolves to be suitable for the
habitation of a pastoral people.
That under the Roman domination the tin was worked on the moor there
is no evidence to show. No Roman coins have been found there except a
couple brought by French prisoners to Princetown.
It may be said that iron would corrode and disappear, whereas flint is
imperishable, and bronze nearly so. But where is Roman pottery? Where
is even the pottery of the Celtic period? An era is distinguished by
its fictile ware. A huge gap in historic continuity is apparent. All
the earthenware found on Dartmoor is either prehistoric or mediæval,
probably even so late as the reign of Elizabeth.
No indication is found that the Saxons worked the tin or even drove
their cattle on to the moor. In Domesday Book Dartmoor is not even
mentioned. It is hard to escape the conclusion that from the close of
the prehistoric period to that of our Plantagenet kings, Dartmoor was
avoided as a waste, inhospitable region.
Of man in the earliest period at which he is known to have existed--the
so-called Palæolithic man--not a trace has been found on Dartmoor.
Probably when he lived in Britain the whole upland was clothed in snow.
He has left his tools in the Brixham and Torquay caves--none in the
bogs of the moor. Indeed, when these bogs have been dug into, there
are not the smallest indications found of man having visited the moor
before the advent of what is called the Neolithic Age.
About the man of this period I must say something, as he in his day
lived in countless swarms on this elevated land. He may have lived
also in the valleys of the lowlands, but his traces there have
been obliterated by the plough. First of all as to his personal
appearance. He was dark-haired, tall, and his head was long, like
that of a new-born child, or boat-shaped, a form that disappears with
civilisation, and resolves itself into the long face instead of the
long head.
At some period, vastly remote, a great migration of a long-headed race
took place from Central Asia. It went forth in many streams. One to the
east entered Japan; probably the Chinese and Anamese represent another.
But we are mainly concerned with the western outpour. It traversed
Syria, and Gilead and Moab are strewn with its remains, hut circles,
dolmens, and menhirs identical with those on Dartmoor. Hence one branch
passed into Arabia, where, to his astonishment, Mr. Palgrave lighted on
replicas of Stonehenge.[5]
Another branch threw itself over the Himalayas, and covered India
with identical monuments. Again another turned west; it traversed the
Caspian and left innumerable traces along the northern slopes of the
Caucasus. The Kuban valley is crowded with their dolmens. They occupied
the Crimea, and then struck for the Baltic. That a branch had passed
through Asia Minor and Greece, and constituted itself as the Etruscan
power in Italy, is probable but not established. The northern stream
strewed Mecklenburg and Hanover with its remains, occupied Denmark and
Lower Sweden, crossed into Britain, and took complete possession of
the British Isles. Other members of the same swarm skirted the Channel
and crowded the plateaux and moors of Western and Central France with
their megalithic remains. The same people occupied Spain and Portugal,
the Balearic Isles, Corsica and Sardinia, and Northern Africa, and
are now represented by the Koumirs and Kabyles. To this race the name
of Iberian, Ivernian, or Silurian has been given. It contributed its
name to Ireland (Erin or _Ierne_), where it maintained itself, but was
known to the conquering Gaels as the Tuatha da Danann and Firbolgs,
two branches of the same stock. The name of Damnonia given to Devon is
probably due to these same Danann, who were also found in the south
of Scotland. When this great people reached Europe, Japan, India,
Africa, before its branches had begun to ramify to east and west, to
south and north, its religious doctrines and its practices had become
stereotyped, and almost ineradicably ingrained into the consciousness
of the entire stock.
If we desire to understand what their peculiar views were, what were
the dominant ideas which directed their conduct, and which led them to
erect the monuments which are marvels to us, even at the present day,
we must go to China.
Let us look for a moment into China at the present day. At first sight,
the Chinese strike us as being not only geographically our antipodes,
but as being our opposites in every particular--mental, moral, social;
in language as in ideas.
The Chinese language is without an alphabet and without a grammar.
It is made up of monosyllables that acquire their significance by
the position in which they are placed in a sentence. In customs the
Chinese differ from us as much. In mourning they wear white; a Chinese
dinner begins with the dessert and ends with the soup; a scholar, to
recite his lessons, turns his back on the teacher. But it is chiefly
in the way in which the living and the dead are regarded as forming
an indissoluble commonwealth, that the difference of ideas is most
pronounced. Regard for the dead is the first obligation to a Chinese. A
man of the people who is ennobled, ennobles, not his descendants, but
his ancestry. The duty of the eldest son of the family is to maintain
the worship of the ancestors. Denial of a sepulchre is the most awful
punishment that can be inflicted; a Chinese will cheerfully commit
suicide to gain a suitable tomb and cult after death. The most sacred
spot on earth is the mausoleum, and that is perpetually inviolable.
Consequently, if this principle could be carried out to the letter,
the earth would be transformed into one vast necropolis, from the
occupation of which the living would be in time entirely excluded. It
is this respect for graves which stands in the way of the execution
of works of public utility, such as canals and railroads; and it is
the imperious obligation of maintaining the worship of ancestors that
blocks conversion to Christianity. It is resentment against lack
of respect shown to the dead, neglect of duty to the dead, which
has provoked the massacres of Christians. A Chinese, under certain
circumstances, is justified in strangling his father, but not in
omitting to worship him after he has throttled him.
On the great Thibet plateau, geographically contiguous to the Chinese,
and under the Empire of China, the Mongol nomads are so absolutely
devoid of a grain of respect for their dead, that, without the
smallest scruple, they leave the corpses of their parents and children
on the face of the desert, to be devoured by dogs and preyed on by
vultures.
If we look at the Nile valley we see that the ancient Egyptians were
dominated by the same ideas as the Chinese. To them the tomb was the
habitation _par excellence_ of the family. Of the dwelling-houses
of the old Egyptians the remains are comparatively mean, but their
mausoleums are palatial. The house for the living was but as a tent, to
be removed; but the mansion of the dead was a dwelling-place for ever.
Not only so, but just as the ancient Egyptian supposed that the _Ka_,
the soul, or one of the souls of the deceased, occupied the monument,
tablet, or obelisk set up in memorial of the dead, so does the Chinese
now hold that a soul, or emanation from the dead, enters into and
dwells in the memorial set up, apart from the tomb, to his honour.
Now if we desire to discover what was the distinguishing motive in life
of the long-headed Neolithic man, we shall find it in his respect for
the dead; and he has stamped his mark everywhere where he has been by
the stupendous tombs he has erected, at vast labour, out of unwrought
stones. He cannot be better described than as the dolmen-builder; that
is to say, the man who erected the family or tribal ossuaries that
remain in such numbers wherever he has planted his foot.
In China, it is true, there are no dolmens, but for this there is a
reason. Before the descendants of the Hundred Families who entered the
Celestial Empire had reached and obtained possession of mountains
whence stone could be quarried, many centuries elapsed, and forced the
Chinese to make shift with other material than stone, and so formed
their habit of entombment without stone; but the frame of mind which,
in a rocky land, would have prompted them to set up dolmens remained
unchanged, and so remains to the present day.
The exploration of dolmens in Europe reveals that they were family or
tribal burial-places, and were used for a long continuance of time.
The dead to be laid in them were occasionally brought from a distance,
as the bones show indication of having been cleaned of the flesh
with flint scrapers, and to have been rearranged in an irregular and
unscientific manner, a left leg being sometimes applied to a right
thigh; or it may be that on the anniversary of an interment the bones
of the deceased were taken out, scraped and cleaned, and then replaced.
In Algeria, and on the edge of the Sahara, are found great trilithons,
that is to say, two huge upright stones, with one laid across at the
top, forming doorways leading to nothing, but similar to those which
are found at Stonehenge.
What was this significance?
We turn to the Chinese for an explanation, and find that to this day
they erect triumphal gates--not now of stone, but of wood--in memory
of and in honour of such widows as commit suicide so as to join their
dear departed husbands in the world of spirits. On the other hand, our
widows forget us and remarry.
[Illustration: FLINT ARROW-HEADS.
(Actual size.)]
The dolmen-builders were people with flocks and herds, and who
cultivated grain and spun yarn. Their characteristic implement is
the so-called celt, in reality an axe, sometimes perforated for the
reception of a handle, most commonly not. The perforation belongs to
the latest stage of Neolithic civilisation. Their weapons, or tools,
were first ground. In about a score of places in France polishing rocks
exist, marked with the furrows made by the axe when worked to and fro
upon them, and others that are smaller have been removed to museums.
At Stoney-Kirk, in Wigtownshire, a grinding-stone of red sandstone,
considerably hollowed by use, was found with a small, unfinished axe
of Silurian schist lying upon it. In the recent exploration of hut
circles at Legis Tor a grindstone was found in one of the habitations,
and on it an incomplete tool that was abandoned there before it was
finished.
After grinding, these implements underwent laborious polishing by
friction with the hand or with leather.
At the same time that these artificially smoothed tools were
fabricated, flint was used, beautifully chipped and flaked, to
form arrow and spear heads and swords. The arrow-heads are either
leaf-shaped or tanged.
The pottery of the dolmen-builders is very rude. It is made of clay
mingled with coarse fragments of stone or shell, is very thick and
badly tempered; it is hand-made, and seems hardly capable of enduring
exposure to a brisk fire. The vessels have usually broad mouths, with
an overhanging rim like a turned-back glove-cuff, and below this the
vessel rapidly slopes away. The ornamentation is constant everywhere.
It consisted of zigzags, chevrons, depressions made by twisted cord,
and finger-nail marks in rings round the bowls or rims. It was not till
late in the Bronze Age that circles and spirals were adopted.
Celtic ornamentation is altogether different.
Whilst the long-headed dolmen-builder crept along the coast of Europe,
there was growing up among the mountains and lakes of Central Europe
a hardy round-headed race--the Aryan, destined to be his master. Was
it through instinct of what was to be, that the Ivernian shrank from
penetrating into the heart of the Continent, and clung to the seaboard?
When the dolmen-builder arrived in Britain, to the best of our
knowledge, he found no one there. On the Continent, on the other hand,
if he went far inland, he not only clashed with the Aryan round-heads,
but also here and there stumbled on the lingering remains of the
primeval Palæolithic people, who have left their remains in England in
the river-drift, and in Devon in the Brixham caves and Kent's Hole.
The dolmen-builder has persisted in asserting himself. Though cranial
modifications have taken place, the dusky skin, and the dark eyes and
hair and somewhat squat build, have remained in the Western Isles, in
Western Ireland, in Wales, and in Cornwall. It is still represented in
Brittany. It is predominant in South-Western France, and is typical in
Portugal.
After a lapse of time, of what duration we know not, a great wave of
Aryans poured from the mountains of Central Europe, and, traversing
Britain, occupied Ireland. This was the Gael. This people subjugated
the Ivernian inhabitants, and rapidly mixed with them, imposing on
them their tongue, except in South Wales, where the Silurian was found
to have retained his individuality when conquered by Agricola in A.D.
78. But if the Gaelic invaders subjugated the Ivernians, they were in
turn conquered by them, though in a different manner. The strongly
marked religious ideas of the long-headed men, and their deeply rooted
habit of worship of ancestors, impressed and captured the imagination
of their masters, and as the races became fused, the mixed race
continued to build dolmens and erect other megalithic monuments once
characteristic of the long-heads, often on a larger scale than before.
Stonehenge and Avebury were erections of the Bronze Period, and late in
it, and of the composite people.
If we look at the physique of the two races, we find a great difference
between them. The Ivernian was short in stature, with a face mild
in expression, oval, without high cheek-bones, and without strongly
characterised supraciliary ridges. The women were all conspicuously
smaller than the men, and of markedly inferior development. The
conquering race was other. The lower jaw was massive and square at
the chin, the molar bones prominent, and the brows heavy. The head
was remarkably short, and the face expressed vigour, was coarse, and
the aspect threatening. Moreover, the women were as fully developed
as the men, so much so that where all the bones are not present it
is not always easy to distinguish the sex of a skeleton of this
race. What Tacitus says of the German women--that they are almost
equal to the men both in strength and in size--applies also to these
round-headed invaders of Britain; and, indeed, what we are assured of
the Britons in the time of Boadicea, that it was _solitum feminarum
ductu bellare_, shows us that the same masculine character belonged
to the women of British origin. The average difference in civilised
races in the stature of men and women at present is about four inches,
but twice this difference is very usually found to exist between the
male and female skeletons of the Polished Stone Period in the long
barrows. The difference is even more strikingly shown by a comparison
of the male and female collar-bones; and we are able to reproduce from
them in picture the Neolithic woman of the Ivernian race, with narrow
chest and drooping shoulders, utterly unlike the muscular and vigorous
Gaelic women who were true consorts to their men when they came over to
conquer the island of Britain.
After a lapse of time the long-head began to reassert itself, and the
infusion of its blood into the veins of the dominant race led to great
modification of its harshness of feature. When iron was introduced into
Britain, whether by peaceable means or whether by the second Aryan
invasion, that of the Cymri or Britons, we do not know, but when Cæsar
landed in Britain, B.C. 55, he found that iron was in general use.
The second Aryan invasion alluded to was that of the true Britons. They
also came from the Alps, where they had lived on platforms constructed
on the lakes. They occupied the whole of Britain proper, but not
Scotland, and made but attempts to effect a landing in Ireland.
They were entirely out of sympathy with the original race and its
ideas, and did not assimilate their religion and adopt their practices
as had the Gaels.
The distinction between the two branches of the great Celtic family
is mainly linguistic. Where the British employed the letter _p_, the
Gael used the hard _c_, pronounced like _k_. For instance, _Pen_, a
head, in British, is _Cen_ in Gaelic; and we can roughly tell where
the population was British by noticing the place names, such as those
beginning with Pen. When these were Gaels, the same headlands would
begin with Cen.
"By Tre, Pol, and Pen
You know the names of Cornishmen,"
and this at once decides that the inhabitants of the western peninsula
were not Gaels.
From the lakes of Switzerland the Britons had brought with them their
great aptitude for wattle-work. They built their houses and halls, not
of stone, but of woven withies. Cæsar says that they were wont to erect
enormous basket-work figures, fill them with human victims, and burn
the whole as sacrifices to their gods. It is a curious coincidence that
on some of the old Celtic crosses are found carved imitations of men
made of wicker-work. These represent saints made of the same material
and in the same manner by the same people, after they had embraced
Christianity and abandoned human sacrifices.[6]
Let us try to imagine what was the mode of life of those people who
raised their monuments on Dartmoor. They were pastoral, but they also
certainly had some knowledge of tillage. In certain lights, hillsides
on the moor show indications of having been cultivated in ridges, and
this not with the plough, but with the spade. We cannot say that
these belong to the early population, but as they are found near
their settlements it is possible that they may be traces of original
cultivation. But we know from the remains of grain found in the
habitations and tombs of the same people in limestone districts that
they were acquainted with cereals, and their grindstones have been
found on Dartmoor in their huts.
