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3rdStone
PO Box 96]
Devizes, Wiltshire SN10 2TS
United Kingdom
Tel: 01380 723933
neil@thirdstone.demon.co.uk
www.thirdstone.demon.co.uk
3rd Stone was edited by
Neil Mortimer
with the help of Jeremy Harte
and Hilary Schratft.
Aubrey Burl, Jennifer Westwood,
George Nash and Danny Sullivan
offered additional editorial advice.
Ian Brown was Resident Illustrator.
Sales and marketing was managed by
Andy Worthington.
3rd Stone’s website was maintained
by Jerry Wellard at HB Studios
Multimedia Ltd
Back issues
A list of the back issues still held in
stock is available from the editorial
address. Online back issue
orders can be made at
www.thirdstone.demon.co.uk
by following the ‘subs’ link.
YOU’LL
NEVER HEAR
SURF MUSIC
AGAIN
ISSN 1369-1791
3rd Stone 47 - implosion 2003
Features:
8 New Angles on Stone Circles: Brittany, the British Isles and the
Land that Archaeology Forgot Aubrey Burl
I6 Stormy Weather: Treasure Hunters and the Devil Jeremy Harte
22 The Staffs of Asklepios and Hermes Bari Hooper
26 Fra/gmen/te/d me/gali/th/s Cornelius Holtorf
32 Geomagnetism: From dream incubation to dowsing Bob Trubshaw
38 Science and Sorcery a millennium before Harry Potter
and Terry Pratchett... Ian Morrison
41 Daddy Long-Legs: The shape—shifting Wilmington Giant
Rodney Castleden
48 Spirits in the Sky: The Spirit of Manitou Across North America
Herman E. Bender
54 Changing Avebury Brian Edwards
59 Contending with Monsters: Satan, the Primitive and the Power of
Place in 19th Century Cornish Folklore David Sivier
Small Stone:
72 The Shining One John Sharkey
74 Blackstone, Redstone and Southstone Shirley Toulson
76 The Devil at large in Suffolk Robert Halliday
77 Avebury: work in progress Rick Kemp
78 Whales on the Rocks Kalle Sognnes
Regulars:
I News & Shortcuts, 65 Letters, 68 Abstracts,
78 Reviews, 88 Classied.
Cover Credits. Thanks to everyone who sent in materials for this final issue’s cover.
Apologies to those of you whose pix etc we weren’t able to use for reasons of space, for-
matting or dodgy discs — we received too many to use “em all. Front (left to right. top to
bottom): John Billingsley at boundary stone on Midgley Moor, near Hebden Bridge, West
Yorkshire (pic: Andrew Riley); Moonrise at Stonehenge on 19 December 2002 (pic: Pete
Glastonbury); Russell Crowe disgraces himself at a 35 word crew meeting (pic: peel slowly
and see); Sunset at Callanish on 27 July 1997(pic: C. Tilanus): Cup Hill Morris Men,
As:
Hydon Ball, Hambledon, near Godalming, Surrey on 1 May I995 (pic: Ross Kilsby); Sam
h—t
at the Blaenawen Stone, Glanrhyd, Cardigan (pic: Maura Hazelden); Sunset over Silbury
A
Hill (pie: Rob Speight); Harold’s Stones, Monmouthshire (pic: Stuart Norman); The Devil’s ‘
ski tracks, West Kennet Avenue (pic: Paul James); Antiquarian picnic at the Devil‘s Den.
Wiltshire (pic: Snazz); Willie and Curtis at Pixies Holt, Dartmoor, summer 2003 (pic:
Barbara O‘Riley); Tal-Y—Fan Menhir, nr Rhiw, North Wales (pic: Ken Docherty). Back
cover: Jade, Rhiannon and Vicki at Bryn Celli Ddu. Anglesey (pic: Mark Willcox);
Bowerman’s Nose, Dartmoor (pic: Pauline Crosby); Tre’r Dryw, Anglesey (pic: Mark
Willcox); Nazca geoglyph, July 2003 (pic: Catherine Wayland); Solstice sunset from Carn
Ingli, Preseli Mountains (pic: Laurence Main); Tap o” Noth vitrified fort, near Rhynie,
Aberdeenshire (pic: Ken Docherty): Matfen Stone, Northumberland (pic: Pauline Crosby); 0
Julian at Avebury (pic: Cass Till); Doll Circle, Derbyshire (pic: Angela Witcher); Blakean b
vernacular art on Malta, 1999 (pic: E. R. Thona); Megalithically induced headache at the p
Rollrights, I993 (pie: Monika Ogasa); Edward at Stonehenge, 2000 (pic: Philip Copestake).
Inside back cover illustration by Ian Brown.
 HCWS
lcome to the very last
‘ R / issue of 3rd Stone. You
may have been
wondering if issue 47 was ever
going to happen. It’s taken what
seems like forever to get this final
issue finished because of work
commitments and so on, so thanks
for being patient. We hope that
you think this last issue, our
biggest ever, has been worth the
wait.
Thanks to everyone —— and
there were lots of you — who sent
in photographs for the final cover,
and apologies to anyone whose
photos we weren’t able to use. If
you haven’t already received your
original photographs back in the
post, you will do soon.
Over the years many
people have contributed to 37d
Stone and needless to say we’d
like to offer our sincere thanks to
all the writers, researchers and
artists who have given their spare
time to the magazine. It’s been a
real pleasure to publish so many
good things. One of the things that
people liked about 3rd Stone was
our policy of mixing amateur,
professional and academic contrib—
utors. We liked that as well, partic—
ularly as the gaps between the
joins were for the most part
difficult to see.
No magazine can exist
without its subscribers, so we’d
also like to thank all of you who
have stuck with the magazine
over the past nine years.
We’ve particularly enjoyed
all the feedback you’ve sent
us. 3rd Stone has always
benefited from an active
readership, and those
of you we’ve met on
field trips and at
conferences etc have
been a great bunch of
people.
from the stone
Most of you probably
know that Jeremy Harte has been
an essential ingredient in the 3rd
Stone mix, and without Jezza’s
input things would have been a lot
less fun. Fortuna must have been
smiling down on us that fateful
day when, at the Abbotsbury
Rhubarb Festival, Jezza first
clapped eyes on a copy of 3761
Stone back in the balmy summer
of ’94. ..
