The first impression that the narrative of the preceding pages will convey to most readers, will probably be that there must be something more to be said on the subject, or that something important is left out. If, it may be argued, the case is so clear as here stated, it could never have been doubted, and must have been accepted long ago. All I can say in answer is, that if anything is omitted I am not aware of it. Everything I know of has been stated as fully and as fairly as seemed necessary for its being clearly understood. In this instance it must be remembered that the usual arguments drawn from the division into stone, bronze, and iron ages hardly come into play. Nothing has been found inside Stonehenge but iron and Roman pottery. Even admitting the barrows in the immediate proximity of Stonehenge to be coeval, before their testimony can be of any avail, it must be ascertained when men ceased to be buried in barrows, and when a man might not wish a bronze spear-head to be entombed with him as a relic, even if he did not fight with it in his lifetime. Even then, however, the evidence would be too indistinct to outweigh that of the finds inside the circle.
If, after what has been said above, any one still maintains that Stonehenge is a temple, and not sepulchral, we have no common ground from which to reason, and need not attempt it. Or if any one as familiar with the locality as I am personally, or who has studied the Ordnance maps with the same care, likes to argue that the barrows came to Stonehenge, and not Stonehenge to the barrows, we see things with such different eyes that we equally want a common basis for argument.
In a case like the present, however, the great difficulty to be overcome is not so much cool argument and close reasoning, as a certain undefined feeling that a monument must be old because we know so little about it. "Omne ignotum pro antiquo" is a matter of faith with many who will listen to no argument to the contrary, and in the case of Stonehenge the false notion has been so fostered by nearly all those who have written about it since the time of James I., that it will be very difficult now to overthrow it. Those who adhere to it, however, hardly realize how dark the ages were between the departure of the Romans and the time of Alfred the Great, and how much may have been done in that time without any record of it coming down to our day. Even if we give them all the megalithic monuments we possess, it is very little indeed for so large a population in so long a time.
Even at a much later period of English history than we are now occupied with, it is wonderful how little we should know of our monuments if we depended on the "litera scripta" for our information. Any one who is familiar with the guide-books of the last, or beginning of the present century, will see what dire confusion of dates existed with regard to the erection of our greatest cathedrals and mediæval monuments. Saxon and Norman were confounded everywhere, and the distinction of any of the styles between Early English and Perpendicular was not appreciated, and frequently the dates were reversed. In fact, it was not till Rickman took the matter in hand that order emerged out of chaos, and he succeeded because his constructive knowledge enabled him to perceive progressive developments which formed true sequences, and he was thus able to supply the want of written information. Every tyro now can fix a date to every moulding in any of our mediæval buildings, but if we had only written history to depend upon, in nine cases out of ten he could not prove that the building was not erected by the Romans or the Phœnicians, or anybody else. If this is the case in an age when writing was so common as between the Conquest and the Reformation, should we be surprised if we find matters so much darker between the departure of the Romans and Alfred, when written history hardly helps us at all? But Rickman's method will, when applied to Stonehenge and similar monuments, if I am not very much mistaken, render their dates nearly as clear as those of our mediæval monuments have been rendered by the same method.
None but those who have had occasion specially to study the subject can be aware how devoid of all literary records the period is of which we are now treating. So meagre and so scarce are they, that many well-informed persons doubt whether such a person as King Arthur ever lived; and scarcely one of his great actions is established by anything like satisfactory contemporary testimony. Yet, in all ages, and in all countries where histories either written or oral exist, they are filled with the exploits of favourite national heroes—as Arthur was—which, even where they are fullest and most diffuse, it is the rarest possible thing to find in them a record of the building of any temple or tomb. From the building of the Parthenon to the completion of Henry VIII.'s Chapel, the notices of buildings in general histories are as few and meagre as may be, and are comprised in a few paragraphs scattered through many hundred volumes. No one, I am convinced, who has thought twice on the subject, would expect to find any notice of buildings in the few pages which are all we possess of history between the departure of the Romans and the time of the Venerable Bede; yet the absence of record is the argument which, if I am not mistaken, has had more influence on the popular mind than almost any other. Too generally it is assumed that, as we know nothing about them, they must be old. To me, on the contrary, nothing appears so extremely improbable as that the builders, while leaving no record of their exploits, should have left any written account of the erection of the Rude Stone Monuments.