Still, grain was not the main element of their diet; they lived chiefly
on milk and flesh. In the huts have been found broad vessels that were
covered with round discs of slate, and it is probable that these were
receptacles for milk or butter, but the milk would mainly be contained
in wooden or leathern vessels. Elsewhere their spindle-whorls have been
found in fair abundance; not so on Dartmoor--as yet only two have been
recovered. This shows that little spinning was done, and no weights
such as are used by weavers have been found. The early occupants were
in the main clothed in skins.
Their huts were circular, of stone, with very frequently a shelter
wall, opposed to the prevailing south-west wind, screening the door,
which opened invariably to the south or south-west. The whole was
roofed over by poles planted on the walls, brought together in the
middle, and thatched over with rushes or heather. The walls were
rarely above four feet six inches high. They are lined within with
large stones, set up on end, their smooth surfaces inwards, and the
stone walls were backed up with turf without, making of the huts green
mounds. This gave occasion to the fairy legends of the Celts, who
represented the earlier population as living in mounds, which the Irish
called _sidi_, and the people occupying them the Tuatha da Danann.
As already said, this same name meets us in Damnonii, the oldest
appellation for the people of Devon. They were a sociable people,
clustering together for mutual protection in _pounds_.
These pounds are large circular inclosures, the walls probably only
about four feet high, but above this was a breastwork of turf or
palisading. Outside the pound were huts, perhaps of guards keeping
watch.
Many of the huts have paddocks connected with them, as though these
latter had been kail gardens, but some of these paddocks are large
enough to have been tilled for corn. Their plough, if they used one,
was no more than a crooked beam, drawn by oxen. It is possible that the
numerous sharp flakes of flint that are found were employed fastened
into a sort of harrow, as teeth. Their cooking was done either in pots
sunk in the soil, or in holes lined with stones.
Rounded pebbles, water-worn, were amassed, and baked hot in the fire,
then rolled to the "cooking-hole," in which was the meat, and layers of
hot stones and meat alternated, till the hollow receptacle was full,
and the whole was then covered with sods till the flesh was cooked.
The following account of the manner in which the Fiana, the Irish
militia, did their cooking in pre-Christian times will illustrate this
custom:--
"When they had success in hunting, it was their custom in the
forenoon to send their huntsman, with what they had killed, to a
proper place, where there was plenty of wood and water; there they
kindled great fires, into which, their way was, to throw a number
of stones, where they continued till they were red hot; then they
applied themselves to dig two great pits in the earth, into one of
which, upon the bottom, they were wont to lay some of these hot
stones as a pavement, upon them they would place the raw flesh,
bound up hard in green sedge or bulrushes; over these bundles was
fixed another layer of hot stones, then a quantity of flesh, and
this method was observed till the pit was full. In this manner
their flesh was sodden or stewed till it was fit to eat, and then
they uncovered it; and, when the hole was emptied, they began their
meal."[7]
[Illustration: FLINT SCRAPERS. (Actual size.)]
Some of the huts are very large, and in these no traces of fires and
no cooking-holes have been found. Adjoining them, however, are smaller
huts that are so full of charcoal and peat ash and fragments of pottery
that no doubt can be entertained that these were the kitchens, and the
large huts were summer habitations.
[Illustration: COOKING-POT.]
Occasionally a small hut has been found with a large hole in the centre
crammed with ashes and round stones, the hole out of all proportion to
the size of the hut if considered as a habitation. No reasonable doubt
can be entertained that these were bath huts. The Lapps still employ
the sweating-houses. They pour water over hot stones, and the steam
makes them perspire profusely, whereupon they shampoo themselves or rub
each other down with birch twigs.
Indeed, men wearing skin dresses are obliged to go through some such a
process to keep their pores in healthy action.
It is very probable that the long tracklines that extend over hill
and vale on Dartmoor indicate tribal boundaries, limits beyond which
the cattle of one clan might not feed. Some of these lines, certainly
of the age of the Neolithic men of the hut circles, may be traced
for miles. There is one that starts apparently from the Plym at
Trowlesworthy Warren, where are clusters of huts and inclosures. It
follows the contour of the hills to Pen Beacon, where it curves around
a collection of huts and strikes for the source of the Yealm by two
pounds containing huts. That it went further is probable, but recent
inclosures have led to its destruction. We cannot be sure of the age
of these tracklines unless associated with habitations, as some very
similar have been erected in recent times as reeves delimiting mining
rights.
That the occupants of the moor at this remote period loved to play
at games is shown by the numbers of little round pebbles, carefully
selected, some for their bright colours, that have been found on the
floors of their huts. That they used divination by the crystal is shown
by clear quartz prisms having been discovered tolerably frequently.
These are still employed among the Australian natives for seeing
spirits and reading the future.
That these early people were monogamists is probable from the small
size of their huts; they really could not have accommodated more than
one wife and her little family.
That they were a gentle, peaceable people is also apparent from the
rarity of weapons of war. Plenty of flint scrapers are found for
cleaning the hides, plenty of rubber-stones for smoothing seams, plenty
of small knives for cutting up meat, but hardly a spear-head, and
arrow-heads are comparatively scarce. Their most formidable camp is at
Whit Tor, the soil of which is littered with flint chips. It did not,
on exploration, yield a single arrow-head. The pounds were inclosed
to protect the sheep and young cattle against wolves, not to save the
scalps of their owners from the tomahawks of their fellow-men.
With regard to the numbers of people who lived on Dartmoor in
prehistoric times, it is simply amazing to reflect upon. Tens of
thousands of their habitations have been destroyed; their largest and
most populous settlements, where are now the "ancient tenements," have
been obliterated, yet tens of thousands remain. At Post Bridge, within
a radius of half a mile, are fifteen pounds. If we give an average of
twenty huts to a pound, and allow for habitations scattered about, not
inclosed in a pound, and give six persons to a hut, we have at once a
population, within a mile, of 2,000 persons.
[Illustration: FLINT SCRAPERS.
(Actual size.)]
Take Whit Tor Camp. To man the wall it would require 500 men. Allow to
each man five noncombatants; that gives a population of 2,500. There
are pounds and clusters of hut circles in and about Whit Tor that still
exist, and would have contained that population. Take the Erme valley,
high up where difficult of access; the number of huts there crowded on
the hill slopes is incredible. On the height is a cairn, surrounded
by a ring of stones, from which leads a line of upright blocks for a
distance of 10,840 feet. Allow two feet apart for the stones, that
gives 5,420 stones. If, as is probable, each stone was set up by a
male member of a tribe, in honour of his chief who was interred in the
cairn, we are given by this calculation a population of over 21,000,
allowing three children and a female to each male.
[Illustration: FRAGMENT OF COOKING-POT.]
But numerous though these occupants of the moor must have been, they
must have been wretchedly poor. The vast majority of their graves yield
nothing but a handful of burnt ash, not a potsherd, not a flint-chip,
and the grave of a chief only a little blade of bronze as small as a
modern silver pocket fruit-knife.
That they were a peaceable people I have no manner of doubt, for there
are absolutely no fortified hilltops on the moor, which there assuredly
would be were the denizens of that upland region in strife one with
another. What camps there are may be found on the fringe, Whit Tor,
Dewerstone, Hembury, Holne, Cranbrook, Halstock, as against invaders.
That they were a happy people I cannot doubt. They were uncivilised:
and the Tree of Knowledge, under high culture, bears bitter fruit for
the many and drips with tears, but it bears nuts--only for the few.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] "Hardly had we descended the narrow path, when we saw before
us several huge stones, like enormous boulders, placed endways
perpendicularly, on the soil, while some of them yet upheld similar
masses, laid transversely over their summit. They were arranged in
a curve once forming part, it would appear, of a large circle, and
many other like fragments lay rolled on the ground at a moderate
distance; the number of those still upright was, to speak by memory,
eight or nine. Two, at about ten or twelve feet apart one from the
other, and resembling huge gateposts, yet bore their horizontal
lintel, a long block laid across them; a few were deprived of their
upper traverse, the rest supported each its headpiece in defiance
of time and the more destructive efforts of man. So nicely balanced
did one of these cross-bars appear, that in hope it might prove a
rocking-stone, I guided my camel right under it, and then, stretching
up my riding-stick at arm's length, could just manage to touch and
push it; but it did not stir. Meanwhile the respective heights of
camel, rider, and stick, taken together, would place the stone in
question full fifteen feet from the ground. These blocks seem, by their
quality, to have been hewed from the neighbouring limestone cliffs
and roughly shaped, but present no further trace of art, no groove or
cavity of sacrificial import, much less anything intended for figure
or ornament. The people of the country attribute their erection to the
Dārim, and by his own hands too, seeing that he was a giant. Pointing
towards Rass, our companions affirmed that a second and similar stone
circle, also of gigantic dimensions, existed there; and, lastly, they
mentioned a third towards the south-west, that is, in the direction of
Henakeeyah."--PALGRAVE, _Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central
Arabia_, 1865, vol. i p. 251.
[6] _Archæologia_, vol. 1. Pl. 2 (1887).
[7] KEETING _History of Ireland_ (ed. O'Connor, Dublin, 1841), i. P.
293.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ANTIQUITIES
Innumerable relics on Dartmoor--Small in size--Great
destruction of them that has taken place--Lake-head Hill thus
devastated--Classification of the remains--1. The dolmen, an
ossuary--2. The kistvaen--Great numbers, all rifled--3. The stone
circle--possibly a crematorium--4. The stone row--Astonishing
numbers still existing--5. The menhir--In Christian times becomes
a cross--Story of S. Cainnech--Dartmoor crosses--Altar tombs--6.
Hut circles--All belong to one period--7. The tracklines--8. The
pounds--9. The cairns--10. The camps--11. Rude stone bridges,
comparatively modern.
As already intimated, the antiquities found on Dartmoor belong almost
exclusively to the Prehistoric Period. The few exceptions are the
crosses and the blowing-houses. These shall be spoken of in other
chapters. In this we will confine ourselves to a general review of
the relics left to show how that the moor was occupied by a large
population in the early Bronze Period.
Now, although these relics are very numerous, they are none of them
megalithic, that is to say, very huge. And this for two reasons. In
the first place it is uncertain whether the people occupying the moor
ever did erect any huge stones, like the Stonehenge monsters, or the
enormous dolmens of Brittany, and above all of the sandstone districts
of the Loire.
In the second place, in the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth
centuries the great bulk of the churches round Dartmoor were rebuilt,
and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the manor houses,
bartons, and farms were also reconstructed, and then for the first time
since the sixth century was granite employed in ecclesiastical and
domestic architecture. The builders delighted in selecting huge stones.
They employed monoliths for their pillars; each door and window had
a single stone on each side as a jamb, and a single stone as a base;
two stones above were used for the arch of every door and window. The
amount of granite of a large size carried away from the moor is really
prodigious, and no large monument was likely to have been spared.
Then came the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when granite was
in demand for gateposts, and every standing stone serviceable was
ruthlessly carried away. Almost every circle of upright stones has lost
some of its finest blocks in this way, and all that is left to show
where they were is the hole cut in the "calm" from which they were
extracted, and the _spalls_ or chips made by the quarrymen as they
knocked the block into shape. At Sherberton was a fine circle: the
three largest stones have been employed a few yards off as gateposts,
and two others have been cast down.
Next came the newtake-wall builders. The ravage they have wrought
is incalculable. In 1848 S. Rowe published his _Perambulation of
Dartmoor_, and gave an illustration of double stone rows that ran
from the Longstone, near Caistor Rock, for half a mile to the Teign.
In 1851 I planned them. A few years ago a farmer built a newtake wall,
and used the rows as his quarry; nothing now is left of them but a few
insignificant stones he did not consider worth his while to remove. The
stones are in the wall, and can be recognised, and the socket-holes can
all be traced, with a spade.
There was a row or set of rows of stones on a common near Leusden. In
1898 the road-menders destroyed it and employed the stones for the
repair of the Ashburton highway.
Now it is quite possible that the old rude stone monument builders
did not erect really mighty structures on Dartmoor, but it is still
more likely that all such as were of any size have been carried
away. Lake-head Hill, near Post Bridge, must at one time have been a
veritable necropolis. The farmer at Bellever was given his holding on a
rent that was to be mainly paid by inclosing new-takes, and repairing
old walls. For six years he was employed in clearing Lake-head Hill of
all the stones he could find. Thousands of loads were removed, and it
is only by a lucky chance that one or two kistvaens have escaped. Three
pounds with their huts, probably scores of kistvaens, and certainly
several stone rows, have been obliterated by this man. In 1851 I drew
the finest moor kistvaen at Merrivale Bridge. The covering stone
measured 9 feet 3 inches by 4 feet 9 inches. In 1891 a man at Merrivale
Bridge wanting a gatepost, cut one out of the capstone and left only
two scraps _in situ_.
Considering the ruthless manner in which these monuments of a hoar
antiquity have been carried away or destroyed, it is a marvel that any
remain; but then, this devastation explains why those allowed to remain
are such only as were considered too insignificant to offer inducement
to the plunderer. The late Mr. Bennett, of Archerton, when inclosing
and planting, utilised a fine pound for a clump of beech. The old
inclosing ring was used up to make a wall for the protection of the
young trees, and these latter, in growing, threw all the huts that had
not been despoiled out of shape and into inextricable confusion.
Let us now take in their order such monuments as remain, and I will say
a few words about each kind.
1. Of the characteristic _dolmen_, which we in England perhaps
improperly call _cromlech_, we have but a single good example, that
at Drewsteignton. The dolmen was the family mausoleum. It is composed
of several large slabs set upright in box-form, and covered with one
or more large stones, flat on the under side. These were probably all
originally covered with earth, but in course of time the earth has been
washed or trodden away. In some cases the dolmen becomes the _allée
couverte_, a long chamber or hall constructed of uprights and coverers.
The most magnificent example is that at Saumur, on the Loire, which is
over 62 feet long and 13 feet wide, and high enough for a tall man to
walk about in it with ease.
In these the dead were interred, not burnt, and their bones seem to
have been taken out on anniversaries, scraped, and then replaced; and
remoter ancestors were huddled into the background to make room for
newcomers.
In time the fashion for carnal interment gave way to one for cremation.
Now of the large dolmen or cromlech we have only the fine Drewsteignton
example, and that deserves a visit. Formerly it was but one of a number
of monuments, lines and circles of upright stones. All these have been
destroyed in this century.
But although this is the sole remaining example, we know by place names
that anciently there were many more. These monuments have everywhere
a local designation. In France they are _pierres levées_ or _cabannes
des fées_. In Devon they were shelf-stones, and wherever we meet
with a farm called Shilston, there we may confidently assert that a
dolmen formerly existed. With a little search the portions of it may
occasionally be recognised in pigsties, or worked into the structure of
the house.
