The word eleven, like its French equivalent onze, ange, or angel, points to the probability that for some reason eleven was essentially the number sacred to the elven, anges, or onzes. Elphinstone, a fairly common surname, implies the erstwhile existence of many Elphinstones: there is an Alphian rock in Yorkshire; bronze urns have been excavated at Alphamstone in Essex, and the supposititious Aelfin, to whom the Alphington in Exeter is attributed, was far more probably Elphin.
The dimensions of many so-called longstones—whether solitary or in the centres of circles—point to the probability that menhirs or standing-stones were frequently and preferably 11 feet high. In Cornwall alone I have noted the following examples of which the measurements are extracted from The Victoria County History. The longstone at Trenuggo, Sancreed, now measures 11 feet 2 inches; that at Sithney 11 feet; that at Burras “about 10 feet,” that at Parl 12 feet; and that at Bosava 10 feet. In the parish of St. Buryan the longstones standing at Pridden, Goon Rith, Boscawen Ros, and Trelew, now measure respectively 11 feet 6 inches, 10 feet 6 inches, 10 feet, and 10 feet 4 inches.
If one takes into account such casualties of time as weathering, washing away of subsoil, upcrop of undergrowth, subsidence, and other accidents, the preceding figures are somewhat presumptive that each of the monuments in question was originally designed to stand 11 feet high.
Frequently a circle of stones is designated The Nine Maids, or The Virgin Sisters, or The Merry Maidens. The Nine Maidens is suggestive of the Nine Muses, and of the nine notorious Druidesses, which dwelt upon the Island of Sein in Brittany. The Merry Maidens may be equated with the Fairy or Peri Maidens, and that this phairy theory holds good likewise in Spain is probable from the fact that at Pau there is a circle of nine stones called La Naou Peyros.[628]
“When we inquired,” says Keightley, “after the fairy system in Spain, we were told that there was no such thing for that the Inquisition had long since eradicated such ideas.” He adds, however, “we must express our doubt of the truth of this charge”: I concur that not even the Inquisition was capable of carrying out such fundamental destruction as the obliteration of all peyros. Probably the old plural for peri or fairy was peren or feren, in which case the great Fernacre circle in the parish of St. Breward, Cornwall, was presumably the sacred eye or hoop of some considerable neighbourhood. About 160 feet eastward of Fernacre (which is one of the largest circles in Cornwall), and in line with the summit of Brown Willy (the highest hill in Cornwall) is a small erect stone. The neighbouring Row Tor (Roi Tor or Rey Tor?) rises due north of Fernacre circle, and as the editors of Cornwall point out: “If as might appear probable this very exact alignment north and south, east and west, was intentional, and part of a plan where Fernacre was the pivot of the whole, it is a curious feature that the three circles mentioned should have been so effectively hidden from each other by intervening hills”.[629]
The major portion of this district is the property of an Onslow family; there is an Onslow Gardens near Alvastone Place in Kensington, and there is a probability that every Alvastone, Elphinstone, or Onslow neighbourhood was believed to be inhabited by Elven or Anges: it is indeed due to this superstition that the relatively few megalithic monuments which still exist have escaped damnation, the destruction where it has actually occurred having been sometimes due to a deliberate and bigoted determination, “to brave ridiculous legends and superstitions”.[630] Naturally the prevalent and protective superstitions were fostered and encouraged by prehistoric thinkers for the reasons doubtless quite rightly surmised by an eighteenth century archæologist who wrote: “But the truth of the story is, it was a burying place of the Britons before the calling in of the heathen sexton (sic query Saxon) into this Kingdom. And this fable invented by the Britons was to prevent the ripping up of the bones of their ancestors.” The demise of similar fables under the corrosive influence of modern kultur, has involved the destruction of countless other stone-monuments, so that even of Cornwall, their natural home, Mr. T. Quiller Couch was constrained to write: “Within my remembrance the cromlech, the holy well, the way-side cross and inscribed stone, have gone before the utilitarian greed of the farmer and the road man, and the undeserved neglect of that hateful being, the cui bono man”.
