Читать книгу English Villages - P. H. Ditchfield - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Stone monuments—Traditions relating to them—Menhirs or hoar-stones—Alignements—Cromlechs—Stonehenge—Avebury—Rollright stones—Origin of stone circles—Dolmens—Earthworks—Chun Castle—Whittenham clumps—Uffington—Tribal boundaries—Roman rig—Grims-dike—Legends—Celtic words.

Among the antiquities which some of our English villages possess, none are more curious and remarkable than the grand megalithic monuments of the ancient races which peopled our island. Marvellous memorials are these of their skill and labour. How did they contrive to erect such mighty monuments? How did they move such huge masses of stone? How did they raise with the very slender appliances at their disposal such gigantic stones? For what purpose did they erect them? The solution of these and many such-like problems we can only guess, and no one has as yet been bold enough to answer all the interesting questions which these rude stone monuments raise.

Superstition has attempted to account for their existence. Just as the flint arrow-heads are supposed by the vulgar to be darts shot by fairies or witches which cause sickness and death in cattle and men, and are worn as amulets to ward off disease; just as the stone axes of early man are regarded as thunder bolts, and when boiled are esteemed as a sure cure for rheumatism, or a useful cattle medicine—so these stones are said to be the work of the devil. A friend tells me that in his childhood his nurse used to frighten him by saying that the devil lurked in a dolmen which stands near his father’s house in Oxfordshire; and many weird traditions cluster round these old monuments.

In addition to the subterranean sepulchral chambers and cairns which we have already examined, there are four classes of megalithic structures. The first consists of single stones, called in Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, menhirs, a name derived from the Celtic word maen or men signifying a stone, and hir meaning tall. In England they are known as “hoar-stones,” hoar meaning a boundary, inasmuch as they are frequently used in later times to mark the boundary of an estate, parish, or manor. There is one at Enstone, Oxfordshire, and at Wardington, Warwickshire. Possibly they were intended to mark the graves of deceased chieftains.

The second class consists of lines of stones, which the French call alignements. Frequently they occur in groups of lines from two to fourteen in number, Carnac, in Brittany, possesses the best specimen in Europe of this curious arrangement of giant stones.

The third class of megalithic monuments is the circular arrangement, such as we find at Avebury and Stonehenge. These are now usually called cromlechs, in accordance with the term used by French antiquaries, though formerly this name was applied in England to the dolmens, or chambered structures, of which we shall speak presently. According to the notions of the old curator of Stonehenge the mighty stones stood before the Deluge, and he used to point out (to his own satisfaction) signs of the action of water upon the stones, even showing the direction in which the Flood “came rushing in.” The Welsh bards say that they were erected by King Merlin, the successor of Vortigern; and Nennius states that they were erected in memory of four hundred nobles, who were treacherously slain by Hengist, when the savage Saxons came. There is no need to describe these grand circles of huge stones which all antiquaries have visited.

The cromlech at Avebury covers a larger area than that of Stonehenge, the circle being about 1,300 feet in diameter. There is a fine circle at Rollright, in Oxfordshire, which is the third largest in England. The diameter of the circle is about 107 feet, and the stones numbered originally about sixty. Near the circle stand the Five Whispering Knights, five large stones leaning together, probably the remains of a dolmen, and a large solitary stone, or menhir. Popular tradition has woven a strange legend about these curious relics of bygone ages. A mighty chieftain once ruled over the surrounding country; but he was ambitious, and wished to extend his sway, and become King of England. So he mustered his army, and the oracle proclaimed that if he could once see Long Compton, he would obtain his desire. Having proceeded as far as Rollright, he was repeating the words of the oracle—

“If Long Compton I can see,

King of England I shall be”—

when Mother Shipton, who had doubtless ridden on her broomstick from her Norfolk home, appeared and pronounced the fatal spell—

“Move no more; stand fast, stone;

King of England thou shall none.”