Owing to their more ruined state, the remains at Shap are more difficult to describe. They were, however, visited by Stukeley in 1725, but he complains it rained all the time that he was there, and rain on a bleak exposed moor like Shap is singularly inimical to antiquarian pursuits.[154] The remains were also described by Camden,[155] but not apparently from personal observation, and others have described them since, but the destruction has been so rapid, the village being almost entirely built out of them, that it is now extremely difficult to ascertain what they really were. All, however, are agreed that the principal monument was an alignment, according to some of a double row of stones, of which others can only trace a single row. So far as I could make out on the spot, it commenced near a spot called the Thunder-stone, in the north, where there are seven large stones in a field; six are arranged as a double row; the seventh seems to commence a single line, from this all the way to a place at the southern extremity of the village, called Karl Lofts, single stones may be traced at intervals, in apparently a perfectly straight line and still beyond this, at a farmyard called Brackenbyr, Mr. Simpson fancied he could, in 1859, trace the remains of a circle 400 feet in diameter, with a large obelisk in the centre.[156] I confess I was not so fortunate in 1869, and I also differ from him as to the position of the stone row. He seems to fancy, from the description of Stukeley, that it was situated to the southward of Karl Lofts, though he could not detect any traces of it. My impression is that it commenced with the circle at Brackenbyr, immediately south of Karl Lofts, and proceeded in a north-westerly direction for nearly a mile and a half to the Thunder-stone, as before mentioned. Rather more than half a mile due south of Brackenbyr stands a portion of what was once a very fine circle. It was partially destroyed by the railway, but seems to have been a hundred-foot circle, and to have stood considerably in advance of the line of the avenue, in the same relative position to the stone row as the circle at Merivale Bridge ([woodcut No. 12]), or as Stonehenge to its cursus ([woodcut No. 26]), whether we assume that it was continued in this direction, or terminated as above indicated. In front of the circle is a noble tumulus, called Kemp How, in which the body of a man of gigantic stature is said to have been found.[157]
According to the popular tradition the stone avenue originally extended to Muir Divock, a distance of rather more than five miles, to which it certainly points. Though this is most improbable, it is not wholly without reason, as on Muir Divock there are five or six circles of stone and several tumuli. The circles have most of them been opened recently, and in all instances were found to contain cists or other evidence of interments.[158] Immediately over the Muir stands a commanding hill, 1747 feet high, marked on the Ordnance Survey as Arthur's Pike. Besides these, on the hill behind Shap, to the eastward, are several stone circles, some single, some double, but none are of any great size, or composed of stones of very large dimensions. The whole aspect of the country is that of a district used as a burying-place to an extent far beyond anything that the usual inhabitants of the locality could have required, for a bleaker and more ungenial spot is not inhabited in any part of these islands.
So far as I know, no credible tradition attaches to these monuments so as to connect them with any historical or local incident. We are, therefore, left almost wholly to their intrinsic forms, or to analogies, to determine either their history or their purposes.
No one will now probably be found seriously to maintain that the long stone row at Shap was a temple either of the Druids or of any one else. At least if these ancient people thought a single or even a double row of widely-spaced stones, stretching to a mile and a half across a bleak moor, was a proper form for a place to worship in, they must have been differently constituted from ourselves. Unless they possessed the tails, or at least the long-pointed ears with which Darwin endows our ancestors, they would have adopted some form of temple more nearly similar to those used in all other countries of the world. Nor was it a tomb. Not only have no sepulchral remains been found here, but nowhere else has any trace of such a purpose been found connected with such alignments. Even, however, if it is contended that it is sepulchral, it certainly was not the burying-place of the hamlet of Shap, or of its neighbourhood, for a more miserable spot for habitation does not exist in England, and it cannot be that Shap, like Avebury, should require the most magnificent cemeteries in the island, while nothing of the sort exists near the great centres of population. Had the country been as thickly inhabited as China, we might fancy the people seeking waste uncultivable spots in which to bury their dead, but even at the present day Woking is the only cemetery that has been selected on this principle in England, and at any previous time to which we can look back, the idea appears too absurd to be entertained for a moment.
If, therefore, the alignment at Shap was sepulchral, it must have been the burying-place of those that fell in some battle on the spot; this in fact brings us to the only suggestion I am aware of that seems at all tenable: that it marks a battle-field like those on Dartmoor (ante, p. 54), and others we shall meet with hereafter.
