circles are generally associated on the one hand with tin stream works,
and on the other with avenues and circles of upright stones, and that
the heights of the hills near them are topped with cairns that contain
kistvaens, or graves of rude stones, set on end and capped with large
granite coverers. It may be taken as almost certain that where there is
a large cluster of these dwellings, there will be found some megalithic
monument hard by, or if not, that the enclosures, or the moor, will
bear some name, such as Ninestones, or The Twelve Men (Maen = a stone),
that testifies to there having been a circle there, which has been
destroyed. With tin works the circles of hut foundations are invariably
associated. In Holyhead, where is the cluster of bee-hive huts examined
by Mr. Stanley, there also are to be found the Meinihirion, long
stones, two stones standing ten feet apart, rising eleven feet above
the soil, and originally surrounded by a circle of upright stones, now
removed to serve as gate posts, or to form fences. There is sufficient
evidence to show that the first builders of the bee-hive huts were
the men of that race which erected the rude stone monuments in our
island, and who also worked the tin. But what race was that? It was not
Keltic. It was in our island before the Britons arrived. We can trace
its course of migration from the steppes of Asia by the monuments it
erected. This mysterious people came to the Baltic and followed its
shores, some crossed into what was afterwards Scandinavia, but the
main tide rolled along the sea-shore. They have left their huge stone
monuments in Pomerania, in Hanover. They crossed the Rhine, and from
Calais saw the white cliffs of Albion and one large branch of the
stream invaded and colonised the British Isles. Another, still hugging
the sea, passed along the coast of Gaul to Brittany, thence descended
the shores of the Bay of Biscay, sent settlers up the Seine, the
Loire, and the Dordogne, swept on into the Iberian peninsula, crossed
into Africa, and after setting up circles and dolmens in Algeria,
disappeared. They never penetrated to the centre of Germany; the Oder,
and the Elbe, and the Rhine offered them no attractions. They were a
people of rocks and stones, and they were not attracted by the vast
plains of Lower Germany; they never saw, never set up a stone in the
highlands, in the Black Forest, or the Alps. But it was otherwise with
the great rivers of Gaul; with the sole exception of the Rhone they
followed them up. Their monuments are numerous on the Loire; they are
as dense in the upper waters of the Lot and Tarn as they are among
the islets and on the headlands of Brittany. It is doubtful if they
ever set foot in Italy. Such was the course taken by the great people
which migrated to Europe. But another branch had separated at the
Caspian, and had turned South. It passed over the Tigris and Euphrates,
and occupied both Palestine and Arabia. The Palestine exploration has
led to the discovery of numerous remains in that land, identical in
character with those found everywhere else where this people sojourned.
And Mr. Palgrave was startled to find that Arabia had its Stonehenges
precisely like that which figures on the Wiltshire Downs.
The researches of French antiquaries have led to the conclusion that
the men who set up these great stone monuments were those who used
weapons of polished flint and chert. Precisely the same conclusion
has been reached by the archæologists of Scotland. Bronze was indeed
employed, but at a later period; and then bronze and polished stone
were used together.
In the tumuli of Great Britain and of Gaul, two distinct types of heads
are found. These are the long and the round bullet skull. In France,
before the dawn of history, there seems to have been as great a mixture
of races as there is at present. It is not possible for us in England
to determine the succession of peoples and civilisations as nicely as
can be done in France, for we have not such deposits of the remains of
successive populations superposed as they have in Perigord. Under the
overhanging limestone cliffs on the Vézère, men lived in succession one
age on another to the present day, from the first who set foot on the
soil, and by digging through these beds to the depth of forty feet, we
obtain the remains of these men in their order--
Modern men.
Mediæval.
Gallo-Roman (coins).
Gauls (iron weapons).
Neolithic men { bronze.
{ polished stone.
[Gap. This gap questioned.]
{ of ivory and bone weapons.
Palæolithic men { of delicately-worked flint blades.
{ of rudely-worked flint weapons. { Moustier.
{ Chelles.[15]
The Palæolithic men were the great reindeer and horse hunters, and the
development of their civilisation may be followed in their remains.
What became of them we know not. Perhaps they migrated north after the
reindeer.
