That my paynys relessyd be."

If I remember rightly his helmet and other parts of his armour still
hang on the church wall. Leland describes Fairford as a "praty
uplandish towne," meaning, I suppose, that it is situated on high
ground. It is certainly a delightful old-fashioned place--a very good
type of what the Cotswold towns are like. Chipping-Campden and Burford
are, however, the two most typical Cotswold towns I know.

In the year 1850 a remarkable discovery was made in a field close to
Fairford. No less than a hundred and fifty skeletons were unearthed, and
with them a large number of very interesting Anglo-Saxon relics, some of
them in good preservation. In many of the graves an iron knife was found
lying by the skeleton; in others the bodies were decorated with bronze
fibulae, richly gilt, and ornamented in front. Mr. W. Wylie, in his
interesting account of these Anglo-Saxon graves, tells us that some of
the bodies were as large as six feet six inches; whilst one or two
warriors of seven feet were unearthed. All the skeletons were very
perfect, even though no signs of any coffins were to be seen. Bronze
bowls and various kinds of pottery, spearheads of several shapes, a
large number of coloured beads, bosses of shields, knives, shears, and
two remarkably fine swords were some of the relics found with the
bodies. A glass vessel, coloured yellow by means of a chemical process
in which iron was utilised, is considered by Mr. Wylie to be of Saxon
manufacture, and not Venetian or Roman, as other authorities hold.

Whether this is merely an Anglo-Saxon burial-place, or whether the
bodies are those of the warriors who fell in a great battle such as that
fought in A.D. 577, when the Saxons overthrew the Britons and took from
them the cities of Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, it is impossible
to determine. The natives are firmly convinced that the skeletons
represent the slain in a great battle fought near this spot; but this is
only tradition. At all events, the words of prophecy attributed to the
old Scotch bard Ossian have a very literal application with reference to
this interesting relic of bygone times: "The stranger shall come and
build there and remove the heaped-up earth. An half-worn sword shall
rise before him. Bending above it, he will say, 'These are the arms of
the chiefs of old, but their names are not in song.'" The "heaped-up"
earth has long ago disappeared, for there are no "barrows" now to be