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.
[Illustration: _Fig. 50._--SKULL THAT HAD BEEN TWICE TREPANNED FROM A
CAVE IN THE PETIT-MORIN.]
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.
[Illustration: _Fig. 51._--TREPANNED SKULL FROM NOGENT-LES-VIERGES
(_after Cartailhac, La France Préhistorique_).]
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]
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.
[Illustration: _Fig. 52._--MENANTOL, MADRON.]
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.”
Here the hoop of steel has taken the place of the holed stone. The
golden circlet has, however, become the usual substitute.
We will now consider some holes of a different description, that are
not actual perforations. A custom very general in Roman Catholic
countries must have struck travellers: it is that of placing cups,
basins, or other concave vessels on graves. The purpose is that they
may be filled with holy water--or if not with that, then with the dew
of heaven. The friends, kindred, or charitable as they pass dip a
little brush in the basin and sprinkle the grave with the water. This
is a symbolic act, nothing more. It means that the visitor to the grave
wishes well to the dead, and offers a prayer for the refreshment of
the departed soul. That soul may be in purgatory, and he who sprinkles
the grave knows that no drops of water thrown on the mound can slake
the fire that tortures the soul, but he acts as though he thought that
the soul still tenanted the body, and could be refreshed by the water
thrown on his grave. I do not believe this usage to have received any
formal sanction; it is a survival of a much earlier usage that has been
given an altered signification. It is not a rational proceeding, but is
not one particle more irrational than our putting wreaths and crosses
of flowers on the graves of those we have loved. I remember a daughter
planting ferns of many sorts round her mother’s tomb, “because mother
was so very fond of ferns.” But those who thus act, when they consider,
know well enough that what lies underground is the decaying husk, and
that the soul, the true being, is elsewhere. Nevertheless, the mind, by
force of custom and natural tendency, persists in associating soul with
body after death, and the dead lady was given her ferns because they
continued to give her pleasure, whilst lying in her grave, precisely as
the Tartar chief is given his horse and his wives slain and laid about
him in his cairn.
The original signification of the basin or cup on the tomb was that
of a vessel to contain the drink supplied to the dead. The dead man
continued to eat and drink in his cairn or dolmen, and the relatives
supplied him with what he required.
In the British tumuli, hollows beside the dead are of common
occurrence. Mr. Greenwell says: “It is of frequent occurrence to find
holes, sunk below the natural surface, within the area of a barrow,
and not usually in close proximity to any interment, though in some
instances such has been found to be the case. Sometimes as many as four
or five have been met with in a single barrow. They are of various
sizes, and differ in shape, but they are generally circular, about 1½
feet in diameter, and the same in depth. In the greater number of cases
they are filled with the ordinary materials of which the mound itself
is composed, and contain nothing besides; but at other times pieces of
animal, and much more rarely of human bones, charcoal, potsherds, and
burnt earth, and stone are found in them.... It has suggested itself
to me, that they may have been made as receptacles of food or of some
other perishable material, and that they answered the same purpose
as the vessels of pottery are supposed to have done, which are such
frequent accompaniments of a burial. Their not being usually placed in
close contact with the body is a fact not perhaps very consistent with
this explanation of their purpose, but I am unable to offer any one
more suggestion.”
I differ from Mr. Greenwell in one point only--that these basins being
at a distance from the body may be inconsistent with the explanation he
proposes. On the contrary, I conceive that these cup-like hollows were
at the circumference of the original mound, and were often replenished
with food or drink. As the mound spread through the action of rain, or
as other interments were made in it, and it was enlarged, these basins
became buried.
[Illustration: _Fig. 53._--DOLMEN AT LARAMIERE (LOT), WITH CUP HOLLOW
ON COVERER.]
The parkin cakes baked in Yorkshire in November, the simnel or
soul-mass cakes of Lancashire, the _gauffres_ baked at All Souls-tide
in Belgium, are all reminiscences of the food prepared and offered to
the dead at All Souls, the great day of commemoration of the departed.