Excavations have proved that all the smaller circles which abound in the neighbourhood are graves, and if those from 60 feet to 100 feet in diameter are so, all analogy must lead us to the inference that the 100-metre circles are so also. Direct proof has not, however, yet been obtained of this, but that may arise first from the difficulty of excavating so large an area; or it may be that the bodies were buried outside the circle, as at Hakpen (ante, p. 76), or at the foot of the stones, as at Crichie (ante, p. 75) or in those circles which have no erect stones in a similar position—at the toe of the inner slope of the rampart—and these are just the places where they have not been looked for. Meanwhile the cairns in the inside of the circle of Long Meg's Daughters seem to favour this view of their sepulchral purpose. But if sepulchres, certainly they were not family or princely tombs. If that was their destination they would not be found only in two or three groups in the wildest and most remote parts of the country, but in far greater numbers, and nearer those places where men most do congregate. We are in fact driven to Camden's suggestion, that they may have been made to celebrate some victory; but, if so, what victory? It looks like riding a hobby very hard to make the same suggestion as was made with regard to Avebury, but I confess I know no other that can be brought forward with so much plausibility as that of considering them to be memorials of Arthur's campaigns against the Saxon invaders.
The first objection that will naturally be raised to this hypothesis is, that King Arthur was a myth, and never fought any battles at all. It was not necessary to examine this when speaking of Avebury. All that was then required was to know if Waden Hill was Badon Hill. If it was the site of that famous battle, there was no further enquiry necessary. Arthur, and he only, commanded there; and if we admit the fact of the battle being fought, we admit at the same time the existence of him who commanded there. But with regard to the other eleven battles mentioned by Nennius[159] the case is not so clear, and according to the present fashionable school of historical criticism it is thought reasonable to reject the whole as a myth, because the evidence is not such as would stand examination in a court of law, and also because the story as it now stands is so mixed up with incredible fables as to throw discredit on the whole. It is very much easier to heap ridicule on the silly miracles which Merlin is said by mediæval minstrels to have performed, and to laugh at the marvellous exploits of Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table, than to attempt to glean the few facts which their wild poetry has left unobscured. But if any one will attempt the same process with one of the many 'Lhystoires du noble et vaillant roy Alexandre le grand,' he will find exactly the same difficulties. Aristotle and his master have been rendered quite as fabulous persons as Merlin and Arthur, and the miracles of the one and the feats of the other are equally marvellous. In Alexander's case we fortunately have Arrian and Curtius, and others, who give us the truth with regard to him; but Arthur had no contemporary history, and instead of living in a highly civilized state that continued for ages after him, he was the last brilliant light of his age and race, and after him all was gloom for centuries. It was not till after a long eclipse that his name was seized upon in a poetical and an uncritical age as a peg for bards whereupon to hang their wild imaginings.
This is not the place to examine so large a question. It will be sufficient to state what I believe to be the main facts. Those who do not admit them need not read further. Arthur, it seems to me, was born the prince of one of the smaller states in the West of England, probably Cornwall, and after the death of Ambrosius, in or about the year 508, took up the struggle the latter had carried on with varying success against the hordes of Saxons and others who were gradually pushing the Bryts out of England. My impression is, that even before the Romans left, Jutes, Angles, and Danes had not only traded with, but had settled, both on the Saxonicum littus of Kent, and on the coast of Yorkshire, Northumberland, and the Lothians; and that during the century that elapsed between the departure of the Romans and the time of Arthur, they were gradually pushing the British population behind the range of hills which extends from Carlisle to Derby and forms the back-bone of England. It was in the plains behind this range and further south that all Arthur's battles seem to have been fought. With Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall behind him, he was not only sure of support from the native population in his rear, but had a secure retreat in case of adverse fortune overtaking him. In all this range of country I do not know any spot so favourable strategically for a defender of his country to take up as the high land about Shap, or the open country extending from thence to Salkeld. The ridges at Shap protected his right against an enemy advancing by Lancaster, the Caledonian Forest and a very rugged country covered his left, and in front there was only a wild inhospitable tract by which the invader from the opposite coast could advance against him, while by a single day's march to his rear he was among the inaccessible mountains and lakes of Cumberland.
I am afraid to lay much stress on the fact of one of the circles at Penrith and the hill opposite Shap bearing Arthur's name, because in the last few years we have seen two hard-headed sober-minded Scotchmen proving, to their own satisfaction, that Arthur was born north of the Tweed—that all his battles were fought and all his exploits performed in the northern portion of the island. Even Ganora—the faithless Guinevere—if not a Scotchwoman, was at all events buried in Miegle churchyard under a stone, which some pious descendant sculptured some centuries later.[160] Even here, however, I fancy I can perceive a difference between the two cases. In the middle ages the Scotch had historians like Boece and Fordun, who recorded such fables for the edification of their countrymen, and with proper patriotism were willing that their country should have as large a share of the world's greatness or great men as they could well appropriate. They were followed by an educated class throughout the country, who were actuated by the same motives, and did exactly what Stukeley and his followers did with English monuments. They found Druids who had no temples, and remains which they supposed to be temples with no priests; so, putting the two together, they made what they fancied was a perfect whole out of two incongruous halves. So the Scotch, having a rich repertory of fables on the one hand, and on the other having hills without names and sculptured stones without owners, joined the two together, and went on repeating in the same manner their inventions till, from dire reiteration, they took the likeness of fact.