We’ve been knocked out
by your response to the news of
the shutdown since issue 46 came
out in April. It’s nice to know that
many of you have gotten so much
out of 3rd Stone, and a selection
of some of your farewells are
included in the letters pages of this
issue.
Readers with outstanding
issues on their subscription should
have received a letter about this by
now. If you haven’t, and you think
that you may be owed some
subscription monies, drop us an
email or write to the usual
address.
Incidentally, the PO BOX
address will remain
open for the
foreseeable future,
and the email
newsletter will
carry on with
its infrequent
mailings. We may also send very
occasional mail shots through the
post; this won’t be junk mail or
such-like, but might let you know
about any developments that you
may be interested in. If you do not
want to receive any such mailings
please drop us a line and we’ll take
your details off the database.
There has been a fair
amount of speculation ying about
regarding a possible successor to
3rd Stone. While 3rd Stone itself
has definitely reached the end of
the line, as ever there are various
projects in the air which may or
may not constitute a revival of
some sort akin to what 3rd Stone
has been doing. It’s early days, but
you’ll hear about it if and when
when we have any news (if you
stay on our database).
37161 Stone’s shutdown also
marks the end of an era because
for the first time since the 19605
Britain doesn’t have a national
small press earth mysteries (or
whatever you want to call it)
magazine. Northern Earth and
Meyn Mamvro (see the Small Press
listings for details) are both great
magazines and still going strong,
but they both focus on particular
regions. Nothing wrong with that,
but we hope that someone starts a
new national earth mysteries
magazine, as is rumoured to
be the case.
But enough of this
machiavellian
cobblers. Enjoy your
final installment of
antediluvian enquiry.
Until next time...
Be lucky!
W
PS. Maybe we’ll see some of you
at Stonehenge in December - see
page 3»
3rd Stone 4.7 page I
 shortcuts
Readers with wheelbarrows of spare
cash might want to know that Marden
Henge, Wiltshire, featured in 3843, is
up for sale. The property pages of the
Wiltshire Gazette and Herald (25
September 2003) included an adver-
tisement for the forthcoming sale.
‘Marden, Nr Devizes. A highly
attractive rural property including a 5-
bedroom Grade II listed house, Grade
II listed former Flour and Grist Mill
and other buildings, with considerable
renovation/conversion potential. Set
in about 22 acres of water meadows,
woodland and pasture paddocks
including an Ancient Henge
Monument. About 23.1 acres as a
whole. Price Guide £1,100,000.’ Your
3rd Stone team would be interested in
this country pile were it not for the
fact that the Vale of Pewsey is such a
deeply unfashionable address, don’t
you know.
More old stuff for sale. A little known
Bronze Age barrow near Nancledra,
West Penwith, Cornwall was recently
put on the market for a measly
£150,000. Saviils Property Review
magazine (Autumn/Winter 2003)
featured the monument, which is
enclosed by two rings of stones. The
barrow’s owner, Nic Potter, former
bassist with doomy proggers Van Der
Graaf Generator, is moving to France
and told the Times (27 June 2003): “I
would come up here and suddenly
start hearing bits of music which I
would use in the band, but now it’s
time to sell up and move on.”
More music... “In a town in the east,
The parishioners were visited upon,
By a curious beast... A nimbus of blue
light surrounds a crimsom paw, As he
takes another fatal swipe, At the
Blytheburgh Church Door.” No, not
an obscure example of dire Victorian
folk—poetry, but sample lyrics from
Black Shuck, the opening track on
chart-topping retro rockers, The
page 2 3rd Stone 47
Darkness’s debut CD, Permission To
Land. Listeners of a gentle disposition
are advised to approach the lyrics of
the tremendously foul-mouthed fops
with caution; the chorus to the track
repeatedly rhymes ‘shuck’ with one of
the most over-used words in the
English language. See Small Stone
‘The Devil at large in Suffolk’ later
this issue for more on the Blytheburgh
beast.
Few of you are likely to have missed
press reports of the momentous
discovery of Ice Age rock carvings on
the walls of Creswell Crags,
Derbyshire earlier in the year. But in
case anyone did... Rock art
researchers Paul Bahn, Paul Pettitt
and Sergio Ripoll identified the
engravings of two birds and an ibex at
Church Hole, where a 12,000-year-
old bone needle was discovered in the
19th century. The rock art panels are
caked in calcite, ruling out the possi-
bility that they are modern forgeries,
and are obscured by grafti dating to
1948. Of the two carved birds, one
appears to be a crane or swan, and the
other a bird of prey. The largest
engraving is of an ibex, an animal not
thought to have been indigenous to
Britain, and the researchers are specu-
lating that the rock art records a rare
sighting of a beast which had strayed
across the land bridge that linked the
British Isles to continental Europe at
the time. (British Archaeology,
September 2003)
Forty-four years ago, The Ley Hunter
initiated a new way of looking at
sacred sites. Brash, chaotic, inspired,
and scruffy, the rst earth mysteries
magazine blazed a trail which has
been followed (dare we say it) by
orthodox as well as alternative
archaeologists. You may have mislaid
your early copies of fading
Gestetnered text. Now the back
numbers 1969-1976 can be accessed
on the web, through the hard
work of Jimmy Goddard, at
www.tlh6976.fsnet.co.uk. Goddard has
also contributed a page on the same
site explaining why the ley system is
for real and contains subtle energies.
The Rollright Stones had an
enigmatic visitor during the summer,
when Anish Kapoor’s 1997 sculpture,
Turning the Worid Inside Out, was
installed in the centre of the site
during July and August. The
sculpture, a shimmering steel globe, is
said to embody Kapoor’s interest with
cosmic regeneration, evoking female
and male Hindu cosmic symbolism.
