We now go behind the testimony of the tombstones, and meet some apparent contradictions. When the turf on the Northern side of a churchyard is broken up, for the first time, as the sexton thinks--since there are neither mounds nor tombstones to serve as “frail memorials,” bones are sometimes discovered. At Bottesford, Lincolnshire, though the North yard had been wholly unused until our day, yet when graves were actually dug, traces of former burials were revealed[903]. The churchyard of Swinhope, in the same county, yielded stronger proofs. Seven or eight very old interments, closely grouped, were found; in one case there was a coffin formed of loose slabs of chalk[904]. The late Canon A. R. Pennington, of Utterby, again in the same county, told the writer of his surprise when bones were thrown out of the first grave made towards the North of his church. It is a fair inference that no mounds had been raised over the earlier interments. Further instances could be added, but these will suffice. The details concerning the Swinhope interments are peculiar, especially the finding of the chalk coffin. These particular burials may point to the building of the church on a pre-Christian site. The other examples, however, have a different interpretation; namely, that the Northern portion of the churchyard was formerly reserved for the bodies of murderers, suicides, excommunicated persons, and still-born or unbaptized children[905]. That the custom is not yet obsolete is attested by the case already described on p. 341 _supra_, which is one of many. This ecclesiastical rule has found its expression in literature. A modern poet, Professor A. E. Housman, has deftly wrought the tradition and the practice into his sad story, _A Shropshire Lad_: “To South the headstones cluster, The sunny mounds lie thick; The dead are more in muster At Hughley than the quick. North, for the soon-told number, Chill graves the sexton delves, And steeple-shadowed slumber The slayers of themselves.”