In the preceding chapter the origin of caves has been discussed, as well as their relation to the physical geography of the districts in which they are found. We must now pass on to the biological division of the subject, which relates to the animals that they contain and the inferences that may be drawn from their occurrence. The caves will be divided into historic, prehistoric, and pleistocene, according to the principles laid down in the first chapter.

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define with precision the point where legend ends and history begins; but the line may be drawn with convenience at the first beginning of a connected and continuous narrative, rather than at the first isolated notice of a country. If we accept this definition, the historic period in Great Britain cannot be extended further back than the temporary invasion of Julius Cæsar, B.C. 55, even if so far, since of the interval that elapsed between that event and the subjugation under Claudius, in the year A.D. 43, we know scarcely anything. Of the events which happened in this country before Cæsar’s invasion there is no documentary evidence, although, by the modern method of scientific research, we are able to extend the narrative away from the borders of history far back into the archæological and geological past.

Wild Animals in Britain during the Historic Period.

During the historic period great changes have taken place in the animals inhabiting Great Britain. The wild animals have been diminished in number, and their area of occupation has been narrowed by the increase of population and the improvement in weapons of destruction. The brown bear, inhabiting Britain during the time of the Roman occupation, was extirpated probably before the tenth century. The current belief that it was destroyed in Scotland by the founder of the Gordon family in 1057 is unsupported by any documentary evidence which I have been able to discover; the crest of the Gordons, which is supposed to have been derived from the last of those animals slain in the island, consisting of three boars’, not bears’, heads. The last wolf is said to have been destroyed in Scotland in 1680, while in Ireland the animal lingered thirty years later to be a terror to the defenceless beggars. It was deemed worthy of a special decree for its destruction in the reign of Edward I. The wild boar was extinct before the reign of Charles I., while the beaver, which was hunted for its fur on the banks of the Teivi in Cardiganshire during the time of the first Crusade, became extinct shortly afterwards. The stag was so abundant in the south of England as recently as the reign of Queen Anne, that she saw a herd of no less than five hundred between London and Portsmouth. At present the animal lives only in a half-wild condition, in the forest of Exmoor and the Highlands of Scotland; while the roedeer is now only found wild in Scotland, although it formerly ranged throughout the length and breadth of the country.

The reindeer is proved to have been living in Caithness as late as the year 1159, by a passage in the Orkneyinga Saga.

The common rat, Mus decumanus, is the only wild or semi-wild animal that has migrated into this country during the historic period contrary to the will of man. In 1727 it (Pallas, Glires) had begun to invade Southern Russia from the regions of Persia and the Caspian Sea. Thence it swiftly spread over Asia Minor, and while it was advancing to the west overland, it was carried by ships to nearly all the ports in the world. It arrived in Britain certainly before the year 1730, and has since nearly exterminated the black indigenous species. It is the only wild animal which is known to have invaded Europe since the pleistocene age, with the exception, perhaps, of the true elk.

Animals living under the care of Man.

The fallow-deer, indigenous in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, was probably introduced by the Romans, since its remains occur in refuse-heaps of Roman age, such as that of London Wall, and of Colchester, while it has not been met with in older deposits. To them, also, we probably owe the introduction of the pheasant, which was sufficiently abundant in the neighbourhood of London in the time of Harold to be mentioned as one of the articles of food eaten on feast-days by the households of the Canons at Waltham Abbey in 1059. The domestic fowl has left the first traces of its presence in this country in the Roman refuse-heaps, although it was known to the Belgæ, according to the testimony of Cæsar, before the first Roman invasion.

The earliest mention of the domestic cat in this country is to be found in the laws of Howel Dha,40 that were probably codified at the end of the tenth or in the eleventh century, although many of the enactments may be of a much earlier date. The king’s cat is assessed at eightpence, or twice as much as that belonging to any subject. The ass41 was certainly known in Britain in the days of Æthelred (A.D. 866–871), when, according to Professor Bell, its price was fixed at the large sum of twelve shillings. The larger breed of cattle represented by the Chillingham ox, and descended from the great Urus, first appears in this country about the time of the English invasion. It gradually spread over those districts conquered by the English, until the small aboriginal dark-coloured, short-horn Bos longifrons, which was the only domestic breed in the prehistoric and Roman times, is now only to be met with in the hill country of Wales and of Scotland, in which the Brit-Welsh or Romano-Celtic inhabitants still survive.

Classificatory value of Historic Animals.

The principal changes in the fauna of Great Britain during the historic age are the extinction of the bear, wolf, beaver, reindeer, and wild boar, and the introduction of the domestic fowl, the pheasant, fallow-deer, ass, the domestic cat, the larger breed of oxen, and the common rat; and as this took place at different times, it is obvious that these animals enable us to ascertain the approximate date of the deposit in which their remains happen to occur. And for this purpose the following table42 may be consulted:—

Some or other of these animals are met with in the peat-bogs and alluvia, and in caves, but far more abundantly in the refuse-heaps left behind by man, by whom they have here been used either for service or for food.

