Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/230

Rh describes it. He considered the Harlyn interments to date from about the third century

There were found at the time a great many needles and prongs of slate, which were afterwards exhibited on the spot and sold to tourists as stone spear-heads. They were no such thing. They were splinters of a soft local slate that had been rolled by the wind and grated by the sand into the shape they assumed, and such are found all through the district.

Dr. Beddoe came down and examined the skulls and skeletons. He considered the interments to be late, and of a race somewhat short in stature, with dolichocephalic skulls, not prognathous. ‘We may conjecture with some confidence that it was after the Gallo–Belgic and before the Roman Conquest.’ There were marked peculiarities in the skulls, distinguishing them from those of the Aryan Celt and from those of the men of the Bronze period. It seemed to me that a necropolis of an intrusive people, peaceable, who, whereas all around them burnt their dead, continued religiously to inter theirs.

The main road from Padstow along the coast cuts through this ancient cemetery. It is interesting to note that this portion of