The globe has a hollow on its upper
section, which Kapoor aligned with
the nearby megalithic burial chamber,
the Whispering Knights. The
sculpture was installed as part of
Extraordinary Art, a national event
marking the centenary of the National
Art Collections Fund. (www.chipping—
norton.net)
London’s key geomantic monument is
about to return home. For the last 125
years Temple Bar, the symbolic
gateway to the western boundary of
the City, has languished inside a wood
in Hertfordshire. Designed by
Christopher Wren in 1669, Temple
Bar replaced an earlier wooden
gateway festooned with the heads of
criminals, and was built to display the
power of the Lord Mayor. Even the
monarch had to stop and ask
permission to pass through. Now the
City of London has bought it back for
£1 - they know how to bargain, these
chaps — and it will be dismantled block
by block and returned... not quite to
the middle of the road, but to
Paternoster Square nearby.
Fans of the dark art of Nicholas
Hawksmoor will have tuned eagerly
into the Radio 4 interview, Devils
Architect, in June. Did the baroque
architect really spread a web of
malign geometry, held together by
human sacrice, across the cities of
London? Er, 110, said architectural
historian Vaughan Hart. He built some
awe-inspiring churches, but that’s it.
We turned to Ian Sinclair, who didn’t
say in so many words the guy was a
black magician, but made it clear he
thought he was manifesting an uncon—
scious Manichaean division between
darkness and light. Peter Ackroyd,
perhaps wisely, stayed home.
A silver gurine of a previously
unknown 3rd century Romano-British
goddess has been discovered among a
hoard of temple treasure found buried
in a eld near Baldock in
Hertfordshire. The collection of 26
items, including the corroded 150m
gurine, plaques and jewellery was
taken to the British Museum for
identication and conservation. Dr
Ralph Jackson, Roman curator at the
museum, deciphered faint inscriptions
on the votive plagues, including one
which read ‘Servandus Hispani
willingly fullled his vow to the
goddess’. The gurine was X—rayed,
revealing the name of Senua: “It was
an extraordinary moment, like seeing
her reborn before my eyes”, said Dr
Jackson. (Guardian, 1 September
2003)
3rd Stone is sad to report the passing
of Professor Gerald Hawkins, author
of Stonehenge Decoded. While the
controversy which surrounded his
most well known research carried out
in the 19603 had long since blown
over, he was due to deliver a research
paper on Stonehenge to a conference
in Oxford shortly before his death. A
full obituary, written by Mike Pitts,
appeared in the Guardian on 24 July
2003.
Ghosts? Forget it, says Richard
Wiseman, publishing in The British
Journai of Psychology. After poking
around haunted spots at Hampton
Court and the South Bridge Vaults in
Edinburgh, the doctor concluded that
it was usually the same areas which
had a spooky reputation, and that they
were characterised by draughts,
shadows and variations in the
magnetic eld. Physical cues like this
may trigger the ghostly experience.
Four months later, in September,
another press release from the same
Dr. Wiseman. Ghosts? Forget it,
haunted houses are due to the local
presence of ultrasound, which...etc,
etc. ‘Science debunks the spooks’
seems to be turning into a folkloristic
meta-narrative all of its own.
A publicity stunt to announce the
latest series of the reality television
trash-fest Big Brother was criticised
earlier in the summer when the show’s
logo, an eye, was painted alongside
the Ufngton White Horse. The 210
feet wide Ufngton eye was marked
out using water-based, non-toxic,
lead-free, biodegradable paint on May
1st and removed the following day
using water jets. David Miles, chief
archaeologist with English Heritage,
said the use of the Ufngton White
Horse in such a way was an
indictment of modern society: “This
simply conrms we live in a
commercial age. Yet somehow I think
the White Horse will be around long
after Big Brother is forgotten.”
(Observer, 4 May 2003.)
Thanks to this issue’s clipsters, who
are Rose Heaword, Alastair McBeath,
Ian Brown, Colleen(?), Snow
Wakeman, Paul Wain, A. Snazz, Barry
Hedges and Gail McHardy.
This edition of Shortcuts was brought
to you by Neil and Jezza.
Winter solstice 2003
It won’t be long until the Winter
Solstice is here, and enquiries made
to English Heritage have conrmed
that Stonehenge will ‘almost
certainly’ be Open for buiness to
greet the sunrise on December
22nd. A reader has suggested that a
few like-minded souls might like to
have a shivery 3rd Stone get-
together that morning, so if you
fancy meeting up around 0700 drop
Neil a line (by post or email) and
we’ll x something up.
The Dragon Project
The Dragon Project Trust’s long-term
ancient site dreaming programme
came to its ofcial end in June, 2003,
with the publication of an initial
academic paper on its outcome in
Dreaming (the only peer-reviewed
publication on the subject). Over a
number of years, in a modern version
of the ancient temple sleep practice,
numerous volunteers slept at four
selected ancient sites in the U.K. and
had their REM sleep monitored. On-
site dreams were tape-recorded and
transcribed. The aim of the
programme was to test whether
dreams had at such places could be
shown to be site specic, or at least
distinguishable from control dreams.
The dream reports were eventually
collated and statistically studied and
blind-judged at The Saybrook
Institute, San Francisco, under the
guidance of Dr. Stanley Krippner.
(Unfortunately, a number of the site-
dreaming volunteers failed to supply
sufcient control dreams, and this
limited the overall programme.) A
distinction of modest statistical signif-
icance was found between on-site
dreams and control dreams, though the
reasons for that are potentially various,
and have not been denitively
assigned. This paper represents the
rst of what will be various cuts of a
valuable data cake, and further statis-
tical studies on this unique body of
dream reports are currently under way,
though their results may take months
or even years to appear. Volunteers
who took part in the programme, and
who provided the requested number of
control dreams, are invited to send a
self—addressed enveIOpe to Devereux,
DPT, P. O. Box 11, Moreton-in-Marsh,
Glos., GL56 OZF, to receive an
offprint of the paper. Offprints unfor-
tunately cannot be made available to
others. ("The Use of the Strauch
Scale to Study Dream Reports from
Sacred Sites in England and Wales",
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and
Adam Fish, in Dreaming, Vol.13,
No.2, June 2003.)