The disappearance of certain wild species, from the areas in which they lived on the continent, in historic times, has not been ascertained so accurately as in this country, and many animals, which have become extinct in our restricted and highly-cultivated island, are still to be found in the continental forests, morasses, and mountains. The brown bear is still to be met with in the Pyrenees, the Vosges, and in the wilder and more inaccessible portions of northern, middle, and southern Europe. The wolf still survives in France, and during the late German war preyed upon the slain after some of the battles. It, as well as the wild boar, ranges throughout the uncultivated regions of the continent. The beaver still lives in the waters of the Rhone, as well as in the rivers of Lithuania and of Scandinavia, and the reindeer, now restricted to the regions north of a line passing east and west through the Baltic, extended further south, in sufficient numbers to be remarked by Cæsar, among the more noteworthy animals living in the great Hercynian forest, which overshadowed northern Germany in his days. This forest also afforded shelter to the true elk and the bison, both of which still live in Lithuania, as well as to the Urus, which was hunted by Charles the Great, near Aachen, and probably became extinct in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The lion inhabited the mountains of southern Thrace in the days of Herodotus and of Aristotle, and became extinct in Europe between 330 B.C. and the days of Dio Chrysostom Rhetor (A.D. 100), who expressly says that there were no lions in Greece in his time. The panther also inhabited the same district when Xenophon wrote his “Treatise on Hunting.”

The fallow-deer was believed by the late Professor Edouard Lartet to have been introduced into France by the Romans. On a visit, however, to Paris in September 1873, Professor Gervais called my attention to an antler of the animal in the Jardin des Plantes, said to have been found in a refuse-heap along with axes of polished stone. It must therefore have lived in France in the Neolithic age, if it were obtained from an undisturbed deposit. It gradually spread into Germany and Switzerland, until in the eleventh century it was sufficiently abundant to be mentioned among the articles of food in a metrical grace of the monks of St. Gall.

The domestic fowl is to be recognized on Gallic coins before the Roman invasion, and therefore was probably known at the very dawn of Gallic history. The larger breed of oxen, descended from the Urus type, has been known in France, Germany, Lombardy, Scandinavia, and Switzerland, in the remote division of the prehistoric age known as the Neolithic.44 The buffalo, on the other hand, of the Roman Campagna, was introduced into Italy, according to Paulus Diaconus, in the year 596, and the domestic cat,45 known to the Greeks from their intercourse with Egypt, became familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants of Rome and Constantinople as early as the fourth century after Christ.

It is evident from the survival of the wolf, the bear, beaver, reindeer, and the wild boar on the continent at the present time, that the chronological table which I have constructed for Britain is inapplicable to Europe in general. In the present state of our knowledge of the varying ranges of the animals, it seems impossible to form any similar scheme.

The historic caves are characterized by the presence of some of these animals, as well as of coins and pottery, and other articles by which the date of their occupation may be ascertained.

The Victoria Cave, Settle, Yorkshire.

The most important historic cave in this country is that discovered by Mr. Joseph Jackson, near Settle, in Yorkshire, on the coronation day of Queen Victoria, in 1838, and which has therefore been called the Victoria Cave. It runs horizontally into the precipitous side of a lonely ravine known as King’s Scar (Fig. 19), at a height of about 1,450 feet above the sea, according to Mr. Tiddeman, and it consists of three large ill-defined chambers filled with débris nearly up to the roof.

The entrances face to the south-west, and open at the bottom of an overhanging cliff at the point where a scree, or accumulation of fragments from the cliff above, gradually slopes down to the bottom of the valley, about one hundred feet below. When Mr. Jackson made his discovery, he passed inwards through a small entrance,46 and was rewarded by finding in the earth on the floor a number of Roman coins, together with ornaments and implements of bronze, and some brooches of singular taste and beauty, with implements of bone, and large quantities of broken bones and fragments of pottery. The collection was very miscellaneous; for besides iron spear-heads, nails, daggers, spoon-brooches of bone, spindle-whorls, beads of amber and of glass, there were bronze brooches, finger-rings, armlets, bracelets, buckles, and studs. All were lying pêle-mêle together, side by side with the broken bones of the animals, and the whole set of remains, with the exception of some of the brooches, was of the kind which is usually met with in the neighbourhood of Roman camps, cities, and villas which have been sacked.

The fragments of Samian ware and Roman pottery scattered through the mass, as well as coins of Trajan and Constantine, proved further, that the cave had been inhabited after the Roman invasion, and not earlier than the middle of the third century; and the rude imitations of Roman coins were, according to Mr. Roach Smith,47 probably in circulation for some centuries after the departure of the Romans from Britain.—“And although some of these remains are indicative of sepulture, yet from the evidence furnished there appears no positive proof of their having formed part of funereal deposits. A more satisfactory conclusion seems to arise in considering that these caves (i.e. the group) may have been used as places of refuge by the Romanized Britons during the troublous times at and after the close of the fourth century.” This conclusion we shall see fully borne out by the evidence subsequently obtained. Mr. Jackson gives the following account of the discovery:—

“The entrance was nearly filled up with rubbish, and overgrown with nettles. After removing these obstructions, I was obliged to lie down at full length to get in. The first appearance that struck me on entering was the large quantity of clay and earth, which seemed as if washed in from without, and presented to the view round pieces like balls of different sizes. Of this clay there must be several hundred waggon loads, but abounding more in the first than in the branch caves. In some parts a stalagmitic crust has formed, mixed with bones, broken pots, &c. It was on this crust I found the principal part of the coins, the other articles being mostly imbedded in the clay. In the other caves very little has been found. When we get through the clay, which is very stiff and deep, we generally find the rock covered with bones, all broken and presenting the appearance of having been gnawed. The entrance into the inner cave has been walled up at the sides. In the inside were several large stones lying near the hole, any one of which would have completely blocked it up by merely turning the stone over. I pulled the wall down, and the aperture was now about a yard wide, and two feet high. On digging up the clay at about nine or ten inches deep, I found the original floor; it was hard and gravelly, and strewed with bones, broken pots, and other objects. The roof of the cave was beautifully hung with stalactites in various fantastic forms and as white as snow.”48

