¹ E. H. Stone, The Stones of Stonehenge, London, 1924, p. 140, quotes the story first published by John Wood, Choir Gaure, 1724, and repeated in A Voice from Stonehenge compiled by J. Easton, Salisbury, 1821, 1826, which tells of Merlin's desire to have “the Parcel of Stones which grew in an odd sort of Form in a Backside belonging to an old Woman in Ireland,” of his employment of the Devil who dressed as a gentleman and offered the old woman as much money as she could count “while he should be taking them away.” Stone, p. 141, thinks this story originated with Gaffer Hunt of Ambresbury, a venerable old man with whom Wood lodged. In its reference to Merlin and Ireland the story is reminiscent of Geoffrey of Monmouth's legend of Stonehenge but is otherwise entirely independent. The Devil in Wood's story was supposed to have bound up the stones and in an instant have transported them to Salisbury Plain. He appears similarly in many other megalithic folktales. Cf. P. Sébillot, Traditions . . . de la Haute-Bretagne, Paris, 1882, I, 20 ff.

² Cf. R. H. Fletcher, Arthurian Materials in the Chronicles, Boston, 1906, Index.

³ For a witty summary of some of the theories propounded in the thousand and more books and articles on Stonehenge see A.H. Allcroft,“The Age of Stonehenge,” Nineteenth Century, 1920, pp. 678 ff. “Stonehenge,” he says, “has been assigned to almost every people from Dan unto Denmark, to every date between Cheops and Canute.—It stands as the Tower of Confusion of English archaeology.” For a bibliography of Stonehenge see The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, Dec. 1901.

⁴ For modern studies see in particular P. Sébillot, Le Folk-Lore de France, Paris, 1904, I, 300-58; Traditions. . . de la Haute-Bretagne, ch. 1-2; W. Johnson, Folk Memory, Oxford, 1908 (Index); Ritchie, “Folklore of the Aberdeenshire Stone Circles,” Proc. Soc. Antiq. of Scotland, Ser. V (1926) XII, 304 ff.; S. Reinach, “Les monuments de pierre brute dans le langage et les croyances populaires, Rev. Arch. XXX (1893) 195 ff.; A. J. Evans, ”The Rollright Stones and their Folklore,“ Folk Lore, V (1895) 6 ff.; A. J. Evans, Archaeological Review, London, 1889, ”Stonehenge,“ II, 312-330.

⁵ Cf. T. D. Kendrick, The Druids, London, 1927, pp. 4-17; G. F. Black, Druids and Druidism, New York Public Library, 1920, for an invaluable bibliography.

⁶ The prevailing earlier opinion of Geoffrey's story is thus expressed by Fletcher, Arthurian Materials in the Chronicles, p. 93, n. 3: “That Geoffrey had any definite basis for most of the details included in this episode no one has ever shown, though Rhys had a theory to account for some of them.” Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, 1886, Celtic Heathendom, 2nd edition, 1892, 192 ff. believed “that Stonehenge belonged to the Celtic Zeus whose later legendary self we have in Merlin.” Apart from conjectures, Rhys called attention to the stone circle found by Diarmait in the story of the Gilla Decair and to the stone circle described in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick. See below, n. 42.

⁷ Edited by Whitley Stokes, Irische Texts, IV (1900), with translation, pp. 225-271, of the parts omitted in the translation by S. O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, London, 1892, II, 101-265.

⁸ R. Thurneysen, Die irische Helden- u. Königsage, Halle, 1921, p, 48, dates the Colloquy between 1142 and 1200.

⁹ O'Grady, pp. 153, 163, 193, 259; Stokes, p. 58, 67, 208.

¹⁰ Called the green sepulchral mounds, the sod-built earth hills: O'Grady, pp. 126, 140, 178, 188, 189, 261; Stokes, p. 227, 252.