Paul Devereux
3rd Stone 4.7 page 3
 .S It
HE THORNBOROUGH HENGES
I are an alignment of three
almost identical and equally-
spaced henge monuments in North
Yorkshire, stretching for almost
1.7km. They have recently starred in
an episode of the BBC’s archaeology
series ‘Time Flyers’.
The henges themselves are
Scheduled Ancient Monuments
(SAMs), each around 550m in
diameter. Just to the west of the
central henge is a gravel pit, where
quarrying has created articial lakes
that are in the process of being
landlled back to a pseudo-normality.
Both the Central and Southern henges
have had their outer ditches and banks
subjected to ploughing, and the entire
northern henge has been engulfed by a
wood that has ironically kept it the
best protected of the three. Dr Jan
Harding from Newcastle University
has received an Aggregate Levy
Sustainability Fund (ALSF) grant via
English Heritage to investigate the
wider area around the henges. “This
amazing landscape,” he explains, “is a
resource of national and international
importance. The eldwork to date has
raised more questions than it has
answered and it would be a
tremendous loss to our national
heritage if the remaining land around
these huge ancient temples is allowed
to be quarried for short-term gain.”
The Friends of
Thornborough is a campaign group
which has been set up to protect the
henges, representing some 2,500 local
people and many more further aeld.
They haVe produced an online petition
which has been circulating via email
which aims to prevent quarrying in
the area. Details of the petition were
posted to various online discussion
lists.
A message from County
Archaeologist for North Yorkshire
Neil Campling was soon posted the
SMRForum list: “The Thornborough
Henges are not under threat. They are
page 4. 3rd Stone 4.7
C W 3.
a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The
‘sacred plateau” [the locality of the
Thornborough Henges, described as
such by some commentators], which
is a construct of a few local
individuals” imagination, is also not
under threat. There are currently no
planning applications for, and not
even any discussions about, quarrying
around the middle and southern
henges. Please do not sign the
petition: it only shows you’ve
swallowed the misrepresentations of
the web site hook, line and sinker.”
George Caplin from the
Friends of Thornborough replied:
“Very recently, the Friends of
Thornborough have received a letter
from AngloAmerican Plc, owners of
Tarmac Northern Ltd, stating that they
intend to proceed with the planning
application, we also hear they are
considering a second for the area.
Were the quarrying to go ahead, futher
landll would be required to bring the
land back up to the same level as at
present.”
Following his visit to the
area during the production of the
‘Time Flyers’ television programme,
Dr Mark Horton commented:
“Thornborough is important in
national terms — the three main henges
are contemporary and part of a single
scheme, and with their double ditches
etc make them the single largest earth-
moving operation in early prehistory.
“The monuments themselves
are in a poor condition, with massive
animal erosion going on destroying
the banks. Recently they have been
fenced off with what looks like a grass
runway between the henges. So
tightly have the fences been placed,
that they actually run over the top of
the outer bank, so I assume that
chunks of the SAM lie outside the
fence!”
Neil Campling responded to
this suggestion: “Yes, the SAM does
extend beyond the edges of the
henges. The hedging and fencing were
t c h
put in as part of a Countryside
Stewardship Agreement with the
landowner to stop ploughing of the
edges and centres of the henges.
Unfortunately, the hedges and fencing
were put in before Dr Jan Harding had
completed a measured survey of the
monument to show just where the
fences should have been placed. This
was a cock-up on the part of EH,
DEFRA and the landowner, and has
nothing to do with the County
Council. The grass ‘runways’ are
reversion to pasture from originally
ploughed areas and are subject to
special grass seed mixes and stocking
rates. The Northern henge is subject to
a voluntary agreement with the
landowner to manage and reduce the
tree cover gradually over time to
preserve the earthworks and prevent
damage from windthrow.”
Dr Horton continued:
“Astroarchaeology is potentially
signicant. We deal with this in our
programme, but the important point is
that certain celestial alignments are
repeated during several phases - from
the cursus to the henges, which does
provide an element of validation.
These alignments are picked up in pits
in the landscape - that may have
served similar functions to ‘standing
stones’ on megalithic sites.”
“Just this September details
were revealed of one of these pit
alignments as part of a Watching Brief
and excavation inside the current
quarry. Such pit alignments are poorly
understood, yet shockingly, they have
now been dug out and lost forever. It
is concerning that a ring ditch burial
found beside the western most pit
alignment was not scheduled, thus
saving the area from quarrying - all
the other barrows in the
Thornborough area have been.”
“Yes, but [the pits] have been
mapped, recorded and sampled and
the information contained in the pit
alignments has been preserved, even
if the pits themselves have been lost”,
 Neil Campling replied. “Bear in mind
that we didn’t know about these align-
ments until they were uncovered, but
the major pit alignment WITHIN the
SAM which we did know about was
also lost, due to, in my view wholly
unnecessary, archaeological excava-
tions by Dr Harding.”
He went on: “Note that the
ring ditch burial and the pit alignment
are not contemporary and may be
separated by 1000 years or so. Once
planning permission has been granted,
a site is very unlikely to be scheduled
as English Heritage would have to pay
compensation to the company for loss
of income and other costs. The
Government should be lobbied to
legislate for scheduling without risk of
compensation.”
The quarrying company has
conrmed their interest, a they intend to do. The recent example
spokesperson told the 24 Hour
Museum website: “The Thornborough
Henge site is an important site of
archaeological interest and we believe
that in Tarmac’s care it is in safe
hands. We are actively consulting with
all the local statutory authorities, local
communities and other interested
parties to ensure the henges are
conserved. We plan to restore the site
in consultation with archaeological
experts and provide a visitor centre.”
The existing ALSF funds
have largely been spent on Dr
Harding’s research work, so ironically
it appears the only way money will
become available is through further
damage to the area - some denition of
Sustainability!
The Friends of
Thornborough, say there has been very
little local consultation. “Since last
November, when the latest plans were
announced, there have been no public
meetings. The local liaison group is
despondent that Tarmac simply do not
listen — simply telling the group what
of the pit alignments, is a good
example - our suggestion that Tarmac
delay quarrying of a small section of
the site so we could further investigate
an apparently unique feature was
responded to by moving the bulldozers
in apparently ahead of schedule.
