Stukeley delin
Toms sculp.
A View a little beyond Woodyates where the Ikening Street crosses part of a Druids barrow Jun. 9. 1724.
CHAP. II.
Of the name of Stonehenge. These works prior to the Roman times. Who were the builders? Of the general situation of it, again. Of the beauty of its general proportion. A peep into it. A walk round the area. Remarks on two stones standing on the vallum, and two corresponding cavities for water vases: explained from ancient coins. That the Welsh are the remains of the Belgæ from the continent, who lived here at the Roman invasion, and by whose reports, Stonehenge was built by the most ancient oriental colony, that brought the Druids hither.
COME we to the name of Stonehenge, so call’d by our Saxon ancestors; an argument sufficient, they were not the builders of it; they would have called it by a more honourable name. Roꝺe henᵹenne is in Saxon a hanging-rod or pole, i. e. a gallows; and Stonehenge is a stone gallows, called so from the hanging parts, architraves, or rather imposts, the more remarkable part; and which only can persuade people from thinking, the stones grew in the very place, (as they express it.) And so Mr. Camden, Dr. Holland, Mr. Webb and others think, of the wonderful work at Abury; because there are none of these overthwart stones, as here. Many are so astonished at the bulk of these stones, that measuring all art and power by their own, they had rather think, they sprouted up in their places, like mushrooms, at regular distances, in mathematical circles; than that they were plac’d there by human industry, for excellent purpose. But pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire, and I have been informed of another place there called Stonehenge, being natural rocks. So that I doubt not, Stonehenge in Saxon signifies the hanging stones. In Cornwall is a Heath call’d now Hengston down, probably from such a work as ours, now demolished. It is in the hundred of Easte. And near it, is that other memorable Antiquity, composed of many upright stones, call’d the Hurlers, a Druid temple. The old Britons or Welsh call Stonehenge choir gaur, which some interpret chorea gigantum, the giants dance: I judge, more rightly chorus magnus, the great choir, round church, or temple. As Banchor (where probably was of old, another Druid temple) means the high temple. But they mistake it for chorea, chwarae χuare, a ball, dance; as Necham sings;
Nobilis est lapidum structura, chorea gigantum:
Ars experta suum posse, peregit opus.
Mr. Camden defines the work coronæ in modum. The Latin corona a crown, corolla a ghirland, and the British crown comes from its circular form, as côr chorus. The armoric Britons call cryn rotundus, kruin the Irish. Coryn is the round tip of any thing, many such like words in all the Celtic dialects. The chorus of a building among Roman christians, became appropriate to the more sacred part, or east end of churches, always turn’d of a circular form; from the time of Constantine the Great. Thus all the churches in the holy land, thus the chapel in Colchester castle, and in the Tower of London, (both, in my opinion, built about his time) are round at the east end. The old Britons or Welsh, we find, had a notion of its being a sacred place, tho’ they were not the builders of it; for I take them to be the remains of the Celtic people that came from the continent, who chiefly inhabited England, at least the south part, when the Romans invaded the island, they are more particularly the remains of the Belgæ. I suppose their name Welsh, a corruption of Belgæ, Οὐέλγαι in greek, Belgischen and Welschen in german. Strabo IV. speaks of their way of making flannel, called λαιναί, for which our Welsh are so famous. Strabo gives the celtic word without the guttural aspirate, chlæna in latin. The most ancient inhabitants, the remains of the old Phœnician colony and primitive Celts who built Stonehenge, were the Picts, Scots, Highland and Irish, all the same people, tho’ perhaps differing somewhat in dialect, as in situation: no otherwise than a Cumberland-man and one of Somersetshire now. The Cornish, I suppose, some remains too, of the old oriental race. But at this very day in Wales, they call every antiquated appearance beyond memory, Irish. Upon view of land, that from before any ones remembrance appears to have been plow’d, or very ancient ruins of buildings, and the like, they immediately pronounce, That it was in the times of the Irish. The very same is observable in the north, of the Picts or Pights, as they pronounce it, gutturally, in the oriental fashion, which we cannot imitate. They call old foundations, Pights houses, &c. Every thing is Pictish, whose origin they do not know. These people are conscious, that they are not the Aborigines, who by time and successive inundations, were forc’d northward and westward, into Scotland and Ireland. And also in the days of the Romans, such of the then inhabitants as would not submit to their gentile yoke, took the same road. The Irish therefore, or ancient Scottish, is the remnant of the Phœnician language, mixt with old Biscayan and Gallic, dialects of Celts; and some oriental, Arabic in particular: as Mr. Toland observes. And they are the descendants of the people who built Stonehenge, and the like Works. Whence spring the strange reports of these stones, coming from Egypt, from Africa, from Spain, from Ireland. As retaining some memory of the steps, by which the people who preceded their ancestors, travelled; nor they themselves, nor even the Belgæ pretending to be the builders of this wonderful work. For the Belgæ could not be ignorant of their own coming from the Gallic continent.