Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

Fig. 47.—CINERARY URN WITH HOLES IN THE SIDE, FROM SALISBURY PLAIN.

The great inner ring of trilithons at Stonehenge affects the horse-shoe shape, and is, and always was, incomplete. The outer ring of trilithons is too ruinous for us to be able to state what its original condition was.

The horse-shoe, the incomplete ring, is still regarded as lucky, and a protection against witches. The enchanter who raised spirits was wont to draw a complete circle around him, and the demons raged outside this circle, but could not pass within and hurt him who had conjured them up. If he stepped outside the circle, or broke the continuity of the ring, then the spirits entered and tore him to pieces.

This probably gives us a clue to the signification of the incomplete circle. The complete circle confines a spirit within it, or protects from the entrance of spirits; an interrupted circle allows spirits to pass to and fro, gives ingress and egress.

The tomb is the house of the dead. He lives in it after some mysterious, not clearly defined fashion. And as a bee-hive hut had its door, so must the hut of the dead have its door. It would be a cruelty to the dead to imprison him; and if the circle be complete, the dolmen closed in on all sides, he could not come in and out at pleasure.

Precisely what the door is to the house, that the mouth is to man; it is the door by which the spirit comes into and goes out of man. With his first inspiration he becomes a living soul; with his last breath he expires—gives up his soul.

The story is well known of the two shepherds who sat together one summer’s day. One fell asleep, and whilst he slept the other saw a bee issue from his lips and creep over a blade of grass that crossed a tiny trickle of water, then fly away among flowers. After an hour the bee returned again in the same way, and re-entered the sleeping man’s mouth. Thereupon he awoke, and told his friend that in dream he had crossed a magnificent bridge over a great river, and had visited Paradise.

Fig. 48.—CRANIAL DISC, WITH HOLE FOR SUSPENSION.