| Dolmens. | Terminations in ac. | |
| Lot | 500 | 71 |
| Finistère | 500 | 3 |
| Morbihan | 250 | 26 |
| Ardèche | 155 | 16 |
| Aveyron | 125 | 35 |
| Dordogne | 100 | 75 |
| Vienne (Haute et Basse) | 82 | 41 |
| Côtes du Nord | 56 | 8 |
| Maine-et-Loire | 53 | — |
| Eure-et-Loir | 40 | — |
| Gard | 32 | 16 |
| Aube | 28 | 1 |
| Indre-et-Loire | 28 | — |
| Charente | 26 | 50 |
| Creuse | 26 | 6 |
| Charente-Inférieure | 24 | 21 |
| Lozère | 19 | 16 |
| Corrèze | 17 | 42 |
| Vendée | 17 | — |
| Loire-Inférieure | 16 | 11 |
| Sarthe | 15 | — |
| Ille-et-Vilaine | 15 | 18 |
| Deux-Sèvres | 15 | — |
| Orne | 14 | — |
| Indre | 13 | 3 |
| Manche | 13 | — |
| Pyrénées-Orientales | 12 | 2 |
| Puy-de-Dôme | 10 | 3 |
| Oise | 9 | — |
| Cantal | 8 | 37 |
| Tarn-et-Garonne | 7 | 16 |
Footnotes
[379] 'Revue archéologique,' August, 1864, 148 et seq.
[380] Livy, v. chap. 34.
[381] Walcknaer, 'Géographie des Gaules.' The earlier chapters and Map V.
[382] 'Revue archéologique,' new series, vii. 228.
[383] Ibid.
[384] 'De Bello Gall.' i. 1.
[385] Strabo, vi. 176, 189.
[386] 'Archæological Journal,' 1870, cviii. p. 225 et seq.
[387] Lartet, Christy, and 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ.' London, 1865 et seq.
[388] 'Monuments mégalithiques du Vivarais,' p. Oll. de Marchand; Montpellier, 1870.
[389] 'Époques antéhistoriques du Poitou,' P. A. Brouillet; Poitiers, 1865.
[390] This list must be taken as only tentative. All I have done was to take the Atlas Joanne, and count the number of names as well as I could. I feel far from confident that I have counted all; and, besides, the scale of the maps is too small to feel sure that all, or nearly all, are there. It is, however, sufficient for present purposes of comparison. If it is thought worth while to pursue the investigation farther, it must be done on the 80,000 scale map of France, which would be work of great labour.
[391] Delpon, 'Statistique du Département du Lot,' i. p. 383.
[392] In the Ordnance Maps, 1-inch scale, the termination ac occurs at least 38 times in this corner, though in these maps always spelt with an additional k, as Botallack, Carnidjack; although this is by no means the usual or ancient spelling of the district.
[393] The whole of these churches are described in more or less detail by Félix de Verneilh in his 'Architecture byzantine en France,' 4to. Paris, 1851. Several of them are also illustrated in my 'History of Architecture,' i. 418-441.
[394] The argument, which it is not necessary to enter on here, has been well summed up by Dr. Schmitz, in Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,' sub voce Cimbri.
[395] The existence of this line of dolmens and of a separate people, all the way from Brittany to Narbonne, may serve, perhaps, to explain the mode in which the tin of Britain found its way across France to the Mediterranean Sea. That the Veneti traded from the Côtes-du-Nord and the Morbihan to Cornwall and the Cassiterides, no one, probably, will dispute. Their vessels, according to Cæsar's account, were fully equal to carrying to France all the metal this country could produce. The road by which it reached Marseilles across France was always the difficulty. In later times, the Celtic trade-route across France was apparently up the Rhone, but on its left bank, and down the Seine, or on its right bank; passing then through Celtica, but round the Aquitania of Augustus, and reaching Britain through the country of the Morini, which was the route Cæsar followed. This does not, however, appear to have been the line which was taken by the trade in tin. It followed, so far as we know, the central line of the dolmen country; and the fact of one people and one language prevailing throughout the whole of that region takes away any improbability, and removes all the difficulties that have hitherto impeded the adoption of that hypothesis.
[396] My intention was to have spent last autumn in travelling through the southern departments of France with this intent; but the war rendered the position of an exploring and sketching foreigner so undesirable that I was forced to desist. Had this book been a "statisque" of the subject, as it was originally intended, I should have been obliged to defer its publication till I had accomplished this journey, or till the monuments had been illustrated. As, however, it has now assumed more the form of an "argument," this is of comparatively little consequence.