The parish of Bradstone derives its name from the broad coverer of
a cromlech, which is now employed as a stile. The supporters have
disappeared, used probably for the church. There is a shilstone in
Bridestowe, and another in Modbury. In dolmens it is usual to have a
hole in the end stone, and even sometimes closed with a stone plug,
or else a small stone is employed that could easily be removed, so
as to enable those who desired it to enter and put therein food for
the consumption of the dead, or to remove the remains for the annual
scraping, or again for the introduction of a fresh tenant.
[Illustration: THE PEDIGREE OF A TOMB]
2. When carnal interment gave way to incineration, at once the need for
large mausoleums ceased, and mourners saved themselves the labour of
erecting huge cromlechs, and contented themselves instead with the more
modest _kistvaen_, or stone chest. This is constructed in precisely the
same manner as the dolmen, but is much smaller. A beautiful diminutive
example, from Peter Tavy Common, has been transported to the Plymouth
Municipal Museum. It measures 21 inches long, 13 inches wide, and 14
inches deep. On Dartmoor there are many hundreds of these kistvaens, of
various sizes, but most have been rifled by treasure-seekers; indeed,
all but such as were covered with earth and so escaped observation have
been plundered.
The kistvaens were always buried under cairns, and almost invariably a
circle of stones surrounded the cairn, marking its bounds.
The finest kistvaens are--one at Merrivale Bridge, one adjoining a
pound near Post Bridge, one on Lake-head Hill, one near Drizzlecombe,
one on Hound Tor, and two on the slope of Bellever. One is near the
Powder Mills. There are several, also, about the Plym.
3. The _stone circle_ is called by the French a cromlech. The name
means curved stone. The circle, of which Stonehenge is the noblest
known example in Europe, consists of a number of stones set up at
intervals in a ring. The purport is purely conjectural. Undoubtedly
interments have been made within them; but none, so far, have been
found in those on Dartmoor. In the great circle on Penmaen-mawr there
were burials at the foot of several of the monoliths, and, indeed, one
of these served as the back-stone of a kistvaen.
Among semi-barbarous tribes it is customary that the tribe should have
its place of assembly and consultation, and this is marked round by
either stones or posts set up in the ground. Among some of the great
clan circles, if one of the constituent tribes fails to send its
representative, the stone set up where he would sit is thrown down.
The areas within the circles on Dartmoor, so far as they have been
examined, show that great fires have been lighted in them; the floors
are thickly bedded in charcoal. It may be that they were the crematoria
of the tribe, and certainly numerous cairns and kistvaens are to be
found around them; or it may be that great fires were lighted in them
when the tribe met for its parliament, or its games and war-dances.
It has been noticed that usually these circles of upright stones are
placed on the neck of land between two rivers.
Some have speculated that they were intended for astronomical
observation, and for determining the solstices; but such fancies may be
dismissed till we have evidence of their being erected and employed for
such a purpose by some existing savage race.
The Samoyeds were wont to make circles of stones of rude blocks set
up, and these are still to be seen in the districts they inhabit; and
although these people are nominally Christians, yet they are secretly
addicted to their old paganism. Mr. Jackson, in his _Great Frozen Land_
(London, 1895), says:--
"The rings of stones which I frequently met with in Waigatz are the
sites of their midnight services, and are made, of course, by the
Samoyeds. They are called yon-pa-ha-pai. It is possible that within
these circles the human sacrifices with which Samoyeds used to
propitiate Chaddi were offered up; and, although these are things
of the past now, it is only a few years ago that a Samoyed, living
in Novaia Zemlia, sacrificed a young girl" (p. 89).
A tradition or fancy relative to more than one of these circles is that
the stones represent maidens who insisted on dancing on a Sunday, and
were, for their profanity, turned into stone when the church bells rang
for divine service. It is further said that on May Day or Midsummer Day
they dance in a ring.
There are several of these circles on the moor. The finest are those
of Scaur Hill, near Chagford, of the Grey Wethers--two side by side,
but most of the stones of one are fallen--the circle on Langstone
Moor above Peter Tavy, Trowlesworthy, Sherberton, and Fernworthy. The
diameters vary from thirty-six feet to three hundred and sixty. One
that must have been very fine was near Huccaby, but most of the stones
constituting it have been removed for the construction of a wall hard
by.
The number of stones employed varies according to the area inclosed.
4. The _stone row_ is almost invariably associated with cairns and
kistvaens, and clearly had some relation to funeral rites. The stone
settings are often single, sometimes double, or are as many as eight.
They do not always run parallel; they start from a cairn, and end with
a blocking-stone set across the line. In Scotland they are confined to
Caithness. The finest known are at Carnac, in Brittany. It is probable
that just as a Bedouin now erects a stone near a fakir's tomb as a
token of respect, so each of these rude blocks was set up by a member
of a tribe, or by a household, in honour of the chief buried in the
cairn at the head of the row.
It is remarkable how greatly the set stones vary in size. Some are
quite insignificant, and could be planted by a boy, while others
require the united efforts of three, four, or even many men, with
modern appliances of three legs and block, to lift and place them
in position. This seems to show that the rows are not the result of
concerted design, but of individual execution as the ability of the
man or family permitted to set up a stone large or small. Usually the
largest stones are planted near the cairn, and they dwindle to the
blocking-stone, which is of respectable size.
[Illustration: STONE-ROWS, DRIZZLECOMBE]
There is no district known so rich in stone rows as Dartmoor. As many
as fifty have been observed. The finest are those of Drizzlecombe,
where there are three double rows, not parallel; Down Tor, a single
line; Merrivale Bridge, two parallel double rows, but the stones
constituting them small; Stall Moor, a single line that looks like
a procession of cricketers in flannels stalking over the moor;
Challacombe; at Glazebrook are thirteen rows; also Staldon Moor.
Some of these rows which are small are nevertheless instructive. On
the north slope of Cosdon is a cairn that originally contained three
kistvaens, one of which is perfect, one exists in part, and evidence of
the existence of the third was found on exploration. From this cairn
start three rows of stones, one for each kistvaen. A remarkably perfect
set of stone rows is on Watern Hill, behind the Warren Inn, on the road
from Post Bridge to Moreton. It is actually visible from the road, but
as the stones are small it does not attract attention. It starts from a
cairn and a tall upright stone set at right angles to the rows, which
are brought to a termination by blocking-stones. Another perfect row
is at Assacombe, starting from a cairn with two or three big upright
stones, and running down a rather steep hill to a blocking-stone which
remains intact.
The longest of all the rows is that on Staldon, which springs from a
circle of 59 feet 9 inches in diameter, inclosing the remains of a
cairn, runs with a single line for two miles and a quarter, and crosses
the Erme river. Had a straight line been followed, an obstruction in
the precipitous bank of the river would have been encountered, to
avoid which the builders of this great monument took a sweep eastward,
where the bank was more sloping. In the Cosdon lines of stones already
referred to, the rows waver so as to avoid a platform of rock in which
the constructors were unable to plant their stones.
At Drizzlecombe there is a cairn with which is connected a row 260
feet long, with an upright stone 17 feet 9 inches high at the end of
the row.
All sorts of random guesses have been made about these rows. Some have
made them out to be sacred _cursi_, where races were run, but then some
lines are single, some are eightfold. Others have supposed that these
were the supporting stones to cattle sheds, but these stones are often
not more than 2 feet 6 inches high, and the rows often run for over 600
feet.
We must, as already said, look to present usage for their
interpretation, and that afforded by the practice of the Khassias of
the Brahmapootra, and by the Bedouin, seems the simplest--stones set up
as memorials or tributes of respect to the dead man who is buried at
the head of the row.
There would seem to have been no feeling attached to the direction in
which these lines run.
One singular feature is that in several cases a second row starts off
from a small cairn in or close to the main row, and runs away in quite
a different direction.[8]
5. The _menhir_, or tall stone, is a rude, unwrought obelisk. In some
cases it is nothing other than the starting or the blocking stone of a
row which has been destroyed. This is the case with that at Merrivale
Bridge. But such is not always the case. There were no rows in
connection with the menhirs on Devil Tor and the Whitmoor Stone.
That the upright block is a memorial to the dead can hardly be
doubted; it was continued to be erected, with an inscription on it,
in Romano-British times, and its modern representative is in every
churchyard.
The menhirs, locally termed longstones, or langstones, must at one
time have been numerous. There was a langstone near Sourton, another
by Tavistock, one at Sheeps Tor, others by Modbury; these stones have
disappeared and have left but their names to tell where they once
stood. One on Peter Tavy Common gave its title to the moor which the
Ordnance surveyors have rendered Launceston Moor. The stone is at one
end of a row, and served as a waymark over the down. It had fallen, but
is re-erected.
But there are still a good many remaining. The tallest is one already
referred to at Drizzlecombe. Bairdown Man (_maen_ = a stone) is by
Devil Tor in a singularly desolate spot. We have none comparable to the
Devil's Arrows at Boroughbridge in Yorkshire--but the best have been
carried away to serve as monolithic church pillars.
The Chinese hold that the spirits of the dead inhabit the memorials
set up in their honour; and the carved monoliths in Abyssinia, erected
by the race when it passed from Arabia to Africa, have carved in their
faces little doors, for the ingress and egress of the spirits. Holed
menhirs are found in many places. I know one in France, La Pierre
Fiche, near Pouancé (Maine-et-Loire), where such a little door or
window, intended for the popping out and in of the spirit, has been
utilised to hold an image of the Virgin, and has been barred to
prevent the statue making off or being made off with.
In Irish post-Christian records there is frequent allusion to the early
saints carrying about their _lechs_ (flat stones) with them, to be
set up over them when dead, and this explains the fantastic stories
afterwards told of saints as of having crossed from Ireland to Wales,
or Cornwall, or Brittany floating on stones. In the original record
it was related that the saint came over with his _lech_, and a later
redactor of the story converted this into coming _on_ it, as a raft.
The _lech_ was cut into a cross when the Celts became Christians, or
crosses were inscribed on them. Some of the most fantastic of the
saints, when travelling over the country, would not sit down to dinner
till they had visited and prayed at all the crosses set up over tombs
anywhere near.
A pretty story is told of S. Cainnech. Bishop Aed's sister had been
carried off by Colman MacDermot, King of the Hy Niall, and he refused
to surrender her. Aed went to Cainnech with his grievance, and Cainnech
at once resolved on intervention. Colman had retired to an island in
the Ross Lake, or Marsh, and shrewdly suspecting that the saint would
administer a lecture, he removed the boats to the island fort or
crannoge. However, Cainnech was not to be deterred, and managed to wade
or swim across. Subdued by his pertinacity, the king surrendered the
girl.
[Illustration: MENHIR, CROSS AND HEADSTONE]
Many years after, one winter day, Cainnech was traversing a moor,
when he noticed a rude stone cross, on the head and arms of which the
snow lay in a crust. He halted to inquire whose cross that was, and
learned that it had been erected on the spot where King Colman had
been assassinated some years previously. Cainnech at once went to the
_lech_, leaned his brow against it, and as he recalled the interviews
he had had with the king, and thought on his good as well as his bad
qualities, his outbursts of violence, and his accesses of compunction,
the old man's tears began to flow, and his disciples noticed the snow
melting and dripping from the arms of the cross, thawed by the tears of
the venerable abbot.
[Illustration: CROSS, WHITCHURCH DOWN.]
Now see how many rugged crosses there are on Dartmoor! Some certainly
are waymarks, others as surely indicate graves. Would that we knew the
tales connected with them!
Then go into any churchyard and observe the tombstones. We are children
of the men who set up menhirs, and we do the same thing to this day,
though the stones we erect are mean and small compared with the great
standing monoliths they set up to their dead.
In many of the churches around the moor are monuments that derive from
the cromlech and kistvaens as certainly as does the modern tombstone
from the menhir. The graveyard of Sourton was rich in these great slabs
standing on four supporters. A late rector who "restored" Sourton
church, and supposed he did God service by so doing, threw all these
down and employed the slabs as pavement to the church paths; he placed
the supporters outside in the village for anyone to carry off as he
listed.
The finest menhirs on Dartmoor are--one at Drizzlecombe, the Langstone
near Caistor Rock, the Whitmoor Stone, the Bairdown Man, the Langstone
at Merrivale, and that on Langstone Moor, Peter Tavy. There must have
been numbers more, for their former presence is testified to by many
place names. They have been carried off, and it is matter of wonder
that any remain.
6. _Hut circles._ The cairn and kistvaen were the places of burial of
the dead, but the hut circles were the habitations of the living. So
many of them have been dug out during the last six years, that we may
safely draw conclusions as to the period to which they belong. They
were occupied by the Neolithic population that at one time thickly
covered Dartmoor.
[Illustration]
In the _Archæologia_ of 1875 is an account of the exploration
of a set of hut circles near Bintley, Northumberland, and this
revealed successive occupation by Celts (?) of the Bronze Age; then
Romano-British, who left fragments of Samian ware and a bronze
horse-buckle; lastly by Saxons, who left behind an iron sword.
Not a trace of continuous occupation has been found in any circle
explored on Dartmoor. All belong to the early Bronze Period, when flint
was the principal material of which tools and weapons were fabricated.
Some account of these huts has been already given. They usually have a
raised platform on the side that is towards the hill, and the circle
bulges at this point to give additional space on this platform. It
was probably used as a bed by night, and was sat upon by day. In one
hut at Grimspound the platform was divided into two compartments. In
some instances, small upright stones planted in the floor show that
the platform was made of logs and brushwood, held in place by these
projections. The stone platforms on the other hand were paved.
The doorways into the huts are composed of single upright stones as
jambs, with a threshold and a lintel, this latter always fallen, and
often found wedged between the uprights. The floor within is paved
near the door, but there only; the rest consists of hard beaten soil.
Occasionally a shelter wall protects the entrance from the prevailing
wind. The huts must have been entered on all-fours; the doorways are
never higher than three feet six inches, usually less. The huts have
hearthstones much burnt or broken, but occasionally hollows lined with
stones full of ashes. Cooking-holes are sunk in the floor near the
hearths, and piles of cooking stones are found at hand much cracked
by fire. Sometimes a flat stone is found bedded in the soil near the
centre to support a pole that sustained the roof. In some instances a
hole has been discovered sunk in the floor near the middle, with the
charred rem ains of the bottom end of the post in it.
[Illustration: HUT CIRCLE, GRIMSPOUND.]
In the cooking-holes have been found cooking-pots made by hand of
the coarsest clay, usually round at the bottom; where not round,
with transverse ridges of thick clay forming a cross to strengthen
the bottom. These pots were too fragile to stand the action of fire
on a hearth, and served by having meat and red-hot stones placed in
them. Consequently they do not show signs of exposure to strong fire
externally, and are black with animal matter within, which may be
extracted by means of a blowpipe.
One found at Legis Tor had been cracked and was mended with china-clay.