Tarmac have not modied any of their
plans based on local concerns, consul-
tation is a two way process that has
never happened here”.
his is the last Site Watch
column for the foreseeable
future. If you’ve taken the time
to write in or e-mailed the ‘powers-
that-be’ regarding any of the sites
we’ve featured, please accept our
heartfelt thanks, and keep it up! There
isn’t space to look back at the sites
we’ve featured, but probably the most
signicant example of what public and
professional pressure can do is the
mothballing of the disastrous ‘Cut and
Cover’ tunnel at Stonehenge. Far from
resolved of course, the Stonehenge
issue will run and run, with a Public
Enquiry looming. Site Watch will
continue with weekly updates as part
of the Megalithic Portal web site on
www.megalithic.co.uk, where you can
also nd the web links for this and
past columns.
Andy Burnham

8 Interesting facts 1: 3rd Stone

(‘32 VER THE YEARS INNUMERABLE READERS HAVE the title, but reected the global aspirations of the Q
(9) asked how, why or where 3rd Stone got its mag (the planet earth is the third planet from the @3
{3:52 name. And here, at very long last, the sun, you dig?) and had a suitably mysterious, Q
mysterious origins of your favourite mag can be laid poetical ring to it. So what would have been issue (63
(‘22 bare like an immodest strumpet. 19 of GEM became issue 19 of 3rd Stone. This is at)
(3} 3rd Stone started out life as GEM the reason why readers unfamiliar with the history C
{‘32 (Gloucestersht're Earth Mysteries), which Danny of the mag looking for back issues 1-18 have Q
(‘gj Sullivan began producing in the 1980s. In 1994 usually been disappointed. The magazine’s new title
3;?) Danny decided that the magazine he was publishing also had the exciting side effect of ensuring that git,
(.5) had outgrown its parochial roots and decided to potential readers, shops, press ofcers, writers, (9’3
@2 change its name to reect its increasingly broad researchers, distributors - indeed the world at large -
,3 subject matter. There was lots of stuff about old had absolutely no idea what 3rd Stone’s subject (3’3
.32 stones in the mag, so it seemed only reasonable to matter was about. Ki???
(ii) get ‘stone’ in the title somewhere. Danny, along The suggestion that Danny subsequently
(0) with his wife Jo-Anne, soon struck on 3rd Stone, went on to publish an Amsterdam-based magazine (‘93
ft“ named after the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s mages- of a highly suspect (and very probably illegal) i’”
@) terial psychedelic epic ‘Third Stone from the Sun’. nature called Foxy Lady can neither be conrmed tag)
The name not only included the catch-all ‘stone’ in nor denied. (3’3

3rd Stone 4.7 page 5

 The Stonehenge we deserve Banish...
Jacquetta Hawkes once famously
declared that every age has the
Stonehenge it deserves *— or desires
(Hawkes 1967: 174). In the 1950s
it seems we desired or deserved
visitors facilities that include a neo-
brutalist concrete underground
'bunker'. With the creation of
English heritage in 1984 the
chairman, Lord Montague, pledged
to improve matters. In 1993 a
House of Commons Select
Committee declared them a
“national disgrace’. In 2003 they
still grace the place.
Stonehenge continues to
be one of the leading tourist desti-
nations in the country. A survey in
1990 established there were
700,000 paying visitors a year, and
about 250,000 who 'chose not pay'.
At peak times they arrived at the
rate of 2,000 an hour. Americans
made up about forty percent of
these visitors; indeed Britons were
outnumbered three-to-one by
overseas tourists. The average
duration of these visits is under 30
minutes, of which half is typically
spent in the loos or the shop. Not
surprisingly only one in six of those
interviewed thought they got ‘good
value’ from their visit.
Since 1986 2,600 hectares
around Stonehenge have been a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
For about as long the Department
of Transport’s ‘motorways by
stealth’ policy for expanding the
A303 from London to the south-
west has considered different
page 6 3rd Stone 4.7
options for putting this major trunk
road through the World Heritage
Site. And since the mid-1970s
there has been increasing archaeo-
logical understanding of the
environs of the monument and its
relationship to the less well—known
cursus and Bronze Age barrows
(e.g. RCHME 1979; Richards
1990, 1991; Cleal et al 1995; Pitts
2001; for an accessible summary
see Bender 1998: Ch.2).
The National Trust, who
own much of the World Heritage
Site, created a network of paths in
the 19803 to encourage people to
visit the lesser—known monuments.
Apart from that any other proposed
improvements and changes have
remained as proposals ~ usually
hotly debated and unsatisfactory to
either the pe0ple with the money, to
a broad consensus of archaeolo-
gists, or to the (often overlooked)
local inhabitants. Finally some sort
of agreement seems to have been
reached. Mike Pitts and Julian
Richards have summarised the key
aspects of the road improvements
and new visitors facilities in an
article in a recent issue of Current
Archaeology (Pitts and Richards
2003)
A bored tunnel will take
the A303 underneath Stonehenge.
The A344, which runs close to
Stonehenge, will be closed. Most
of the arable farming will revert to
pasture and a massive conservation
project will enhance the chalk
downland environment for wildlife.
The visitors centre will be to the
east, close to existing roads in an
area with no known signicant
archaeology, attractively situated by
the River Avon, invisible from
Stonehenge and screened by trees.
A ‘land train’ will take visitors take
visitors to the mid-point of the
cursus, due north of Stonehenge,
with the final approach being on
foot. This approximates to
approaching Stonehenge along The
Avenue, presumed to be the way
the monument was intended to be
approached. From this direction
the megaliths sit dramatically on
the skyline. As Pitts and Richards
conclude ‘it seems to us [this] is
what Stonehenge really deserves.’
Assuming the necessary
public inquiry does not lead to
insuperable problems then
completion for these changes
is 2008.
FFI: www.cnglish-heritage.org.uk
Follow links to ‘Conservation
Management’ then ‘The
Stonehenge Project’.
