For just as the long barrow answers in
form to the buried human corpse and the chambered hut that surrounds and
encloses it, so does the round barrow answer in form to the urn
containing the calcined ashes of the cremated barbarian. And is it not a
suggestive fact that when we turn to the little graveyard by the church
below we find the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body, as
opposed to the pagan belief in the immortality of the soul, once more
bringing us back to the small oblong mound which is after all but the
dwarfed and humbler modern representative of the long barrow? So deep is
the connection between that familiar shape and the practice of
inhumation that the dwarf long barrow seems everywhere to have come into
use again throughout all Europe, after whole centuries of continued
cremation, as the natural concomitant and necessary mark of Christian
burial.
This is what I would have said, if I had been asked, at Ogbury Barrows.
But I wasn't asked; so I devoted myself instead to psychological
research, and said nothing.
FISH OUT OF WATER
Strolling one day in what is euphemistically termed, in equatorial
latitudes, 'the cool of the evening,' along a tangled tropical American
field-path, through a low region of lagoons and watercourses, my
attention happened to be momentarily attracted from the monotonous
pursuit of the nimble mosquito by a small animal scuttling along
irregularly before me, as if in a great hurry to get out of my way
before I could turn him into an excellent specimen.
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