The Hall of Waltheof/Chapter IV

by Sidney Oldall Addy

LESS than a mile to the south of Broomhead Hall in Bradfield is a ditch or fosse with its embankment known as Bar Dike. The width of the fosse, which is on the northern side of the embankment, is about thirty feet,^[1] and its depth about ten feet. About 300 feet to the north-west of the embankment is an earth circle with a diameter of about seventy feet. The embankment seen somewhat faintly in the distance, with the circle in the foreground, are represented in the aquatint which faces the beginning of this chapter. A portion of the Dike is shown more clearly by the smaller drawing on the following page.

I will first deal with the embankment. In this case, as sometimes happens, the old name lingers, and of itself seems to give a clue to the history of the embankment. For the Old English dic, according to Professor Lèo, means a continuous protecting dam; though in modern times it has come to mean ditch or fosse alone. And "bar" seems here to mean a defensive barrier or bulwark. If that is so Bar Dike means defensive barrier, and we seem to learn from its old name that this earthwork was intended for a pretentura and was erected by one people to protect themselves from the attacks of another people. The Dike is not more than 1,500 feet from one end to the other, and it is almost in a straight line. At its northeastern end it terminates in an abrupt declivity, and at its south-western end the ground is very steep and rugged. The land descends from the Dike both to the north and south. It would seem then that the fosse and mound were intended to protect a piece of ground through which an inroad could be easily made, the nature of the ground at either end being itself a substantial protection. A mile to the north-west of Bar Dike, and running nearly parallel to it, is another entrenchment about three-quarters of a mile in length. This entrenchment runs in a straight course across a comparatively level moor and is divided at right angles by a stream. In this case the fosse is also on the northern side of the mound. I think it is important to state on which side the fosse is situated because attack would be expected on that side. This entrenchment, like the Bar Dike, was a barrier against the north. Close to the southern side of this entrenchment are a number of burial mounds, and the Ordnance Map marks a number of such mounds on the northern side. They are, however, much more apparent on the southern side, where they are higher, and where their conical forms are more clearly defined.

We have now to consider by what people these entrenchments were made. In Bradfield, beyond the discovery of one or two Roman coins, I am aware of no evidence of Roman occupation. There is, nevertheless, reason to believe that the Romans had a settlement at or near Stannington a few miles distant, and this matter will be examined in the sequel. Canon Greenwell, however, regards the numerous entrenchments on the Yorkshire wolds as the work of a round-headed people who intruded upon a long-headed people already settled in the country. He finds in the modern Danish head "the same peculiarity of type as is found to exist in the round skull of the barrows."^[2] These round-headed people were taller and of more ferocious aspect than the long-headed people. "But the skull of both types is capacious, and the different parts are well balanced; nor is there anything in it to lead to the belief that either people was wanting in mental power."^[3] Professor Rolleston would speak of the people who buried in the long barrows and had long heads as belonging to the "Silurian" type, and he would describe the round-headed people who buried in the round barrows as belonging to a "Cimbric" type, because "a similar form of skull is found at the present day to be the skull form of the inhabitants of Denmark once called the 'Cimbric' peninsula."^[4]

Can we say that these long-headed people were hill tribes invaded by a round-headed and stronger race ? And can we identify the Silures who, according to Tacitus, were a British people, with those hill tribes of whose mode of life Mr. Gomme claims to have found traces in Great Britain? Mr. Gomme has drawn attention to land cultivated in terraces on the slopes of hills, and to hill fortresses, or "protected clan homesteads," and he holds that he has proved "the existence in Britain of a hill folk who bear a relationship to the Aryan occupiers of the valleys exactly similar to that obtaining in India, where races have not lost their special characteristics and are still marked off from each other instead of being crushed out by the greater weight of nationality."^[5] Without going this length—though I think that Mr. Gomme's conclusion is founded upon strong evidence—we may at all events place confidence in the conclusion which Professor Rolleston has drawn from craniological and other evidence. Professor Rolleston concludes that a black-haired people, of short stature, long skulls, and feeble development occupied Great Britain before the invasion of a stronger and taller race with rounded skulls, lighter hair, and lighter complexions. The evidence which he gives on this subject seems to me both ample and convincing.

Now a Cimbric people advancing inland from the sea might be expected to throw up earthworks to defend themselves from the attacks of a people whose country they had invaded, and especially from the attacks of hill tribes. And this, I think, may be the explanation of Bar Dike.^[6] The round-headed Cimbric invaders coming from the Danish peninsula had chosen the lower ground for their place of settlement, leaving the heights and fastnesses to the long-headed hill tribes. We know from Tacitus^[7] that the Cimbri were accustomed to make "camps and spaces" (castra ac spatia), and it was possibly they, and not the Romans or the older settlers or aborigines, who made the Bar Dike. The student of English history is familiar with the attacks of native barbarians whom the Romans themselves had to keep back by such great works as Hadrian's wall, and possibly the Cimbric invaders adopted a similar, if ruder, method of fortification.

"Who were the original inhabitants of Britain," said Tacitus, "and whether they sprang from the soil or came from abroad is unknown, as is usually the case with barbarians. Their physical characteristics are various, and from this conclusions may be drawn. The red hair and large limbs of the Caledonians point clearly to a German origin. The dark complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair (colorati vultus et torti plerumque crines^[8]) and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are evidence that Iberians of a former date crossed over and occupied those parts."

It is very likely then that a short, swarthy people, with long and narrow heads, and of a ferocious and warlike disposition, originally occupied these parts, and that before the coming of the Romans they were invaded by a taller, stronger, and light-haired race who came over from the Danish peninsula.