References
BENDER, Barbara, 1998, Stonehenge:
Making space, Berg.
CLEAL, R., K. WALKER and R.
MONTAGUE, 1995, Stonehenge in its
Landscape: Twentieth century excavations.
English Heritage.
HAWKES, Jacquetta, 1967, 'God in the
machine', Antiquity, 41, 174—80.
PITTS, Mike, 2001, Hengeworld (2nd edn),
Arrow.
PITTS, Mike and Julian RICHARDS, 2003,
'A future for Stonehenge', Current
ArchaIOgy, 185, 197*201.
R.C.H.M.E., 1979, Stonehenge and its
Environs: Monuments and [and use,
Edinburgh UP.
RICHARDS, Julian, 1990, The Stonehenge
Environs Project, English Heritage
Archaeological Report 16.
RICHARDS, Julian, 1991, Stonehenge,
Batsford/English Heritage.
 Acoustics, Space and Intentionality
McDonald Institute, Cambridge, 27-29 June, 2003
In June 2003, Chris Scarre and
Graeme Lawson invited a repre-
sentative group of researchers
working in various ways with
acoustics in archaeological contexts
to an effectively closed
“conference/working party” at
Cambridge University’s McDonald
Institute for Archaeological
Research.
Among the 20 or so
delegates were: legor Reznikoff,
who has studied the behaviour of
echoes of the chanting human voice
in Palaeolithic painted caves; Peter
Holmes, who undertakes practical
investigation into how ancient
musical instruments were made and
played; Steve Waller, who has been
investigating the association
between rock art worldwide and
echoes, but notably in the USA (and
who before he left Britain managed
to investigate the newly—discovered
and currently unique example of
English Palaeolithic parietal cave
art at Church Hole, Cresswell
Crags, Derbyshire, where he found
echo phenomena to be present);
Aaron Watson who, with his then
Reading University colleague,
David Keating, used wide-spectrum
[d e ll/ 1 V : m m
d’f/WW7’
r
x
///
sound to explore various Neolithic 2002) gave an account of his 1994
sites in Britain; Italian scholar work with Robert Jahn under the
Eleonora Roccini who has been aegis of the International
studying acoustics in Classical Consciousness Research
Greek and Roman theatres; Swedish Laboratories (ICRL) group in deter-
archaeologist Joakim Goldhahn mining the natural resonant
who is studying the “acoustic frequencies of a selection of
narrative” of rock art at points along chambered prehistoric stone struc-
a river in Sweden; Ian Cross who tures, including Newgrange, at
discussed the “human experience of around 110 Hz. He also unveiled
socially organised sound”, and conrmed results of new ICRL
French-based Italian researcher, research showing that the 110 Hz
Francesco d’Errico, who convinc- audio frequency signicantly
ingly showed that some of the “bone affects the pre-frontal cortex and the
whistles” found in Stone Age cave temporal cortex of the human brain
deposits in Europe could indeed be with virtually the accuracy of a
the result of gnawing by bears. switch.
There were various other At the end of the
contributors, too, including Ezra symposium it was agreed to
Zubrow and Iain Morley who ofcially inaugurate a sub-disci-
provided anthropological perspec- pline within archaeology to be
tives. Chris Scarre gave a compre- called “archaeoacoustics”, modelled
hensive introduction to the research on archaeoastronomy. The
area, concentrating in particular on pioneering investigations of the kind
“the challenge of methodology”, described in Paul Devereux’s Stone
and Graeme Lawson made a Age Soundtracks (Vega, 2001) have
number of noteworthy contribu- nally come in from the cold.
tions, including the “music-archae— (“Acoustics, Space and
ology connection” and remarkable Intentionality”, McDonald Institute,
discoveries of acoustic signicance Cambridge, 27-29 June, 2003.
at Wells Cathedral. Paul Devereux Papers will be published as a
(“Soundings”, Third Stone 44, McDonald Institute Monograph.)
-
[.70 MW
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3rd Stone 4.7 page 7
 New Angles on Stone Circles
Brittany, the British Isles and the Land that
Archaeology Forgot
In the British Isles stone circles and rows are familiarfeatures of the
prehistoric landscape, but look hard enough and megalithic rectangles,
triangles and horseshoes may also be found. Aubrey Burl explains why.
S IGNATURE-TUNES CAN BECOME SWAN-SONGS.
Many years ago the writer began an attempt
to detect something from the silence of
stone circles and ever since it has been his theme
that archaeologists should scrutinise not selected
aspects of physical evidence but every piece from
the past. For prehistorians there is nothing else.
Now the last plea is, with John Aubrey, to ‘revive
the Memories and Memorials of [people] since
dead and gonne”, time to square the circle and
rediscover the triangle, the abandoned and
forgotten relics of four thousand years ago. Such
megalithic anomalies do exist. Archaeology has
simply contrived to ignore them. ‘Death’,
Le Tribunal observed Aubrey ruefully, ‘comes even to Stones
fer-a-cheval, and Names”.
St. Just, There has been an obstinate refusal to
Ile-et— Vilaine, admit any physical connection between the stone
Brittany. A monuments of Brittany and Britain even though
classic other foreign links are accepted. Mesolithic groups
megalithic splashed their hunter-gathering ways through the
horseshoe puddles and deepening swamps of the incipient
setting. English Channel. Selected immigrations in antiq-
page 8 3rd Stone 47
uity are unquestioned: Beaker inltrations and
Belgic invasions are undisputed yet not one Breton
builder has been allowed to reach these shores.
Even a association between the architecturally
similar passage-tombs of Brittany and Ireland is
denied.
Lonely voices have cried in the wilder-
ness, arguing the probability that the people who
constructed the monumental tombs of Newgrange,
Knowth, Dowth and other fine passage—tombs in
the Bend of the Boyne of eastern Ireland were
immigrants from the départmente of Morbihan,
‘the little sea”, in southern Brittany. The Irish
archaeologist, Michael Herity believed it. ‘The
group that set off for Anglesey and the Boyne may
have gathered in sheltered harbours inside the Gulf
[of Morbihan]... In this small area are massed
many of the nest of the ornamented Breton
tombs... It certainly serves to link the Golfe de
Morbihan and the Boyne Valley much more
closely”.