¹¹ Called graves, excavations in the earth, etc., O'Grady, pp. 172, 175 (where four hundred were buried together), 181, 183.

¹² O'Grady, pp. 129, “three huge pillar stones,” 170 “the pillar stone of Usnach,” 181 the “monumental stones of the Fiana,” 183, 255 “the three men's pillar-stones” described on p. 256 as three “monoliths.” The Lia in imracail, a royal pillar stone, is described (Stokes, p. 270) as “a huge mass of rock.” For “stones over graves” see Stokes, p. 225 (O'Grady, p. 122), p. 90 (O'Grady, p. 181), p. 252. Borlase, Dolmens, 111, 785, notes that many great rocks are still similarly ascribed to the Fiana. “Lackaneen, a circle in (Meath) is perhaps Lacka na bh-Fian, ”Flagstones of the Fians.“ Dolmens in Ireland are constantly described as the beds or graves of the mythic figures of antiquity. Cf. Eleanor Hull, Folk-Lore, XXXVII (1927), 244 ff.

¹³ Stokes, pp. 58-59, 226; O'Grady, p. 154. The huge skull mentioned was said to be that of Garbdaire. One colossal grave of the “ancients” is described in the Colloquy (O'Grady, p. 154) as being seven score feet in length and twenty-eight in width.

¹⁴ Three of the Fiana, even in their old age, were able to lift one of the mighty stones of a great tomb (O'Grady, p. 156). The old Cailte of the Fiana could lift a stone four hundred ordinary men vainly tried to move (O'Grady, p. 172).

¹⁵ In his authoritative archaeological work on The Stones of Stonehenge, already cited, Stone states (p. 34): “Except that the peristyle of Stonehenge happens to be circular in plan there is absolutely nothing about this highly specialized design which has anything in common with the stone circle.” But the exaggeration of this remark is obvious even if one confines one's self to Stone's own description (p. 1) of Stonehenge as consisting of four series of stones: “1, An Outer Circle of Sarsen stones; 2, An Inner Circle of blue stones; 3, Five great trilithons—somewhat in horseshoe shape; 4, An inner horseshoe of blue stones.”

¹⁶ Cf. Borlase, Dolmens, I, 275, Fig. 257; R. A. S. Macalister, Archaeology of Ireland, Dublin, 1928, p. 106. The earthring about Stonehenge is best shown in an aerial photograph, Archæologia, LX (1907) Part II, Pl. LXX, p. 571. The earliest known print of Stonehenge, reproduced by Stone, Stonehenge, Pl. 36, from a Dutch manuscript of 1574, illustrates in remarkable fashion the artist's conception of Stonehenge as a stone circle.

¹⁷ In the Welsh versions of the Historia the phrase cor y ceuri preserves the primary meaning of cor, ‘circle of the giants’ (Griscom, p. 432, n.) On cor as a Celtic word see J. Loth, Rev. Celt. XLIV (1927) 272-81. Celtic cor and Latin coraula had by the 12th century acquired the sense of dance. See U. T. Holmes, Language, IV (1928) 29, 202, who connects OF caroler with Breton coroll. Cf. Wace, 8383. “Breton les solent en bretan Apeler Karole as gaians.” Of course Geoffrey's Chorea meant dance. In the earliest version of the story of the Accursed Dancers, the group is referred to as “famosa illa chorea.” This version is in the works of Lambert of Hersfeld, d. 1083 (Herbert, Cat. of Romances, III, 283). In referring to this story William of Malmesbury (De Gestis Anglorum, Rolls Series I, 204), uses Chorea in this sense.

¹⁸ Archaeological Journal, XV (1858) 204; Victoria County Hist. of Somerset, p. 191; Somerset Arch. and Natural Hist. Soc. XIV, II, 161; Dymond, Stanton Drew, 1896.

¹⁹ Victoria County Hist. of Cornwall, I, p. 380 and Plate.

