As a matter of fact, even the Druids themselves are quite
modern and commonplace personages compared with the short, squat
chieftains of the long barrows. For all the indications we found in the
long barrow at Ogbury (as in many others we had opened elsewhere) led us
at once to the strange conclusion that our new acquaintance, the
skeleton, had once been a living cannibal king of the newer stone-age in
Britain.
The only weapons or implements we could discover in the barrow were two
neatly chipped flint arrowheads, and a very delicate ground greenstone
hatchet, or tomahawk. These were the weapons of the dead chief, laid
beside him in the stone chamber where we found his skeleton, for his
future use in his underground existence. A piece or two of rude
hand-made pottery, no doubt containing food and drink for the ghost, had
also been placed close to his side: but they had mouldered away with
time and damp, till it was quite impossible to recover more than a few
broken and shapeless fragments. There was no trace of metal in any way:
whereas if the tribesmen of our friend the skeleton had known at all the
art of smelting, we may be sure some bronze axe or spearhead would have
taken the place of the flint arrows and the greenstone tomahawk: for
savages always bury a man's best property together with his corpse,
while civilised men take care to preserve it with pious care in their
own possession, and to fight over it strenuously in the court of
probate.
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