The Neolithic men erected the rude stone monuments, the circles of
upright stones. They were the men of Stonehenge and of Carnac. But this
race was not pure. Its skulls exhibit a great mixture of character
and kind, and it is probable that it took up into it other peoples
subjugated on its way west and south. Perhaps it also was conquered. We
cannot tell; but it seems from certain indications that it was so, and
that by the metal-working race.
When the Gaels and Cymri invaded our isles, they found them peopled,
and peopled by various races, and these they in turn subjugated.
We know but very little of the primitive populations of our isles
and of Europe; and a good deal of what we think we know is due to
guesswork based on a few observations.
As far as we can judge, the dwellers in bee-hive huts were the same as
those who erected the rude stone monuments, but it does not follow that
the Megalithic monument builders did not impose their customs on the
race they conquered; and indeed it is possible, even probable, that a
people conquering them may have adopted their religious ideas and their
methods of interment.
It is curious to note how that in legend the subjugated people are
supposed to live in earth mounds. No story is more common than that
of a man passing a mound at night and seeing it open, and finding
that merriment and drinking are going on within. Sometimes children
are snatched away, and are brought up in these mounds. He who desires
to have a sword of perfect temper goes to one of the mounds, taps,
and bargains with the mound-dweller to make him a sword. The name now
given to the race--not a pure, but a mixed one--that occupied the land
before the dawn of history, is Ivernian. It was a dark-haired and
sallow-complexioned race. The Kelt was fair; and if in Ireland, and in
Cornwall, and in France so much dark hair and dusky skin is found, this
is due to the self-assertion of the primitive race that was subjugated
by the blue-eyed, fair-haired conquerors from the Black Sea and the
Danube.
What was the conquered race? “What,” asks the author of “Chaldæa,” in
the “Story of the Nations,” “What is this great race which we find
everywhere at the very roots of history, so that not only ancient
tradition calls them ‘the oldest of men,’ but modern science more and
more inclines to the same opinion? Whence came it?” And the answer Mme.
Ragozin gives to the question is--that this was the yellow Turanian
people which overflowed from the steppes of Northern Asia, which
carried with it thence acquaintance with the metals, and through this
acquaintance established itself as masters wherever it went. That may
be, but before this Ivernian race arrived in the west, whatever it was,
it found that man had been on the soil before it--aye, and for ages on
ages--occupying caves, hunting the reindeer and the horse, ignorant
of the art of the potter, and yet in some particulars his superior in
intellectual power.[16]
Although the bee-hive hut may have originated with the dark-haired
Ivernian metal-worker, it by no means follows that it was not in use
long after, to a comparatively recent period. As we have seen, Tristan
and Ysonde took refuge in one. The bee-hive hut is still in employ in
the Hebrides. I will quote a most interesting account of one by Dr. A.
Mitchell. “I turn now to a more remarkable form of dwelling which is
still tenanted, but is just passing into complete disuse. Nearly all
the specimens of it remaining in Scotland are to be found in the Lewis
and Harris, or other islands of the outer Hebrides. There are probably
only from twenty to thirty now in occupation, and although some old
ones may yet be repaired, it is not likely that a new one will ever
again be built. The newest we know of is not yet a century old. It was
still occupied in 1866, and was built by the grandfather of a gentleman
who died a few years ago in Liverpool.
[Illustration: _Fig. 16._--BO’H IN THE HEBRIDES.
(_From Mitchell: The Past and the Present._)]
“My first visit to one of these houses was paid in 1866, in the company
of Captain Thomas. They are commonly spoken of as bee-hive houses, but
their Gaelic name is _bo’h_ or _bothay_. They are now only used as
temporary residences or shealings by those who herd the cattle at their
summer pasturage; but at a time not very remote they are believed to
have been the permanent dwellings of the people.
“We had good guides, and were not long in reaching Larach Tigh
Dhubhstail. As we had been led to expect, we found one of these
bee-hive houses actually tenanted, and the family happened to be at
home. It consisted of three young women. It was Sunday, and they had
made their toilette with care at the burn, and had put on their printed
calico gowns. None of them could speak English; but they were not
illiterate, for one of them was reading a Gaelic Bible. They showed no
alarm at our coming, but invited us into the _bo’h_, and hospitably
treated us to milk. They were courteously dignified, neither feeling
nor affecting to feel embarrassment. There was no evidence of any
understanding on their part that we should experience surprise at their
surroundings. I confess, however, to having shown, as well as felt, the
effects of the wine of astonishment. I do not think I ever came upon a
scene which more surprised me, and scarcely know where and how to begin
my description of it.