The colonization of England from time to time by Germanic races may be taken as being in some degree parallel to their more recent colonization of the American continent. One could not, of course, fairly compare the neolithic Briton or Silurian with the North-American Indian. But still, to some extent, the comparison holds good. One can understand how the invaded race would try to maintain their ground, and how, like savages in other lands, they would attack the foreign settlers who had invaded their country. Of the defence made against such attacks, it seems to me, the Bar Dike is an eloquent witness. In saying this it need not be supposed that the flint implements scattered over the soil in Bradfield are evidence of battles fought there. Where wood-work, and indeed almost every other relic of neolithic life has perished, the flint implement, imperishable in its hardness, may well lie scattered over the earth in which the softer and less durable works of early man have long since been dissolved.

A short distance to the north of the northern entrenchment is another circle about fifty-three feet in diameter. Here short upright stones have been embedded in a rather wide ring of earth, and in this respect the circle differs from the one near Lady Bower called Seven Stones, which will be described in a subsequent chapter. Most of the upright stones are buried in the circling mound. It is possible that the circle near the Bar Dike may have been a doom-ring^[9] in which men were sentenced. And the last-named circle is still more likely to have been a doom-ring, for the short stones would form seats for the judges. The doom-ring was the bar within which the court sat in the open air. "No evil doer," we are told, "might enter this hallowed ring, or commit an act of violence within it; if he did so he was called a vargr í véum," a wolf in holy places. "In early heathen times this sacred circle was formed by a ring of stones (dóm-steinar, court stones, court ring); no doubt some of the so-called Celtic or Druidical stone circles are relics of these public courts, e.g. the Stones of Stennis in the Orkneys."^[10] A passage in the Landnama mentions a doom-ring in which men were sentenced to be sacrificed. It is not, however, necessary to suppose that either of these circles was used for that purpose alone. They are more likely to have been ordinary places of judgment, or open-air courts, and it is important to bear in mind that in old times these courts were held not only in the open air but on a plain. On the six-inch Ordnance Map the circle near the Bar Dike is marked and described as the site of the Apronfull of Stones, but those stones stood, before their removal, near the milestone at the junction of the two roads.

About a quarter of a mile to the west of the northern entrenchment, amidst wild and beautiful scenery, is a cliff called Raven Rocher, i.e., Raven Rock, and about 300 yards further to .the west in the sapie line of cliff is a rock called Gallows Rocher. Now a German name for the gallows, says Mr. Baring- Gould, "is the raven's stone, not only, perhaps, because ravens come to it, but because the raven was the sacred bird of Odin."^[11] These two names Gallows Rocher and Raven Rocher, which by reason of their proximity or contiguity are virtually names of the same precipice, make it very probable that men were once hanged in this place, or, as the custom was, flung from the rock as sacrifices to Odin.^[12]

It is possible, no doubt, that both these circles instead of being doom-rings may be of sepulchral origin. Canon Greenwell says that "circles are placed in some cases immediately round the base of the barrow, and in others at some little distance from it."^[13] In these cases, however, there is no barrow sufficiently near the circles to warrant the conclusion that they are of sepulchral origin, though Canon Greenwell has described a grave-mound which "was placed just to the west of one of the entrenchments so abundant on the [Yorkshire] wolds."^[14] Yet there must have been doom-rings in England as well as in other parts of Northern Europe. Although Canon Greenwell has said that "circling mounds and trenches are found to surround spaces of ground which have been devoted to the purpose of burial, but where, apparently, no barrow has ever surmounted the graves,"^[15] he does not appear to have considered that many of these circling mounds may have been doom-rings or public courts. It seems to me that only an adlual exploration in each case can finally decide whether the circle in question is a place of burial or a place of judicature. But the proximity of the Gallows Rocher affords strong evidence that one at least of the circles on Broomhead Moors was a doom-ring.

Footnotes

1. The ditch on the north side of Hadrian's wall "measures occasionally over thirty-six feet across, but much more frequently rather less. Its general shape is 'fastigate,' that is, its sides seem to have originally sloped to a narrow point at the bottom like an inverted roof."—Neilson's Per Lineam Valli, Glasgow, 1891, p. 2.
2. British Barrows, p. 126.
3. Ibid. p. 128.
4. See Greenwell's British Barrows, p. 630.
5. Village Community, p. 101.
6. I think, however, that it would be very rash to deny positively that the Romans made the Bar Dike.
7. Germania, 37. The words of the historian throw a strong light upon our subject. He says: :Eundem Germaniæ sinum proximi Oceano Cimbri tenent, parva nunc civitas, sed gloria ingens. Veterisque famæ lata vestigia manent, utraque ripa castra ac spatia, quorum ambitu nunc quoque metiaris molem manusque gentis, et tarn magni exitus fidem."
8. Tac. Agric. c. 11. The translation of this variously interpreted passage has been taken from Mr. Elton's Origins of English History, 1882, p. 137.
9. O. N. dóm-hringr.
10. Cleasby and Vigf. s. v.
11. Strange Survivals, p. 245.
12. In a very interesting survey of Whiston Fields, made by W. Fairbank in 1765. I find Gallow Tree Hill (O. N. gálga-tré; gallows tree). There is also a Gallow Tree Hill at Kimberworth near Rotherham, which the Ordnance Map wrongly prints as "Garrow Tree Hill." Mr. Gomme remarks that there are few places in Scotland which have not a gallows hill, and he observes that many moot-hills and law-hills are associated with another hill or place, connected with the "Gallows."—Primitive Folk-Moots, p. 273.
13. British Barrows, p. 4.
14. Ibid. p. 274.
15. Ibid. p. 6.