[429] See David MacRitchie, Fians, Fairies, and Picts; also his Testimony of Tradition.
[430] Myers, in the Survival of the Human Personality (ii. 55-6), shows that ‘the departed spirit, long after death, seems pre-occupied with the spot where his bones are laid’. Among contemporary uncultured races there exists a theory parallel to this one arrived at through careful scientific research, namely, that ghosts haunt graves and monuments connected with the dead: according to the Australian Arunta the ‘double’ hovers near its body until the body is reduced to dust, the spirit or soul of the deceased having separated from this ‘double’ or ghost at the time of death or soon afterwards (Spenser and Gillen, Nat. Tribes of Cent. Aust.).
[431] See Les Grottes, t. i; Les Menhirs, Les Dolmens, Les Tumulus, and Cultes et observances mégalithiques, t. iv.
[432] On April 17, 1909, at Carnac, in a natural fissure in the body of the finest menhir at the head of the Alignement of Kermario, I found quite by chance, while making a very careful examination of the geological structure of the menhir, a Roman Catholic coin (or medal) of St. Peter. The place in the menhir where this coin was discovered is on the south side about fifteen inches above the surface of the ground. The menhir is very tall and smoothly rounded, and there is no possible way for the coin to have fallen into the fissure by accident. Nor is there any probability that the coin was placed there without a serious purpose; and it is an object such as only an adult would possess. An examination of the link remaining on the coin, which no doubt formerly connected it with a necklace or string of prayer-beads, shows that it has been purposely opened so as to free it at the time it was deposited in the stone. Had the coin been accidentally torn away from a chain or string of prayer-beads the link would have presented a different sort of opening. But it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that by any sort of chance the coin could have reached the place where I found it. I showed the coin to M. Z. Le Rouzic, of the Carnac Museum, and he considers it, as I do, as evidence or proof of a cult rendered to stones here in Brittany. The coin must have been secretly placed in the menhir by some pious peasant as a direct ex voto for some favour received or demanded. The coin is somewhat discoloured, and has probably been some years in the stone, though it cannot be very old. And the offering of a coin to the spirit residing in a menhir is parallel to throwing coins, pins, or other objects into sacred fountains, which, as we know, is an undisputed practice.
[433] Cf. A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel; quoted in Crawley’s Idea of the Soul, p. 133.
[434] Cf. Weidemann, Ancient Egyptian Doct. Immortality, p. 21.
[435] Cf. Mahé, Essai.
[436] Tylor, Prim. Cult.,4 ii. 143 ff., 169, 172.
[437] Marett, The Threshold of Religion, c. i.
[438] Mahé, Essai, p. 230.