The learned Dr. Bogan in his letter prefix’d to Delphi phœniciss. from Æschylus and others, Ικετ. ά. shews, that men were often call’d snakes by the ancients, in an allegorical way; and as to the report of Cadmus and his wife, of the Sidonian women and others, turn’d into snakes, or stones, or birds, or trees, in the sense we are explaining them; ’tis no more than what we daily see and hear at this time, in these very Druid temples of our own island, which we are speaking of. The people who live at Chippin-Norton and all the country round our first described temple of Rowldrich; affirm most constantly and as surely believe it, that the stones composing this work are a king, his nobles and commons turn’d into stones. They quote an ancient proverb for it, concerning that tall stone, call’d the king stone.
If Long-Compton thou canst see,
Then king of England shall thou be.
And as Mr. Roger Gale wrote once to me from the place: “’tis the creed of all that country, and whoever dares to contradict it, is looked upon as the most audacious free-thinker.”
The very same report remains, at the Druid temple of Stanton-Drew, in Somersetshire, which I shall describe in my next volume. This noble monument is vulgarly call’d the Weddings; and they say,’tis a company who assisted at a nuptial solemnity, thus petrify’d. In an orchard near the church, is a cove consisting of three stones, like that of the northern circle in Abury, or that of Longstones: this they call the parson, the bride, and bridegroom. Other circles are said to be the company dancing: and a separate parcel of stones standing a little from the rest, are call’d the fidlers, or the band of musick.
So that vast circle of stones in Cumberland which was a Druid temple, is call’d long Meg and her daughters, and verily believed to have been human, turn’d into stones.
Thus we see an exact uniformity between the fables of the antient Greeks, and our present people. The former found these kind of patriarchal temples built by their first heroes and planters; admiring the vastness of the works, they affix’d these marvellous stories to them, and retain them as firmly, as our vulgar do the like now. And this is the nature of the ancient mythology; but by finding the end of the clue, we draw it out into useful truths.
These Cadmonites, Avim, Hittites, Hivites, Spartans, Lacedemonians, (who are all one and the same people,) retain’d a distinct remembrance of their relation to the Jews, even to the days of the Maccabees, as we read 1. Maccab. xii. and in Josephus Ant. xii. 5. Undoubtedly they reckoned themselves of kin to Abraham, if not descended from him; thus I understand it. Joshua mentions chap. xi. the Hivites in the land of Mizpeh under mount Hermon by Libanus. He says further, in the 19th verse, the Gibeonites were a portion of that same people. The Avim or Horites about mount Seir where Esau dwelt, were the same people who were expell’d by the Caphthorim, as Moses mentions: on which bishop Cumberland has wrote largely.
We read of the great intercourse there was between Esau’s family and these people; for Esau married four of his wives from them, Gen. xxvi. 34. xxxvi. 2. no doubt but they married into his family again. Hence it is that Strabo x. writes, that Cadmus had Arabians in his company. And in xvi. that the inhabitants of Syria (he means properly Phœnicia) are originally deriv’d from the neighbourhood of the Persian gulf.
I doubt not but that there are now upon the face of the earth, many of these serpentine temples remaining in Europe, Asia and Africa. For instance, Strabo xvi. from Posidonius relates, that in a field call’d Macra by Damascus, was a dead serpent, the length of an acre, so thick that two horsemen could not see each other across him, his mouth so large as a horseman might enter into it; each scale was as big as a shield.