“By the side of a burn which flowed through a little grassy glen, we
saw two small round hive-like hillocks, not much higher than a man,
joined together, and covered with grass and weeds. Out of the top of
one of them a column of smoke slowly rose, and at its base there was a
hole about three feet high and two feet wide, which seemed to lead into
the interior of the hillock--its hollowness, and the possibility of
its having a human creature within it being thus suggested. There was
no one, however, actually in the _bo’h_, the three girls, when we came
in sight, being seated on a knoll by the burnside, but it was really
in the inside of these two green hillocks that they slept, and cooked
their food, and carried on their work, and--dwelt, in short.
“The dwelling consisted of two apartments opening into each other.
Though externally the two blocks looked round in their outline,
and were in fact nearly so, internally the one apartment might be
described as irregularly round, and the other as irregularly square.
The rounder of the two was the larger and was the dwelling-room. The
squarish and smaller one was the store-room for the milk and food.
The floor space of this last was about six feet in its shorter and
nine feet in its longer diameter. The greatest height of the living
room--in its centre, that is--was scarcely six feet. In no part of
the dairy was it possible to stand erect. The door of communication
between the two rooms was so small that we could get through it only
by creeping. The great thickness of the walls, six to eight feet, gave
this door, or passage of communication, the look of a tunnel, and made
the creeping through it very real. The creeping was only a little less
real in getting through the equally tunnel-like, though somewhat wider
and loftier passage which led from the open air into the first, or
dwelling-room.
[Illustration: _Fig. 17._--PLAN OF BO’H.
_a a a._ Entrances; _b._ Sleeping platform; _c._ Range of cobble
stones; _d._ Hearth; _e e e._ Lockers; _f._ Dairy.]
“At the right hand side on entering there was the fireplace. The smoke
escaped at a small opening at the apex of the dome. The floor was
divided into two spaces by a row of curb-stones eight or nine inches
high. These served as seats, the only seats in the house; but they
at the same time cut off the part of the floor on which the inmates
slept, the bed, in short--the whole space behind the row of stones
being covered with hay and rushes. In the part of the wall bounding the
bed there were three niches or presses, in which, among other things,
we observed a hair-comb and some newly-made cheeses. The walls of these
bee-hive huts are built of rough, undressed stones gathered from the
moor, which are of fair size, but not larger than one or two men could
easily lift and put into position. The dome shape, or bee-hive form,
is given by making the successive courses of stone overlap each other,
till at length they approach so closely all round as to leave nothing
but a small hole, which can be either closed by a large sod, or left
open for the escape of smoke or the admission of light. I need scarcely
say that no cement is used. The principle of the arch is ignored, and
the mode of construction is that of the oldest known masonry. Though
the stone walls are very thick, they are soon covered on the outside
with turf, which soon becomes grassy like the land round about, and
thus secures perfect wind and water tightness.”[17]
Now, this extremely interesting account shows us two things. First,
that we can not safely conclude from the structure of a bee-hive hut
that it belongs to a pre-historic date. We are only justified in so
asserting when we find it in connection with megalithic monuments, or
when the spade in exploring it reveals implements of bronze or stone.
Secondly, we see how man clings to tradition, how that actually at the
present day men will occupy habitations on precisely the model of
those erected by the population of Great Britain ages before the Roman
set foot on our land.
It may be said, and with some justice, that there is no certainty
that the bee-hive hut was not a mode of construction adopted by many
different races. This is true. The huts in the vineyards on the
river Lot in France are of precisely the same construction. In the
south of Africa the Kaffir, at the sources of the Nile the Niams,
build themselves circular huts of clay and wattles. Nevertheless,
when we find this sort of hut identical in structure to the smallest
particular, as far apart as the Desert of Beersheba, and the dunes of
Brittany, the Hebrides, the Cornish peninsula, and the Pyrenees,[18]
and very generally associated with megalithic monuments, we may safely
conclude that they are the remains of one primitive people, and if in
later ages similar habitations have been raised, it is because that
with the blood, the traditions of that race have been continued.
[Illustration: _Fig. 18._--HUTS IN THE VINEYARDS, CAHORS.]