It had a cooking-stone in it. There would seem to have been in use as
well shallower vessels that were covered with round slate discs. None
of these have been recovered whole. Possibly they were employed to hold
curd or butter.
Occasionally round stones, flat on one side and convex on the other,
have been disinterred in the huts. They served to protect the apex
of the roof, where the poles were drawn together, from the action of
the rain, which would rot them, as well as to prevent the rain from
entering at this point. An example of a stone of the same character
employed for this very purpose may be seen in actual use on a thatched
circular pounding-house on Berry Down, near Throwleigh.
Not a single quern has been found in a hut, and this indicates that
the occupants neither grew nor ground corn extensively.[9] They lived
mainly on milk and meat. Numerous rubber-stones have been unearthed
that served for smoothing the seams of skin clothing sewn together;
and plenty of flint scrapers that turn up show that the skins employed
for garments were previously carefully scraped and cleaned. Esquimaux
women chew the leather to get it flexible, and then rub it with similar
smoothers of stone.
7. _Tracklines_ in abundance are everywhere found, made of stones, but
without close investigation it is not possible to determine to what
period they belong.
8. Paved roads exist; the main road across the moor has been traced
from Wray Barton in Moreton Hampstead, by Berry Pound to Merripit, by
Post Bridge, and thence on to Mis Tor. From somewhere near the Powder
Mills a branch struck off in the direction of Princetown, aiming
probably for Tamerton, but it has been obliterated by the prison
inclosures. A raised paved road leaves the camp above Okehampton
Station and takes a direction due south, but cannot be traced far. That
these ways were not Roman is tolerably certain. The ancient Britons
drove chariots with wheels, and where wheeled conveyances were in use,
there roads are postulated.
9. The _cairns_ that are abundant, and were of considerable size, have
nearly all been ransacked by treasure-seekers. Only such as were too
small to attract attention have escaped. They are mounds of earth and
stone over a pit sunk in the original soil, or over a kistvaen. Usually
they contain a handful of ashes only; they rarely yield more. One,
however, on Hamildon surrendered a bronze knife with amber handle and
rivets of gold. Others have given up small knives of bronze, and urns
of the characteristic shape and ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In
one, on Fernworthy Common, was found a thin blade of copper, along with
a flint knife, a large button of horn, and a well-ornamented urn.
A cairn surrounded by a circle of stones, and containing a kistvaen,
near Princetown, is called "The Crock of Gold," a name that may be due
to a vessel of the precious metal having been found in it.
One thing is obvious, the enormous labour of exploring the larger
cairns would not have been undertaken unless previous ransackings had
yielded valuable results. Some of the cairns must have been huge, and
have taken many men several days in clearing out their interiors. About
these cairns I shall say a good deal in a chapter apart.
10. Of _camps_ there are two kinds, those constructed of stone and
those of earth. I reserve what I have to say about these to a separate
chapter.
11. The old stone _bridges_, composed of rude slabs cast across an
opening to a pier, also rudely constructed, have been attributed to
"the Druids," of course. There is nothing to indicate for these a
great antiquity. They belong to the period of pack-horses, and were
doubtless often repaired. Those at Dartmeet, and Post Bridge, and Two
Bridges--this last has disappeared--were in the line of the pack-horse
track, and _not_ in that of the paved way across the moor.
The rude bridge at Okery in like manner is in the pack-horse line of
way, which is indicated between Princetown and Merrivale Bridge by rude
posts of granite set up at intervals.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Merrivale Bridge, Har Tor, and Longstone, near Caistor Rock.
[9] Querns have been found, but none in prehistoric habitations.
CHAPTER V.
THE FREAKS
Lucubrations of antiquaries in past times--How their imagination
led them astray--Rock idols--Logan stones--Who originated
the idea that they were oracular--Rock basins--Tolmens--The
difference between the modern system of archæological research
and that which it has supplanted.
It would be amusing were it not melancholy to read the lucubrations of
antiquaries of the early part of the nineteenth century on the relics
of the past found in such abundance on the moor. Their imagination
played a large part in their researches, and references to curious
customs in the Bible or in classic writings were drawn in to explain
these relics. The antiquaries lacked the faculty of observing
accurately, and instead of labouring to accumulate facts, and recording
them with precision, employed them as pegs on which to hang their
theories, and they whittled at what they did observe, so as to fit what
they saw to elucidate these theories.
In rambling over the moor they discovered rock idols, logan stones,
rock basins, and tolmens, and entered into long dissertations on their
employment for worship, oracles, lustrations, and ordeals.
[Illustration: BOWERMAN'S NOSE]
There are, indeed, to be seen curious piles of rock, but none of
these are artificial, and there is not a particle of evidence that
any of them received idolatrous worship. Bowerman's Nose is the most
remarkable, perhaps. Carrington, the poet of Dartmoor, thus describes
it:--
"On the very edge
Of the vast moorland, startling every eye,
A shape enormous rises! High it towers
Above the hill's bold brow, and seen from far,
Assumes the human form; a granite god,--
To whom, in days long flown, the suppliant knee
In trembling homage bow'd."
It stands up, a core of hard granite, forty feet high, in five layers
above a "clitter," the softer masses that have fallen off from it. Had
it ever been venerated as an idol, the worshippers would assuredly
have done something towards clearing this clitter away, so as to give
themselves a means of easy access to their idol, and some turf on which
to kneel in adoration.
Another remarkable pile is Vixen Tor, presenting from one point a
resemblance to the Sphinx. Not a single relic of early man is in its
immediate neighbourhood. We can hardly doubt that prehistoric man was
not as big a fool as we suppose him, and that he was quite able to see
that Bowerman's Nose and Vixen Tor were natural objects as truly as the
tors on the hilltops.
The logan stones on the moor are numerous, and these, also, are natural
formations. The granite weathers irregularly; a hard bed alternates
with one that is soft, and the wind and rain eat into the more
crumbling layer and gnaw it away, till the harder superincumbent mass
rests on one or two points. Either it topples over and becomes one
more block in a clitter, or it remains balanced, and, if fairly evenly
balanced, can be made to rock like a cradle.
Here is a specimen of tall twaddle from the hand of Mrs. Bray or the
Rev. E. Atkyns Bray, her husband:--
"There must have been a more than ordinary feeling of awe inspired
in the mind of the criminal by ascending heights covered with
a multitude, to whose gaze he was exposed, as he drew nigh and
looked upon these massive rocks, the seat of divine authority and
judgment. How imposing must have been the sight of the priesthood
and their numerous trains, surrounded by all the outward pomps
and insignia of their office; as he listened to the solemn hymns
of the vates, preparatory to the ceremonial of justice; or as he
stepped within the sacred inclosure, there to receive condemnation
or acquittal, to be referred to the ordeal of the logan, or the
tolmen, according to the will of the presiding priest! As he
slowly advanced and thought upon these things, often must he have
shuddered and trembled to meet the Druid's eye, when he stood by
'the stone of his power.'"
All this rubbish is based on supposition. There is not a particle of
evidence to support it. Toland was the first to start the theory that
logan stones were used for ordeal purposes or as oracles. He says:
"The Druids made the people believe that they alone could move these
stones, and by a miracle only, by which pretended power they condemned
or acquitted the accused, and often brought criminals to confess
what could in no other way be extorted from them." Here is a positive
statement. Toland died in 1722. Whence did Toland derive this? From his
imagination only. Then Rowe quotes him as his authority for attributing
to the logan stones this function of delivering oracular judgments.
Appeal was wont to be made to a line in Ossian as a support for the
theory, but since Ossian has been proved to be a fraud antiquaries are
chary of referring to him.
[Illustration: LOGAN ROCK. THE RUGGLESTONE, WIDDECOMBE.]
There are some really fine logan rocks on Dartmoor. Perhaps the largest
is one above the West Okement, which I remember seeing many years ago,
when a boy, rolling in a strong wind like a boat at sea. That on Rippon
Tor measures 16½ feet in length, and is about 4½ feet in thickness and
nearly the same in breadth. It still logs, but not so well as formerly,
owing to mischievous interference with it. There is a large one in
the Teign, above Fingle Bridge, that can also be made to roll with the
application of a little strength.
The Rugglestone, near Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, measures 22 feet by 14
feet in one part, and 19 feet by 17 feet in another, and is 5 feet 6
inches in mean thickness. Its computed weight is 110 tons, whereas the
celebrated logan in Cornwall weighs 90 tons. This stone is poised upon
two points.
Roos Tor, which the Ordnance surveyors playfully render Rolls Tor,
possessed two logan stones, but quarrymen have destroyed one, together
with the fine mass of rock on which it stood. Near it lay a huge
menhir, never removed till these depredators broke it up. I give an
illustration of the head of the tor with its two logans, taken in
1852; one alone remains. On Black Tor, near the road from Princetown
to Plymouth, is a small logan, with a rock basin on the top, and
with a projection like a handle. It can be made to oscillate without
difficulty. A small logan is near the stone rows on Challacombe in the
miners' workings. Its existence is purely accidental. Another is near a
collection of hut circles on the slope of Combeshead Tor.
The rock basins are numerous; they are hollow pans formed on the
surface of granite slabs by the action of wind and water, assisted by
particles of grit set in rotation by the wind. "That this rude and
primitive species of basin formed part of the apparatus of Druidism
there can be little doubt," says Mr. Rowe, "but the specific purpose
for which they were designed is not clear." Fosbroke unhesitatingly
pronounces rock basins to be "cavities _cut_ in the surface of a rock,
supposed for reservoirs, to preserve the rain or dew in its original
purity, for the religious uses of the Druids."
[Illustration: ROOS TOR, WITH ITS LOGANS, PREVIOUS TO DESTRUCTION.]
All this assertion must be put aside. The bowls are excavated by
natural agencies, and there is not a scrap of evidence to show that
they were put to superstitious or any other use. The largest is on
Caistor Rock, and this has been railed round, as sheep floundered in
and got drowned, or could not get out again. Mis Tor has a fine basin,
called "The Devil's Frying-pan."
These basins may be seen in all stages of growth on the tops of the
tors.
The tolmen is either a holed stone or a rock supported in such a manner
as to preserve it from falling, and supposed to have been used as an
apparatus of ordeal, by requiring those accused of a crime to creep
through the orifice.
Holed stones have unquestionably been employed for the purpose of
taking oaths and sealing compacts, the hands being passed through
an opening and clasped. And certainly S. Wilfrid's needle, in the
crypt under Ripon Minster, was made use of as a test to try whether a
maiden accused of incontinency was guilty or not. There is, however,
no well-defined tolmen on Dartmoor that can be pronounced to be
artificial. A holed stone in the Teign was pierced by the action of the
water, and a suspended rock at an incline on Staple Tor, called by Mrs.
Bray and Mr. Rowe a tolmen, is a natural production also. It is, of
course, possible that stones thus poised may have been employed for the
purpose, but we have no evidence that those on Dartmoor were so used.
Of rocks supported at one end by a small stone there are plenty. There
is a good one on Yar Tor, above Dartmeet.
The old school of antiquaries started with a theory, and then sought
for illustrations to fit into their theories, and took facts and
distorted them to serve their purpose, or saw proofs where no proofs
existed. The new school accumulates statistics and piles up facts, and
then only endeavours to work out a plausible theory to account for the
facts laboriously collected and registered. It never starts with a
theory, but applies practices in savage life still in use to explain
the customs of prehistoric men, who lived on the same cultural level as
the savages of the present day.
One word of caution must be given relative to the Druids, who are
credited with so much. It is true that there were Druids in Britain
and in Ireland, but they were the schamans, or medicine-men, of the
earlier Ivernian race, who maintained their repute among the conquering
Celts, and their representatives at the present day are the white
witches who practise on the credulity of our villagers.
CHAPTER VI.
DEAD MEN'S DUST
Cairns on Dartmoor--Why mostly in solitary places and
on hilltops--The theory of wearing mourning--Its real
origin--Various modes of deceiving the dead or discouraging them
from returning--The desire of the ghost to get home--Is cajoled
or scared away--How widows get rid of the ghosts of their first
husbands--Disguising the dead.
One of the most striking experiences of an explorer of Dartmoor is
the coming upon great cairns in the most remote and inaccessible
parts of that waste. Not a lone hill surrounded by bogs is without
its great mound of earth or pile of stones over some dead man. In the
howling wilderness about Cranmere Pool, where are no traces of human
habitation, there lie the dead. On every rise above the swamps and
fathomless morasses of Fox Tor, there they are scattered thick. Almost
always the dead were conveyed to the tops of hills, or placed on the
brows of elevations far away from the settlements of the living.
Why was this?
Because prehistoric men were in fear of their dead people.
I remember, in 1860, riding across the central desert of Iceland, and
coming about midnight, when the summer sun was just dipped below the
polar sea, on a solitary cairn among pools of frozen water and amidst
illimitable tracts of volcanic ash. My guide told me it was the grave
of one Glamr, who had so haunted the farms in the Vatnsdal that the
people of the valley had combined to dig him up and transport the
corpse almost a day's journey into the central desert, where they cut
off his head, and buried the body in a sitting posture with his own
skull as his throne, an indignity which the ghost was likely to so
resent as never to venture to show again.
The heathen Icelander, on the death of a father in the family, was
removed by the anxious heir to the estate in an ingenious manner. The
wall of the house behind the bed was broken through, and the corpse
drawn out of doors by that way, and then the opening was hastily
repaired. He was then hurried off to his grave. The heir was so afraid
lest the venerable party should saunter home again and reclaim his
property, that the father was carried forth in this peculiar manner in
order to bewilder him and make him find a difficulty in returning.
A strip of black cloth an inch and a half in width stitched round the
sleeve--that is the final, or perhaps penultimate relic (for it may
dwindle further to a black thread) of the usage of wearing mourning on
the decease of a relative.
The usage is one that commends itself to us as an outward and visible
sign of the inward sentiment of bereavement, and not one in ten
thousand who adopt mourning has any idea that it ever possessed a
signification of another sort. And yet the correlation of general
custom--of mourning fashions--leads us to the inexorable conclusion
that in its inception the practice had quite a different signification
from that now attributed to it, nay more, that it is solely because its
primitive meaning has been absolutely forgotten, and an entirely novel
significance given to it, that mourning is still employed after a death.
Look back through the telescope of anthropology at our ancestors in
their naked savagery after a death, and we see them daub themselves
with soot mingled with tallow. When the savage assumed clothes and
became a civilised man, he replaced the fat and lampblack with black
cloth, and this black cloth has descended to us in the nineteenth
century as the customary and intelligible trappings of woe.
The Chinaman when in a condition of bereavement assumes white garments,
and we may be pretty certain that his barbarous ancestor, like the
Andaman Islander of the present day, pipe-clayed his naked body after
the decease and funeral of a relative. In Egypt yellow was the symbol
of sorrow for a death, and that points back to the ancestral nude
Egyptian having smeared himself with yellow ochre.