Such cries from outer space occasionally
reached established settlements. That fervent
Breton and austere archaeologist, P-R. Giot,
reviewed Herity”s book and its heretical conclu-
sions. He was unequivocal. ‘May I be permitted to
say that I don’t believe in a word of this lovely
picture”.1
But which of them was nearer the truth?
Those who know the literature also know the
archaeological ambivalence between what is
agreed about foreign artefacts and what is ignored
about foreign architecture. Since the 19th century
it has been agreed that there were cultural contacts
between Bronze Age Wessex and Brittany. The
bronze axes, daggers and ornaments of gold,
amber, jet and faience in round barrows near
Stonehenge are very like those of the warrior
graves in northern Brittany. In the Early Bronze
Age 'southern Britain and Brittany
presented a single cultural province'.2
Despite this unarguable
evidence of cross-channel contacts -
obviously not the handiwork of extra-
terrestrials - there has been no recog-
nition of the equally strong fact that
Breton architectural styles inuenced
the design of ritual sites in Britain.
Alien forms of rectangles of standing
stones and horseshoes, even minilithic
triangles, exist in the British Isles.
Even when this has been
demonstrated it has been ignored as
though one intrusive Battle of
Hastings was quite sufficient. The
rejection is strange. It is not as though
the claimed continental associations
were restricted to almost unheard-of
sites such as Ramsdale, Little Tom’s
Hill or Llanfairyinghomwy. To the
contrary, ‘Made in Brittany’ is
metaphorically engraved on the
sarsens of Stonehenge, a site well-
known to archaeologists. Avebury
must be added to the list. And
Arminghall in Norfolk, Croft Moraig
in central Scotland, King Arthur’s
Hall on Bodmin Moor, even a ‘stone
circle’ on Machrie Moor, Arran.
An entirely British ancestry
for Stonehenge would not account for
its ‘foreign’ rectangle of the Four
Stations, nor its three outlandish
horseshoes of stones, nor its Breton
carvings of axes, a dagger and anthro—
pomorphs on the sarsens. Elements of
Stonehenge have much in common
with the architecture and art of
Brittany.
In the centuries when gold,
copper, tin and int were being
exported across the channel from
Ireland and Cornwall, materials
scarce in many parts of western
Europe, it seems that incomers from
Brittany, traders or merchants raised
assembly-places and sanctuaries
around the coasts-of Britain and
Ireland.
This suggestion is strength-
ened by the fact that sea—going had for
generations been part ofa Breton way
of life. Mesolithic hunter-gathers
shed off Morbihan on the south coast
of Brittany. Carvings that may repre-
sent boats exist in the early Neolithic
doimens-aux-couloir and later alle'es-
couvertes. ‘Perhaps these alleged
ships were ceremonial vessels
carrying away the souls of the dead’.3
Centuries later the Iron Age Veneti of
southern Brittany were experienced
mariners whose heavy, leather—sailed
vessels rode the Atlantic waves.
There was no sudden irrup-
tion of Visiting sightseers when
Stonehenge was built. Contacts
between Brittany and Britain had
existed for centuries before that mega-
lithic astonishment and continued for
centuries afterwards, from the earliest
of New Stone Age tombs to Middle
Bronze Age stones in arrangements
unlike anything known in these
islands, well over two thousand years
of cross—channel interaction.
At the very beginning of the
Neolithic there were stylistic afnities
between the single-celled Severn—
Cotswold tombs of the Marlborough
Figure 1.
of
Distribution
ofmegalithic horseshoe
settings in Britain and
1%
Ireland.
Seilly Isles
0 100 200
Miles
Ushant
Downs and the dolmens d couloir
avec chambre simple of Brittany.4 A
thousand years later in the Late
Neolithic there was a comparable
similarity between the long-cham-
bered Breton alle’e—couvertes and a
monument inside Avebury that John
Aubrey described.
‘One of the Monuments in the
Street like that above Holy-head. .. is
converted into a Pigstye or Cow-
house — as is to be seen in the Rode’.
On Anglesey Aubrey had seen the
megalithic tomb of Tregnath, ‘of
great rough Stones about 20 in
number and about 30 paces...’.
That long-sided tomb was
unlike those around Avebury with
their short, single cells but Aubrey
recognised its resemblance to a
boxlike tomb in Avebury on the
‘crosse-street’... that runnes East and
Key
% 1. Arminghall
‘3 2. Croft Moraig
6 3. Cowiemuir
4. Haerstanes
5. Achavanich
6. Broubster
7. Latheronwheel
8. Machrie Moor I
20 9. Cam Beg
10.Lugg
11. King Arthur’s Hall
12. Stonehenge II, III
0 . 'HL 13. Avebury
P'n IS
a"
inistere
3rd Stone 47 page 9
 West’ across the road far east of the corner where often towards a cardinal point or to a solar align-
the ghastly Red Lion pub stands. With no covering ment.
barrow there were ve close—set upright slabs Such open-ended settings seem truncated
forming the southern side of a megalithic burial- versions of the spacious ellipses and egg—shaped
place spacious enough, like Tregnath, to stall rings around Camac. Huge ovals like Ménec West
farm animals. contained solar alignments along their axis. By
It was different from those on the ‘cutting’ such enclosures in half a horseshoe
Marlborough Downs but almost identical to the would be formed with an open mouth facing the
allées-couvertes of Brittany whose exposed foresight of a tall pillar at the curved apex.
