Around the fire at night the inmates slept, with their feet towards it, and their heads towards the circumference.

These features, found in numbers of these dwellings, appear to denote the threefold division previously referred to; the servitors and women, on whom the labour of the household fell, next to the door, the body of the hall for common occupation, and the high seat beyond the fire for the master and head of the house. In these houses we, however, find a variation, which belongs to the smaller kind of residences. These have the fire not in the centre but at the back of the hut, furthest from the door, the smoke escaping through a hole at the back of the house; and at the sides of the hearth are stone seats, while next to the door, in some cases, there remain stone slabs, for the preparation of food. The reason for this change in the smaller residences is plainly the want of room for a central hearth and at the same time for habitation. We shall see later on that this alteration of plan has been handed down to comparatively late times, and that it attaches more. particularly to the smaller class of mediæval dwellings.

Another variation, but conveying the same idea of the sacred common hearth, is to be found on the western coast of North Britain. The brochs are large round towers, with thick walls, in the thickness of which are many small chambers and narrow passages of access. Practically they are tribal houses, and their erection is attributed to the Picts, in the sixth and seventh centuries. They have never been roofed, and in the circular open. court formed by the thick wall was the common tribal fire, which was never allowed to go out. Practically they are an extension of the family circular house, but this fashion of building, although

it recognises the common principle of the home or tribal hearth, did not obtain beyond the West of Scotland, although an analogous fashion is found in the early Irish raths.

But these relics, though from their permanent material they have survived to us, are by no means the only representatives of their class. In the lower country the materials of the house were rough timber and thatch, and in these we obtain a much closer approximation to the mediæval hall, and they have left their impress on its plan more markedly than the rude stone structures of the hills. It is natural to assume that the lowland houses must have been by far the most numerous, though their less enduring material has left us few, if any, existing early examples, but many survivals of their fashion of construction.

We may take here Seebohm's excellent description of the typical tribal or family house, from his work on The English Village Community, and then endeavour to trace back this class of building, if possible, to its origin, and forward to the development of the English mediæval hall.

"The tribal house is in itself typical of their (the tribe's) tribal and nomadic life. It is of the same type and pattern for all their orders, but varying in size according to the gradation of rank of the occupier. It is built, like the houses observed by Giraldus Cambrensis, of trees newly cut from the forest. A long straight pole is selected for the roof tree. Six well-grown trees, with suitable branches, reaching over to meet one another, and about the same size as the roof tree, are stuck upright in the ground, at even distances, on two parallel rows, three in each row. Their extremities bending over form a gothic arch; and crossing at the top each pair makes a fork, upon which the roof tree is fixed. These trees supporting the roof trees are called gavaels, forks, or columns, and they form the nave of the tribal house. Low walls of stakes and wattle shut in the aisles of the house, and over all is the roof of branches and rough thatch, while at the ends are the wattle doors of entrance. All along the aisles behind the pillars are placed beds of rushes, called 'gwelys' (lecti) beds, on which the inmates sleep. The footboards of the beds, between the columns, form the seats in the daytime. The fire is lighted on an open hearth in the centre of the nave, between the middle columns,

and in the chieftain's hall a screen runs between these central columns and either wall, so partially dividing off the upper portion, where the chief, the edling, and his principal officers have their own appointed places, from the lower end of the hall, where the humbler members of the household are ranged in order. The columns, like those in Homeric houses and Solomon's Temple, are sometimes cased with metal. The bed or seat of the chieftain is sometimes covered by a metal canopy. The kitchen and other out-buildings are ranged round the hall, and, beyond these again, the corn and cattle yard included in the tyddyn. The chieftain's hall is twice the size and value of the free tribesman's, and the free tribesman's twice the size of the treeog; but the plan of all is the same. They are built with similar green timber forks and roof tree, and wattled, with the fireplace in the nave and the rush beds in the aisles. In this tribal house the undivided household of the free tribesmen, comprising several generations down to the great-grandchildren of a common ancestor, lived together.

Strabo describes the Gallic houses as great houses, arched, constructed of planks, and covered with a heavy, thatched roof; and Tacitus, in his Germania, describes similar stake and wattle German houses. Perrot and Chipiez, in their work on Persian Architecture, give examples of the modern Persian houses of timber, corresponding to a considerable extent to the British and Gaulish timber houses, but having a flat roof. They show from ancient sculptures that these are identical with the ancient Persian house. Viollet le Duc, in his Habitations of Man, gives us a similar Median house, with its six pillars, also flat-roofed; and houses with much likeness to these, and including similar arrangements to those developed in the mediæval halls, are found existing in the Indian village communities, and among the Dyaks of Borneo, and some of the more settled races of Central Africa, to which reference need only be made in order to show the wide prevalence of the type, as regards location. And if it can also be shown that it reaches back to very distant periods of time, a fair primâ facie case may be made out for assigning a common origin to those primitive states of society under which the first

beginnings of settled and organised life made their appearance.

We may turn now to some of the best-marked ancient remains and indications which are to be found still existing, in order to find how far back our knowledge of this type can be carried. The Etruscans, who occupied Northern Italy prior to the founding of Rome, were a civilised people. It is an accepted opinion that with most of the nations of antiquity the tomb represented the house of the dead, and it was modelled and furnished with appliances that were used by the living; and this fact is more or less true of most ancient and many modern races, in various stages of civilization. The Etruscan tombs, then, show us decorated and furnished chambers, supplied with objects of use and art of the fashion prevalent at the time. But it is natural for such customs to become conventional, and to preserve in the tombs certain earlier fashions; so that there is a gradual separation between the sepulchral and the living surroundings, the former retaining the earlier type. We find, then, among the humbler burials of the Etruscan and earlier Latin races, a peculiar form of cinerary urn, for containing the ashes of the dead, and this represents, not the civilized character of masonry buildings, but a house having a side door; and on the sides, which slope inwards towards the top in an obtuse conical form, are projecting ribs that represent the timber posts of the primitive house. This at a period when masonry buildings were in common use, perpetuates the more ancient tribal house as the dwelling of the departed, and indicates the fashion of a bygone time.

The researches of Dr. Schliemann and Dr. Dorpfeld at Mykené, brought to light the plan

and ruins of the palace of the Atridæ, and the date of this building is estimated to reach back to the Homeric age, 1200 to 1400 years B.C. The plan of the great central building is a marvellous precursor of the English mediæval hall in all its features, and it also repeats the plan and divisions of the tribal house. But here there is no rude and primitive dwelling; at this early date the building, plainly as it discloses its origin, is a perfected structure, with all the additions and development of an early civilisation, derived, indeed, from the ruder early type, which is thus indefinitely set back, but showing a long-established pattern of the primeval house.

This building at Mykené, and a similar but less complete one at Tiryns, so perfectly presages the arrangement of the medieval hall, that it is desirable to describe it more in detail. It consists of a large oblong structure, having at one end a portico, open in front, and formerly carried by pillars of timber, set on stone bases. Next to the house is a wall, in which are three large doors. This "pro-naos" corresponds to the screens at the lower end of the mediæval hall. Beyond this again is another apartment, the "naos," for the use of the men. Another wall divides this from the third section, but it is also pierced by large doors, and corresponds with the retainers' place in the hall, below the central fire; though in the English form the dividing line is indicated by a central truss of timber, and not by a masonry wall. In the third section, representing the daïs, high table, and hearth of the mediæval hall, is set the great hearth, a circular structure, of plaster, showing elaborate ornamentation painted round its circumference, which has been carefully renewed with fresh plaster and ornament when the old became worn,