Black was not the universal hue of mourning in Europe. In Castile white
obtained on the death of its princes. Herrera states that the last
time white was thus employed was in 1498 on the death of Prince John.
This use of white indicates chalk or pipe-clay as the daub affected by
the ancestors of the house of Castile in primeval time as a badge of
bereavement.
Various explanations have been offered to account for the variance of
colour. White has been supposed to denote purity--and to this day white
gloves and hatbands and scarves are employed at the funeral of a young
girl.
Yellow has been supposed to symbolise that death is the end of human
hopes, because falling leaves are sere; black is taken as the privation
of light; and purple or violet also affected as a blending of joy with
sorrow. Christian moralists have declaimed against black as heathen,
as denoting an aspect of death devoid of hope, and gradually purple
is taking its place in the trappings of the hearse, if not of the
mourners, and the pall is now very generally violet.
But these explanations are after-thoughts, and an attempt to give
reason for the divergence of usage which might satisfy: they are
really no explanations at all. The usage goes back to a period when
there were no such refinements of thought. If violet or purple has
been traditional, it is so merely because the ancestral Briton stained
himself with woad on the death of a relative.
The pipe-clay, lampblack, yellow ochre, and woad of the primeval
mourners must be brought into range with a whole series of other
mourning usages, and then the result is something of an "eye-opener."
It reveals a condition of mind and an aspect of death that cause not a
little surprise and amusement. It is one of the most astonishing, and,
perhaps, shocking traits of barbarous life, that death revolutionises
completely the feelings of the survivors towards their deceased
husbands, wives, parents, and other relatives.
A married couple may have been sincerely attached to each other so long
as the vital spark was twinkling, but the moment it is extinguished the
dead partner becomes, not a sadly sweet reminiscence, but an object of
the liveliest terror to the survivor. He or she does everything that
ingenuity can suggest to get himself or herself out of all association
in body and spirit with the late lamented. Death is held to be
thoroughly demoralising to the deceased. However exemplary a person he
or she may have been in life, after death the ghost is little less than
a plaguing, spiteful spirit.
There is in the savage no tender clinging to the remembrance of the
loved one; he is transformed into a terrible bugbear, who must be
evaded and avoided by every contrivance conceivable. This is due,
doubtless, mainly to the inability of the uncultivated mind to
discriminate between what is seen waking from what presents itself in
phantasy to the dreaming head. After a funeral it is natural enough
for the mourners to dream of the dead, and they at once conclude that
they have been visited by his _revenant_. After a funeral feast--a
great gorging of pork or beef--it is very natural that the sense of
oppression and pain felt should be associated with the dear departed,
and should translate itself into the idea that he has come from his
grave to sit on the chests of those who have bewailed him.
Moreover, the savage associates the idea of desolation, death,
discomfort, with the condition of the soul after death, and believes
that the ghosts do all they can to return to their former haunts and
associates for the sake of the warmth and food, the shelter of the
huts, and the entertainment of the society of their fellows. But the
living men and women are not at all eager to receive the ghosts into
the family circle, and they accordingly adopt all kinds of "dodges,"
expedients to prevent the departed from making these irksome and
undesired visits.
The Venerable Bede tells us that Laurence, Archbishop of Canterbury,
resolved on flying from England because he was hopeless of effecting
any good under the successor of Ethelbert, King of Kent. The night
before he fled he slept on the floor of the church, and dreamed that S.
Peter cudgelled him soundly for resolving to abandon his sacred charge.
In the morning he awoke stiff and full of aches and pains. Turned into
modern language we should say that Archbishop Laurence was attacked
with rheumatism on account of his having slept on the cold stones of
the church. His mind had been troubled before he went to sleep with
doubts whether he was doing right in abandoning his duty, and very
naturally this trouble of conscience coloured his dream and gave to his
rheumatic twinges the complexion they assumed in his mind.
Now Archbishop Laurence regarded the Prince of the Apostles in
precisely the light in which a savage views his deceased relatives and
ancestors. He associates his maladies, his pains, with them, if he
should happen to dream of them. If, however, when in pain, he dreams
of a living person, then he holds that this living person has cast a
magical spell over him.
Among Nature's men, before they have gone through the mill of
civilisation, plenty to eat and to drink, and someone to talk to, are
the essentials of happiness. They see that the dead have none of these
requisites, they consider that they are miserable without them. The
writer remembers how, when he was a boy, and attended the funeral of
a relative in November, he could not sleep all night--a bitter frosty
night--with the thought how cold it must be to the dead in the vault,
without blankets, hot bottle, or fire. It was in vain for him to reason
against the feeling; the feeling was so strong in him that he was
conscious of an uncomfortable expectation of the dead coming to claim a
share of the blanket, fire, or hot bottle. Now the savage never reasons
against such a feeling, and he assumes that the dead will return, as a
matter of course, for what he cannot have in the grave.
The ghost is very anxious to assert its former rights. A widow has to
get rid of the ghost of her first husband before she can marry again.
In Parma a widow about to be remarried is pelted with sticks and
stones, not in the least because the Parmese object to remarriage, but
in order to scare away the ghost of number one who is hanging about his
wife, and who will resent his displacement in her affections by number
two.
To the present day, in some of the villages of the ancient Duchy of
Teck, in Würtemberg, it is customary when a corpse is being conveyed
to the cemetery for the relatives and friends to surround the dead,
and in turn talk to it--assure it what a blessed rest it is going to;
how anxious the kinsfolk are that it may be comfortable; how handsome
will be the cross set over the grave; how much all desire that it may
sleep soundly and not by any means leave the grave and come haunting
old scenes and friends; how unreasonable such conduct as the latter
hinted at would be--how it would alter the regard entertained for the
deceased, how disrespectful to the Almighty who gives rest to the good,
and how it would be regarded as an admission of an uneasy conscience.
Lively comparisons are drawn between the joys of paradise and the vale
of tears that has been quitted, so as to take away from the deceased
all desire to return.
This is a survival of primitive usage and mode of thought, and has its
analogies in many places and among diverse races.
The Dacotah Indians address the ghost of the dead in the same "soft
solder" to induce it to take the road to the world of spirits, and not
to come sauntering back to its wigwam. In Siam and in China it is much
the same; persuasion, flattery, threats, are employed.
Unhappily, all ghosts are not open to persuasion, and see through
the designs of the mourners, and with them severer measures have to
be resorted to. Among the Slavs of the Danube and the Czechs, the
bereaved, after the funeral, on going home, turn themselves about after
every few steps, and throw sticks, stones, mud, even hot coals, in the
direction of the churchyard, so as to frighten the spirit back to the
grave so considerately provided for it. A Finnish tribe has not even
the decency to wait till the corpse is covered with soil; they fire
pistols and guns after it as it goes to its grave.
In _Hamlet_, at the funeral of Ophelia, the priest says:--
"For charitable prayers,
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her."
Unquestionably it must have been customary in England thus to pelt a
ghost that was suspected of the intention to wander. The stake driven
through the suicide's body was a summary way of ensuring that his ghost
should not be troublesome.
Those Finns who fired guns after a dead man had another expedient for
holding him fast, if the first failed, and that was to nail him down in
his coffin. The Arabs tie his legs together. The Wallachs drive a long
nail through his skull; and this usage explains the many skulls that
have been exhumed in Germany thus perforated.
The Californian Indians were wont to break the spine of the corpse
so as to paralyse his lower limbs and make "walking" impossible.
Spirit and body, to the unreasoning mind, are intimately associated.
A hurt done to the body wounds the soul. Mrs. Crowe, in her _Night
Side of Nature_, tells a story reversing this. A gentleman in Germany
was dying. He expressed great desire to see his son, who was a
ne'er-do-well, and was squandering his money in Paris. At that time the
young man was sitting on a bench in the Bois-de-Boulogne, with a switch
in his hand. Suddenly, he beheld his old father before him. Convinced
that he saw a phantom, he raised his switch, and cut the apparition
once, twice, and thrice across the face, and it vanished. At that
moment the dying father uttered a scream, and held his hands to his
face. "My boy! my boy! He is striking me again--again!" and he died.
The Algonquin Indians beat the walls of the death-chamber to drive
out the ghost. In Sumatra a priest is employed with a broom to sweep
the ghost out. In Scotland and in North Germany the chairs on which a
coffin has rested are reversed, lest the dead man should take a fancy
to sit on them instead of going to his grave. In ancient Mexico certain
professional ghost ejectors were employed, who, after a funeral, were
invited to visit and thoroughly explore the house whence the dead had
been removed, and if they found the ghost lurking about in corners,
in cupboards, under beds--anywhere, to kick it out. In Siberia, after
forty days' "law" given to the ghost, if it be still found loafing
about, the Schaman is sent for, who drums it out. He extorts brandy,
which he professes to require, as he has to personally conduct the
deceased to the land of spirits, where he will make it and the other
ghosts so fuddled that they will forget the way back to earth.
In North Germany a troublesome ghost is bagged, and the bag is emptied
in some lone spot, or in the garden of a neighbour against whom a
grudge is entertained.
Another mode of getting rid of the spirit of the dear departed is to
confuse it as to its way home. This is done in various ways. Sometimes
the road by which it has been carried to its resting-place is swept to
efface the footprints, and a false track is made into a wood or on to
a moor so that the ghost may take the wrong road. Sometimes ashes are
strewn on the way to hide the footprints. Sometimes the dead is carried
rapidly three or four times round the house so as to make him giddy and
not know in which direction he is carried.[10] The universal practice
of closing the eyes of the dead may be taken to have originated in the
desire that he might be prevented from seeing his way.
In places it was, as already said, customary for the dead body to be
taken out of the house, not through the door, but by a hole knocked in
the wall for the purpose, and backwards. In Corea, blinders made of
black silk are put on the dead man's eyes, to prevent him from finding
his way home.
Many savage nations entirely abandon a hut or a camp in which a death
has occurred for precisely the same reason--of throwing the dead man's
spirit into confusion as to its way home.
It was a common practice in England till quite recently for the room
in which a death had occurred to be closed for some time, and this is
merely a survival of the custom of abandoning the place where a spirit
has left the body. The Esquimaux take out their dying relatives to huts
constructed of blocks of ice or snow, and leave them there to expire,
for ghosts are as stupid as they are troublesome; they have no more
wits than a peacock, they can only find their way to the place where
they died.
Other usages are to divert a stream and bury the corpse in the
river-bed, or lay it beyond running water, which, according to
ghost-lore, it cannot pass. Or, again, fires are lighted across its
path, and it shrinks from passing through flames. As for water, ghosts
loathe it. Among the Matamba negroes a widow is flung into the water
and dipped repeatedly so as to wash off the ghost of the dead husband,
which is supposed to be clinging to her. In New Zealand, among the
Maoris, all who have followed the corpse dive into water so as to throw
off the ghost which is sneaking home after them. In Tahiti, all who
have assisted at a burial run as hard as they can to the sea and take
headers into it for the same object. It is the same in New Guinea. We
see the same idea reduced to a mere form in ancient Rome, where, in
place of the dive through water, a vessel of water was carried twice
round those who had followed the corpse, and they were sprinkled. The
custom of washing for purification after a funeral practised by the
Jews is a reminiscence of the usage, with a novel explanation given to
it.
In the South Pacific, in the Hervey Islands, after a death, men turn
out to pummel and fight the returning spirit, and give it a good
drubbing in the air.
Now perhaps the reader may have been brought to understand what the
sundry mourning costumes originally meant. They were disguises whereby
to deceive the ghosts, so that they might not recognise and pester
with their undesired attentions the relatives who live. Indians who
are wont to paint themselves habitually, go after a funeral totally
un-bedecked with colour. On the other hand, other savages daub
themselves fantastically with various colours, making themselves as
unlike to what they were previously as is possible. The Coreans, when
in mourning, assume hats with low rims that conceal their features.
The Papuans conceal themselves under extinguishers made of banana
leaves. Elsewhere in New Guinea they envelop themselves in a
wicker-work frame in which they can hardly walk. Among the Mpongues of
Western Africa, those who on ordinary occasions wear garments, when
suffering bereavement walk in complete nudity. Valerius Maximus tells
us that among the Lycians it was customary in mourning for the men to
disguise themselves in women's garments.
The custom of cutting the hair short, and of scratching and disfiguring
the face, and of rending the garments, all originated from the same
thought--to make the survivors unrecognisable by the ghost of the
deceased. Plutarch asserts that the Sacæ, after a death, went down into
pits and hid themselves for days from the light of the sun. Australian
widows near the north-west bend of the Murray shave their heads and
plaster them with pipe-clay, which, when dry, forms a close-fitting
skull-cap. The spirit of the late lamented, on returning to his better
half, either does not recognise his spouse, or is so disgusted with her
appearance that he leaves her for ever.
There is almost no end to the expedients adopted for getting rid of
the dead. Piles of stones are heaped over them, they are buried deep
in the earth, they are walled up in natural caves, they are inclosed
in megalithic structures, they are burned, they are sunk in the sea.
They are threatened, they are cajoled, they are hoodwinked. Every sort
of trickery is had recourse to throw them off the scent of home and to
displease them with their living relations.
The wives, horses, dogs slain and buried with them, the copious
supplies of food and drink laid on their graves, are bribes to induce
them to be content with their situation. Nay, further, in very many
places no food may be eaten in the house of mourning for many days
after an interment. The object, of course, is to disappoint the
returning spirit, which comes seeking a meal, finds none; comes again
next day, finds none again; and after a while out of sheer disgust
desists from returning.
A vast amount of misdirected ingenuity is expended in bamboozling and
bullying the unhappy ghosts; but the feature most striking in these
proceedings is the unanimous agreement in considering these ghosts
as such imbeciles. When they put off their outward husk, they divest
themselves of all that cunning which is the form that intelligence
takes in the savage. Not only so, but, although they remember and
crave after home comforts, they absolutely forget the tricks they had
themselves played on the souls of the dead in their own lifetime; they
walk and blunder into the traps which they had themselves laid for
other ghosts in the days of their flesh.
Perhaps the lowest abyss of dunderheadedness they have been supposed
to reach is when made to mistake their own identity. Recently, near
Mentone, a series of prehistoric interments in caves has been exposed.
They reveal the dead men as having had their heads daubed over with
red oxide of iron. Still extant races of savages paint, plaster, and
disfigure their dead. The prehistoric Greeks masked them. The Aztecs
masked their deceased kings, and the Siamese do so still. We cannot say
with absolute certainty what the object is, but we are probably not far
out when we conjecture the purpose to be to make the dead forget who
they are when they look at their reflection in the water. There was a
favourite song sung some sixty years ago relative to a little old woman
who got "muzzy." Whilst in this condition some naughty boys cut her
skirts at her knees. When she woke up and saw her condition, "Lawk!"
said the little old woman, "this never is me!" And certain ancient
peoples treated their dead in something the same way; they disguised
and disfigured them so that each ghost on waking up might exclaim,
"Lawk! this never is me!" And so, having lost its identity, the soul
did not consider that it had a right to revisit its old home and molest
its old acquaintances.