One other point seems worth alluding to before concluding this chapter, which is that nothing has been advanced, so far as I know, that would lead us to suppose that the people of this island were, before the time of the Romans, either more numerous or more powerful, and consequently more capable of erecting such monuments as Stonehenge and Avebury, than they were after that people had resided for four centuries among them. All our existing knowledge seems to tend to a diametrically opposite conclusion, and now that the day for vague declamation and à priori reasoning is past, if any proof to the contrary can be brought forward, it would be well that it were now adduced, for otherwise judgment may go by default. If we mistake not, the case must be strong and clear that is to outweigh the evidence just brought forward in reference to the two monuments the use and age of which we have just been discussing.
Footnotes
[77] These particulars are taken from a careful survey made by Sir R. Colt Hoare, in 1812, and published in his 'Ancient Wilts,' vol. ii. pl. xiii. p. 70 et seq.
[78] 'Stonehenge and Avebury,' p. 34.
[79] Haca, or Haco, according to Kemble, was some mythical person with a very Danish name which is found in Hampshire and Berkshire, as well as here. Pen seems to mean merely enclosure, as it does now in English. See Kemble, in 'Journal Arch. Inst.' xiv. p. 134.
[80] 'Bell. Gall.' vi. 17.
[81] 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' ii. p. xli.
[82] Thurnam, 'Crania Britannica;' London, 1856 to 1865.
[83] 'Codex diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici,' v. p. 238, No. 1120.
[84] Stukeley, 'Stonehenge and Abury,' p. 27.
[85] The particulars are taken from a pamphlet entitled 'Excavations at Avebury, under the direction of the Secretary of the Wiltshire Archæol. and Nat. Hist. Society,' printed at Devizes, but, so far as I know, not yet published.
[86] 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' vol. i. introd. p. xx.
[87] A plan of it was published about Stukeley's time by a Mr. Twining, in a pamphlet, which was written to prove that this group of monuments was erected by Agricola, to represent a map of England! A plan accompanies it, which shows all the avenues as straight; but what weight can possibly be attached to any evidence coming from a man with such a theory as this?
[88] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. p. 63.
[89] Camden, 'Britannia,' 127.
[90] 'Archæologia,' xxviii. p. 399 et seq.
[91] 'Journal Wiltshire Archæol. and Nat. Hist. Society,' vii. p. 1861.
[92] Curiously enough these dimensions are almost identical with those of the mound erected by the Belgic-Dutch, to commemorate the part they did not take in the battle of Waterloo. Its dimensions are 130 feet high, 544 feet in diameter, and 1632 feet in circumference. The angle of the slope of the sides is lower, being 27½ degrees, owing to the smaller diameter of the flat top, which is only 40 feet.
[93] Douglas, 'Nenia Brit.' p. 161. See also Salisbury volume of the Archæological Institute, p. 74.
[94] 'Journal Royal Asiatic Soc.' xiii. p. 164; and Major Skinner's plan of Anurajapura.
[95] Wilson, 'Ariana Antiqua,' p. 41; and Masson's 'Memoir,' passim.
[96] Sir R. C. Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. pl. ii. fig. 8.
[97] Ibid. i. p. 191.
[98] 'Archæologia,' xxx. p. 300 et seq.
[99] 'Arch. Journ.,' xxiv. pp. 92 and 319.
[100] Ibid. p. 100.
[101] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. 5. Unfortunately there is no scale attached to the plan of the Marden Circle, and no dimensions quoted in the text.
[102] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' p. 7.
[103] I adopt Dr. Guest's dates for this part of the subject, not only because I think them most probable, but because I think, from his knowledge and the special attention he has bestowed on the subject, he is most likely to be right. See Salisbury Volume Arch. Journal, p. 62.
[104] 'Athenæum Journal,' Dec. 13, 1865.
