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and exhort them as to their future conduct, and it requires no violent stretch of the imagination to suppose that the corpse was informed that the central cup was his own particular kraal, the space inclosed by the first ring was for his wives, the second ring for his bodyguard or household slaves, the third for his cattle and so on, while the unringed cups would be for other slaves, children, and persons of no particular consequence. The greater the number of rings, the greater the chief, just as, among the North American Indians, the size of the tumulus showed the wealth and importance of the person commemorated. My suggestion, if correct, will account for most of the difficulties hitherto pointed out with regard to these carvings. First, as I have already mentioned, for their wide distribution and monotonous repetition. On standing stones we generally find one cup with rings and numerous cups without rings; this would be for a chief and the many slaves who were killed to attend him in the ghost-world. The large rock surfaces covered with carvings, such as Routin Linn, I attribute to ghost-villages, where a new ghosthut is made at each death. And the different methods of grouping I explain by differences in modes of constructing villages. Thus we find the open village with stockaded huts, and unstockaded huts grouped within a common ring fence, such as a camp. The curious ladder-forms found at Ilkley would be made by a tribe who cultivated the hill sides in terraces; it is true that I do not know of any such terraces at Ilkley, but at Lindley, not far away, there is a very well marked series.

"Apart from these isolated instances of survival, the cup-and-ring marks degenerate into mere ornament. A considerable number of kist-slabs, both in Ireland and Brittany (referred to in the quotation from Simpson), have their surfaces covered with elaborate patterns derived from the cup and ring. All symbolism has apparently been lost, and all that remains

is the tradition that designs of this character have some mysterious appropriateness as decorations for the sepulchral chamber; but the artist is at liberty to use them how and where he likes, in conjunction with other patterns.

"The spirals, swastikas, triskeles, and other rare forms, I am inclined to class with the secondary interments in burial-circles and barrows. These forms are all typical of Bronze-Age ornament, and may have been added to the original carvings without any very clear object or meaning beyond adding something to a collection of carvings obviously of a sacred character."

1

The aforesaid suggestion of Mr. Baildon does not commend itself to Mr. George Coffey. In a recent paper, on a stone at Ryfad, county Fermanagh, he points out that this stone, the surface of which is literally covered with cup-and-ring marks suggests votive sun emblems." It hardly supports Mr. W. Paley Baildon's recent theory that cup-and-ring markings are emblems of "ghost-houses." It agrees much better with M. Joseph Déchelette's view that they are to be regarded as sun-symbols.

Here we must leave the subject for the present.

1 Journal R. S. A. I., vol. xli, p. 25.

2 Manuel d'archéologie.

DYSERTH CASTLE

BY THOS. EDWARDS, BRYNTEG, CHESTER

THE purposes of Dyserth Castle,' though capable of being made one of offence or invasion, are mainly those of defence. It commands the lands towards the sea, and also the entrance to the Vale of Clwyd. On the north-east and south-east it commands the roads on the land side, closing Newmarket effectually, and bars the passage of any army by the low lands between the hills and the sea, which were then far more extensive than now.

The Castle is situated on the Rock of Maelan (now known as Graig Bach). The south and west sides are "dyn" or escarped, and the east side is joined by a narrow neck to the inclined ground in the rear. The latter is therefore the weakest side, and is compensated by the stronger defences of the Castle on that side of the fortress. Mr. E. W. Cox, whose description of the purposes and orientation, etc., has been freely quoted in this article, says there is an entrenched, nearly square, outer court, with a deep but not very wide ditch on the westward side, and a deeper and wider ditch is carried for about two-thirds of a circle round the north and west sides, till it ends at the precipitous face of the rock. This line of ditch is about 80 ft. from the wall of the inner court of the Castle. There is a peculiarity about this entrenchment which at first sight might lead to the supposition that the great earthwork was earlier than the Castle, as it follows the old British precedent of placing the vallum or bank outside the fosse. As a military work this is less strong than the plan of placing the ditch

1 E. W. Cox, Chester Arch., v, New Series, 365.
2 E. W. Cox, Chester Arch. Journal, v, 367.

exterior to the vallum. Notwithstanding this feature, it is evident that the Castle and entrenchments were planned together at one time.

The purpose of placing the ditch within the vallum in British forts was, in most cases, dictated by the

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need for driving the cattle within the enclosure in times of peril, and the inner ditch acted as drainage for the area which otherwise would have become an untenable quagmire if banked in like a pond. The same consideration has most likely prevailed at Dyserth; the deep and wide ditches were for the protection of

cattle brought together in time of attack, and they were thus kept from inconveniencing the garrison.

There are precedents for this in some of the castles of the north border (Norham, for instance), and in the entrenched farm of Irby Grange (a medieval manor of St. Werburgh's, exposed to raids from Wales) the large vallum is also external to the ditch as in British examples. This provision for collecting the live stock is a collateral proof of the defensive character of Dyserth. The entrenchments bear scarcely any vestiges of masonry, and were doubtless strengthened with a palisade of cleft oak, as usual in such works.

The outer court of the Castle was entrenched and no doubt stockaded, and would contain the penthouses and farm buildings and rick-yards, and, when strongly occupied, rough quarters for troops, or tents would be pitched in it. The buildings, judging from the scantiness of masonry remains, and the thin walls which were fitted for only a light superstructure, must have been made of timber or of wattle and daub, a material that resists fire much better than might be supposed. A bridge, probably a draw-bridge, crossed the moat to the great gate of the Castle. At the far side of the ditch there must have been some barrier to protect the well-tower on the left of the gate.

This gate was flanked on the proper right by a semicylindrical tower, and on the left by an irregularlysided polygonal tower, the arrangement of whose faces seems to indicate a preparation for a machicolation over the gateway. These towers are now broken down to less than half their original height and lie buried in their own debris to some depth, and the gateway passage is partially choked with rubbish.

Mr. Leonard Hughes, in his excavations, has disinterred the lower parts of the inner gateway, which was of two orders, with an acutely-pointed arch.

There is a large crescent-shaped court, whose wall, embracing the west side of the Castle on the verge of the rock, terminates on the north-west in a square

6TH SER. VOL. XII,

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