The barrows lie scattered all over the Forest, and are known to the Foresters by the name of “butts,” some of the largest being distinguished by local appellations. As in other parts of England, and as in France, superstition connects them with the fairies; and so we find on Beaulieu Plain two mounds known as the Pixey’s Cave and Laurence’s Barrow.
My own excavations have been entirely confined to the Keltic barrows in the northern part of the Forest.[238] But we will first of all take those on Sway and Shirley Commons, opened by Warner.[239] The largest stands a little to the east of Shirley Holms, close to Fetmoor Pond, measuring about a hundred yards in circumference, and surrounded by three smaller mounds varying from thirty to fifty yards, and two more nearly indistinct. These two last are, I suspect, those opened by Warner, where, after piercing the mound, he found on the natural soil a layer of burnt earth mixed with charcoal, and below this, at the depth of two feet, a small coarse urn with “an inverted brim,”[240] containing ashes and calcined bones.
Some more lie to the northward, and are distinguished by being trenched. Two of these also were opened by Warner, but he failed to discover anything beyond charcoal and burnt earth.
His opinion was that these last belonged to the West-Saxons and the former to the Kelts, who were slain defending their country against Cerdic. So large a generalization, however, requires far stronger evidence than can at present be produced.
Warner, too, is besides wrong in much of his criticism, such as that the Teutonic nations never practised urn-burial; whilst the banks in which he sees fortifications may be only the embankments within which dwelt a British population.
Still there is some probability about the conjecture. A little farther down the Brockenhurst stream are Ambrose Hole and Ampress Farm, both names unmistakeably referring to Ambrosius Aurelianus, or Natan-Leod, who led the Britons against their invaders. Nearer Lymington, too, stands Buckland Rings,[241] a Roman camp, with its south and north sides still nearly perfect, to which, perhaps, Natan-Leod fell back from Calshot.
All this, however, must be accepted as mere conjecture. A more critical examination of these barrows is still wanting.