²⁰ R. A. S. Macalister, Ireland in Pre-Celtic Times, 1921, p. 294, Fig. 100.

²¹ Borlase, Dolmens, II, 592, Fig. 474.

²² Noted in Victoria County Hist. of Cornwall, p. 383.

²³ Reinach, Cultes, III, 374, 423; Bézier, Inventaire des monuments megalith. d'Ille-et-Vilaine, p. 163, also Pl. XXII; Sébillot, Le Folk-Lore de France, IV, 12 ff.

²⁴ Reinach, III, 377; Boisvillette, Statistique archéol. d'Eure-et-Loire, p. 59.

²⁵ The text and translation of the Life of St. Sampson are given by T. Taylor, Celtic Christianity in Cornwall, London, 1916, p. 33; P. Sébillot, Le paganisme contemporain chez les peuples Celto-Latins, Paris, 1908, p. 310.

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 2, 39, 79, 251. See also Eleanor Hull, Folklore of the British Isles, London, 1928, p. 96.

²⁷ Revue des traditions populaires, 1907, pp. 417-419; Reinach, Cultes, III, 411.

²⁸ Monumento, Germanise Historica, ed. Mommsen, Berlin, 1898, III, 214 ff. Possibly this remote provincial author did not know of Stonehenge at all but he did know of at least two sites in his own western part of Britain which he associated with Arthurian legend, i.e., the Carn Caval and the large mound supposed to mark the grave of Anir, Arthur's son. Cf. ibid., p. 217.

²⁹ The allusions occur chiefly in the Welsh poem of the “Gododin,” once supposed to be the work of the sixth century poet Aneurin. Skene, Four Books of Ancient Wales, II, 359, terms the attempt to find the occasion of this poem in the traditional slaughter of the British chiefs at Stonehenge, one of the most curious pieces of perverted ingenuity in Welsh literature. The triads also have been supposed to contain allusions to Stonehenge but the material seems too uncertain for argument. Cf. Loth, Mabinogion, II, 321, n. 1.

³⁰ Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 192, believed Geoffrey's Killara(us) was in the parish of Killare, Co. Westmeath, where, according to Gerald of Wales, a famous stone was still known as the umbilicus Hiberniae. Gerald himself believed Stonehenge had been taken from Kildare near Nass (Topog. Hib. II, xviii; Works, V, 100; III, iv). As Gerald evidently knew Geoffrey's story it would seem that his Kildare was either a misreading of Geoffrey's Killare, or a deliberate change to Kildare. Borlase, Dolmens, II, 439, noted that dolmens are practically lacking in the region of Kildare.

³¹ “The one statement which can be made positively about the object of stone circles is that many of them were erected in honor of the dead:” Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 211 (cf. p. 208, n. 3, for a useful bibliographical note on the worldwide use of sepulchral stone circles). See also Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times, 6th ed. 1902, p. 103; Hastings, Encyc. of Religion and Ethics, III, 191; J. A. Macculloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 281; J. E. Lloyd, History of Wales, 1911, I, 23, etc.

³² Stone, Stones of Stonehenge, pp. 116 ff.

³³ “Within a circular area of twenty miles about Stonehenge—there are 15.3 barrows to a square mile,” Stone, ibid., p. 35. To so cautious a scholar as Dr. Rice Holmes, Ancient Britain, p. 217, the monument and the vast necropolis of barrows seemed “indissolubly connected.”

In some cases actual excavation may have informed medieval people, as it has modem, of the sepulchral use of stone circles. Hidden treasure, in old as in modern times, was commonly supposed to be hidden under prehistoric structures of all sorts. For modern instances see Johnson, Folk Memory, Oxford, 1908, p. 163 ff.; also Sébillot, Le Folk-Lore de France, I, 331, 333; II, 44; IV, 19 ff., 44, 107. In the Colloquy of the Ancients (O'Grady, II, 126) the story is told of a tumulus from which St. Patrick's companions took a spearshaft's length of rings and bracelets. The excavation of tumuli and barrows seems always to have been more general, however, than digging about megalithic stones. Superstitious awe for the stones has for the most part protected them into recent times. Cf. Sébillot, IV, 51 ff.

