A Description of the Deverel Barrow, Opened A.D. 1825: Also, A Minute Account of the Kimmeridge Coal Money, a Most Mysterious and Nondescript Article

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Page 27 - November night. Men were employed in dragging furze from an adjoining spot, and it was a fine subject for the talent of an artist to have described the venerable urn, smoking at the flame, while a red and flickering gleam played upon the countenances of the labourers, who stood around the fire, speaking in low and smothered tones, allowing...
Page 27 - ... their eyes fixed upon the flame and dead men's bones, — were afraid to look into the surrounding darkness. The swell of the passing breeze as it fanned the fire, raised them from their reverie, or roused their attention from some direful story of goblin damned, which was gravely related and as faithfully believed. The effect produced by the narrative of the village thatcher added most strongly to the horror of their...
Page 28 - ... course, wondered why a fire blazed upon the unfrequented down ; a spot on which it is more than probable no fire had ever gleamed since the last deposit was pompously and religiously placed in the barrow just explored, save at the May-eve rites. But now, how changed the scene ! The urn, when last it was seen by man, so hallowed, so venerated — the form, the features of the chief, whose ashes it contained, fresh to the minds and perhaps dear to the memories of those who assisted at the sepulchral...
Page 3 - The fong of their bards and the voice of their harps are over. A green mound of earth, a mofs-clad ftone lifting through it here and there its gray head, is all that preferves their memory.
Page 11 - Funera sunt pro cultu Gallorum magnifica et sumptuosa ; omniaque quae vivis cordi fuisse arbitrantur in ignem inferunt, etiam animalia : ac paullo supra hanc memoriam, servi et clientes, quos ab iis dilectos esse constabat, justis funeribus confectis, una cremabantur.
Page 22 - ... the day of its splendour. The various forms, ornaments, and materials of the urns, indicate advancement from a rude to a more civilized state ; and the various modes of interment in this barrow, mark a series of years to have elapsed, which will even allow for the improvement of their potteries. Here every method of interment had been followed, after cremation had been used ; and although each corpse had been consumed by fire, the ashes were variously deposited. I found seventeen urns in cists,...
Page 10 - On a spot so hallowed by the wing of Time, the imagination may vividly depict the rude but solemn rites attendant on the burial; the blazing pile flinging its lurid * See Sir RC Hoare's History of Ancient Wilts, folio. •f* Barrows may be more properly attributed to particular clans, which resided on the downs. Sir RC Hoare't "Ancient Wilts.

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