The interest in these discoveries led Mr. Denny, Mr. Farrer, and other gentlemen to examine the superficial stratum from time to time, until, in 1870, Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, Mr. Walter Morrison, Mr. Birkbeck, and other gentlemen in the neighbourhood formed a committee for the investigation of the contents of the cave, which had been placed at their disposal by the courtesy of the owner, the late Mr. Stackhouse. They were aided by the assistance of Sir C. Lyell, Sir. J. Lubbock, and Mr. Darwin, Professor Phillips, Mr. Franks, and others, and by a grant obtained from the British Association, and have carried on the work since that time with comparatively little interruption. Mr. Jackson, the original discoverer, superintended the workmen; while I identified the works of art and the mammalian remains that were discovered, and drew up for the committee the reports brought before the British Association in 1870, 1871, and 1872, and before the Anthropological Institute in 1871. Mr. Tiddeman also contributed a report on the physical history of the cave, which is printed in the British Association Report for 1872, and subsequently in the Geological Magazine, January 1873.49

The Romano-Celtic or Brit-Welsh Stratum.

The committee resolved not to begin at the entrance which Mr. Jackson discovered in 1838 (Fig. 19 A), but to make a new passage, at a point where daylight could be seen through the chinks of the broken débris, which there prevented access. Ground was broken on a small plateau in front of this (Figs. 19 B, 20), which, from the sunny aspect and commanding view, would naturally be chosen by the dwellers in the cave as their more usual place for eating and lounging, and in which we might therefore expect to find the remains of whatever they had dropped or lost. The gloomy recesses of a cave, indeed, even if lit up by large fires or by torches, are not fitted for any other purpose than for sleeping or concealment; and if we add in this case the damp cold clay under foot and the constant drip of the water overhead, it was only reasonable to infer that most of their life was spent out of doors, and that the cave was used merely as a place of retirement for shelter. As the trench progressed we dug first of all through a thickness of two feet (Figs. 20, 21) of angular blocks of limestone, that had fallen from the cliff above, and that rested on a black layer (No. 4) containing the kind of remains which we had expected. The layer was composed of fragments of bone and charcoal, surrounding the burnt stones which had formed the ancient hearths, and contained large quantities of the broken bones of animals which had been used for food, and coins and articles of luxury, as well as those instruments which were more naturally suited for the half-savage life of dwellers in caves. As we opened out the new mouth, the angular fragments disappeared and the black layer rose to the surface, composing the floor, and lying in some places beneath enormous blocks of limestone which had fallen from the roof since its accumulation, and being continuous with the layer in which Mr. Jackson first made his discoveries.

It was evident that this stratum had been formed during the sojourn of man in the cave, and we shall find, in the examination of the remains which it furnished, proof that it is connected with the obscure history of Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries. We will take each group of objects in its proper class, beginning with what at first sight seems the least promising, the broken bones of the animals that supplied the inhabitants with food.

The Bones of the Animals.

The bones of the Celtic short-horn (Bos longifrons) were very abundant, and proved that a variety of ox, indistinguishable from the small dark mountain cattle of Wales and Scotland, was the chief food of the inhabitants. A variety of the goat with simple recurved horns, which is commonly met with in the Yorkshire tumuli explored by Canon Greenwell, and in the deposits round Roman villas in Great Britain, furnished the mutton; while the pork was supplied by a domestic breed of pigs with small canines; and since the bones of the last animal belong for the most part to young individuals, it is clear that the young porker was preferred to the older animal. The bill of fare was occasionally varied by the use of horse-flesh, which formed a common article of food in this country down to the ninth century. To this list must be added the venison of the roedeer and stag, but the remains of these two animals were singularly rare. Two spurs of the domestic fowl, and a few bones of wild duck and grouse, complete the list of animals which can with certainty be affirmed to have been eaten by the dwellers in the cave. The numerous unbroken bones, some very gigantic, of the badger, and those of the fox, wildcat, hare, and water-vole, commonly called water-rat, have probably been introduced subsequently, from those animals having used the cave as a place of shelter. There were also bones of the dog, which from their unbroken condition proved that the animal had not been used for food, as it certainly was used by the men who lived in the caves of Denbighshire in the Neolithic age. The whole group of remains implies that the dwellers in the Victoria Cave lived upon their flocks and herds, rather than by the chase. And since the domestic fowl was not known in Britain until about the time of the Roman invasion, the presence of its remains fixes the date of the occupation as not earlier than that time. On the other hand, since the small Celtic short-horn (Bos longifrons) was the only domestic ox in use known in Roman Britain, and since it disappeared from those portions of the country which were conquered by the English, along with its Celtic possessors, the date is fixed in the other direction as being not much later than the Northumbrian conquest of that portion of Yorkshire. I shall return to this part of the subject presently; here I will only remark, that the present distribution of the lineal descendants of the Celtic short-horn, the small, dark-coloured Scotch and Welsh cattle, corresponds with those regions on which the Celtic population fell back before the English. And its survival in Wales, and until comparatively recently in Cornwall, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, may be accounted for by the fact, that in those districts the Celtic populations of Roman Britain were not displaced by the English invaders.50