[Illustration: PLAN OF WHITTOR CAMP]
FOOTNOTES:
[10] This was done at Manaton at every funeral, the only difference
being that he was carried round and round the cross. A former rector,
Rev. C. Carwithen, destroyed the cross so as to put a stop to this
practice.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAMPS
No camps in the forest--All on the confines--No apprehension
of attack from the south--Whit Tor--The exploration of the
camp--How the walls were constructed--This explains their ruinous
condition--Brent Tor formerly a camp--How a road up it was
made--The Dewerstone camp--Earthen camps--Hembury--The Galford
Down camp--A Saxon thegn's burrh--Old Squire Bidlake--Lydford
fortifications.
As I have already said, the inhabitants of Dartmoor in prehistoric
times seem to have been of a peaceable disposition. There are pounds
to contain cattle and protect them against wolves, but no camps on the
moor itself. What camps there are will be found on its confines, as
though the natives feared attack from an enemy outside, but were not
troubled by their neighbours of the same blood and pursuits.
Of camps there are two sorts, but we cannot be sure that they belong to
different races of men. The stone-walled fortresses are few--Brent Tor,
Whit Tor, Cranbrook, one near Ashburton, and the Dewerstone. Of earth,
or earth and stone mixed, there are more. A small one above Tavistock,
an immense and very important one at Galford or Burleigh in Bridestowe,
one above the station at Okehampton, Wooston and Prestonbury on the
Teign, Holne and Hembury on the Dart. Along the south of the moor
are none till we reach Boringdon, between the Plym and the Tory. But
one only of all these has been systematically explored, and that is,
perhaps, the finest, on Whit Tor, above Mary and Peter Tavy.
Whit Tor rises to the height of 1,526 feet above the sea-level. It is
on Cudlipptown Down, and commands exceedingly fine views westward as
far as the distant Cornish hills.
The tor is not of granite, but of gabbro, an eruptive igneous rock,
very black and hard, and splitting along defined planes under the
action of the weather. The north side near the summit is covered with a
clitter of broken masses.
The boldest masses of rock rise on the south precipitously, but there
are fangs of rock that shoot up over the small plateau that forms the
summit of the hill.
The whole of the summit is surrounded by a double wall in a very
ruinous condition, and this is to a considerable extent due to the
smallness of the stones of which it was composed. The faces of the
walls were to be traced only by digging, and were never more than
doubtful.
Both walls appear to have been 10 feet thick, perhaps a little more;
the outer, when perfect, might have had a height of 4 to 4½ feet,
whilst the inner, judged by the débris, appears to have been 6 to 7
feet high.
The space between the walls varied, owing to the inequalities of the
ground, but was generally 10 feet wide.
The area inclosed by the innermost wall amounts to close on one and a
half acres; the total amount included within the outer wall is about
two and a half acres of ground.
The circumference is very much broken up, as is also the inclosed area,
by considerable masses of protruding rocks. About these, within the
camp, heaps of small stones had been piled up, forming cairns. The
largest and most notable of these is at the south-west, and consists
of a core of rock about which an immense accumulation of stones has
been heaped. All these cairns were thoroughly explored. They covered
no interments, and although they disclosed evidences that fires had
been lighted against the rocks, and that people had camped there for
a while, they showed no tokens of structural erection, as though they
were ruinous huts built against the native rock. The huge cairn was
removed with great labour, and revealed nothing whatever beneath it but
one flint flake.
These cairns, there can be little doubt, were collections of stones for
the use of the besieged, to serve as missiles, or for the repair of the
walls.
Within the area of the camp are a few hut circles. One near the centre
is double, and contained an incredible number of flint chips, a flint
scraper, and a core from which flakes had been struck. The whole area
is littered with flint chips that are brought up by the moles when
making their burrows, and curiously enough not a single arrow-head
or flake that can be confidently set down as a weapon has been
disinterred. The pottery found is all of the hand-made cooking-vessel
type.
To the east is a circle sheltered on one side by a mass of rock, that
has a second chamber, a sort of bedroom made under a slab of rock, with
the interstices on all sides built up, except only on that by which
it was entered from the hut. A good deal of flint was found there.
Outside, on the south, was another hut circle, where a piece of clear
quartz crystal was found, together with a flint knife that had one edge
serrated by use.
[Illustration: COVERED CHAMBER AND COOKING-HOLE.]
Connected with the camp on the north-east is a ruined wall that leads
to an inclosure with numerous hut circles. South-west of the camp
further down the hill is a pound in good preservation with eight hut
circles in it. A reeve or bank to the west of the camp leads down to
other collections of habitations of the same description.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF STONE AND TIMBER WALL.]
Some ten cairns on the slopes have been investigated, but have yielded
little beyond the handful of ashes sunk in a pit in the centre that
represents the dead. A ruined kistvaen, much mutilated, lies between
the camp and the Langstone, a menhir that gives its name to the common,
and which is the starting-point of a stone row of very inconsiderable
blocks that led to a cairn now demolished, and its place occupied by a
pool. From Langstone a track to the south-east leads by the head of the
Peter Tavy stream, which rises in a bog, to a fine circle of standing
stones, and on the slope below that and above the Walkham river is a
large settlement of some thirty or forty habitations. Beyond the Peter
Tavy brook, moreover, are numerous clusters of dwellings. To all the
population who lived in these huts, Whit Tor had served as a camp of
refuge. The place deserves a visit, for we have there collected within
a small radius the houses and hamlets occupied by the primeval race,
the tombs of their dead, the stone row set up in memory of some chief
represented by the Longstone towering above the petty stones below, the
circle in which the dead were burned, and finally, the camp to which
they flew to defend their beloved moor from invasion.
It may cause some surprise that the walls of the stone castles should
be in such complete ruin. But, in all likelihood, they were constructed
on the same principle as the Gaulish camps described by Cæsar. They
were built of timber frames packed in with stones, and the logs
mortised together held the stones in place. When, however, the wood
rotted, this mode of construction ensured and precipitated utter ruin.
At Murcens, in the department of Lot, is one of these stone camps,
and sufficiently well preserved, owing to the size of the limestone
slabs employed in the building, to show precisely how the whole was
constructed. But the walls of Iosolodunum, that held out so bravely
against Cæsar, being built of small stones compacted with timber, are
now but heaps of ruin, no better than those of Whit Tor.
Brent Tor was fortified in a manner very similar to Whit Tor; the outer
wall remains fairly perfect on the north side, but the inner wall has
been much injured. In this instance it is not the summit, but the base
of the hill that has been defended. As there is a church on the summit,
as also a churchyard with its wall, these have drawn their supplies
from the circumvallation. Moreover, it has been broken through to form
a way up to the church.
[Illustration: BRENT TOR]
A late curate of Tavistock, whose function it was to take the service
on Brent Tor, and who found it often desperate work to scramble to the
summit in storm and sleet and rain, resolved on forming a roadway to
the churchyard gate. But he experienced some difficulty in persuading
men to go out from Tavistock to work at this churchway. However, he
supplied himself with several bottles of whisky, and when he saw a
sturdy labourer standing idle in the market-place he invited him into
his lodgings and plied him with hot grog, till the man in a moist and
smiling condition assented to the proposition that he should give a day
to the Brent Tor path. By this means it was made. The curate was wont
to say: "Hannibal cut his way through the Alps with vinegar; I hewed
mine over Brent Tor with prime usquebaugh." Few traces of this way
remain, but in making it sad mischief was made with the inner wall of
the fortress.
On Brent Tor summit it is sometimes impossible to stand against the
wind. I remember how that on one occasion a baptismal party mounted
it in driving rain. The father carried the child, and he wore for
the occasion a new blue jersey. When the poor babe was presented at
the font it was not only streaming with water, but its sopped white
garments had become blue with the stain from the father's jersey.
On an occasion of a funeral, when the parson emerged from the church
door he was all but prostrated by the north-west blast, and he and the
funeral party had to proceed to the grave much like frogs. "Crook'y
down, sir!" was the sexton's advice; and the whole company had to press
forward bent double, and to finish the service seated in the "lew" of
headstones.
According to popular belief the graves, which are cut in the volcanic
tufa, fill with water, and the dead dissolve into a sort of soup.
But this is not true; the rock is dry and porous. It discharges its
drainage by a little spring on the north-east that in process of ages
has worked itself from stage to stage lower down the hill.
The Dewerstone Camp consists of two stone walls drawn across the
headland. No walls were needed for the sides that were precipitous.
Cranbrook Castle is in very good preservation, except on the side
towards the Teign, where it has been removed by road-menders, but
not within recent years. It richly deserves to be investigated, and
the owners have recently granted permission to do so to the Dartmoor
Exploration Committee.
We come next to the earthen-banked camps. Of these there is a very fine
example at Hembury, near Buckfastleigh. But the finest of all is in
Burleigh Wood, in the parish of Bridestowe. Here the side accessible
from Galford Down has been cut through, with a trench and a bank thrown
up on the camp side, and this is carried right across the neck. The
earthen banks were almost certainly crested with palisades. Hard by
this early camp, where a bronze palstave has been found, is another of
a different character, occupying the extreme point of the hill. This
consists of a tump or mound, with an earthwork round it as a ring. In
this are remains of iron-smelting.
There can be little doubt as to the period of this latter. It was
the _burrh_ of the Anglo-Saxon, and was in every point similar to
the _mottes_ of the Merovingians in France. On the Bayeux tapestry
three fortified places are represented--Dinan, Dol, and Rennes--and
all are of the same type. A mound of earth was either thrown up, or a
hilltop was artificially shaped like a tumulus. On the top of this the
_thegn_ erected his fortress of wood. In the Bayeux representations the
superstructures at Dol and Rennes are of timber, and that of Dinan is
partly of timber and partly of stone. A flying bridge of wood led from
the gate in the palisading of the outer ring, supported on posts, and
conducted by an incline to the gate of the citadel. An example of one
of these camps at Bishopston in Gower has been explored recently.[11]
The stumps of the pales were there found embedded in the clay of the
bank, in tolerable preservation.
In the valley below Burleigh Camp, commanding the ancient road from
Exeter by Okehampton to Launceston, was a third camp, that has been for
the most part obliterated; it occupied a rising knoll of limestone, and
this latter has been quarried, so that the camp earthworks have been
either destroyed or buried under the accumulations from the quarry.
The locality is of great interest. The ridge goes by the name of
Galford, and there is reason to think that this was the Gavulford of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where, in 823, the Britons made their last
stand against Egbert and the Saxons of Devon.
The place is by nature very strong, and it dominates two roads, that
from Exeter to Cornwall, and that which branched off from it on
Sourton Down and struck through Sourton to Lydford. The name Gavulford
signifies the holdfast on the _fordd_ or road.
Burleigh Camp is on the estate of Bidlake, an interesting old manor
house, long the residence of a family of the same name, and deserving a
visit. Old Squire Bidlake was a zealous Royalist, and the Parliamentary
soldiers went to his house to seize him. As they entered the avenue
they met an elderly tramp in rags, and said, "You fellow. Have you seen
Squire Bidlake?"
"Yes," he replied; "I've just come from the house, and when I was there
he was in it."
Then he went his way, and not till too late did they discover that this
tramp was Squire Bidlake himself slipping away in disguise.
He fled to Burleigh Wood. There is a little farm below it, in which,
at the time, lived a tenant of the name of Veale. Veale and his wife
and daughter concealed him in the underwood, and daily conveyed to him
food, and supplied him with blankets till the search for him ceased.
At the Restoration, Squire Bidlake made over the farm to the Veales on
a nominal rent, to be held by them on this rent so long as a male Veale
of their descent remained to hold it.
Both Bidlakes and Veales are now gone, and the little farmhouse is a
ruin. Squire Bidlake is supposed still to haunt the wood, and children
are frightened by their mothers with the threat that the old squire
will come and fetch them, if naughty.
Lydford was strongly defended. It occupies a fringe of land between
ravines, and lines of fortification were drawn across the neck. These
may still be traced. The castle stands on a tump artificially shaped.
Beyond the church is another small camp, probably British. The castle
itself is a structure of stone, replacing the old Saxon _burrh_.
It was probably from the bridges leading up into these citadels, which
the Norsemen saw when they harried our coasts, that they conceived
the idea that the rainbow was the great bridge leading up into Odin's
Valhalla.
"What fools the gods must be," says the inquirer in the Edda, "to build
their passage of egress and ingress of such brittle stuff."
FOOTNOTES:
[11] _Archæologia Cambrensis_, July, 1899. The camp was excavated by
Colonel W. L. Morgan.
CHAPTER VIII
TIN-STREAMING
Remains of the tin-streamers--Dartmoor stream tin--Lode tin--The
dweller in the hut circles did not work the tin--The tin
trade with Britain--How tin was extracted--A furnace--Deep
Swincombe--Blowing-houses--The wheel introduced in the reign of
Elizabeth--Japanese primitive methods--Numerous blowing-house
ruins--The tin-mould stones--Merrivale Bridge--King's Oven--Its
present condition--Mining.
No one who has eyes in his head, and considers what he sees, if he has
been on Dartmoor, can have failed to observe how that every stream-bed
has been turned over, and how that every hollow in a hillside is
furrowed.
The tin-streamers who thus scarred the face of the moor carried on
their works far down below where the rivers debouch from the moor on to
the lowlands, but there the evidences of their toil have been effaced
by culture.
The tin found in the detritus of streams is the oxide, and is far purer
than tin found in the lode. Mining for tin was pursued on Dartmoor
during the Middle Ages to a limited extent only, and solely when the
stream tin was exhausted.
[Illustration: BLOWING-HOUSE UNDER BLACK TOR]
A very interesting excursion may be made from Douseland Station up the
Meavy valley to Nosworthy Bridge, above which several old tin-moulds
may be seen lying in the track beside the river, and tin-workings are
passed. But perhaps the most interesting portion of the walk is that up
the Nillacombe that opens on to the Meavy from the right below Kingset.
[Illustration: TIN-WORKINGS, NILLACOMBE.]
Above this the stream has been turned about and its bed torn up, and
rubble heaped in huge piles. Not only so, but the hill-slope to the
south is marked as with confluent smallpox, the result of the gropings
of miners after tin. They followed up every trickle from the side and
dug _costeening_, or _shoding_, pits everywhere in search of metal.
The upper waters of the Webburn have in like manner been explored,
and some idea of the extent to which the moor was lacerated by the
miners may be obtained from the Warren Inn on the road from Post
Bridge to Moreton, looking east, when the slopes of Headland Warren and
Challacombe will be seen seamed deeply.
The remains of the tinners have not been subjected to as full an
exploration as they merit, but certain results have nevertheless been
reached. One thing is abundantly clear, that all the tin-streaming was
done subsequently to the time when men occupied the hut circles. The
population living in them knew nothing of tin.
