Strange Survivals

In the village churchyard where as a boy I often played, is a tomb, built up to the height of about five feet, with a slate slab let into the south face, on which is an inscription. In this slab is a hole, and it used to be said among the village boys that any one who looked in through this hole and knocked at the slate would see the dead man within open his eyes. Often have I and my brother peeped in and knocked, but the experiment failed, because, when the eye was applied to the hole, it excluded external light.

The monument is still where it was, and is in the same condition. Whether boys still knock and look in I do not know.[44 - The date on this stone is only 1807, so that the practice must be very modern.]

Curiously enough, a somewhat similar practice exists at Burghead, about nine miles from Elgin, which is described by Professor Mitchell in his “Rhind Lectures,” 1880. He says: “There is a memorial slab built into the wall of the burial-ground, called the Chapel Yard, at the south-east corner; it is 35 inches high by 20 inches wide; close above it, and also built into the wall, there is a hewn lintel-like stone, 37 inches long by 1½ inches thick. On the narrow exposed face of this stone there is no sculpturing.

“The woodcut shows the position on the cradle stone (as it is called) of a cup-like hollow, which is quite round 2¼ inches in depth. This hollow has been produced by the children of Burghead, who are in the habit of striking the spot with a beachstone (which is also represented in the woodcut), and then quickly putting their ears to the place, when the sound of a rocking cradle and the crying of a child are said to be heard, as if coming from a cavern deep under ground. I am told that during last century the stone was not visited by children, but by women, who believed that they were to become mothers if they heard the rocking of the cradle and the crying of the child after tapping on the stone.”

What is certainly a curious coincidence is that the pre-historic rude stone ossuaries, dolmens or cromlechs, have very frequently in like manner a hole worked in them.

Trevethy cromlech, in the parish of St. Cleer, Cornwall, has a hole perforating the capstone. The Maison des Fées at Grammont, in Hérault, has a hole bored through the head or western supporter. Another, now destroyed, was at Cahaignes, in Normandy. The covered avenue of Conflans now transferred to the fosse of the Musée, St. Germain, has not only the round hole bored in one upright, but also the stone that closed this opening.[45 - Other dolmens with holes at Trye-le-Château, Presles, les Mauduits, in Seine et Oise; at Vic-sur-Aisne; at Bellehaye, and at Villicor – Saint Sépulcre (Oise); and others are in the Morbihan, Charente, etc.]

Holes in like manner have been bored in the cromlechs of Avening and Rodmarton. Those in Circassia, in Palestine, and in India, have also holes. Colonel Meadows Taylor found that 1,100 dolmens out of 2,219 in the Dekhan had these holes in them. Similar holes have been observed in the dolmens of Sardinia.

In a majority of cases these holes will not serve the purpose of giving admission to the interior of the monument, though in some large enough. These megalithic structures were ossuaries; often, no doubt, the dead was laid in one as he had died; but in a great many cases, always where the dead had fallen in battle at a distance from the family mausoleum, his bones were cleaned of flesh and sinew before being brought to it. The bones bear marks of the scraper that cleared them of flesh, and they are not put together in correct position. In like manner the Landgrave Ludwig, husband of St. Elizabeth, died at Otranto, in 1227; his body was boiled to get the flesh off the bones, and then the bones alone were conveyed to Germany, to be interred at Eisenach.

It has often been noticed that along with ordinary interments in barrows, incineration has been practised. This was probably another means of transporting the remains of those who had died at a distance from the family or clan burial mound.

The holes in the dolmens[46 - What we in England term cromlechs, the French more correctly call dolmens.] are in many cases too small to allow of anyone crawling through to carry within the remains of the last member of the family, who had succumbed and was to be placed in the dolmen. Some other explanation must be sought.

Now, it is remarkable that the circles of upright stones that enclose cairns and stone graves or kistvaens are rarely complete. They have been purposely made imperfect circles, with a gap or a stop in the circle; and we may ask whether the interruption in the circle has some meaning analogous to that of the hole in the stone chest.

Mr. Greenwell, in his “British Barrows,” says: – “The incompleteness of these circles is so frequent a feature in their construction that it cannot be accidental. They have, moreover, been left incomplete in some cases in a way which most evidently shows a design in the operation; as, for instance, where the circle is formed of a number of stones standing apart from each other. The space between two of them has frequently been carefully built up with one large or several smaller stones. The effect of this is to break the continuity, or rather the uniformity, of the circle, and so to make it imperfect. This very remarkable feature in connection with the enclosing circles is also found to occur in the case of other remains which belong to the same period and people as the barrows. The sculptured markings engraved upon rocks, and also upon stones forming the covers of urns or cists, consist in the main of two types, cup-shaped hollows, and circles, more or less in number, surrounding in most cases a central cup. In almost every instance the circle is imperfect, its continuity being sometimes broken by a duct leading out from the central cup; at other times by the hollowed line of the circle stopping short when about to join at each end. The connection of these sculptured stones, if so they may be termed, with places of sepulture, brings them at once into close relationship with the enclosing circles of barrows, and it is scarcely possible to imagine but that the same idea, whatever that may have been, is signified by the incomplete circle in both cases.”[47 - The building up of part of the circle round a cairn was probably to block the way of the spirit in the direction of the village occupied by the living.]