The larger breed of cattle known in its purity as the white ox of Chillingham, from which all our purely English breeds have been derived, was imported originally by the English, and spread over the whole country which they occupied, until at last the smaller and more ancient oxen survived only in a few isolated areas in the north and west of Britain. This displacement of the Celtic short-horn by the English oxen of the Urus type corroborates, in a striking degree, the truth of Mr. Freeman’s view of the ruthless destruction of everything Roman and Celtic at the hands of the English. It is clear, therefore, that from the examination of the bones we may infer that the cave was occupied before the Celtic short-horn was supplanted in this district by the larger domestic breed of oxen, and after the introduction of the domestic fowl, that is to say, in the interval which elapsed between the Roman and English invasions.

We must now treat of the remains of man’s handiwork in the cave.

Miscellaneous Articles.

The ornaments and implements of bone consist of carefully smoothed pins, and points intended to be fitted to a handle, knife-handles made of bone and antler; three spindle-whorls made of the perforated head of a femur; a stud; a perfect spoon-shaped fibula (Fig. 22), which corresponds with one of those in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, as well as several fragments, and which when in use was passed through holes in the clothes, in such a manner that the two ends alone were visible. These are ornamented, and the shaft and the whole back is more or less polished by wear. Eight articles bear a close resemblance to the handles of gimlets (Figs. 23, 24), and most probably have been used as studs, or links, for fastening together clothing. The fact, indeed, that some have the central hole worn by the friction of a thong or string of some kind, coupled with the worn state of some of their surfaces, renders this guess very likely to be true. In Fig. 24, a, the ornament in right lines, which once covered the surface as in Fig. 24, b, is very nearly obliterated by friction against some soft body such as clothing. A reference to the figures will give a better idea of their shape and ornamentation than a mere description. Two perforated discs may have been used as studs. There are also many nondescript articles, consisting of sockets made of antler of stag, and bone rods carefully rounded, together with cut bones of uncertain use. For the identification of the ivory boss of a sword-hilt I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Franks.

Besides the ornaments in bone and antler, there were seven glass beads, five transparent and two of a bluish tint, and one of jet turned in a lathe; as well as a fragment of a jet bracelet. Among the articles of daily use were many rounded pebbles, with marks of fire upon them, which had probably been heated for the purpose of boiling water. Pot-boilers, as they are called, of this kind are used by many savage peoples at the present day, and if we wished to heat water in a vessel that would not stand the fire, we should be obliged to employ a similar method. Other stones formed parts of ancient hearths, and two or three grooved slabs of sandstone had evidently been used for rounding and sharpening bone pins. The fragments of pottery were very abundant, and were all of the type usually found round Roman villas. One fragment of Samian ware was ornamented with the representation of a hunt.

This group of articles throws but little light on the date of the occupation of the cave. The Samian ware, and the ivory boss of a Roman sword, merely imply that it was either Roman or post-Roman.

The Coins.

If we turn now to the coins, we shall find the date to lie within narrower limits than those fixed by the animals. They consist of:—

Two silver of Trajan, d. 117.
Four bronze of Tetricus I., 267–274.
One bronze of Tetricus II., 267–274.
One bronze of Gallienus, d. 268.
One bronze of Constantine II., d. 343.
One bronze of Constans, d. 353.
Three barbarous imitations in bronze of coins of Tetricus, circa 400–500 A.D.

In a group of coins such as this the latest only give a clue to the date, since the earlier may have remained in circulation long after they were struck. In India, for example, those of Alexander the Great have not yet disappeared from the country, and in Spain, in the shops of Malaga, Moorish, Roman, and even Phœnician coins were current in 1863, as well as all those which have been struck since.51 We may therefore disregard the earliest coins, and fix our attention more particularly on those of the Constantine family, and the bronze minimi mentioned last in the list. The presence of the coin of Constans implies that the cave was occupied either during or after 337 A.D., when he ascended the throne; while the date of the minimi has not been ascertained with accuracy. “They abound upon all Roman sites, such as Verulam and Richborough. In size they come nearest to those struck under Arcadius and his successors, and I think that you will not be far wrong in assigning them to the first half of the fifth century. The latest of the genuine Roman coins found in this country are those of Arcadius and Honorius; at least, the finding of any of later date is quite exceptional. What the currency was between that time and the commencement of the Saxon coinage it is hard to say. It seems probable, however, that gold and silver had nearly disappeared, and that the needs of a small local commerce were supplied by the Roman copper coins of which abundance remained in the country, and by small pieces struck after their model, not improbably by private speculators.” This opinion, which Mr. John Evans, F.R.S., has been kind enough to write me, coincides with that of Mr. Newton, as well as that of Mr. Roach Smith; and we may therefore assume, with tolerable certainty, that the cave was inhabited during the first half of the fifth century or afterwards, at a time when the withdrawal of the Roman Legions had left the colony of Britain, whose youth and vigour had been consumed in the fierce struggle of the rivals for the throne of the West, a prey to the barbarian invaders.