How striking is this passage from Dr. Geikie’s “Holy Land and the
Bible.” He says, “In the Wilderness of Beersheba are bee-hive huts
of stone, conjectured to be ancient native houses of the Amalekites.
They are from seven to eight ft. in diameter, with a small door of two
uprights and a lintel, about two ft. square. In one dwelling a flint
arrowhead and some shells were found. _Close by are some circles of
upright stones._ The whole country was at one time inhabited. Nearly
every hill has ancient dwellings on the top and stone circles, also
great cairns. The extraordinary resemblance, the identity in every
point so struck Professor Palmer, who discovered this settlement, that
in his ‘Desert of Exodus’ he engraved a Cornish bee-hive hut to show
how it was a counterpart to the huts of Beersheba.”
[Illustration: _Fig. 19._--OVEN AT NOUGARET, DEP. OF LOT.
(_Dog Kennel under Shelf._)]
But these bee-hive huts are themselves a reproduction in stone of the
tents with which the primeval race wandered on the steppes of the
Altai before ever they reached Palestine on the one hand and Europe
on the other. The Nomad made his tent of skins stretched on poles. It
was circular, and the smoke escaped through a hole in the top. When he
ceased to ramble, he constructed his habitation on the same principle
exactly as his tent, circular and domed. On the Siberian tundras and in
Lapland there are still in use two sorts of huts; one, the smoke-hut,
is precisely like a bee-hive habitation. It is, however, too small to
allow of a fire being kept burning in the centre, and it is heated in
this way--a fire is kindled and then allowed to go out. When extinct,
the chimney hole at the top is closed, and the owner retires into his
hut, which retains the heat for a great many hours. Sometimes, however,
like the _bo’h_ in the Hebrides, the fire is at the side, but owing to
the smallness of the hovel, must be kept low. Castrén, in his travels
among the Samojeds and Ostjaks, was sometimes obliged to spend months
in one of these huts. At first he was obliged to go outside in all
weathers, climb up the side of the hut and plug his chimney to keep
in the warmth; but after a while he rigged up a bundle of old cloth
attached to a pulley, and he was able by this means to block the
opening from within, by pulling a string.
[Illustration: _Fig. 20._--PLAN OF OVEN AT NOUGARET.]
A very similar hut is still in use among the Finns, but no longer as a
habitation. It is employed for bathing purposes. A fire is lighted in
it, and stones are heated in the fire red hot, then plunged in a vessel
of water. This generates steam, and the bather enters the bee-hive hut,
shuts the door, and is parboiled in the steam. Now, the inconvenience
of these bee-hive huts was obvious. Intense heat could be generated in
them, but owing to their smallness, a whole family could not live in
one. In the Fostbraethra Saga, an Icelandic account of transactions
in the eleventh century, that comes to us in a twelfth century form,
is an account of how one Thormod went to Greenland. Having committed
a murder there, he took refuge with an old woman in her hut. When his
foes came to seek him, she lit a fire on the hearth, and filled the
hut with smoke, so that they could not see who was in it. But one man
climbed on the roof and pulled the plug out of the chimney hole,
whereupon the atmosphere within cleared. In time the long house with
four corners to it was discovered or adopted. This was an immense
advance in comfort. But, at the same time, the peculiar advantage
of the bee-hive hut was not lost sight of. If human beings had been
baked and boiled therein--why not their bread and their meat? They saw
that a bee-hive hut was a hot-air chamber retaining the heat for an
extraordinary length of time. So the next step in civilisation was to
build the bee-hive hut on a smaller scale for the sake of boiling and
stewing. In the year 1891 I exhumed on the edge of Trewortha Marsh, on
the Cornish moors, an ancient settlement. The houses were all oblong.
The principal house consisted of two great halls. The upper hall was
divided by stone screens into stalls, and in front of each stall had
been formerly a hearth. In each stall a family had lived, each family
had enjoyed its own fire, burning on the ground. But such an open fire
would not bake. The inmates had knowledge of corn, for we found a hand
quern for grinding it. In order to bake, they had erected independent
huts, with bee-hive ovens in the walls, identical in structure with the
old bee-hive huts, and the reddened stones showed that fires had been
lighted in these for baking purposes. But that was not all, we found
heaps of burnt pebbles about the size of a goose-egg. These had been
employed for throwing into vessels of water either to boil them, or to
generate steam for baking purposes.