Not only did the living eat the cakes, but they were given as well
to the dead. In Belgium the idea still holds that the pancakes or
_gauffres_ avail the souls; but through a confusion of ideas, the
ignorant suppose that the living by eating them satisfy the dead, and
as these pancakes are very indigestible, it is customary to hire robust
men to gorge themselves on _gauffres_ so as to content the departed
ones with a good meal. A has a dear deceased relative B. In order that
B may be well supplied with pancake, A ought to eat a plentiful supply;
but A shrinks from an attack of indigestion, which a surfeit would
bring on, so he hires C to glut himself on _gauffres_ in his room.
The Flemish name for these cakes are “zielen brood” or soul-bread. “At
Dixmude and its neighbourhood it is said that for every cake eaten a
soul is delivered from purgatory. At Furnes the same belief attaches
to the little loaves called ‘radetjes,’ baked in every house. At Ypres
the children beg in the street on the eve of All Souls for some sous
wherewith ‘to make cakes for the little souls in purgatory.’ At Antwerp
these soul-cakes are stained yellow with saffron, to represent the
flames of purgatory.”[49] In the North of England all idea as to the
connection between these cakes and the dead is lost, but the cakes are
still made. This custom is a transformation under Christian influence
of the still earlier usage of putting food on the graves. When food and
drink were furnished to the dead, then necessarily the dead must have
their mugs and platters for the reception of their food, and the basins
scooped in the soil of a barrow in all likelihood served this purpose.
[Illustration: _Fig. 54._--CUP-MARKINGS, CROMLECH, S. KEVERN.]
In like manner there are basins cut on some of the dolmens, and other
depressions that were natural were employed for the same purpose.
On the coverer of a dolmen close to the railway at Assier, in the
Department of Lot, is such a rock basin, natural perhaps, but if
natural, then utilised for the purpose of a food or drink vessel for
the dead. Another dolmen in the same department, at Laramière, has one
distinctly cut by art at the eastern extremity of the covering stone.
Inside dolmens and covered avenues stones have been found with cup-like
hollows scooped out in them. These served the same purpose, and were in
such monuments as were accessible in the interior, as, for instance,
those stone basins found in the stone-vaulted tombs on the banks of the
Boyne, near Drogheda, with their singular inscribed circles. Whereas
such dolmens as could not be entered had the food or drink basins
outside them.
“The Three Brothers of Grugith,” a cromlech or dolmen at S. Kévern,
in Cornwall, has eight cup-like hollows on the coverer and one in one
of the uprights. They vary from 4 to 6 inches in diameter and are 1½
inches deep.
The cup-like holes found so frequently in connection with palæolithic
monuments may probably be explained in this way. Originally intended
as actual food receptacles or cups for drink, they came in time to be
employed as a mere form, and no particular care was taken as to the
position they occupied. Thus, very often an upright stone has these
cup-marks on it; sometimes they are on the under surface of a covering
stone. They belong to the period of the rude stone monuments. With the
advent of bronze they gradually disappear. They are not found always
associated with interments, though generally so, and it is probable
that the stones bearing them which do not at present seem to be
intended to mark the place of an interment may have done so originally.
We know that in a great number of cases a mere symbol was taken to
serve the purpose of something of actual, material use. Thus, the
Chinese draw little coats and hats on paper and burn them, and suppose
that by this means they are transmitting actual coats and hats to
their ancestors in the world of spirits. In Rome, at certain periods,
statuettes were thrown into the Tiber: these were substitutes for the
human sacrifices formerly offered to the river. Probably the custom
of giving food and drink to the dead gradually died out among the
palæolithic men, but that of making the cups for the reception of the
gifts remained, and as their purpose was forgotten, the stones graven
with the hollows were set up anyhow.