It is of course conceivable that some of these coins may have been dropped at one time, and some at another, but nevertheless it seems very probable that the whole accumulation belongs to the same relative age. But whether this be accepted or not, it is certain the cave was inhabited during the time that the minimi were in circulation,—that is to say, during the first half of the fifth century, or from that time forwards.

The Jewellery, and its Relation to Irish Art.

This conclusion as to the date, derived from the coins, is confirmed in a remarkable degree by the examination of the articles of luxury. Besides two bronze brooches of the Roman pattern, known by archæologists as harp-shaped (Coloured Plate, fig. 5), was one of the split-ring type, with a moveable pin, which is generally assigned to the later period of the Roman occupation of this country. One type of brooch was composed of two circular plates of bronze, soldered together, the front being very thin and bearing flamboyant and spiral patterns in relief (Fig. 25), of admirable design and execution. The original of the figure was discovered by Mr. Jackson, and is more perfect than any of those which we obtained in our excavations. It is altogether unlike any Roman brooch properly so called, both in its composite make and style of ornament. A similar brooch has been discovered at Brough Castle, in Westmoreland, and was figured in the Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society (vol. iv. 129), by Sir James Musgrave, and a second is preserved in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy (492). The style corresponds with that of a medallion on a Runic casket of silver-bronze, figured by Prof. Stevens, and stated to have been obtained from Northumbrian Britain, as well as that of a brooch in the Museum at Mainz, assigned by the same authority to the third or fourth century. It is also to be met with in the illuminations of one of the Anglo-Saxon Gospels at Stockholm, as well as in those of the Gospels of S. Columban, preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and in the “Book of Kells” (8–900).52 In all these cases it cannot be affirmed to be Roman, and it is not presented by ornaments of either purely English or Teutonic origin. It is most closely allied to that work which is termed by Mr. Franks “late Celtic.” From its localization in Britain and Ireland, it seems to be probable that it is of Celtic derivation; and if this view be accepted, there is nothing at all extraordinary in its being recognized in the illuminated Irish Gospels. Ireland, in the sixth and seventh centuries, was the great centre of art, civilization, and literature; and it is only reasonable to suppose that there would be intercourse between the Irish Christians and those of the west of Britain during the time that the Romano-Celts, or Brit-Welsh, were being slowly pushed to the westward by the heathen English invader. Proof of such an intercourse we find in the brief notice in the “Annales Cambriæ,” in which Gildas, the Brit-Welsh historian, is stated to have sailed over to Ireland in the year A.D. 565. It is by no means improbable that about this time there was a Brit-Welsh migration into Ireland, as well as into Brittany.

Nor is it at all strange that the same style of ornament should occur in some few cases in North Germany.

“The conquest of Britain,” writes the Rev. J. R. Green (“History of the English People,” p. 1653), “had thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of the Western Church. On the one side lay Italy and Gaul, whose Churches owned obedience to the see of Rome, on the other the free Celtic Church of Ireland. But the condition of the two portions of Western Christendom was very different. While the vigour of Latin Christianity was exhausted in a bare struggle for life, Ireland as yet unscourged by invaders had drawn from its conversion an energy such as it has never known since. Christianity had been received there with a burst of popular enthusiasm. Letters and arts sprang up rapidly in its train; the science and Biblical knowledge which had fled from the continent took refuge in famous schools which made Durrow and Armagh the universities of the West. The new life soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within insular bounds. Patrick, the first missionary of Ireland, had not been half a century dead, when Celtic Christianity flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism which had rolled in upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands, among the Frisians of the northern seas; Columban founded monasteries in Burgundy and the Apennines; the canton of St. Gall still commemorates in its name the missionary before whom the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing over the waters of the Lake of Constance. For a time it seemed as if the course of the world’s history was to be changed, as if the older race that Roman and Teuton had swept before them had turned to the moral conquest of its conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the Churches of the West.”

It is impossible that Irish-Celtic art should not have made itself felt wherever the Irish missionaries penetrated, and especially in the gorgeous illuminated Gospels, which it was the pride of S. Columban and his school to have made, and which now excite our wonder and admiration. The early Christian art in Ireland grew out of the late Celtic, and was, to a great extent, free from the influence of Rome, which is stamped on the Brit-Welsh art of the same age in this country. The style, therefore, of these circular brooches, from its correspondence with that of the Irish illuminated gospels, affords reasonable grounds for the belief that the Victoria Cave was inhabited in the sixth century, or possibly later, but before the English invaders had swept the Brit-Welsh away from the district.

Two other brooches were also discovered in the black layer, which are even of greater interest than those which have just been described. The one represents a dragon (colored Plate, fig. 3), with its eye made of red enamel; the other (colored Plate, fig. 7) shaped, like the letter S, has its front composed of an elaborate cloissonnée pattern in red, blue, and yellow enamels, and is of the same design as two brooches in the British Museum, discovered, one near Whittington Hill, in Gloucestershire, and the other near Malton, in Yorkshire. All three were, undoubtedly, turned out of the same artistic school, and they may have been made by one workman. The enamel, in all these examples, seems to have been inserted into hollows in the bronze, and then to have been heated so as to form a close union with them, and in some cases where it has been broken, as in colored Plate, fig. 7, small fragments still remain to attest the completeness of the fusion with the bronze. The style of workmanship is neither Roman nor Teutonic. An enamelled fibula with spirals in relief, found at Reichenbach54 (Soleure) in a post-Roman sepulchre, and figured by Bonstettin, is of a similar design, and it may be traced also in two brooches obtained by the Abbé Cochet, from the Merovingian Cemetery of Envermeu,55 although they are of more massive and square construction than those of Yorkshire.