[397] In a paper on the 'Monuments mégalithiques de l'Auvergne,' by M. Cartheilhac, in the Norwich volume of the Prehistoric Congress, he gives drawings of ten as types. Five of these, or one-half, are dolmens on tumuli, which is, however, probably more than a fair proportion. One has already been given, [woodcut No. 8].
[398] 'Statistique monumentale de la Charente,' 141. Richard, 'France monumentale,' p. 677. 'Mém. de la Société royale des Antiquaires de France,' vii. 26.
[399] The woodcuts are copied from Michon, 'Statistique de la Charente.' In describing it, he quotes the Edict of the Council at Nantes with regard to the destruction of these "venerated stones." He (p. 141) gives the date of this council as A.D. 1262, which would almost make it appear that this was one of the stones against which the decree was fulminated. This date, however, appears to be a mistake. The true date I believe to be 658, as given above, p. 24.
[400] 'Rev. archéologique,' ix. 400.
[401] 'Essai sur les Dolmens,' p. 38.
[402] Paper read by S. Ferguson, Q.C., before the R. I. A. 14th Dec. 1863. See also pamphlet by René Galles (Vannes, 1863), describing the exploration.
[403] 'Congrès préhistorique,' vol. de Paris, 1868, 42.
[404] All these are represented in Gailhabaud's 'Architecture ancienne et moderne,' ii. plates 7 and 8.
[405] The woodcut is from a publication privately printed by Dr. Blair and Mr. Ronalds.
[406] Gailhabaud, 'Arch. anc. et mod.' i.
[407] Renouvier, 'Monuments de Bas-Languedoc.' No numbers to plates.
[408] See one published by Sir R. Colt Hoare, 'Modern Wiltshire,' iv. p. 57.
[409] 'Kilkenny Journal,' third series, vol. i. p. 40 et seq.
[410] I have not seen the monument myself, nor do I know any one who has, but I cannot believe it to be a pure invention. Too much stress must not, however, be laid upon it.
[411] There is a woodcut in Bonstetten's work (p. 25) which, being taken endways, explains more clearly how, the cap-stone resting on two points only, it can be understood to oscillate. It is, however, much less correct as a representation.
133. Pierre Martine. From Bonstetten
[412] Delpon, 'Statistique du Dép. du Lot,' i. p. 388.
[413] 'Ptolemæi Geo.' Amstel. 1605, p. 47.
[414] The only survey of this monument which has been published, and can be depended upon, is that made by Mr. Vicars, a surveyor of Exeter, for the Rev. Dr. Bathurst Deane. It was published by him on a reduced scale in vol. xxv. of the 'Archæologia,' and re-engraved, with the principal parts on the original scale, by Dr. Blair and Mr. Ronalds, in the work before alluded to, but unfortunately never published. The original map, on a scale of 440 feet to 1 inch, is still in Dr. Deane's possession, at Bath, and is so valuable a record of what the monument was thirty-two years ago that it is hoped it may be preserved by some public body. Sir Henry Dryden and the Rev. Mr. Lukis have been employed for some years past exploring and surveying in that neighbourhood, and have brought back perfect plans, on a large scale, of all the principal monuments; and if these were published, they would leave little to be desired in that respect. Meanwhile nothing can exceed Sir Henry's kindness and liberality in allowing access to his treasures, and the use of them by any one who desires it; and I am indebted to him for a great deal of the information in this chapter. The general plans here published are from Messrs. Blair and Ronalds' work, which is quite sufficiently correct for my scale or my present purpose.
[415] The form of this enclosure, as will be seen from the plan, is not an exact square, and some of the angle-stones being removed, it is difficult now to ascertain its exact form. Sir Henry Dryden makes it curvilinear. Messrs. Blair and Ronalds make the east side quite straight; the south and west were slightly curvilinear, but the whole figure is quadrangular; which is my own impression of its form.
[416] Sir Henry Dryden counts ten rows. Mr. Vicars' survey, from which the woodcut is copied, makes only eight. Their irregularity makes it difficult to feel certain on such a point.
[417] 'Journal of Archæological Association,' vol. xxiv. pp. 40 et seq.
[418] Ante, pp. 163 et seq.
