1. The cult of sacred stones or cairns.
The only objection which, so far as I can see, may be raised to these practices being absolutely common is the idea among many British archæologists that the cairns, in which term I include chambered barrows or dolmens and their skeletons, the cromlechs and stone passages, were set up for burial and not for worship. This idea has arisen because some of them have been used for burials. But I cannot accept this argument, because since the burials might have taken place at any time subsequent to their erection they prove nothing as to the reason of the erection; and further, if these chambered cairns were meant for burials, there should be burials in all of them, and yet there are none in the most majestic of them all, Maeshowe.
Let us consider a few facts in relation to the Semitic use of cairns referred to on [p. 244].
That the cromlechs found both in Britain and Syria—there are 780 in Ireland and 700 in Moab—are the remains of chambered cairns is pretty clear from the evidence brought forward by Borlase.[100]
Mr. John Bell, of Dundalk, disinterred over sixty cromlechs from cairns in Ulster. All dolmens were covered by tumuli according to Mr. Bell and Mr. Lukis. Monuments called cairns in the earliest Ordnance Survey have been marked dolmens in subsequent surveys (e.g. Townland of Leana in Clare) because the earth covering the stones had disappeared in the meantime.
Among the evidences of natural and artificial caves preceding cairns which replaced them are the twenty-four caves which have been explored in France (op. cit., p. 568).[101]
Borlase points out with regard to the Irish dolmens that large tumuli were not essential; all that was necessary was that the walls of the cell or crypt should be impervious to the elements and to wild animals. A creep or passage communicating with the edge of the mound is common to Ireland, Wales, Portugal and Brittany (op. cit., p. 428).
The facts that the cairns so often had their open ends facing the N.E. or S.E., and that the west end was generally higher, like the naos trilithons at Stonehenge, must be borne in mind.
Most of what we know of earliest man has been obtained from their lives in caves; what they ate, the contemporary fauna and their art are thus known to us, but caves have not been considered as tombs, though men have died and left their remains in them.
In the case of a dolmen, however, an artificial cave, as we shall see, the possibility of people living in them appears never to have been considered seriously, and the tomb theory has led to bad reasoning and forced argument.
When burials are absent it has been suggested that “owing to some peculiarity of the soil, the entire of the human remains have become decomposed, only the imperishable stone implements entombed with the body remaining.”[102]
Mr. Spence has pointed out the extreme improbability of Maeshowe being anything but a temple, and I may now add on the Semitic model. There were a large central hall and side rooms for sleeping, a stone door which could have been opened or shut from the inside, and a niche for a guard, janitor or hall porter! So high an authority as Colonel Leslie has pointed out that neither Maeshowe, New Grange and Dowth on the Boyne, nor Gavr Innis in Brittany bear any internal proof of being specially prepared as tombs.[103]
There is another point connected with these dolmens and cromlechs. An origin in the Semitic area easily explains why in Asia and Britain the dolmens are so alike, down to small details, such as the perforation of one of the side stones. Borlase has remarked also upon the similarity of Indian and Irish dolmens (op. cit., p. 755), similar holes also being common to them. The curious concentric circles, &c., found on some dolmen stones are common to Assyrian vessels.[104]
The most philosophical study of this question I have seen[105] certainly suggests that much light may be expected from this source.
Part of the cult of the sacred stones was the ceremony of anointing them. Robertson Smith (p. 214) gives us the meaning and history of anointing among the Semites, and notes its continuation from Jacob’s pouring oil on sacred stones at Bethel, through the time of Pausanias to that of the Pilgrims of the fourth century A.D.
The anointing of stones was certainly carried on in ancient times in Britain and Brittany. Baring-Gould tells us:[106]
“Formerly the menhir was beplastered with oil and honey and wax, and this anointing of the stones was condemned by the bishops. In certain places the local clergy succeeded in diverting the practice to the Churches. There are still some in Lower Brittany whose exterior walls are strung with wax lines arranged in festoons and patterns.
“In some places childless women still rub themselves against menhirs, expecting thereby to be cured of barrenness, but in others, instead, they rub themselves against stone images of saints.”
When I visited the Cave of Elephanta in 1871 I was told that the barren women of Bombay visit the cave once a year and anoint the standing stone in the chief chamber. In Egypt they still rub their bodies on the Colossi.