[Illustration: _Fig. 21._--SECTION OF GRANITE OVEN, ALTARNON, CORNWALL.
_Date, 16th century._]
A common English word has completely lost its primitive signification.
That word is _stove_. The stove is the Norse word _stofa_, and the
German _stube_. It does not mean a heating apparatus, but a warm
chamber.
There is a curious old book, “The Gardener’s Dictionary,” by Philip
Miller, the fourth edition of which was published in 1754. He gives an
account of greenhouses and conservatories as places usually unheated.
“I suppose,” says he, “many people will be surprised to see me direct
the making of flues under a greenhouse; but though perhaps it may
happen that there will be no necessity to make any fires in them for
two or three years together, yet in very hard winters they will prove
extremely useful.” But when the author comes to hothouses, he describes
them under the name of “_stoves_.”
[Illustration: _Fig. 22._--EARTHENWARE OVEN AS IN USE AT PRESENT.]
The stove is a hot chamber, heated maybe by an oven, but we have turned
the name about, and we apply it mistakenly to the heating apparatus.
In Germany the room that is heated is the _stube_, but the heater is
the _ofen_. The _ofen_ is, however, itself a reproduction in small of
the hot chamber. The oven is employed to radiate outwards in heating a
room; it radiates inwards when employed for baking.
The German _ofen_, or, as we would term it, stove, is an earthenware
vessel in a room. A fire is lighted in it, till it is thoroughly
heated. Then the fire is allowed to expire, and the damper is turned,
effectually closing the flue. Thenceforth all the heat within and in
the earthenware walls radiates into the apartment, and keeps it warm
for eight or nine hours. In the ancient oven, as in the bee-hive huts
at Trewortha, every precaution was adopted to retain the heat. The
outside was banked up with peat, and the heat gathered within baked
bread or meat.
The bee-hive oven of courses of stone was not all that could be
desired. The fire acted on the granite or limestone or slate, and split
or crumbled it, and when one or two stones gave way, the whole dome
collapsed.
After a while a further advance was made. The bee-hive hut was
constructed of earthenware, of clay baked hard, so as to resist fire
for an indefinite number of years. Now in the West of England in every
cottage may be seen one of these “cloam” ovens. It is in structure a
bee-hive hut precisely. The old tradition hangs on, is followed from
century to century and year to year, and he who looks at these ovens
may think of the story they tell--of the ages unnumbered that have
passed since the type was fixed by the tent of the wanderer on the
Siberian steppes, of the changes that type has gone through, of the
stone bee-hive hut supplanting the tent of skins, of the bee-hive hut
abandoned for the house with four corners, and the old hut converted
into a baking oven, and then finally of the adoption of the oven of
“cloam.” In another ten or fifteen years that also will have passed
away, to be replaced by the iron square oven, and then one of the links
that attach us to that remote past, to that mysterious race that Mme.
Ragotzin says “lies at the roots of all history,” a race which has
marked its course by gigantic structures, but has left behind it no
history--then, I say, one of the last links will be broken.
IV.
Beds.
I had let my house. Two days after, I received the following letter:--
“Friday.
“MY DEAR SIR,
“In the best bedroom is a four-post bed. Mrs. C. assures me that it
will be quite impossible for her to invite any friend to stay with her
unless the four-poster be removed, and its place occupied by a brass
or iron double-tester. Four-posters are entirely exploded articles. I
will trouble you to see to this at your earliest convenience this week.
“Yours faithfully,
“C. C.”
Of course I complied. Two years ago I went to a sale. As I was not
very well I did not remain, but left word with my agent to buy certain
articles for me. Next day a waggon arrived with my purchases, and among
them--a mahogany four-post bed. “Why, good gracious! I do not want
_that_.” “It was going so cheap, and is of solid mahogany,” answered my
agent, “so I thought you ought to have it.” That four-poster has never
been put together. It lies now in an outhouse with a chaff-cutter,
empty cement barrels, and much rubbish. It probably never will be used,
except by boring woodworms.
I saw some little while ago in one of the illustrated papers a
recommendation how to make use of old carved four-post beds--that is to
say, of the carved four posts. Let them be sawn through, and converted
into massive picture frames or ornamental chimney-pieces.
I am sorry that the four-poster is doomed to extinction, for it has a
history, and it attaches us to our Scandinavian ancestry.