[105] 'Mon. Brit.' p. 15.
[106] 'Salisbury Vol.' p. 63.
[107] 'Mon. Brit.' p. 15.
[108] Colt Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. p. 22.
[109] Saxon Chronicle, in 'Mon. Brit.' p. 304.
[110] 'Jeffrey of Monmouth,' ix. p. 4.
[111] The history of the plan given on [page 92], and from which all the dimensions in the text are quoted, is this. When I was staying with my friend, Mr. Hawkshaw, the eminent engineer, at Eversley, I was complaining of the incorrectness of all the published plans, when he said, "I have a man in my office whose plans are the very essence of minute accuracy. I will send him down to make one for you." He did so, and his plan—to a scale of 10 feet to 1 inch, is before me. I afterwards took this plan to Stonehenge, and identified the position and character of every stone marked upon it.
[112] I am almost afraid to allude to it even in a note, lest some one should accuse me of founding any theory upon it, like Piazzi Smyth's British inches in the Pyramids, but it is a curious coincidence that nearly all the British circles are set out in two dimensions. The smaller class are 100 feet, the larger are 100 metres in diameter. They are all more than 100 yards. The latter measure is at all events certainly accidental, so far as we at present know, but as a nomenclature and "memoria technica," the employment of the terms may be useful, provided it is clearly understood that no theory is based upon it.
[113] 'Historia,' in 'Mon. Brit.' 694.
[114] 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' by the author, plates iii. et seq.
[115] Twenty Chinese coolies would carry any one of them up in a week.
[116] 'Serie Centrale' by Comte Melchior de Vogüé. Though this work was commenced some ten years ago, and subscriptions obtained, it is still incomplete. No text has yet been published, and no maps, which makes the identification of the places singularly difficult.
[117] Vide ante, footnote, [p. 15.]
[118] 'Topography of Jerusalem,' by the Author, p. 58.
[119] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 178, plan vi.
[120] Sir John Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' p. 116.
[121] Sir R. Colt Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 145.
[122] The name is written as Sidbury in the Ordnance maps.
[123] 'Archæologia,' vii. pp. 132-134.
[124] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 154.
[125] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 150.
[126] Nennius, in 'Mon. Brit.' p. 69.
[127] Jeffrey, viii. c. 9.
[128] "Fuit antiquis temporibus in Hiberniâ lapidum congeries admiranda, quæ et Chorea gigantum dicta fuit, quia gigantes eam ab ultimis Africæ partibus in Hiberniam attulerunt et in Kildarienes planicie non procul a Castro Nasensi, tam ingenii quam virium opere mirabiliter erexerunt. Unde et ibidem lapides quidam aliis simillimi similique modo erecti usque in hodiernum conspiciuntur. Mirum qualiter tanti lapides tot etiam et tam magni unquam in unum locum vel congesti fuerint vel erecti: quantoque artificiis lapidibus tam magnis et altis alii superpositi sint non minores; qui sic in pendulo et tanquam in inani suspendi videntur ut potius artificum studio quam suppositorum podio inniti videantur. Juxta Britannicam historiam lapides istos rex Britonum Aurelius Ambrosius divina Merlini diligentia de Hiberniâ in Britanniam advehi procuravit; et ut tanti facinoris egregium aliquod memoriale relinqueret eodem ordine et arte qua prius in loco constituit ubi occultis Saxonum cultris Britanniæ flos occidit et sub pacis obtentu nequitiæ telis male tecta regni juventus occubuit."—Topogr. Hiberniæ, vol. ii. ch. xviii.
If we could trust Ware, they still existed in the beginning of the last century. He speaks of "Saxa illæ in gentia et rudia quæ in planitie non longe a Naasa in agro Kildariensi et alibi visuntur."—Hist. Hib., xxiv. 103.
[129] 'Hist. Brit.' viii. ch. xvi.
[130] 'Hist. Brit.' xi. ch. iv.
[131] This is the principal argument of Herbert's 'Cyclops Christianus.'
[132] 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 158. See also woodcut [No. 26, p. 102]. The dotted part of the smaller cursus is a restoration of my own.