Diodorus Siculus, who wrote B.C. 8, says that the dwellers at Belerium,
a cape of Britain, mined and smelted tin. "After beating it up into
knucklebone shapes they carry it to a certain island lying off Britain,
named Ictis, for at ebb tides, the space between drying up, they carry
the tin in waggons thither ... and thence the merchants buy it from the
inhabitants and carry it over to Gaul, and lastly, travelling by land
through Gaul about thirty days, they bring down the loads on horses to
the mouth of the Rhine."
There can exist little doubt that Ictis is the same as Vectis, the
Isle of Wight. It is held that anciently the island was connected with
the mainland. The Roman station and harbour was at Brading. The early
workers first pounded the ore with stone crushers, and such have been
found. They then fanned it in the wind, which carried off the fine
light dust, and left the metal on the shovels on which they tossed
the ore and grit into the air. Beside some of the workings heaps of
this dust have been detected. The washing of the ore came later. When
sufficient had been collected, long troughs were sunk in the "calm,"
or native clay, and these were filled with charcoal; then the tin ore
was laid on this charcoal, and either more of this latter was heaped
above, or else peat was piled up, with layers of ore. Finally the whole
was kindled. No bellows were used, but a draught through the channel
kept the whole glowing, and the metal ran through the fire into the
bottom of the hollow, or ran out at the end, as this rude furnace was
constructed on an incline.
[Illustration: MORTAR-STONE, OKEFORD.]
In Staffordshire, at Kinver, and in the neighbourhood of Stourbridge,
in Worcestershire, I have seen banks and hedges made up of what are
locally called _burrs_. These consist of masses of sand and iron slag,
two feet in diameter, round, and concave on one side, convex on the
other. These burrs were formed in the primitive manufacture of iron,
which much resembled that of tin. Andrew Yarranton, in _England's
Improvement by Sea and Land_, 1698, says that he saw dug up near the
walls of Worcester the hearth of an old Roman iron-furnace.
"It was an open hearth upon which was placed alternately charcoal
and ironstone, to which fire being applied; it was urged by men
treading upon bellows. The operation was very slow and imperfect.
Unless the ore was very rich, not more than one hundredweight of
iron could be extracted in a day. The ironstone did not melt, but
was found at the bottom of the hearth in a large lump or bloom,
which was afterwards taken out and beaten under massive hammers
previous to its being worked into the required shape or form."
The _burrs_ found are the sand and iron mixed that encased the _bloom_,
which was taken out by pincers and worked on the anvil. The scoria that
encased the bloom was thrown aside, and yet contains more than one-half
of iron. The iron reduced in this simple manner never ran, but it
became soft like dough, and could be removed and beaten into shape.
The method of dealing with the tin was similar, only that in this
latter case the metal flowed. That foot bellows were employed before
the system of working bellows, and producing a continuous blast by
means of a water-wheel, is most probable. The foot bellows are known to
most primitive people, but in Agricola's illustration of the smelting
of tin none are shown. On the contrary, Æolus is represented in the
corner as blowing a natural blast.
[Illustration: SLAG-POUNDING HOLLOWS, GOBBETTS.]
The book of Agricola, published in 1556, shows that this primitive
method was still in practice so late as the middle of the sixteenth
century.
But this clumsy method could not be long practised on Dartmoor, where
fuel--except peat--was scarce; and it gave way to a furnace of better
construction, where the receiver was circular, and a draught-hole was
at the bottom. One of these has been dug out and carefully examined at
Deep Swincombe.
[Illustration: SMELTING ORE. (_After Agricola._)]
[Illustration: PLAN OF BLOWING-HOUSE, DEEP SWINCOMBE.]
It consists of a single chamber, 18 feet by 11 feet, rudely constructed
of masses of granite resting on one another by their own weight and
unset in mortar or in clay. The entrance was narrow and low. On one
side was the furnace, constructed of granite, one slab set upright to
form a side, and the back and other side built up rudely. A fragment
of the receptacle for the molten tin was found, with a receiver and
channel cut in it. Pottery was also found, which was of a very early
description. It was submitted to the late Sir Wollaston Franks, of the
British Museum, who said that he would have attributed it to the Celtic
period but for the bold scores made at the starting-point of a handle,
which are characteristic of Anglo-Saxon pottery.
At the extremity furthest from the door was a _cache_ in the thickness
of the wall, formed something like a kistvaen, as a place in which
to store the metal and tools. The whole structure was banked up with
rubble and turf.
Outside to the south still lies a mould-stone, a slab of elvan, in
which the mould had been cut, measuring 26 inches long by 12 inches at
one end and 15 at the other, and 5 inches deep.
That this is the earliest tin-furnace yet discovered on Dartmoor admits
of no doubt. The curious mould-stone is quite different in shape from
any others found on the moor. No mortar-stones were discovered, and
this also is a token of antiquity.
The earliest smelting arrangements must have been very crude, and much
tin was left in the slag. Until recently the Malays threw away their
slags, which contained as much as 40 per cent. of tin. As there have
been no mortar-stones found at Deep Swincombe, it is to be presumed
that the tinners disregarded their slags. These have not, moreover,
been found. The reason was this--the sets had been reworked at a later
time by the tinners at Gobbetts, further down the river. These later
men had stone mortars and a crazing mill, and finding these rich slags,
removed them, pounded them up in the hollowed mortar-stones, that may
be seen _in situ_ at Gobbetts, and re-smelted them. Deep Swincombe has
all the appearance of having been much pulled about by tinners since
the first furnace was erected.
[Illustration: TIN-MOULD, DEEP SWINCOMBE.]
The tin running out of the furnace was allowed to flow into holes in
the ground, and thence was ladled whilst in a molten condition and
poured into the moulds.
Mr. Gowland has given a most interesting account of the manner in which
the metals are extracted from their ores in Japan.[12] This shows how
that the primitive methods are still in practice there. He says:--
"Although tin ore is found and worked in Japan in several
localities, there is but one ancient mine in the country. It is
situated in Taniyama, in the province of Satsuma. The excavations
of the old miners here are of a most extensive character, the
hillsides in places being literally honeycombed by their burrows,
indicating the production in past times of large quantities of the
metal. No remains, however, have been found to give any clue to the
date of the earliest workings. But whatever may have been their
date, the processes and appliances of the early smelters could not
have been more primitive than those I found in use when I visited
the mines in 1883.
"The ore was roughly broken up by hammers on stone anvils, then
reduced to a coarse powder with the pounders used for decorticating
rice, the mortars being large blocks of stone with roughly hollowed
cavities.
"It was finally ground in stone querns, and washed by women in a
stream to remove the earthy matter and foreign minerals with which
it was contaminated. The furnace in which the ore was smelted is
exactly the same as that used for copper ores, excepting that it
is somewhat less in diameter. The ore was charged into it wet, in
alternate layers with charcoal, and the process was conducted in
precisely the same way as in smelting oxidised copper ores. The tin
obtained was laded out of the furnace into moulds of clay."
The furnace employed for copper is also described by Mr. Gowland:--
"An excavation, measuring about 4 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 2
feet deep, is made, and this is filled with dry clay carefully
beaten down. In the centre of this bed of clay a shallow,
conical-shaped hole is scooped out. The hole is then lined with a
layer, about three inches thick, of damp clay mixed with charcoal,
and the furnace is complete.
[Illustration: SMELTING TIN IN JAPAN.]
"It has no apertures either for the injection of the blast or for
tapping out the metal. A blast of air is supplied to it generally
from two bellows, placed behind a wall of wattle well coated with
clay, by which they and the men working them are protected from
the heat. The blast is led from each bellows by a bamboo tube,
terminating in a very long nozzle of clay, which rests on the edge
of the furnace cavity."
At Deep Swincombe no bellows were used; the draught probably came in
through the hole behind the furnace.
But in the reign of Queen Elizabeth a great revolution in the smelting
of tin was wrought by the introduction of German workmen and their
improved methods. They brought in the water-wheel. The ruins that are
found in such abundance of "blowing-houses," as they are called--one at
the least beside every considerable stream--belong, for the most part,
to the Elizabethan period. They have their "leats" for carrying water
to them, and their pits for tiny wheels that worked the bellows.
The situation of these smelting-houses may be found usually by the
mould-stones that lie near them. There is one below the slide or fall
of the Yealm, with its moulds in and by it, and another just above the
fall. There is one near the megalithic remains at Drizzlecombe, also
with its mould-stones. But it is unnecessary to particularise when they
are so numerous. I will, however, quote Mr. R. Burnard's description of
two in the Walkham valley as typical:
"The first is about 250 yards above Merrivale Bridge, on the
left bank of the river. One jamb is erect, and, like most of the
doorways of Dartmoor blowing-houses, was low, and to be entered
necessitated an almost all-fours posture. Very little of the walls
is standing, but what remains is composed of large moor-stones,
dry laid. Near the entrance is a stone, 3 feet long and 2½ feet
wide, containing a mould, which at the top is 18 inches long, 13
inches wide, and 6 inches deep. The sides are bevelled, so that the
bottom length is 12½ inches, with a width of 7 inches at one end
and 8 inches at the other. One end of the mould has a narrow gutter
leading from the top to halfway down the mould. This was probably
used for the insertion of a piece of iron prior to the metal being
run in, thus permitting the easy withdrawal of the block of tin
when cool from the mould. This stone also contains a small bevelled
ingot or sample mould, 4 inches long, 2 inches wide, and 1¼ inches
deep.
"A water-wheel probably stood in the eastern recess of the house,
for there is a covered drain leading from here right under the
house and out at the western end, where the water was discharged
into the river. Traces of the leat which supplied the motive power
to this wheel may also be seen.
"What appear to be the remains of the furnace, consisting of
massive stones placed vertically, and inclosing a small rectangular
space, are plainly visible. In this place, lying askew, as if it
had been thrown out of position, is a large stone containing a
long, shallow cavity, which may have been the bottom of the furnace
or 'float,' _i.e._ the cavity in which the molten tin collected
before being ladled into the mould.
"This ruin lies at the nether end of deep, open cuttings, which
start from near Rundlestone Corner, and are continued right down to
the Walkham.
"About 1,000 yards up stream is the ruin of the other
blowing-house, with remains of a wheel-pit and a leat. There
is also a stone containing a mould 16 inches long at the top,
11 inches wide, and 6 inches deep. It is bevelled, so that the
bottom length is 12½ inches, with a width of 8 inches. Like the
mould-stone in the ruin below, it contains a sample ingot mould 3½
inches long, 3 inches wide, and 2 inches deep. The remains in these
ruins are very similar to each other, and these blowing-houses
were probably smelting during the same period, indicating that a
considerable quantity of tin was raised in their neighbourhood."[13]
Anciently, before the introduction of the wheel, the smelting-place
above all others was at King's Oven, or Furnum Regis, near the
Warren Inn, between Post Bridge and Moreton. It is mentioned in the
_Perambulation of Dartmoor_, made in 1240. It consists of a circular
inclosure of about seventy-two yards in diameter, forming a pound, with
the remains of a quadrangular building in it. The furnace itself was
destroyed some years ago. When the inclosure was made it was carried to
a cairn that was in part demolished, to serve to form the bank of the
pound. This cairn was ringed about with upright stones, and contained a
kistvaen. The latter was rifled, and most of the stones removed to form
the walls; but a few of the inclosing uprights were not meddled with,
and between two was found firmly wedged a beautiful flint scraper.
As the drift tin was exhausted, and the slag of the earlier miners was
used up, it became necessary to run adits for tin, and work the veins.
These adits remain in several places, and where they have been opened
have yielded up iron bars and picks. But these are not more ancient
than mediæval times, probably late in them. That gold was found in the
granite rubble of the stream-beds is likely. A model of a gold-washing
apparatus was found on the moor a few years ago. It was made of zinc.
According to an old Irish historical narrative, a bard was wont
to carry a wand of "white bronze" or tin, and his shoes were also
tin-plated.[14] One wonders whether at any time a bard thus shod and
with his rod of office strode over Dartmoor and chanted historic
ballads there!
For such as would care to see these dry bones of antiquarian research
into the past of tin-streamers clothed with flesh, I must refer them to
my novel of _Guavas the Tinner_, in which I have described the mode of
life of the metal-seekers on the moor in the time of Elizabeth.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] _Archæologia_, vol. lvi. part 2, 1899.
[13] _Dartmoor Pictorial Records_, 1893.
[14] _Silva Gadhelica_, ii. p. 271.
CHAPTER IX.
LYDFORD
An out-of-the-world spot--The church dilapidated--The
clerk--Situation of Lydford--An early fortress--The church of S.
Petrock--British foundations--Monument of the watch-maker--The
castle--A prison--Mr. Radford--Will Huggins--Primitive
gate-hinges--The gorge--The waterfall--The Gubbins crew--Black
Down--Entries in the registers of Mary Tavy--Mary and Peter Tavy
churches--Bridestowe church--Bronescombe's Loaf and Cheese--Tavy
Cleave--Peat-works--Cross on Sourton Down.
Fifty years ago Lydford was one of the most out-of-the-world and wild
spots in England. I had almost written God-forsaken, but checked my
pen, for God forsakes no place, though He may tarry to bless. There
were no resident gentry--there never had been, as a glance at the
registers reveals. There was no resident rector--there had not been
within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The rector was a wealthy
pluralist, rector of Southill and Callington, in Cornwall, who hardly
ever showed his face in Lydford, the largest parish in England,
and maintained a poor curate there on a hundred pounds a year in a
miserable cottage.
The people were a law to themselves, and had the credit of being
inveterate poachers.
[Illustration: ON THE LYD]
The houses, thatched, built of moor-stones, not set in mortar, were
in a ruinous condition. The aspect of the place was that of an Irish
village. It was dominated by a ruined castle, and possessed a church
fast lapsing to ruin, and was girt in by walls long ago reduced
to heaps. One Christmas Day the curate went to the church for the
celebration of the Holy Communion, and found the altar covered with
snow that had blown in through the battered east window and under the
cracked slates of the roof.
"I'll sweep it off," said the clerk.
"On no account. God has spread His table," said the curate; and he
celebrated on the white sheet of snow.
In the cottage that served as parsonage it was not much better.
The curate had two rooms downstairs and one above. One room was
slate-paved. Upstairs there was no ceiling, and he had occasionally to
spread his umbrella over his head and pillow when he went to bed.
Now all is changed, or changing.
The church has been restored, and is a model of what a church should
be. The old parsonage has been pulled down, and stables built on
the site, and the late Mr. Street, the architect, erected an absurd
Scottish castle with angle turrets and extinguisher caps to serve
as rectory. The ruinous houses are being replaced by trim, if ugly,
habitations. Only the gaunt castle remains gutted.
