UNWRITTEN HISTORY.
THE best part of history is the part written by the spade. When the first man was turned out of Eden he started digging, and the early narrators of the story seem to have regarded" that as. belonging to the curse. But the earthly
Paradise of the modern historian is composed of a spade, a suitable plot of earth, and unlimited leisure to dig and dia- coVer. Milton was clearly .uncertain about the existence of spades in Eden, for he describes Eve going about it .
"With such gardening tools as art tho' rude Guiltless of fire had formed, or angels brought."
So it is incontestable that no self-respecting historical student would exchange his Paradise for the unsatisfying resources of the garden belonging to an inadequate because a spadelese Adam.
There was.history enough in the very stones of Glastonbury before the spade set to work digging up all sorts of astonishing records that have been buried for nearly two thousand years beneath the marsh and peat of the moors beyond the town, records in face of which the tower that looks down on them from the height of Glastonbury Tor is a mushroom growth and a thing of yesterday. These records are the floors and the hearthstones and odds and ends of things belonging to; or n►ade by, a tribe that started a settlement out in the middle of the lake some two hundred years before Christ, and went on living and fighting and working and playing there until about the time of the Roman occupation, when they dropped out before the dominant race, or at any rate went away and left their lake dwellings to be covered up by the mosses and marsh, and so preserved to give future generations food for reflection. We know so little of these people that we cannot tell whether they bear a great or small proportion in the ancestry of our singularly hybrid race. But then the civilisation of our country is so new—ours. which has no literary monument that can be dated with certainty earlier than the sixth century, and which counts the stones of Glastonbury old—that we are apt to forget how small a period five or six thousand years counts for in the world's history, and to think of these earlier inhabitants of our land as the vague, shadowy ghost-figures, shock-beaded and un- kempt, that the dwellers across Channel used to see dimly paddling in and out of the fogs and mists of the rock-bound coast of Britain.
The enduring fascination of the study of life and manners lies in the disposition of both to repeat themselves again and again at widely different periods ; so that if, after talking vaguely about prehistoric dwellers on these shores, you should go and pay sixpence at a sort of sentry-box on the edge of a barbed-wire enclosure on the Glastonbury moors, it will project you like a catapult into a period of history, unwritten and nearly forgotten until almost yesterday, when the records of a life long since passed away were laid bare by that parent of true history, the spade of the excavator. That spade has been digging for about fifteen years, and has turned up a comparatively small patch of ground, and transferred a large quantity of broken and dirty objects thence to the Museum, and in the execution of this laborious and toilsome and in many ways ungrateful work has created a monument of history-that is as intensely vital, as keenly alive with the undying life of dead ages, as are the rolls and records of long-buried local affairs,—wills and fines and rolls and musters and old historical letters and manuscripts- that • look as dead and dry as dust from the outside, but which, given only the key, are more full of vitality and fascination than the most superlatively correct of historical romances, because the voices of the dead themselves speak through the old records straight out to the living, and the centuries between only make their call stronger and more urgent. - On the moors at Glastonbury, four feet or more down below the peat that has protected them for centuries, you can touch the ashes on the hearths that were burning all those hundreds of years ago. Black and white they still are like a gipsy's bonfire after the camp has gone, and beside them were found broken bowls with grains of corn burned and sticking to the potsherds as the last hands had dropped them, to lie untouched for centuries. It is a prose version. of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The houses themselves have disappeared for the most part, since the wattled walls and thatched roofs could not endure as did the more solid parts. But the stumps of the posts that supported the , hurdles, and the circular floors, platforms of logs and brushwood with clay hearths midmost on their slightly conical surface, beside the central post that supported the roof,—all these can be touched and seen as they stand, but the wood is rotten throughout and soft to touch like a newly wrung cheese. The posts shrink
to about a third of the size they are when first laid bare, and they must be left covered by the protecting peat or else they would perish entirely from exposure to air and rain. The permanent part of these dwellings is the doorstep (generally blue lias) which the dwellers crossed to gO through the low door, of which you still see the threshold log with its mortice-holes for the lateral beams. The floors sank by degrees, either because of the weight or of floods, and the hearths of beaten clay got worn away, and so both were renewed us need required. In one but five floors and eleven hearths were cut through, one on top of the other, with relics of pottery and tools in each layer. The village was a marsh settlement, like the island of Marken in the Zuyder Zee to-day, and probably the inhabitants were not less civilised, though their system of building ou piles was less scientific ; but then the water may not have been deep enough to need the long stakes that would