The great inner ring of trilithons at Stonehenge affects the horse-shoe shape, and is, and always was, incomplete. The outer ring of trilithons is too ruinous for us to be able to state what its original condition was.

The horse-shoe, the incomplete ring, is still regarded as lucky, and a protection against witches. The enchanter who raised spirits was wont to draw a complete circle around him, and the demons raged outside this circle, but could not pass within and hurt him who had conjured them up. If he stepped outside the circle, or broke the continuity of the ring, then the spirits entered and tore him to pieces.

This probably gives us a clue to the signification of the incomplete circle. The complete circle confines a spirit within it, or protects from the entrance of spirits; an interrupted circle allows spirits to pass to and fro, gives ingress and egress.

The tomb is the house of the dead. He lives in it after some mysterious, not clearly defined fashion. And as a bee-hive hut had its door, so must the hut of the dead have its door. It would be a cruelty to the dead to imprison him; and if the circle be complete, the dolmen closed in on all sides, he could not come in and out at pleasure.

Precisely what the door is to the house, that the mouth is to man; it is the door by which the spirit comes into and goes out of man. With his first inspiration he becomes a living soul; with his last breath he expires – gives up his soul.

The story is well known of the two shepherds who sat together one summer’s day. One fell asleep, and whilst he slept the other saw a bee issue from his lips and creep over a blade of grass that crossed a tiny trickle of water, then fly away among flowers. After an hour the bee returned again in the same way, and re-entered the sleeping man’s mouth. Thereupon he awoke, and told his friend that in dream he had crossed a magnificent bridge over a great river, and had visited Paradise.

In the Caucasus, among the Abazas, when a boy dies he is put into a wooden coffin with a hole in it, and hung up in a tree. Bees are supposed to fly in and out at the hole, and these are taken, no doubt, to be souls visiting the boy, and the soul of the boy going in and out along with them.

I remember some years ago when a person was dying and seemed to find great difficulty in the parting of soul from body, that the nurse went to the window and opened it, whereupon the dying person heaved a sigh, and the spirit took its flight. On asking the reason of this opening of the window, the nurse answered, “You would not have the soul go up the chimney, would you?”

Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his poem “The Gift of the Sea,” refers to this belief: —

“The widow …

Opened the door on the bitter shore

To let the soul go free.”

Again, it has often been noticed that holes have been knocked or bored in funeral urns containing incinerated bones. These have been made purposely, and must have had some signification. I have not myself examined such urns on the spot where discovered; but I have little hesitation in surmising that only such urns have been perforated as have had their mouths covered with another vessel inverted, or with a flat stone, and that the object of this perforation has been to make a door of ingress or egress for the spirit of the dead; that, in fact, it had the same purpose as the hole in the dolmen and the rupture of continuity in the circle.

Of a number of the smaller sized urns or vessels found in the barrows of Salisbury Plain, “a very large proportion are pierced on one side with two holes, from half an inch to two inches apart. There are exceptions with a large number of holes, but the rule is to have two holes on one side only,” says Mr. Long, in his “Stonehenge and its Barrows.” He proceeds to discuss their signification. The holes could not have existed for suspension, and he adopts Sir C. Colt Hoare’s supposition that the perforated urns were incense vessels. But calcined bones have been found in some, and others probably served as caps to the cinerary urns. Almost certainly the people of the barrows knew nothing of incense, and the probability is that these two holes were bored as doors of egress and ingress for the spirit that still tenanted the bones.

Count d’Alviella says in his Hibbert Lectures for 1891, “Numbers of savage peoples suppose that the soul continues to inhabit the body after death, though from time to time it makes excursions into the world of the living. It therefore requires a hole if it is to escape from the enclosure. For this reason it is that, at the death of a relative, the Hottentots, the Samoyeds, the Siamese, the Fijians, and the Redskins, make a hole in the hut to allow the passage of the deceased, but close it again immediately afterwards to prevent its coming back. The Iroquois make a small hole in every tomb, and expressly declare that it is to enable the soul to go out and come in at its pleasure.”