One harp-shaped brooch (colored Plate, fig. 1) is ornamented with diamonds of blue enamel, separated by small triangles of red, and shows in its Roman design and Celtic ornamentation the union between Celtic and Roman art. A similar specimen from Brough Castle, Westmoreland, is preserved in the British Museum, and may have been turned out of the same workshop. We also met with an enamelled disk (colored Plate, fig. 6), and a finger-ring (fig. 4) of bronze-gilt, ornamented with blue enamel.

Several enamelled fibulæ in the British Museum, obtained by Sir James Musgrave, at Kirby Thore, Westmoreland, belong to the same style of art as those of the Victoria cave, and were associated with the same class of remains. Shields,56 scabbards, horse trappings, and other articles have also been discovered in this county, decorated in the same fashion with coloured enamels, and especially a bronze vase from the late Roman tumuli, called the Bartlow Hills. They all belong to the class termed “late Celtic” by Mr. Franks, and are considered by him to be of British manufacture.

This view is supported by the only reference to the art of enamelling which is furnished by the classical writers. Philostratus, a Greek sophist, who left Athens in the beginning of the third century to join the Court of Julia Domna, the wife of the Emperor Severus, writes:—“It is said that the barbarians living in or by the ocean, pour these colors (those of the horse trappings) on heated bronze, that these adhere, grow as hard as stone, and preserve the designs that are made in them.”57 Mr. Franks’ opinion that this passage relates to Britain, seems to be more probable than that of the eminent French archæologist, M. de Laborde, who holds that it relates to Gaul and especially to “Belgica.”58

When we consider the variety of enamelled objects which have been discovered in the north of England, it seems to be by no means improbable that the principal centre of the art enamelling was here rather than in the south; and this conclusion is considerably strengthened by the fact that under the Romans political power centered in the district between the Humber and the Tyne, and that York, and not London, was the capital of Britain and the seat of the Roman Prefect. It is worthy of remark, that since the Emperor Severus built the wall which bears his name, marched in person against the Caledonians, and died at York, the account of the enamels may have been brought to the court of the Empress Julia from this very region, and thus come to be recorded by Philostratus.

Two harp-shaped fibulæ, obtained by Mr. Jackson from the Victoria cave, and ornamented with enamel, are coated with silver, and in one of them two small blocks of that metal still remain firmly imbedded in the bronze. It is very probable that most of the ornaments were plated either with silver or gold, traces of which, in some cases, still remain.

Among the miscellaneous objects in metal are a bronze wire brooch (colored Plate, fig. 8), two bracelets, composed of twisted bronze-gilt wire; and one fragment in solid bronze, ornamented with right lines; one plain bronze finger-ring; two small buckles, respectively of bronze and of iron, and a small bronze flattened pin (colored Plate, fig. 2), ending in two points to which, at first, we were unable to assign a use. When, however, the two points were compared with the circles on the ornaments of bone (Fig. 22), there was but little doubt that this curious object was employed as a pair of fixed compasses. There were also iron articles which were too much corroded to admit of a guess at their probable use, besides a Roman key, knife-blades, and a spear-head discovered by Mr. Jackson.

The number of ornaments found in the Victoria Cave from time to time by various explorers is very considerable. They are scattered in the private collections of Messrs. Jackson and Eckroyd Smith, and in the Museums of Giggleswick Grammar-school, and of Leeds, and the British Museum.

Similar remains in other Caves in Yorkshire.

The Victoria cave is by no means the only one in the district that has furnished works of art and the remains of animals. The Albert cave (Fig. 19, c.) close by is, as yet, only explored sufficiently to prove that it contains the same kind of objects; and from that of Kelko, overlooking Giggleswick, they have been obtained by Mr. Jackson;59 as well as from that of Dowker-bottom between Arncliffe and Kilnsay, by Mr. James Farrer and Mr. Denny.60 From the last, seven spoon-shaped brooches of bone, and two spindle-whorls of Samian ware of the bottom of a vase, are preserved in the British Museum, as well as a bronze needle, and brooches both harp-shaped and discoid, and fragments of pottery. Three coins in bronze, according to Mr. Farrer,61 prove that the date of the accumulation is late or post-Roman, one being of Claudius Gothicus, whose reign ended A.D. 270, and two belonging to the Tetrici, A.D. 267–273, since they would remain in circulation for some time after they were struck. A bronze pin, in the possession of Mr. Jackson, from Dowker-bottom, is remarkable for the head being plated with silver.

The fragment of flattened antler from this cave, referred by Mr. Denny to the elk, most probably belongs to the crown of an old antler of the stag, and the remains of the “Canis primævus” of that author cannot be distinguished from those of a large dog. The bones of the wolf, and an enormous stag in the Museum of the Philosophical Society at Leeds, are probably much older than the Brit-Welsh stratum.

These Caves used as Places of Refuge.