[419] It is so difficult to realise these similarities, except by representation, that I give here a woodcut of that at Rodmarton. Allowing for the difference of drawing and engraving, the openings are identical, and it is so peculiar in form that the likeness cannot be accidental. If it does not occur anywhere else, or at any other time, it proves, as far as anything can prove, that the French and English long barrows were erected under the same inspiration. If one is post-Roman, so, certainly, is the other; or if one can be proved to be prehistoric, the other must follow.
140. Entrance to Cell, Rodmarton.
[420] These were exhibited in the inn in the village when I was there. Where they are now, I do not know.
[421] 'Revue archéologique,' xii. p. 17.
[422] 'Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy,' vol. viii. 1864, p. 298 et seq.
[423] 'Revue archéologique,' vol. x. 1864, pl. iv.
[424] Woodcuts No. 145 and 146 are copied from Mr. Ferguson's paper in the 'Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy,' viii. 398 et seq.
[425] These dimensions are from Richard; other authorities make it 18 feet by 12 feet.
[426] The existence of the plume is doubted by Sir Henry Dryden, and he is so accurate that he probably is right; but as others say they have seen it, and nothing depends upon it, I have allowed it to remain.
[427] It was in a very ruinous state when I saw it five years ago; and there is an ominous silence regarding it among subsequent tourists. The measurements here quoted are from Richard, 'France monumentale.'
[428] The plan here given is reduced from one by Sir Henry Dryden, and may be perfectly depended upon as far as the smallness of the scale will allow.
[429] Sir Henry drew all these sculptures first on the spot, and afterwards corrected his drawings from the casts at St.-Germain. They are the only drawings existing which can thoroughly be depended upon.
[430] A plan of the first-named alignment was published by Freminville, 'Finistère,' part ii. pl. i., but the above particulars and the woodcut are taken from a diagram by Sir Henry Dryden in the last number of the 'Journal of the Anthrop. Inst.' He has perfect plans of the whole.
[431] 'Revue archéologique,' new series, ix. pp. 81 et seq. I may mention that almost every other name in their neighbourhood ends in ac. See 'Joanne Atlas,' dép. Ille-et-Vilaine.
[432] Delpon, 'Statistique du Dép. du Lot,' i. 384.
[433] "C'est en 465 que Vannes reçut pour premier évêque l'Armoricain St. Patern, qui mourut peu d'années après chez les Francs, où les Goths l'avoient forcé de se réfugier. Modestus en 511 mit tout en œuvre pour repandre le Christianisme parmi les Pagani de son diocèse, mais son zèle ne fut pas recompensé, car plus de trente ans après la mort de Patern les habitans de la Vénétie étoient encore presque tous païens. 'Erant enim tunc temporis Venetenses pene omnes Gentiles.'—Ap. Boll. 'Vita St. Melan.' vi. Jan. p. 311."—Courzon, 'Chartulaire de l'Abbaye de Redon,' cxliii.
[434] The authority for these events will be found at length in Gibbon, chap. xviii., and are too familiar to need quoting here.
[435] Daru's 'Histoire de la Bretagne,' vol. i. p. 58.
[436] Ibid. p. 112.
[437] Dom. Bouquet, 'Recueil des Hist. des Gaules,' i. p. 629. "Exuperantius anno circa 416 Armoricos qui a Romanis defecerunt ad officium reducere tentavit."
[438] Daru, i. p. 112.
[439] "Gradlonus gratia dei rex Britonum necnon ex parte Francorum."—Chartulaire de Landevenec; quoted by P. Lobineau, ii. 17. And further: "'Pervenit Sancti (Wingaboei) fama ad Grallonum regem Occiduorum Cornubiensium, gloriosum ultorem Normannorum qui post devictas gentes inimicas sibi duces subduxerat.'—Gurdestan, Moine de Landevenec, 'Vie de St.-Wingabois.'"—Daru, i. p. 69.
[440] The information in this table must be received with great limitation. In the first place, What is a dolmen? Do the alignments at Carnac count as two, as seven, or as 700? Many also are mere estimates of local antiquaries. It is, for instance, very doubtful if Finistère contains more monuments than the Morbihan; and subsequent information may introduce great modifications into many of the numbers.
The value of the ac distinction does not come out clearly: first, because of the imperfect mode in which it has been obtained, but more because it does not make it clear that there are in France twenty-nine departments in which there are no dolmens, and no ac-terminations; in fact, the negative evidence which does not appear here is stronger than the positive.