³⁴ For the geographical distribution of stone circles in Britain see B. Windle, Remains of the Prehistoric Age in England, London, 1904, pp. 197 ff. For the most recent and comprehensive study of stone circles in Britain and elsewhere see H. A. Allcroft, The Circle and the Cross, London, 1927, vol. 1. Cf. p. 81 ff.

³⁵ See above, n. 12.

³⁶ O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 543 (LL. 190: 3) and p. 377 (Book of Ballymote) for The Death of Crimthann . . . and Fiachra.

³⁷ As in the story alluded to in n. 13.

³⁸ The dragon's cave in Beowulf is thus styled. This and the Danish jaettestue, giant-chamber, have long since been recognized as earth-covered megalithic funeral mounds. Cf. W. W. Lawrence, Beowulf and Epic Tradition, Cambridge, 1928, p. 211 ff.; PMLA XXXIII, (1918), 569-583, 210. Archaeologia, XLII, 202; O. G. Crawford, The Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, Gloucester, 1925, p. 27.

³⁹ Allcroft, Circle and Cross, 1, 122 ff., 131: “As early as the ninth century the Danes had no less than three centres of royalty . . . at each of which was a stone circle.” He cites Olaus Magnus (d. 1558) on the old custom of electing kings of Sweden in a circle of twelve stones; the last one so elected was King Erec in 1396. For further discussion and evidence see F. Wildte, “Scandinavian Thingsteads,” Antiquity, II (1928), 328-336. The use of stone circles for moots or assemblies is alluded to by Homer, Iliad, XVIII, 497; cf. Allcroft, pp. 81-92.

⁴⁰ A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois: Paris, 1897, pp. 400 ff. lists many of the decrees, from the degree of Arles, 452, down to the end of the seventeenth century. See also E. Cartailhac: La France Préhistorique, 1899, pp. 316 ff. Texts given in extenso by Danjou de la Garenne, Statistique des monuments celtiques de l'arrondissement de Fougeres, App. Mém. de la Soc. Arch. d'Ille-et-Vilaine, II, 71-83. Both Charlemagne and Canute specifically forbade the barbaric cults connected with the worship of stones. Cf. D'Arbois de Jubainville, “Le Culte des Menhir dans le monde Celtique,” Comptes rendus â l'Acad. Inscript. 1906, pp. 146 ff.; Mortillet, see below, note 44, Sébillot, Le Paganisme Contemporain, p. 132 ff. J. F. Ffrench, Prehistoric Faith and Worship, L., 1912, p. 22, cites some particularly interesting thirteenth century prohibitions (Norse and English) of stone worship and notes that even as late as 1656 the Presbytery of Dingwall (Ross) forbade the adoring of stones and wells.

⁴¹ See above, n. 25.

⁴² In the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick the story is told of his overthrow of the great stone idol known as Cromm Cruaich which was surrounded by twelve lesser stone idols. See below, n. 54. All scholars are agreed that this story refers to an ancient twelve-stone circle surrounding a great central stone.

⁴³ In addition to the references given in the text see S. Baring-Gould, A Book of Brittany, 1909, p. 21 (oil on menhir); G. F. Black, Examples of Printed Folklore concerning Orkney and Shetland, 1903 (people healed by water in which they had washed stone of St. Conval; G. Henderson, Survivals in Belief among the Celts, Glasgow, 1911, pp. 198-209; Folklore XIII, 235, XVI (1905), 339 (Arthur's stone, Gower, crawled round by girls); 339, curative spittle rubbed from cromlech near Cardiff; XVII, 448 (Irish cromlechs cure barrenness); XXII (1911) 51 (offerings made as late as 1840 on so-called Druid's Altar). Sébillot's Le Folk-Lore de France has many important references on the curative power of megalithic stones. See Index, Médicine, les mégaliths; Sterilité. Macalister, Arch. of Ireland, p. 101.