bold firm against the weight of the waves, as did the deep piles of Venice and .Holland. The Mere villagers laid a platform of logs, covered it with brushwood, added another platform, and kept the whole firm with small piles and plastered clay on the top. They used quantities of alder—which resists damp, and must have abounded in the marsh—oak, ash, willow, and birch also, but no elm. That came in with the Normans, and the fallow- deer, and the forest laws. The place was a proper mere, into the depths of which Sir Bedivere might have flung Excalibur without the fear of a summer drought leaving it stranded, and. the people must have stepped off their doorsteps either into the marsh, or on to a causeway,. or into boats, as the inhabitants of Marken do to this day, and still see no reason for leaving their marsh- nest and going to live on dry land. For this village was a fortified place, and the water no doubt helped its security. There was a surrounding palisade, and a large causeway connecting the village with the mainland, and probably protected by a drawbridge, so that the settlement could be isolated at will. They had horses and spurs and wheeled vehicles, unlike the Marken people, who are too far from laud to use them, so that roads of some sort must have been within reach. These people were probably a tribe of the Belgae, and brought the use of iron into this country. They had come from a continent, and brought with them the influence of a continental civilisation, and that of a high order, as is witnessed by the beauty of some of their bronze-work and the delicate flowing ornament of their pots and crockery, which are worked with patterns well known in their own age round the shores of the Mediterranean. They were skilful craftsmen, they wove and spun dainty garments—for some of the slender brooches would be little use for fastening coarse ones—they worked in glass and made gay-coloured beads, and a man is very far removed from savagery who can make such mortices as they made for wheels and ladder-rungs. They, too, had the senti- ment of things past which is such an enduring fascination in civilised life, for relics of a yet older race have been found in their possession, notably a stone celt, fashioned by some earlier prehistoric dweller in the place, collected by some curious or imaginative lake-dweller, and very likely used as a charm. The finest ornaments are probably yet to seek, for the burial-ground of this tribe bas not been dis- covered, nor is it certain whether the village was a permanent settlement or an abode for so many months of the year. Their boats were simple, very like an Indian dug- out canoe ; they had a variety of weapons—knives, daggers, spears, swords; and halberds—as well as reaping-hooks. Besides the needles and reels and instrumeats for fine work, they bad a whole ritual of ornament,—rouge-boxes, studs, chains and beads, mirrors and hair-curlers, actually curling- pins such as you may see in the weekday bead of any factory girl in our great cities. There were masculine vanities as well; at least we must hope. that the numbered dice found there were a masculine monopoly, because, sad to relate, some of them are loaded ! Which proves that the story of the Fall repeats itself through many generations. There is no Eden without the serpent, and this might have been, an Eden, for there was no money in it ; at any rate, only one coin has been found (though probably bars of iron were the standard of exchange). But battle and murder there were, for it cannot be proved that any one of the axe-cloven heads . preserved in the Museum belonged to the owner of the loaded
dice. These backed skulls most likely belonged to enemies, for they were cast outside the palisade. One is the head of a woman, and has been carried aloft on a spear,—a grim com- mentary on a certain political question which yet afflicts us to-day.
Of domestic furniture in the shape of stools or tables there is no trace, nor is it possible to tell whether the huts had windows: Probably they were only used as a shelter, and the inhabitants stooped through the low door and sat round the fire or in the doorways on their heels like the miners in pit villages to-day. A very interesting point is the recent discovery of what has been in all probability a sort of moot-hall. This was a large oval but with two roof-poles. The huts for the most part were smaller and round, with only one support for the roof. You can see here the pattern of the hurdle-wall, as it fell inwards and left its mark on the surface of the floor, among the clay and birch-logs, where the bark still gleams white and toolmarks show on the wood. What councils were held and what wise plans propounded here two thousand years before an age which has not yet subdued the primeval instinct of fighting in its children ! And what strain of this forgotten race actually survives amongst the many conquer- ing peoples all of which have so powerfully impressed our island character ? Small wonder that we are a domineering race, descended as we are from such a variety of grasping and overbearing ancestors. And how inferior in point of actual civilisation have been many of our own immediate forefathers to these lake-dwellers who disappeared hundreds of years ago. The history of races seems to repeat itself continually in a world-without-end succession, and some of its most inspiring records are those that leave half the story untold. There is an undying fascination about all beautiful things left in- complete. It leaves so much to imagine, and you never have the pain of getting to the end of the story "Of Camball and of Algarsyfe, And who had Canace to wife."
And so with the records of this mysterious wise people who lived long ago in the buried village near Glastonbury, the best part of their story lies in the fact that it was left unwritten.