There was another usage of the men of the megalithic monuments which had, apparently, the same idea or conception of spirit as that which induced them to make holes in their dolmens.

In 1873, when the French Association for the Advancement of Science met in Congress at Lyons, Dr. Prunières produced an elliptical disc of skull which had been found by him inside a human skull that had been trepanned, and which came from a dolmen in Lozère. The disc had been cut out of a human skull by some sharp instrument at an incline. At first sight it appeared probable that this piece came from the skull in which it was discovered, but on close examination it was found that it would not fit the hole trepanned in the skull.

In the same dolmen Dr. Prunières found a second skull that had been trepanned more than once. Attention was now drawn to this remarkable phenomenon – and instances multiplied to prove that the men of the polished stone age, the men who erected Stonehenge and Carnac, were wont to cut holes in their heads.

Dr. Prunières especially took the matter up. He discovered in the dolmens portions of skulls, circular or elliptical, that had been pierced with holes for suspension, and had been polished by long continued wear. In the Cave de l’Homme-Mort, in Lozère, he exhumed a skull that had a surgical trepanned hole on the sagittal suture. Finally, in the great ossuary of Beaumes Chaudes he discovered as many as sixty cranial discs. Skulls began to turn up elsewhere that had been trepanned, and all of the same epoch. They came from Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Bohemia, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Algeria. It was found also that trepanning skulls had been in practice among the aborigines of America. In the Peabody Museum is a skull that has had a hole cut out of it. A mound on the Devil’s River yielded another. Other trepanned skulls were taken out of mounds near Lake Huron and Grape Mound. A skull found in a barrow near the River Detroit had two perforations in it. A sepulchre near Lima yielded a skull that had also been surgically treated in the same fashion. Another came from the basin of the Amazon. There is, however, a marked difference between the American holed skulls and these of the neolithic men of Europe. The American skulls have all been operated on after death, and are found only in male skulls. They were, moreover, made by means of a stone drill which was turned rapidly round. Only one circular perforation in every respect similar to these found in Europe has been noticed in America. We may, therefore, put aside the pre-historic trepannings of America as not connected directly with the subject under consideration. In Europe the majority of the cases show by evident tokens that the operations were performed during life. Of these the greatest numbers of every age and sex have been found in the dolmens of France.

In the Casa da Moura, a dolmen in Portugal, was found a skull on which the operation had been begun, but never completed. It had clearly been worked with a flint scraper. The Baron de Baye found in one of the paleolithic caves of Marne a head that had been twice trepanned.

The great majority of cases of trepanned heads show that those operated upon had lived for many years after the operation. Indeed, it cannot be said that the practice of trepanning is as yet extinct. Dr. Boulongue, in his work on Montenegro, gives a long account of this usage of the natives of the Black Mountain; they have recourse to trepanning on the smallest provocation, simply because they have headaches. He quotes numerous instances of persons who have been trepanned seven and even eight times, without this materially injuring their health.

In the same manner the Kabyles of Algeria cut holes in their heads, usually as a cure for epilepsy.

The first example of pre-historic trepanning was discovered in 1685. Montfaucon mentions it, but misunderstood it; he supposed that the man with the hole in his head had been wounded in battle, but had recovered. A second example was observed in 1816, and was also misinterpreted. A sepulchral cave had been opened at Nogent-les-Vierges, which contained two hundred skeletons. One of the skulls was found to be trepanned, and the edges of the wound showed evidence of the efforts of Nature to repair the injury. This also was supposed to be a case of wound in battle.

It must, however, be observed that the men thus trepanned lived in the stone age, and that no stone axe or sword could possibly gash away a slice of skull; that, moreover, the edges of the holes show that they have been laboriously worked through at an incline, the scraper held so as to make the hole convex, widest at the outer surface, and narrowing at the inner surface near the brain.

The hole in the head of the man from the Cave of l’Homme-Mort is peculiarly interesting, as it showed that he had been trepanned during life, and that Nature had done her best to smoothe the rough edges. Then, after death, a flint saw had been used, to further enlarge the hole. The marks of the two operations are quite distinct.

Now what, it may be asked, is the meaning of these holes cut in the head? Various suggestions have been offered, but the most plausible is this – that they were made in cases of epilepsy.

“The art of trepanning,” says Dr. Broca, “was employed exclusively in cases of spontaneous maladies. In all likelihood the operation took place in accordance with certain ideas prevalent relative to nervous complaints, such as epilepsy, idiotcy, convulsions, mental alienations, etc. These affections, which science regards as natural, always struck the imagination of the vulgar, and were attributed to divine or demoniacal possession. Who can say whether trepanning for epilepsy – a practice now almost abandoned, but which was formerly in usage, was not adopted as a means of opening a door by which the demons possessing the patient might be allowed to escape?”[48 - Bull. de la Soc. d’anthropologie de Paris, t. ix., p. 198.]

