The Story of the East Riding of YorkshireBrowne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
History
The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Browne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
Yorkshire (England) -- History
With the coming of Julius Caesar to Britain in the middle of the first
century before the birth of Christ, we reach the time in the history of
our country when definite facts about its people begin to be recorded.
Thus we know from Caesar’s own writings that the Britons lived in houses
like those of the Gauls, that they had great numbers of cattle, that
they used copper coins, that many of the inland tribes did not grow corn
but lived on milk and flesh and went clothed in skins, that in war time
they dyed their bodies with a blue stain to give them a more terrible
aspect, and that they wore long hair on their heads and their upper
lips.
So also, with regard to their religion, Caesar tells us that their
priests were called Druids; that if any crime had been committed, or if
there were any dispute about an inheritance or a boundary, it was the
Druids who gave judgment; that they had vast stores of learning, all of
which was committed to memory and none committed to writing; and that
their chief doctrine was that the soul of man did not perish, but passed
after death into another body, so that no man should fear death.
[Illustration:
BRONZE CELT OR AXE HEAD FOUND AT SWINE.
]
From these accounts we see that there had been great progress made since
the times described in the last chapter. This was due to the migration
westwards of a new race of people—the Kelts—who had gained a knowledge
of the use of metal, and who, consequently, had weapons and implements
made of bronze instead of stone. Their greater knowledge gave them
greater power, and the extinction of the men of the Stone Age was only a
question of time. For not often was the bronze-weaponed warrior slain by
a weapon of stone.
But the account written by Julius Caesar refers to the inhabitants of
the southern parts of our island. ‘Many of the inland tribes do not grow
corn, but live on milk and flesh and go clothed in skins.’ This passage
may be taken as true of the tribes living north of the Humber, known—so
later Roman writers tell us—as the BRIGANTES, the wildest and most
savage of the tribes inhabiting Britain.
Let us see what Mr. Mortimer’s discoveries have to tell us of these
BRIGANTES. The most interesting discovery, perhaps, was that made in a
barrow on Calais Wold, the highest point of the Yorkshire Wolds, 807
feet above sea-level. Here, on the mound being removed, a double row of
stake-holes was exposed in the surface of the ground. These were from 3
to 15 inches in diameter, and were arranged in circles having diameters
of 21½ and 28 feet. Outside these were four other stake-holes, and
beyond these again a circular trench 100 feet in diameter, 3 feet 9
inches deep, 9 feet across at the top, and 1 foot across at the bottom.
Within the double circle of stake-holes was a cavity cut in the chalk
and containing a skeleton lying on its side, with its knees bent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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