About fifty years ago the clerk was addicted to lifting his elbow too
freely, and came to church occasionally in a hilarious condition. The
climax was reached at a funeral, when he tumbled into the grave before
the coffin, and apostrophised the dead man as he scrambled out: "Beg
parding, Ted; I bain't minded to change places wi' you just yet."
The curate was compelled to discharge him and appoint another, Peter X.
The old clerk refused to accept his dismissal, and gathered his
adherents, and on the ensuing Sunday marched at their head to the house
of God. Peter, advised of this, summoned his supporters, and, having
the keys, ensconced himself early within the sacred building, in the
clerk's pew, surrounded by his upholders. The rival party entered, and
a battle ensued between the factions. The curate absolutely refused
to perform the service to the clerking of the dismissed official, and
finally the latter and his gang were ejected from the church, loudly
professing that they would all turn Dissenters.
This Peter remained clerk for fifty years. He obtained a subsidiary
revenue by carrying children afflicted with "the thrush" up the tower,
and holding them over the battlements at each pinnacle, whilst he
recited the Lord's Prayer. For this he received a small gratuity.
He was a most worthy man, and, as he is now dead, I do not scruple to
mention that the story I have told in _Furze Bloom_, under the title of
"Peter Lempole," pertained to him. He never married, the reason being
that he had a childish old brother entirely dependent on him. Peter was
engaged to a bright, pretty girl; but one day she said to him, "When
us is married, then, mind y', Peter, I'm not going to have that silly
brother of yourn in the house with me." "Indeed!" was Peter's retort;
"then into my house _you_ shall never come."
Lydford occupies a tongue of land between two ravines, one cleft
perpendicularly to a depth of seventy feet, the other steep, but not
sheer through rock. The old line of fortifications, much degraded by
the plough, may be traced distinctly, nevertheless, across the only
portion of the headland by which attack was possible. It is the sort
of fortress which goes by the name of cliff castle on the Cornish and
Welsh coasts.
That it was a site chosen by the prehistoric population is undoubted.
Such a natural fortress could not have been overlooked, and it was
held since remote times till the Normans came. Yet, notwithstanding
the position being almost impregnable, it was taken, and the town of
Lydford was burnt by the Danes in 997 after they had destroyed the
Abbey of Tavistock. From Domesday it would appear that at the Conquest
Lydford was a walled town. It sent burgesses to Parliament twice in the
reign of Edward I.
The church is dedicated to S. Petrock, and at its restoration some
remains of the old British church were discovered three feet below the
pavement of the present edifice. The slabs that had lain on the floor
of the original oratory were taken up and placed within the doorway
of the present church; so that the worshippers may stand on the very
stones on which their ancestors stood in the sixth century. That
into the walls of the reconstructed church most of the stones of the
original edifice were incorporated, is more than probable.
There are several Petrock churches round the moor--Harford, South
Brent, Clannaborough; and probably the original founder and patron of
Buckfast Abbey was this saint.
The great distinction between British foundations and those that were
Roman was this: a British church was called after its founder, whereas
a Roman church received its name from some scraps of dead bones of a
saint laid under the altar, or placed in it. Unhappily, we have no
record of S. Petrock's labours in Devon, but there can exist little
hesitation in holding that he was an apostle of the district about
Dartmoor and of a tract north of it as well, as also that he laboured
and died in Cornwall.
Here is what Bede tells us of the manner of consecration among the
Celts. It must be premised that the historian is speaking of Cedd,
Bishop of the East Saxons from 653 to 664, to whom Oidilvald, King of
the Deisa, had given a piece of land. Cedd had received his training
from Celtic monks at Iona.
"This man of God, wishing by prayer and fasting to purge the place
of its former pollution of wickedness, and so to lay the foundation
of the monastery, entreated the king that he would grant him the
means and permission to dwell there for that purpose, during the
whole time of Lent, which was then at hand. In all the days of this
time, except on Sundays, he fasted till the evening, according to
custom, and then took no other sustenance than a little bread, one
hen's egg, and a little milk mixed with water. This, he said, was
the custom of those of whom he had learned the rule of regular
discipline; first to consecrate to our Lord, by prayer and fasting,
the places which they had newly received for building a monastery
or a church.
"When there were ten days of Lent still remaining there came a
messenger to call him to the king, and he, that the religious
work might not be intermitted, on account of the king's affairs,
entreated his priest, Cynebil, who was also his brother, to
complete the work that had been so piously begun. Cynebil readily
complied, and when the time of fasting and prayer was over he there
built the monastery, which is now called Lastingham."[15]
The name Petrock is really Peterkin, the Celtic diminutive of Peter,
and it is probable that Peter Tavy is another of his foundations, as
well as certain other churches now regarded as dedicated to the great
apostle.
The Saxons, who were saturated with Latin ideas, when they obtained
supremacy, rededicated the churches to saints of the Roman calendar,
if they were able to obtain from Italy some scraps of bone that it was
pretended had belonged to one of the saints of the Latin calendar. But
there is no evidence that the British Christians did other than call
their churches after the names of the founders.
Lydford church is of fifteenth-century Perpendicular, but in the
chancel is an earlier piscina, and the font is possibly pre-Norman. The
chancel screen is gone, but the rood staircase remains.
In the churchyard is the often-quoted epitaph of George Routleigh:--
"Here lies in horizontal position
the outside case of
George Routleigh, watch-maker,
whose abilities in that line were an honour
to his profession.
Integrity was the main-spring
and Prudence the regulator
of all the actions of his life.
Humane, generous and liberal
his Hand never stopped
till he had relieved distress.
So nicely regulated were all his motions
that he never went wrong,
except when set agoing
by people who did not know his key.
Even then he was easily set right again.
He had the art of disposing his time so well
that his hours glided away
in one continual round
of pleasure and delight.
Till an unlucky minute put a period to
his existence.
He departed this life Nov. 14, 1802,
aged 57,
wound up
in hopes of being taken in hand
by his Maker
and of being thoroughly cleaned, repaired
and set agoing
in the World to Come."
In the churchyard may be noticed some altar tombs of the type not
infrequent round the moor.
Due west of the church, across the graveyard hedge, is a small camp,
possibly British.
The castle is planted on a tump, a natural elevation artificially
shaped, and is not particularly interesting. It is square, and was
built after the Conquest. By a charter of Edward I. it was constituted
a Stannary prison. Richard Strode, of Newnham Park, one of the
principal gentry of the county, moved in Parliament to restrain the
miners from discharging their refuse into the rivers with the result of
choking up the harbours. The miners were so incensed against him that
they captured him in 1512, had him summarily tried by their Stannary
Laws, on Crockern Tor, and threw him into Lydford gaol, where he
languished for some time, and it was with considerable difficulty that
his release was obtained.
What with Forest Laws and Stannary Laws, Lydford Castle rarely lacked
tenants. Even in 1399 Lydford law was held in bad repute, for Wright,
in his collection of political poems, prints some verses of that date
which speak of it as such; and William Browne, in 1644, wrote on it:--
"I oft have heard of Lydford law,
How in the morn they hang and draw,
And sit in judgment after:
At first I wondered at it much,
But soon I found the matter such
As it deserves no laughter.
"They have a castle on a hill;
I took it for some old wind-mill,
The vanes blown off by weather.
Than lie therein one night 'tis guessed
'Twere better to be stoned or pressed
Or hanged, ere you come thither."
And so on for sixteen verses.
Below the castle is the water-gate where is the only spring from which
Lydford town was supplied till Mr. Radford brought drinking water into
the place.
With Lydford the name of Daniel Radford will be indissolubly
connected--one of the noblest and kindest of men, and one of the most
modest. He cut the way up the ravine by which the gorge was made
accessible. When I was a boy the only method by which it could be
explored was by swimming and scrambling in summer, when the water was
low. Mr. Radford built Bridge House and restored the church. It was due
to him that I undertook, in 1888, to collect the folk-music in Devon
and Cornwall; and it is in Lydford churchyard that he lies, awaiting
the resurrection of the just. Not without deep feeling can I pen these
lines to commemorate one of the best men whom it has been my happiness
to know.
As I have mentioned the folk-music of Devon, I may here add that
one of my assistants was old Will Huggins, of Lydford, a mason, who
entered enthusiastically into the work. I had an attack of influenza
in the winter of 1889-90, and had to leave England for Italy. Before
my departure Will promised me to go about among his old cronies and
collect ancient ballads. Alas! he caught a chill; it fell on his chest,
and when I returned in the spring, it was to learn that he was gone.
"I'm going, I reckon, full mellow
To lay in the churchyard my head;
So say, God be wi' you, old fellow,
The last of the singers is dead."
In the village street may be noticed, built into the hedge or wall, a
piece of granite with a round hole like a rock basin depressed in it.
Actually it is one of the stones of a gate-hinge.
[Illustration: A PRIMITIVE HINGE.]
Formerly the gates around Dartmoor had no iron hinges, but turned in
sockets cut in granite blocks. Few of these now remain in use, but the
stones may be noticed lying about in many places, and it is really
marvellous that the antiquaries of the past did not suppose they were
basins for sacrificial lustration.
In 1880 the late Mr. Lukis was in Devon, planning the rude stone
monuments on Dartmoor for the Royal Society of Antiquaries. He came on
some of these cuplike holes in stones, and carefully measured and drew
them. Happily, I was able to show a gate swinging between two of these
blocks, and so explain to him their purpose.
The Lydford ravine is the finest of its kind in England. A bridge
crosses it, and it is worth while looking over the parapet into the
gulf below, through which the river writhes and leaps. The gardens of
Bridge House are thrown open on Mondays, when a visitor may descend
and thread the gorge. But decidedly the best way for him to see the
beauties of the Lyd valley, where most restricted and romantic, is for
him to descend at the waterfall, a pretty but not grand slide of a
lateral brook, and ascend the ravine of the Lyd from thence; he will
pass through the gorge where finest, under the bridge, and pursue his
course till he comes out at a mill below the south gate of Lydford.
Hence a half-mile will take him to Kitt's Steps, another fall, a leap
of the Lyd into a basin half choked with the rubbish from a mine.
The mine happily failed, but it has left its heaps in the glen as a
permanent disfigurement.
Considerable caution must be exercised in ascending the gorge, as the
path is narrow, and in places slippery. A schoolmistress was killed
here a few years ago. She turned to look at the sun glancing through
the leaves at the entrance of the chasm, became giddy, and fell over.
She was dead when her body was recovered.
Inhabiting the valley and lateral combes of the Lyd, in the time
of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, was a race of men called the
Gubbinses. They were wild and lawless, and maintained themselves by
stealing sheep and cattle, and carrying them into the labyrinth of
glens where they could not be traced.
Fuller, in his account of the wonders of the county of Devon, includes
the Gubbinses. He heard of them during his stay in Exeter, 1644-7.
"I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land
is a Scythia within England, and they be pure heathens therein.
It lyeth near Brenttor, in the edge of Dartmore.... They are a
peculiar of their own making, exempt from Bishop, Archdeacon,
and all Authority, either ecclesiastical or civil. They live in
cotts (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in common,
multiplied, without marriage, into many hundreds. Their language
is the drosse of the dregs of the vulgar Devonian; and the more
learned a man is, the worse he can understand them. Their wealth
consists in other men's goods, and they live by stealing the sheep
on the More, and vain it is for any to search their Houses, being
a Work beneath the pains of a Sheriff, and above the powers of any
constable. Such their fleetness, they will out-run many horses:
vivaciousnesse, they outlive most men, living in the ignorance of
luxury, the Extinguisher of Life, they hold together like Burrs,
offend One, and All will revenge his quarrel."
William Browne speaks of them as near Lydford:--
"And near thereto's the Gubbins' cave,
A people that no knowledge have
Of law, of God, or men;
Whom Cæsar never yet subdued;
Who've lawless liv'd; of manners rude;
All savage in their den.
"By whom, if any pass that way,
He dares not the least time to stay,
But presently they howl;
Upon which signal they do muster
Their naked forces in a cluster,
Led forth by Roger Rowle."
It cannot be said that the race is altogether extinct. The magistrates
have had much trouble with certain persons living in hovels on the
outskirts of the moor, who subsist in the same manner. They carry
off lambs and young horses before they are marked, and when it is
difficult, not to say impossible, for the owners to identify them.
Their own ewes always have doubles.
In the West Okement valley, in a solitary spot, are the foundations of
a cottage in which for many years a man lived, preying upon the flocks
and cattle on the moor, and carrying on his depredations with such
cunning that he was never caught. It was shrewdly suspected that he was
in league with a number of small farmers, and that he was by this means
able to pass on his captures and ensure their concealment.
Black Down is an extensive ridge of moorland traversed by the high road
from Okehampton to Tavistock. The highest point is called Gibbet Hill,
but tradition is silent as to who hung there.
In the Mary Tavy register occurs this entry:--
"1691, March 12, William Warden, a currier, was whipped by the
Parson and Churchwardens of Whitchurch, and ordered to be passed
on as a wandering rogue from parish to parish, by the officers
therein, in 26 days to his native place, Cheshunt in Hertfordshire,
and as the Churchwardens were conveying him on horseback over Black
Down, he died on the back of the horse, and was buried the same
night."
The parson of Whitchurch was a Mr. Polwhele, who was also justice of
peace.
Here is another curious entry in the same book of registers:--
"1756, Sept. 12, Robert Elford, was baptized, the child of Susanna
Elford by her sister's husband, to whom she was married with the
consent of her sister, the wife, who was at the wedding."
Here the union is not with a _deceased_ wife's sister, but the living
wife's sister. There is no entry relative to this marriage, so that
the pair must have got their unhallowed union blessed in some remote
parish, where the relationship was not known.
In 1760 William Creedy, sojourner, and Susanna Elford had their banns
called, but there is no entry of a marriage.
Another entry in the same register book is suggestive of a scandal.
"1627, Aug. 5, Baptized, Nicolas filius Mri. Johan. Cake jam senio
confecti."
Mary Tavy church, picturesquely situated, not on the Tavy, but on a
little confluent, was barbarously renovated some years ago, but of late
much loving care has been bestowed upon the structure, and something
has been done to efface the mischief wrought by the architect who had
dealt with it previously. The new screen is remarkably good, and in
accordance with Devonshire work of the sixteenth century. The stained
glass is excellent.
Peter Tavy church was disfigured rather later than Mary Tavy. It
possessed an interesting Tudor square pew, richly carved, and with
posts at the corners supporting heraldic beasts. This was demolished
at the so-called restoration. Some scraps have been preserved and
worked up to form a screen across the tower arch. All the modern work
is of the vulgarest description, in yellow deal. A portion of the
screen with saints painted on it is preserved within the altar rails.
Peter Tavy Combe must on no account be neglected; it is a remarkably
picturesque valley.
Another church that may be visited from Lydford is Bridestowe,
dedicated to S. Bridget, who had a sanctuary of refuge here, now called
the Sentry. The original church stood in a different position, and
contained the Norman arch now erected at the entrance to the church
avenue. It was turne
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