⁴⁴ Efforts to Christianize ancient Stones of Worship have resulted in little more than the placing of crosses upon them. Cf. A. de Mortillet, “Les Monuments mégalithiques christianisés,” Rev. de l'Ecole d'Anthropologie, VII (1897) 321 ff.; O'Laverty, “Notes on Pagan Monuments in the Immediate Vicinity of Ancient Churches,” Journ. Roy. Hist. Arch. Soc. XV, 103.

⁴⁵ H. H. Thomas, “The Source of the Stones of Stonehenge,” Antiquaries Journal, III (1923), 239-258. In this important article by a member of the British Geological Survey, it is established that the blue stones in no single case weighed more than two and a half tons, that geologically the stones belong to the Prescelly region from which they must have been brought by land transport, that they were dressed at some period, presumably long after their arrival, in order to conform to those other dressed stones of Stonehenge which represent the latest and most advanced stage of megalithic work.

⁴⁶ Thomas's results are accepted by R. E. Wheeler, Prehistoric and Roman Wales, Oxford, 1925, p. 100; Stone, Stonehenge, p. 64; Kendrick, The Druids, p. 152, the new Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1929, xxi, 439.

⁴⁷ Bushell, “Amongst the Prescelly Circles,” Archaeol. Cambrensis, Ser. 6, vol. XI, 1911, 287 ff. speaks of the Prescelly area as a “prehistoric Westminster;” Thomas, p. 257, as an “area containing one of the richest collections of megalithic remains in Britain.” He observes that only the special veneration in which stones of this area were held can account for their laborious removal to Stonehenge, for the stones themselves are in no way better than those available on Salisbury Plain.

⁴⁸ Quoted by Stukeley, Stonehenge, 1740, p. 49: “Sir Christopher Wrenn said there were many such structures as Stonehenge in Africa, being temples to Saturn.” Some five or six thousand dolmens in North Africa, many of them surrounded by circles, were examined by General Faidherbe, Comptes rendus du Congrès Préhistorique, 1872; Borlase, Dolmens, III, 713-19. A valuable recent study of some seventy stone circles in West Africa was made by H. Parker, “Some Circles in Gambia,” Proc. Anthrop. Institute of Great Britain, LIII (1923) 173 ff. These circles were close to villages and were regarded with awe by the natives. Cf. also J. W. Fewkes, “Great Stone Monuments in History and Geography,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, LXI, (1913) 14 ff.: “In Berrary, Africa, Dr. Forbes Watson counted 2129 megalithic monuments;” A. Lissauer, “The Habyles of N. Africa,” Smithsonian Report, 1911, p. 523 ff.

⁴⁹ H. Barth, Travels in North Africa, 1849-56, London, 1857, I, 58, 74. At Oran, near Djelfa, in Zenzer, there is a circle of standing stones and a trilithon ten feet high. Cf. Livingston, Missionary Travels in Africa, pp. 219, 304; Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times, pp. 100, 105.

⁵⁰ J. M. Jones, app. B in Rhys, The Welsh People, London, 1909, pp. 630 ff.; J. E. Lloyd, History of Wales, 1911, I, 15 ff.

In this connection it is of interest to note the arguments set forth by G. Elliot Smith for the spread of Egyptian influence far north of the Mediterranean, Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1912, 1913; also W. J. Perry, Children of the Sun, N. Y., 1923, pp. 436 ff.; Index, Megalithic. T. E. Peett, Annual of the British School at Athens, XVII (1910), 250 ff., altogether denies, however, the possibility of Egyptian influence on the building of megaliths even in the Mediterranean region.