We know how that even in medieval times, the evil spirit exorcised out of a man is represented as a little figure issuing from his mouth. The primitive medicine-men, supposing that the epileptic child was possessed by a spirit, cut a hole in the head, and through this hole conjured the spirit forth. Then the portion of the skull cut away obtained a superstitious value, it had been in contact with a spirit, and so was employed as an amulet. It is, however, quite possible that these discs from the heads were worn by the wives or the mothers of those from whom they were cut, out of sentiment. In some tombs, male skulls have been found stuffed with small bones of children, and not all from the same children; these skulls had been polished by friction, and seem to have been worn hung round the neck, and to have served as a sort of reticule or rather reliquary, in which the widow carried portions of the various children she had borne, who had died, packed away in their father’s skull.

So much, then, for perforations in tombstones, interrupted continuity in circles, and trepanned skulls. All have the same interpretation, the opening of a means of egress for the spirit, and are precisely what the open window means now in a case of death, they are to the dead man what the door is in the house to the living man.

There is another usage of a hole that has come down to us from primeval man in a very modified form. I refer to the wedding-ring, a piece of perforated metal through which the finger is thrust. The marriage ring is a pledge of fidelity, but it must often have struck English people that it is a very one-sided arrangement when the woman has to wear the badge of being married, whereas the man wears none. The reason why the man wears no ring is probably to be sought in custom followed from the period when a man had as many wives as he liked, but the woman was debarred from belonging to more than one man.

The passing of the finger through a ring is probably a survival of the practice of passing the entire body through a ring as a symbol of covenant, of entering on new relations, a sort of regeneration into a new family or fraternity. A great number of holed stones remain among pre-historic monuments that were probably so used, for there remained a reminiscence of such usage in tradition. Wherever megalithic remains are found, there also these holed stones are found large enough for the passage of a body; sometimes only of sufficient size for the hand to be passed through.

At Boleit in Cornwall in tolerably close juxtaposition is a circle of 19 upright stones, 75 feet in diameter, “The Merry Maidens;” two menhirs, “The Pipers,” respectively 15 feet and 13½ feet high; another upright stone 11 feet high, 5 barrows, and 3 holed stones.

At Tregaseal, in the same county, are four holed stones in a line, the hole in each 3¼ to 3¾ inches in diameter. At St. Buryan, near a sacred circle, is an upright slab with a hole in it 5¼ inches in diameter. Another holed stone is at Trelew in St. Buryan, the hole 5 inches in diameter. Another at St. Just, 6 inches in diameter. Another upright stone 3 feet 3 inches high at Sancreed has in it a hole 3¼ inches in diameter. But there are others far larger. The Tolven near Gweep Constantine has in it a hole 1 foot 4½ inches in diameter, and the Men-an-tol at Madron, which is near Lanyon Cromlech and Boskedrian Circle, and is itself apparently one stone in a ruined circle, has in it a hole measuring 1 foot 6 inches to 1 foot 9 inches in diameter. St. Wilfred’s needle in the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole bored in the natural rock, and girls were wont to be passed through it to prove their virtue. If they stuck in the eye of the needle they were held to be dishonest.

At Chagford in Devon again we find in connection a sacred circle, avenues, and a tolmen, or holed stone 3 feet in diameter. So also on Brimham Moor in Yorkshire; there within the memory of old men, holed stones have been used for passing children through to remove disorders. But the original purpose for which the tolmens were set up is almost certainly to furnish a means for making a covenant, for taking an oath. The woman was passed through the perforated stone before she married, as an assurance to the bridegroom that she was a pure virgin. Those entering on a covenant crawled through the hole one after another, in pledge of their having no arrière pensée, that they took the pledge to each other in full faith. There are several curious passages in the Icelandic sagas that illustrate this custom. The Icelanders were a very different race from the men who erected the megalithic monuments, but their Scandinavian ancestors came on the traces of the neolithic men, subdued them, and adopted many of their usages. In Iceland there are no holed stones, but the principle of passing through a hole was followed, and it assumed this curious form. A turf was cut so that it held in the ground at both ends, then it was raised in the midst, and those who entered on a covenant of brotherhood with each other crawled under the turf.

A ballad sung by the peasantry in the West of England relates how a gay trooper loved a fair damsel, and married her in military fashion: —

“My sword it is a Damask blade,
I bend it in a bow.
No golden ring may here be got,
So pass thy white hand through.”