This vale is a cup-shaped hollow in the south side of Bow Hill; its
steep sides are clothed in a sombre garb of yews and at the farther end
of the combe is a solemn grove of these venerable trees amid which
broad noon becomes a mystic twilight filled with the spirit of awe; a
fitting place for the burial of warrior kings with wild, barbaric rite.
Tradition has it that many Danish chieftains were here defeated and
slain and that here beneath the yews they rest. But who shall say what
other strange scenes these lonely deeps in the bosom of the hills have
witnessed before Saxon or Dane replaced the Celt; who in turn, for all
his fierce and arrogant ways, went, by night, in fear and trembling of
those spiteful little men he himself displaced, and whose vengeance or
pitiful gratitude is perpetuated in the first romances of our
childhood. Though their living homes were in the primeval forests of
the Britain that was, their last long resting places were under the
open skies on the summits of the wind-swept Downs. Many of the smooth
green barrows that enclosed their remains have been ruthlessly rifled
and desecrated by greed or curiosity. It is to be hoped that the
votaries of this form of archaeological research have now discovered all
that they desired to know, and that our far-off ancestors will be left
to the peace we do not grudge our more immediate forefathers.




Appendix

THE SUSSEX DOWNS FROM END TO END


The following summary will suggest to the stranger how his time, if