[CHAPTER IX.]
SPAIN, PORTUGAL, AND ITALY.
It would not be easy to find a more apt illustration of the difficulty and danger of writing such a book as this than the history of how we acquired our knowledge of Spanish dolmens. When Ford published his interesting and exhaustive 'Handbook of Spain,' in 1845, he had travelled over the length and breadth of the land, and knew its literature intimately, but he did not know that there was a single "Druidical remain" in the country. The first intimation of their existence was in a pamphlet by Don Rafael Mitjana,[441] containing the description of one at Antequera; and since then Don Gongora ý Martinez[442] has published a work containing views and descriptions of thirteen or fourteen important monuments of this class in Andalusia and the south of Spain; and from other sources I know the names of at least an equal number in the Asturias and the north of Spain.[443] Had this work consequently been written only a very few years ago, a description of the dolmen at Antequera must have begun and ended the chapter. As it now is, we not only know that dolmens are numerous in Spain, but we have a distinct idea of their distribution, which may lead to most important historical results.
With regard to Portugal, the case is even more striking. Kinsey, in his 'Portugal Illustrated,' in 1829, gave a drawing of a "Druid's altar" at Arroyolos, and it was mentioned also by Borrow,[444] but there our information stopped, till the meeting of the International Prehistoric Congress at Paris in 1867, when S. Pereira da Costa described by name thirty-nine dolmens as still existing in Portugal. He also mentioned that as long ago as 1734 a memoir had been presented to the Portuguese Academy enumerating 314 as then to be met with; and though this is doubtful, it seems that they were at one time very numerous, and many, no doubt, still exist which have escaped S. da Costa's enquiries. Neither he nor any one else appears to have visited Cape Cuneus, the most southern point of Portugal, where, if we read Strabo aright, dolmens certainly existed in his day;[445] and if they do so now, it would be a point gained in our investigation.
At present, according to S. da Costa, there are twenty-one dolmens in Alentejo, two in Estramadura, nine in Beira, four in Tras os Montes, and three in Minho. According to my information, they are numerous in Gallicia, but have never been described. Three at least are known by name in Santander, and as many in the Asturias. One at least is known in Biscay, and two in Vitoria; one in Navarre, and one in Catalonia. But I am assured that all along the roots of the mountains they are frequent, though no one has yet described or drawn them.[446] So far as is known, there are none in the Castiles, in the centre of Spain, and only that group above alluded to in Andalusia, where probably, instead of a dozen, it may turn out that there are twice or thrice that number.
Assuming this distribution of the Spanish dolmens to be correct—and I see no reason for doubting that it is so, in the main features at least—it is so remarkable that it affords a good opportunity for testing one of the principal theories put forward with regard to the migrations of the dolmen-building people. According to the theory of M. Bertrand, the dolmen people, after passing down the Baltic and leaving their monuments there, migrated to the British islands, and after a sojourn of some time again took to their ships and landed in France and Spain, to pass thence into Africa and disappear.[447] This seems so strange, that it is fortunate we have another hypothesis which assumes the probability of an indigenous population driven first to the hills and then into the ocean by the advancing tide of modern civilization.
The first hypothesis involves the assumption that the dolmen people possessed a navy capable of transplanting them and their families from shore to shore, and that they had a sufficient knowledge of geography to know exactly whither to go, but at the same time possessed with such a spirit of wandering that so soon as they settled for a certain time in a given place, and buried a certain number of their chiefs, they immediately set out again on their travels. According to this view, they were so weak that they fled the moment when the original possessors of the land rose against them, though, strange to say, they had in the first instance been able to dispossess them. What is still more unlikely is that they should have possessed the organization to keep together, and to introduce everywhere their own arts and their own customs, but that, when they departed, they should have left nothing but their tombs behind. This hypothesis involves in fact so many difficulties and so many improbabilities that I do not think that either M. Bertrand or the Baron de Bonstetten would now, that our knowledge is so much increased, adhere to it. I at least cannot see on what grounds it can be maintained. It is so diametrically opposed to all we know of ancient migrations. They seem always—in so far as Europe is concerned—to have followed the course of the sun from east to west; and the idea that a people, after having peopled Britain, should have started again to land on the rugged coasts of the Asturias or in Portugal, and not have been able to penetrate into the interior, is so very unlikely that it would require very strong and direct testimony to make it credible, while it need hardly be said no such evidence is forthcoming.