The presence of these works of art, in association with the remains of the domestic animals used for food, is only to be satisfactorily accounted for in the way proposed by Mr. Dixon. Men accustomed to luxury and refinement were compelled, by the pressure of some great calamity, to flee for refuge, and to lead a half-savage life in these inclement caves, with whatever they could transport thither of their property. They were also accompanied by their families, for the number of personal ornaments and the spindle-whorls imply the presence of the female sex. We may also infer that they were cut off from the civilization to which they had been accustomed, since they were compelled to extemporize spindle-whorls out of the pieces of the vessels that they brought with them, instead of using those which had been manufactured for the purpose.

The evidence of History as to the Date.

We have already seen from the examination of the coins, that the Victoria cave was occupied during or after the first half of the fifth century, and from the works of art that it may have been, and probably was, occupied at a later time. To fix the latest possible limit to the occupation of the group of caves to which it belongs, we must appeal to contemporary history.

During the first four centuries of Roman dominion in Britain, the spread of the manners and arts of the great mistress of the world followed close upon her success in arms; and the policy of one of the greatest of her generals, Agricola, bore fruit in the adoption of her civilization by the British provincials. The population clustered round the Roman stations, and cities sprang up, such as Chester, Bath, York, and Lincoln, between which a ready communication was maintained by the roads that still remain as monuments of engineering skill, and which, in many cases, have been used uninterruptedly from that time to the present day. Agriculture was carried on to such an extent, that Britain became one of the principal corn-producing regions of the Roman Empire; and a commerce with foreign countries was carried on from the ports on the banks of the Thames and the Severn (Gildas, i.). The mineral sources were also fully explored; tin was sought in the mines of Cornwall, lead in those of Derbyshire and Somersetshire, and iron in the forest of Dean, Sussex, and Northumberland. Nor was this material prosperity unaccompanied by the signs of luxury and culture. Numerous villas were dotted throughout the province, resembling in size and plan the quadrangle of a mediæval college at Oxford or Cambridge, and even in ruins astonishing us by their magnitude and the beauty of their tessellated pavements. York was the capital of the province and the centre of government, and consequently Yorkshire must have been, if anything, more completely penetrated with the Roman arts and civilization than any other part of Britain. The relation of the Roman conquerors to the conquered Celtic inhabitants was somewhat analogous to that which now exists between the English and the subject nations in India. Latin was the language spoken by the higher classes in the cities, of the army, and probably of the courts of law; while in the country the Celtic tongue held its ground, and still survives in the language of Wales. Christianity was probably professed in this country about the time of Constantine, and became the dominant religion by the middle of the fifth century, if not before.

Underneath all the outward signs of prosperity during the Roman rule in Britain, there were causes at work which ensured the ruin of the province. The policy of centralization, and the very perfection of the machinery for government on autocratic principles, which brought about the destruction of the Roman Empire, as in our own days they have nearly ruined France, bore fruit in Britain in the helpless apathy of the provincials when the machinery was broken up. It is therefore no wonder that when the Roman garrison was finally withdrawn from this country, in the year 409, the provincials were left an easy prey to their enemies. Nor need we wonder that they set up isolated centres of government, which we may term communes, in the year 410, in which each city stood out for itself, instead of combining together for the common weal. From this time forward the inhabitants of the Roman province of Britain, severed from the Roman Empire, became a prey to the many tyrants who sprang up, and the anarchy followed so pathetically described by Gildas. It was at this time that the coinage became debased, and Roman coins afforded the patterns for the small bronze minimi of the Settle cave,62 which are so abundant among the ruins of Roman cities in this country, such as St. Alban’s.

The invaders of Britain must now be considered. The Picts and Scots had secured a rude liberty under the protection of their mountains and morasses, rather than by their success in arms against the Roman legions, and their raids into the Roman province had been curbed by the walls and lines of forts, extending, the one from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, the other from the Solway Firth to the Tyne. In spite of these, however, from time to time, in the fourth century, they carried desolation into Northumberland and Yorkshire, even if they did not penetrate farther into the south. And on the withdrawal of the Roman legions, at the beginning of the fifth century, their raids were organized on a much larger scale. In the pages of Gildas we have a melancholy picture of their results. In the letter written to Ætius, the Roman commander in Gaul, in 446, the Britains are described as sheep, and the Picts and Scots as wolves. “The barbarians drive us back to the sea; the sea drives us back again to perish at the hands of the barbarians,” are the words put into the mouth of the embassy.63 One plea for aid, which they advanced, is especially interesting, because it shows incidentally that the Roman civilization did not disappear with the withdrawal of the legions—the plea that unless they were succoured the name of Rome would be dishonoured. Nerved by despair, the British in the following year take up arms, and, according to Gildas, leave their houses and lands, and taking shelter in mountains and forests, and in caves,64 succeed in driving back their Pictish and Scottish enemies.

It is very significant that caves should be mentioned in this account; for the region of Craven is one of the very few in the country in which they are sufficiently abundant to allow of their being used as places of shelter on a scale sufficiently large to be recorded in history; and when we consider that one of the natural highways from Scotland into central England lies through that district, it seems to me extremely probable that the group of caves of which Victoria is one is that referred to. On this point it is worthy of record, that in the year 1745, when the younger Pretender was at Shap, and it was doubtful whether he would take the route through Ribblesdale or by way of Preston, the eldest son of one of the landowners near Settle, was hidden, along with the family plate, in a Cave close to the Victoria, in the belief that the Highlanders were in the habit of eating children as well as of laying hands on the precious metals. The historical notice tallies exactly with the geographical position, and is not inconsistent with the evidence offered by the coins and other remains. The date, therefore, of the occupation may probably be assigned as about the middle of the fifth century.

