So far in this book I have dealt chiefly with stones—as I hold, associated with, or themselves composing, sanctuaries. We have become acquainted with circles, menhirs, dolmens, altars, viæ sacræ, various structures built up of stones. Barrows and earthern banks represented them later.
The view which I have been led to bring forward so far is that these structures had in one way or another to do with the worship of the sun and stars; that they had for the most part an astronomical use in connection with religious ceremonials.
The next question which concerns us in an attempt to get at the bottom of the matter is to see whether there are any concomitant phenomena, and, if there be any, to classify them and study the combined results.
Tradition and folklore, which give dim references to the ancient uses of the stones, show in most unmistakable fashion that the stones were not alone; associated with them almost universally were many practices referred to on [p. 26], such as the lighting of fires, passing through them, and dancing round them; in the neighbourhood of the stones and associated with the fire practices were also sacred trees and sacred wells or streams.
Folklore and tradition not only thus may help us, but I think they will be helped by such a general survey, brief though it must be. So far as my reading has gone each special tradition has been considered by itself; there has been no general inquiry having for its object the study of the possible origin and connection of many of the ancient practices and ideas which have so dimly come down to us in many cases and which we can only completely reconstruct by piecing together the information derived from various sources.
I now propose to refer to all these matters with the view of seeing whether there be any relation between practices apparently disconnected in so many cases if we follow the literature in which they are chronicled. We must not blame the literature, since the facts which remain to be recorded now here, now there, are but a small fraction of those that have been forgotten. Fortunately, the practices forgotten in one locality have been remembered in another, so that it is possible the picture can be restored more completely than one might have thought at first.
It will be seen at once that from the point of view with which we are at present concerned, one of the chief relations we must look for is that of time, seeing that my chief affirmation with regard to the stone monuments is that they were used for ceremonial purposes at certain seasons, those seasons being based first upon the agricultural, and later upon the astronomical divisions of the year, to which I drew attention in [Chapter III.] In [Chapter IV.], when referring to the agricultural and astronomical new years’ days, I indicated a possible relation between the temple worship and the floral celebrations of that time, and later on ([p. 40]), in connection with the monuments in Brittany, I pointed out the coincidence of fire customs at the same time of the year.
But in a matter of this kind it will not do to depend upon isolated cases; the general trend of all the facts available along several lines of inquiry must be found and studied, first separately and then inter se, if any final conclusion is to be reached.
This is what I now propose to do in a very summary manner. It is not my task to arrange the facts of folklore and tradition, but simply to cull from the available sources precise statements which bear upon the questions before us. These statements, I think, may be accepted as trustworthy, and all the more so as many of the various recorders have had no idea either of the existence of a May year at all or of the connection between the different classes of the phenomena which ought to exist if my theory of their common origin in connection with ancient worship and the monuments is anywhere near the truth.
This question of time relations is surrounded by difficulties.