For that these were the bones of a man mighty in his day the
workmanship of his coffin goes to prove. For he lay with a stone rest
for his head and feet, made each of a cubic block of fine granite, and
a deep depression hollowed in his pillow to take his head, resting
sideways towards his shoulder. As these great blocks were cut and
squared and hollowed with stone tools, the labour which they betoken
may be imagined; and none, I suppose, but an imperious Caesar could
have exacted it. The skeleton was covered and surrounded by a mass of
limpet-shells. There were seven other skeletons buried in a line with
these two, but without coffins, and they were not of the race of
giants; and then, at a little distance, there was a great pit, filled
with the bones of men, women, and children, as if a slaughtered
multitude had been flung into a common grave. In this pit were found
some beads, light blue in colour, some sherds of red glazed pottery,
and a few fragments of bronze. Over all was scattered a vast heap of
limpet-shells.
Here is one of the fascinating problems of archaeology, which comes
with the touch of romance to the dry study of minutiae: When were these
burials made? Are they of two different dates? The giant of the stone
coffin perhaps belonged to the far-off Stone Age, already grown dim and
legendary to these later peoples, who knew of the working of metal and
the making of glass. And were they sacrificed to him, as a dark hero
or demi-god of the past, to propitiate him against plague or conquest?
And what is the magical significance of the limpet-shells, which cover
them and him alike? These questions, and many others, will, I am
convinced, be answered by the patient research of archaeology within
comparatively few years. The suggestion that this interment is Danish,
and is the remnant of the force defeated by Alfred the Great outside
Kenwith Castle, is, I think, untenable; the bones of women and children
being found with those of men alone disproves it, apart from the
inaccessibility of Lundy and the very great antiquity of the stone
coffins.
But whoever they may be who left their bones here, it is certain the
story of their lying there is a tragedy, of bloody sacrifice or more
bloody massacre, like all the histories of wild animals and of
primitive peoples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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