This, however, is not the latest date that can be assigned. In the year 449, the three ships which contained Hengist and his warriors, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, and the first English colony was founded among a people who were known to the strangers as “Brit-Welsh.”65 From that time a steady immigration of Angle, Jute, Saxon, and Frisian set in towards the eastern coast of Britain, as far north as the Firth of Forth, until, in the first half of the sixth century, the whole of the eastern part of our island was taken possession of by various tribes,66 whose names, for the most part, still survive in the names of our counties. The principal rivers also afforded them a free passage into the heart of the country, and the kingdom of Mercia gradually expanded until it embraced, not only the basin of the Trent, but reached as far as the line of the Severn. The river Humber afforded a base of operations for the Anglian freebooters, who founded the kingdom of Deira or modern Yorkshire; while the camp of Bamborough was the centre from which Ida, who landed with fifty ships in the year 547, conquered Bernicia, or the region extending from the river Tees to Edinburgh. The tide of English colonization rolled steadily westward, until, at the close of the sixth century, the hilly and impassable districts culminating in the Pennine Chain, and extending southwards from Cumberland and Westmoreland, through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, formed the barrier between the Brit-Welsh kingdoms of Elmet and Strathclyde on the east, and the English on the west. To the south of this the Brit-Welsh dominion was bounded by the river Severn, and included Chester and the whole of the basin of the Dee; while Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, and the district round Bradford and Malmesbury formed the kingdom of West Wales.67

The long war by which the borders of England were gradually pushed to the west, at the expense of the Brit-Welsh, was one of the most fearful of which we have any record. The English invaders came over, with their wives and children and household stuff, in such force that the country which they left behind was left desolate for several centuries. Worshippers of Thor and Odin, and living a free life, equally divided between farming, hunting, and war, they were mortal foes to Christianity and to Roman civilization. They destroyed the Brit-Welsh cities with fire and sword; and the ashes of the Roman villas, which are to be found in nearly every part of the Roman province of Britain, testify to the keenness of their hate to everything which was at once Christian, Roman, and Celtic. Gildas forcibly describes the destruction which they wrought among his countrymen, by the metaphor that “the flame kindled in the east, raged over nearly all the land, until it flared red over the western ocean.”68 In the conquered districts the Brit-Welsh were either exterminated or enslaved, and their civilization was wholly replaced by the rude culture of the English.

It follows, from the nature of this conquest, that any group of remains, such as those in the caves under consideration, must be assigned to the time before the English had possession of the district, and we must therefore see what historical proof is to be found on the point.

At the close of the sixth century the Brit-Welsh kingdom of Elmet (in the basin of the river Aire)—a name which still survives in Barwick-in-Elmet, a little village about seven miles to the north-east of Leeds—extended over the country round Leeds and Bradford, passing westwards towards, if not into, Lancashire, and northwards probably so as to embrace Ribblesdale, and forming a barrier to the westward advance of the English possessors of eastern Yorkshire. Its downfall will give us the latest possible limit which we are seeking for the Brit-Welsh occupation of the Victoria Cave. The two kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia had united to form the powerful state of Northumbria, at the beginning of the seventh century, under Æthelfrith, who carried on the war against the Brit-Welsh with greater vigour than his predecessors. In 60769 he marched along the line of the Trent, through Staffordshire, avoiding thereby the difficult and easily-defended hilly country of Derbyshire and East Lancashire, to the battle near Chester, famous for the destruction of the power of Strathclyde, and the death of the monks of Bangor, who fought against him with their prayers. By this decisive blow, the English first set foot on the coast of the Irish Channel, and Strathclyde and Elmet, on the one hand, were cut asunder from Wales. On the other Chester was so thoroughly destroyed that it remained in ruins for nearly three centuries, to be rebuilt by Æthelflæd, “the Lady of the Mercians,” in 907, and the plains of Lancashire lay open to the invader.70 This western advance of the Northumbrians was completed by the conquest of Elmet, in 616, by Eadwine, and the whole district from Edinburgh, as far south as the Humber, and as far west as Chester, became subject to his rule.71 The latest possible date, therefore, that can be assigned for the occupation of these caves by the Brit-Welsh is determined by that event. It cannot be later than the first quarter of the seventh century, or the time when what remained of Roman art and civilization in that district was swept away by the ancestors of the present dalesmen. The relics in the caves must have been accumulated in the two centuries which elapsed between the recall of the legions in the days of Honorius and the English conquest. They are traces of the anarchy which existed in those times, and they tell a tale of woe, wrought on the Brit-Welsh, by Pict, Scot, or Englishman, as eloquently as the lament of Gildas, or the mournful verses of Talliesin. They complete the picture of the desolation of those times revealed by the ashes of the villas and cities which were burned by the invaders.

We have now examined the evidence as to date offered by the contents of these caves, and we have seen that it agrees with the contemporary history. It may therefore be concluded that it lies in the fifth and sixth centuries, possibly the first quarter of the seventh.

The Neolithic Stratum.