The question has been often raised whether the rock-basins found on
granite heights are of artificial origin. It is perhaps too hastily
concluded that they are produced by water and gravel rotating in the
wind. No doubt a good many have this origin; but I hardly think that
all are natural, and it is probable that some have been begun by art
and then enlarged by nature, and also that natural basins may have been
used by the palæolithic men as drink or food vessels for the gods or
spirits in the wind.
[Illustration: _Fig. 55._--MENHIR, LEW TRENCHARD.]
About twelve years ago I dug up a _menhir_ that had lain for certainly
three centuries under ground, and had served on one side as a wall
for the “leat” or conduit of water to the manorial mill. There was no
mistaking the character of the stone. It was of fine grained granite,
and had been brought from a distance of some eight miles. It was
unshaped at the base, and marked exactly how much of it had been sunk
in the ground. It stood when re-erected 10 feet 10 inches above the
surface. The singular feature in it is this. At the summit, which
measures 15 inches by 12 inches, is a small cup 3 inches deep sunk in
the stone, 4½ inches in diameter, and distinctly artificial. Now, that
the monolith had been standing upright for a vast number of years, was
shown by this fact, that the rain water, accumulating in the artificial
cup, driven by the prevailing S.W. wind, had worn for itself a lip,
and in its flow had cut itself a channel down the side of the stone
opposite to the direction of the wind to the distance of 1 foot 6
inches.
[Illustration: _Fig. 56._--THE CUP ON THE TOP.]
[Illustration: _Fig. 57._--SECTION OF THE CUP.]
What can this cup have been intended for? It is probable that it was
a receptacle for rain water, which was to serve for the drink of the
dead man above whom the monolith was erected. The Rev. W. C. Lukis, one
of the highest authorities on such matters, was with me at the time
of the re-erection of this monolith, and it then occurred to him that
the holes at the top of so many of the Brittany menhirs, in which now
crosses are planted, were not made for the reception of the bases of
these crosses, but already existed in the menhirs, and were utilised in
Christian times for the erection therein of crosses which sanctified
the old heathen monuments. Some upright stones have the cup-hollows
cut in their sides, so that nothing could rest in them; but I venture
to suggest that these may be symbolic cups, carved after their use, as
food and drink receptacles, had been abandoned.
[Illustration: _Fig. 58._--THE FURROW DOWN THE SIDE.]
Mr. Romilly Allen, in a paper on some sculptured rocks near Ilkley
in Yorkshire,[50] that have these cup-hollows, says, “The classes of
monuments on which they are found are as follows:--
1. Natural rock surfaces.
2. Isolated boulders.
3. Near ancient British (?) fortified towns and camps.
4. In connection with the lake-dwellings, underground
houses, and Pictish towers.
5. On single standing stones. }
6. On groups of standing stones. }
7. On stone circles. }
8. On cromlechs (dolmens). } Sepulchral
9. In chambered cairns. } remains.
10. On cist-covers. }
11. On urn-covers. }
12. On gravestones in Christian churchyards. }
13. On the walls of churches themselves.
“From the fact of cup-markings being found in so many instances
directly associated with sepulchral remains, I think it may fairly be
inferred that they are connected in some way or other with funeral
rites, either as sacred emblems or for actual use in holding small
offerings or libations.”
Mr. Romilly Allen is, I believe, quite right in his conjecture, which
is drawn from observation of the frequency with which these cup-hollows
are associated with sepulchral stones. But it must be remembered
that a libation is the last form assumed by the usage of giving a
drink to either the dead or to a god. The conception of a sacrifice
is comparatively modern, the primitive idea in connection with the
offering of a liquid is the giving of some acceptable draught to some
being who is in the spirit world.
The fact, and it is a fact, that these cup-markings are found on
Christian tombstones, shows how the old habit continued to find
expression after the meaning which had originated it was completely
lost.[51]
These singular cup-markings are found distributed over Denmark, Norway,
Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Switzerland.
[Illustration: _Fig. 59._--CUP-MARKINGS IN STONE AT CORRIEMONY. (_From
Mitchell’s “The Past and the Present._”)]