ty and comfort,
and were industrious and intelligent; and it is interesting to record,
from the relics which the earth has preserved of their civilisation, the
kind of life which they must have lived in the ages which existed before
the dawn of history.

CHAPTER V

CROMLECHS, CAMPS, AND EARTHWORKS

Stone monuments--Traditions relating to them--Menhirs or hoar-stones--
_Alignements_--Cromlechs--Stonehenge--Avebury--Rollright stones--Origin
of stone circles--Dolmens--Earthworks--Chun Castle--Whittenham clumps--
Uffington--Tribal boundaries--Roman rig--Grims-dike--Legends--Celtic
words.

Among the antiquities which some of our English villages possess, none
are more curious and remarkable than the grand megalithic monuments of
the ancient races which peopled our island. Marvellous memorials are
these of their skill and labour. How did they contrive to erect such
mighty monuments? How did they move such huge masses of stone? How did
they raise with the very slender appliances at their disposal such
gigantic stones? For what purpose did they erect them? The solution of
these and many such-like problems we can only guess, and no one has as
yet been bold enough to answer all the interesting questions which these
rude stone monuments raise.

Superstition has attempted to account for their existence. Just as the
flint arrow-heads are supposed by the vulgar to be darts shot by fairies
or witches which cause sickness and death in cattle and men, and are
worn as amulets to ward off disease; just as the stone axes of early
man are regarded as thunder bolts, and when boiled are esteemed as a
sure cure for rheumatism, or a useful cattle medicine--so these stones
are said to be the work of the devil. A friend tells me that in his
childhood his nurse used to frighten him by saying that the devil lurked
in a dolmen which stands near his father's house in Oxfordshire; and
many weird traditions cluster round these old monuments.

[Illustration: MENHIR]

In addition to the subterranean sepulchral chambers and cairns which we
have already examined, there are four classes of megalithic structures.
The first consists of single stones, called in Wales, Cornwall, and
Brittany, _menhirs_, a name derived from the Celtic word _maen_ or
_men_ signifying a stone, and _hir_ meaning tall. In England they are
known as "hoar-stones," _hoar_ meaning a boundary, inasmuch as they
are frequently used in later times to mark the boundary of an