[69] Henderson (ii. 68) places the stone in the swamp, not on the hill-side; Forbes (219) adds that it was in the centre of the Doom-ring. If so, we did not see it: moreover, Mr R. M. Smith heard from Hr Thorlacius that we were misled. I cannot help believing in the shepherd-boy; and there was no mistaking the Doom-ring. For the most part, the instruments of death stood in the fens where certain classes of criminals were drowned. On the other hand, the Landnámabók (chap. xii.) says, that after the profanation of Helgafell (Monticulus Sacer), Thórðr Gellir “forum (Thing) in superiora linguæ loca ubi nunc est, transportavere ... ibique adhuc conspiciendus est lapis Thorinus (Thórsteinn), supra quem homines sacrificio destinati, frangebantur; ibi etiam circulus judicialis existit in quo homines ad victimas condemnabant.”
[70] Compare this Northern effort with the poetical Greek curse at the Akropolis of Athens: “I entrust the guardianship of this temple to the infernal gods, to Pluto, and to Ceres, and to Proserpine, and to all the Furies, and to all the gods below. If any one shall deface this temple, or mutilate it, or remove anything from it, either of himself, or by means of another, to him may not the land be passable, nor the sea navigable, but may he be utterly uprooted! May he experience all evils, fever, and ague, and quartan, and leprosy! And as many ills as man is liable to, may they befall that man who dares to move anything from this temple!” Perhaps the most picturesque composition of the kind is the inscription upon the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon—at least in the translation of the late Duc de Luynes.
[71] This form of “lynching” is popularly and erroneously supposed to have been invented upon the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. The Brazilian “Indians” practised it by way of ceremonial toilette.
[72] Waring and many others suggest that the “Prostrate Stone” lying north-east of the horse-shoe or elliptical opening of the Stonehenge trilithons, and the three—formerly five—fallen stones inside the vallum, represent the first or outer circle, like that of Avebury. It is usually assumed that the “Friar’s Heel,” the single “block lying farther to the north-east of the “Prostrate Stone,” served for astronomical purposes, the sun rising over it on the summer solstice, and striking the sacrificial Thorsteinn or Blótsteinn (4 by 16 feet). The same arrangement is remarked at Stennis. There seems, however, no reason why both should not have been members of an outermost circle.
Martin (Description of Western Islands, London, 1716) has preserved the popular tradition that the sun was worshipped in the larger, and the moon in the lesser, ring of the Orkney ruins. Later writers deny the honour of erecting the circles of Stennis and Borgar (anciently Broisgar = Brúar-garðr) to the “Northmen,” because such circles are found only in localities where a Keltic race has ruled, and because “such names as Stennis and Stonehenge prove that they had existence before the people who so designated them arrived in the country.” The causa appears to me a non causa, especially if they were Thingsteads and Doom-rings, which in later days would take modern and trivial names from their sites or peculiarities of structure. On the other hand, the absence of tradition concerning the popular use of the buildings, which we might expect to linger in the minds of men, is a serious objection.
[73] We have retained the word “Flói” in ice-floe. It properly means the deep water of a bay opposed to the shallow water along shore.
[74] We see in Ireland, Scotland, and the English coast about Bristol, the effect of these gales: they prevail along the coast of Brittany, become less violent in the Bay of Biscay and along Portugal, and finally the Mediterranean, as the regular outlines of the Balearics, Sicily, and Malta prove, ignores them.
[75] The work of Jón Thórðarson and another compiler in the fourteenth century, who transcribed from old MSS., and bring the history up to A.D. 1395, that is a century before the Columbian discovery. A facsimile specimen of the vellum manuscript used by Professor Rafu as the basis of his text is given in the “Antiquitates Americanæ.”
[76] In June 1862 Mr Shepherd and his party succeeded in mastering the Dránga Jökull. Upon the summit the barometer marked 26·5° (at sea-level 29 inches, not degrees), and the thermometer 32° (F.). Glámu (Dict., Glam, Glamr, Glaumr, glamour) is translated “noisy Jökull,” from the hljóð (Germ. Laut), or the clamour, the crashing and clashing of ice-slips and torrents.
[77] Dýr is Θήρ, their, deôr, and deer, in Iceland especially applied to the fox, being the only insular beast of prey (Cleasby).