Parish Councils of to-day do not fear to commit vandalisms which private individuals in the past shrank from perpetrating.[631] A Welsh “Stonehenge” at Eithbed, Pembrokeshire, shown on large-scale Ordinance maps issued last century, has disappeared from the latest maps of the district, and a few years ago an archæologist who visited the site reported that the age-worn stones had been broken up to build ugly houses close by—“veritable monuments of shame”.
In the Isle of Purbeck near Bournemouth, Branksea, Bronksea (Bronk’s ea or island) Branksome and numerous other Bron place-names which imply that the district was once haunted by Oberon, is a barrow called Puckstone, and on the top of this barrow, now thrown down, is a megalith said to measure 10 feet 8 inches. In all probability this was once 11 feet long, and was the Puckstone or Elphinstone of that neighbourhood: near Anglesea at Llandudno is a famous longstone which again is eleven feet high.
In Glamorganshire there is a village known as Angel Town, and in Pembroke is Angle or Nangle: Adamnan, in his Life of Columba, records that the saint opened his books and “read them on the Hill of the Angels, where once on a time the citizens of the Heavenly Country were seen to descend to hold conversation with the blessed man”. Upon this his editor comments: “this is the knoll called ‘great fairies hill’. Not far away is the ‘little fairies hill’. The fairies hills of pagan mythology became angels hills in the minds of the early Christian saints.”[632] One may be permitted to question whether this metamorphosis really occurred, and whether the idea of Anges or Angles is not actually older than even the Onslows or ange lows. The Irish trinity of St. Patrick, St. Bride, and St. Columba, are said all to lie buried in one spot at Dunence, and the place-name Dunence seemingly implies that that site was an on’s low, or dun ange. The term angel is now understood to mean radically a messenger, but the primary sense must have been deeper than this: in English ingle—as in inglenook—meant fire, and according to Skeat it also meant a darling or a paramour. Obviously ingle is here the same word as angel, and presumably the more primitive Englishman tactfully addressed his consort as “mine ingle”. The Gaelic and the Irish for fire is aingeal; we have seen that the burnebee or ladybird was connected with fire, and that similarly St. Barneby’s Day was associated with Barnebee Bright: hence the festival held at Englewood, or Inglewood (Cumberland) yearly on the day of St. Barnabas would appear to have been a primitive fire or aingeal ceremony. It is described as follows: “At Hesket in Cumberland yearly on St. Barnabas Day by the highway side under a Thorn tree according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air, is kept the Court for the whole Forest of Englewood, the ‘Englyssh wood’ of the ballad of Adam Bel”.[633]
Stonehenge used to be entitled Stonehengels, which may be modernised into the Stone Angels,[634] each stone presumably standing as a representative of one or other of the angelic hierarchy. When the Saxons met the British in friendly conference at Stonehenge—apparently even then the national centre—each Saxon chieftain treacherously carried a knife which at a given signal he plunged into the body of his unarmed, unsuspecting neighbour; subsequently, it is said, hanging the corpses of the British royalties on the cross rocks of Stonehenge: hence ever after this exhibition of Teutonic realpolitik Stonehenge has been assumed to mean the Hanging Stones, or Gallow Stones.[635] We find, however, that Stonehenge was known as Stahengues or Estanges, a plural form which may be connoted with Hengesdun or Hengston Hill in Cornwall: Stonehenge also appears under the form Senhange, which may have meant either Old Ange or San Ange, and as the priests of ancient cults almost invariably assumed the character and titles of their divinity it is probable that the Druids were once known as Anges. In Irish the word aonge is said to have meant magician or sorcerer, which is precisely the character assigned by popular opinion to the Druids. In Rode hengenne, another title of Stonehenge,[636] we have apparently the older plural hengen with the adjectival rood or ruddy, whence Stonehenge would seem to have been a shrine of the Red Rood Anges.