[876] Anon, Secret Societies of the Middle Ages: History of the Assassins.
[877] Fergusson, J., Rude Stone Monuments, p. 231.
[878] Fergusson, p. 523.
[879] Ibid., p. 390.
[880] Almost immediately above the cromlech is Dan’s Hill, and in close neighbourhood are Burham, Borough Court, Preston Hall, Pratling Street, and Bredhurst, i.e., Bred’s Wood. That Bred was San Od is possibly implied by the adjacent Snodhurst and Snodland. At Sinodun Hill in Berkshire, Skeat thinks Synods may have once been held. The Snodland neighbourhood in Kent abounds in prehistoric remains.
[881] The authorities assume that the cat is here cath, the Gaelic for war. It might equally well be cad, the Gaelic for holy: in the East a jehad is a Holy War.
[882] Lang, A., Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i., 72.
[883] A New Description of England, 1724.
[884] Sharon Turner informs us, on the authority of Cæsar, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, that the Britons “cleared a space in the wood, on which they built their huts and folded their cattle; and they fenced the avenues by ditches and barriers of trees. Such a collection of houses formed one of their towns.” Din is the root of dinas, the Welsh word in actual use for a town.
[885] Westropp, T. J., Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy, p. 165.