⁵¹ See A. A. Lewis, “Some Stone Circles in Ireland,” Jour. Anthrop. Inst. of Great Britain, XXXIX (1909) 517 ff.; Macalister, Archaeology of Ireland, Index; Borlase, Dolmens, Index.

⁵² On the pre-Celtic origin of megalithic remains in France and Britain, see Bertrand, Archéol. Celt. et Gauloise, Paris, 1889, p. 125; J. A. Macculloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts, 1911, p. 281; Hastings, Encycl. of Religion and Ethics, III, 391; A. Macbain, “Druid Circles,” Gaelic Soc. of Inverness, Transactions, 1885, XI, 23-50.

⁵³ The Irish story, “The Expulsion of the Dessi,” (Ed. K. Meyer, Y Cymmrodor XIV (1901) 112 ff.) was composed sometime during the eighth century. The Dessi were supposed to have left Leinster in the third century. See C. H. Slover, “Early Literary Channels between Britain and Ireland,” Univ. of Texas Studies in English, No. 6, 1926, p. 15, a work which discusses the available evidence concerning the early Irish in Britain. Cf. C. O'Rahilly, Ireland and Wales, L., 1924, p. 39 ff.

Thomas's remarks, Antiquaries Jour. III, 258, are of special interest, He notes that as early as 1833 Conybeare believed Geoffrey's legend concerning the importation of the stones had an element of truth: “We now realize that a derivation from the west is the only tenable view to take with regard to the foreign stones of Stonehenge and it certainly seems probable that little discrimination would be exercised in early times in any legendary story between the extreme west of Wales and the south of Ireland. Again there is the possibility of the same race occupying both regions, and thus the name Ireland might have been applied later to indicate a racial character rather than a definite locality.” Mr. Thomas was ignorant of the actual settlement of the Dessi in Pembrokeshire.

⁵⁴ The worship of Cromm is described in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick (ed. Rolls Series, I, 93); also in the Rennes Dinnschenchas, (cf. Meyer, Voyage of Bran, 11,305). The Tripartite Life is dated by K. Mulchrone between 895-901 (Zts. f. celt. Phil. XVI (1928). The most important study of the cult of Cromm Cruaich, its localization, its survivals, is that by J. P. Dalton, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. XXXVI (1922) 22-67. See also R. A. Macalister, Ireland in pre-Christian Times, Dublin, 1921, p. 195; L. Hibbard Loomis, Mod. Phil. XXV (1928) 345 ff.

⁵⁵ The two ancient accounts of Cromm's worship describe a central idol surrounded by twelve stones. It is admitted by all writers on the subject that the story must concern one of the smaller stone circles of this familiar type. See Allcroft, Circle and Cross, p. 257; Macalister, op. cit. p. 195, etc.

⁵⁶ I am indebted to the Rev. Acton Griscom for the following name observations. In the group of Latin MSS studied by him for his edition of Geoffrey's Historia the name Gilloman(n)ius occurs twelve times; Gilla once; and thirteen times in one of these spellings, Gillomaurus, Gillamurius, Gillamurus, Gillmaurus, Gilmarius. The Welsh equivalent is uniformly Gilamwri.

It is of interest to note that the early Irish word gilla antedates the Norse period in Ireland and is found in combination with other words as early as the eighth century. Cf. C. Marstrander, “Altirische Personennamen mit Gilla,” Zts. f. celt. Phil. XIII (1921), 1 ff. In combination with the Irish word mor the name might have meant Great Servant.

⁵⁷ Slover, op. cit., p. 27; Macalister, Studies in Irish Epigraphy, London, 1897-1907, III, 210, 80.

⁵⁸ For a valuable discussion of the present status of this question see Roger S. Loomis, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthurian Origins,” Speculum, III (1928) 19 ff.

⁵⁹ The writer has in hand the material for a study of the prehistoric twelve stone circle in connection with certain Arthurian descriptions of the burial of twelve men in a circle.