To make the foregoing applicable for monuments in all latitudes between Brittany and the Orkneys, I give still another diagram, [Fig. 37], also prepared for me by Mr. Rolston which will enable any archæologist to determine approximately, for the present time, the azimuth of sunrise at the summer solstice, without waiting for the 21st of June in any year actually to observe it.
As before stated, I have dealt with the solstice in this chapter because it affords us the most precise case. I hope to be able to deal with the May year sun in the same way later on.
CHAPTER XIII
STENNESS (Lat. 59° N.).
I wrote a good deal in Nature[20] on sun and star temples in 1891, and Mr. Lewis the next year expressed the opinion that the British stone monuments, or some of them, were sun and star temples.
Mr. Magnus Spence, of Deerness, in Orkney, published a pamphlet, “Standing Stones and Maeshowe of Stenness,”[21] in 1894; it is a reprint of an article in the Scottish Review, October, 1893, showing that the stones were set up for solar worship. Mr. Cursiter, F.S.A., of Kirkwall, in a letter to me dated March 15, 1894, a letter suggested by my “Dawn of Astronomy,” which appeared in that year, and in which the articles which had been published in Nature in 1891 had been expanded, directed my attention to the pamphlet.
I began the consideration of the Stenness circles and alignments in 1901, but other pressing calls on my time then caused me to break off the inquiry. Quite recently it occurred to me that a complete study of the Stenness circles might throw light on the question of an earlier Stonehenge, so I have gone over the old papers, plotting the results on the Ordnance map.
Fig. 38.—Maeshowe, in the foreground, and the Stones of Stenness. From “Notice of Runic Inscriptions,” by James Farrer, M.P. (1862).
Now that the inquiry is as complete as I can make it without spending some time in Orkney with a theodolite, I will begin my reference to other circles besides Stonehenge by stating the conclusions at which I have arrived with regard to the stones of Stenness.