sideslabs were not concealed under a mound. The Signicantly the horseshoes in Britain
existence of such an alien burial-place lying and Ireland are noticeably coastal, often near a bay
between Avebury’s South Circle and the ring’s or river-mouth as though set up by seafarers. There
North CirclefHorseshoe may have been just one of is a ne example in Caithness at Achavanich,
many intrusions from overseas. ‘eld of the holy man’, by Loch Stemster ve
There are hundreds of stone circles and miles from Lybster Bay. Originally fty-four tall
ovals in Britain and Ireland but horseshoe shapes stones formed an embanked setting 69m long with
are unusual. They are plentiful in Brittany. At a 26m wide mouth at the SSE. Idiosyncratically
Avebury as well as his allée-coaverte John Aubrey the pillars are ‘set with their long sides at right-
may have recorded one, a Breton fer-a-chevai. Its angles to the curve projecting like the cogs of a
surviving sarsens are traditionally identied as the wheel’. The setting has a characteristic Breton
remains of a ‘North Circle’ but a resistivity survey ‘high-and-low’ trait with taller stones on its
appeared to conrm a U-shaped setting. eastern side. It also has higher terminals like Er-
There are at least sixteen fer-aux- Lannic South. Astronomically it is aligned NNW
chevaux, in Brittany, the farthest south the dilapi- towards the head of a low rise and the most
dated Kergonan on the Ile-aux-Moines in the Gulf northerly setting of the winter moon.5 Like other
of Morbihan, the northernmost Tossen-Keler on horseshoes it was composed of local material as
Table I. the coast. In central Brittany is the Tribunal near Table 1 shows.
Horseshoe St.-Just and there are many others in Morbihan The ruinous stones of Hethpool in
Settings in including the pair on the former hill, now island, Northumberland could be added to the list. Until
Britain and of Er-Lannic. As well as their shape they have recently it was interpreted as a gigantic horseshoe
Ireland stones graded in height and an astronomical axis, 61m long and 27m wide but a survey has offered
the alternative of being the tumbled remains of
SITE LOCALITY MATERIAL EARTH DISTANCE
two separate circles. Questions remain. Hethpool
WORK FROM COAST
Arminghall Norfolk Timber Yes 20 miles
near Wooler is twelve miles from Budle Bay along
the River Glen and its size is in accord with large
Croft Moraig Perthshire Stone Yes. 30 miles fer-aux-Chevaux in Morbihan such as Kergonan
and the Champ de la Croix. It merits considera-
Cowiemuir Moray Firth Earth No 2 miles
tion.‘
Haerstanes Moray Firth Stone No 4 miles As well as Hethpool there is the ambiva-
lent structure inside Avebury. Of the two reliable
Achavanich Caithness Stone Yes 5 miles observers before its disruption, John Aubrey and
William Stukeley, Stukeley thought it had been a
Broubster Caithness Stone No 6 miles
concentric circle. He was mistaken. A geophysical
Latheronwheel Caithness Stone No 1 mile survey in 1989 discovered no traces of an inner
ring but did detect depressions and anomalies
Machrie Moor I Arran Stone No 1 miles
which with the two surviving standing and one
Cam Beg Co. Louth Stone Yes 2 miles
fallen stone indicated a horseshoe setting. Aubrey
actually planned it as one. The resistivity survey
Lugg Co. Dublin Timber Yes 5 miles cautiously concluded that ‘it is at least possible
that Aubrey’s version in this area may yet turn out
King Arthur’s Bodmin Stone Yes 12 miles
to be the most accurate of all’. Astronomically
Hall Moor -
there is independent support. The axis from the
Avebury Wiltshire Sarsen Yes 48 miles centre of the mouth to the apex of the setting is due
North, an orientation often found in Brittany.’
Stonehenge II Wiltshire Bluestone Yes 3] miles
It can be no more than conjecture. Short of
Stonehenge Ill Wiltshire Bluestone Yes 31 miles nding a Breton vase-support or other Middle
Neolithic Chasséen ware at Avebury the interpre-
Stonehenge III Wiltshire Sarsen Yes 31 miles tation is just a tempting possibility. Nothing more.
But if it had been an earlier Breton allée-couverte

page 10 3rd Stone 4.7

F
that Aubrey had drawn at Avebury
then the misinterpreted North ‘Circle’
is just as likely to have been a fer-d-
cheval from Brittany. ,
The settings at Stonehenge
are less controversial. The sarsen
ring’s elements are an amalgam of a
circle, a rectangle and two, perhaps
three, horseshoe settings. Yet there
has been no debate about the reasons
for the oblong of the Four Stations
around the circle and the horseshoes
of trilithons and bluestones inside the
ring.
Except for the perceptive
Stukeley no authority on Stonehenge
explained why the circle held the U-
shaped arrangement of trilithons. In
1740 Stukeley sensibly thought that
its mouth acted as an entrance to the
sacred cell. For the following three
centuries other reporters were
prosaically unenlightening: John
Smith in 1771, ‘originally an Ellipsis,
or oval’; Sir Richard Colt Hoare in
1812, ‘a large oval’; E. H. Stone in
1924, ‘somewhat in horseshoe style’;
Robert Cunnington in 1935, ‘in the
form of a horseshoe’; even Richard.
Atkinson in 1956, ‘set in a horseshoe’.
None offered a reason. Even the ency-
clopaedic Stonehenge in its
Landscape of 1995, shrugged, ‘a
horseshoe’.
E. H. Stone did stress the
enigma but only as a negative. ‘In
Britain Stonehenge is unique. We
have no earlier structure in the same
style from which its evolution may be
A N\
.. --........
Stonehenge: (a) The Four Stations, and (b) the tritithon horseshoe.
traced, and the design has never been
repeated... It has no ancestors and no
descendants’. He was mistaken.
Barclay remarked that trilithons were
unknown elsewhere in Britain but
‘examples are to be met with abroad’.8
So are megalithic horseshoes and
rectangles.
Of Stonehenge’s three horse-
shoe settings, the first of Atkinson’s
Phase II is debatable. Two are later and
certain, a slighter one of nineteen blue-
stones inside another of ve sarsen
trilithons, lintelled pairs of ten tall,
closely-set pillars. That horseshoe is
graded in height up to the apex of the
Great Trilithon and the midwinter
sunset. It is most persuasively
explained as an innovation from over-
seas.
So is the rectangle of the Four
Stations. The U-shaped arrangement of
the trilithons matches the Breton fer-
aux-chevaux. Horseshoes were
uncommon in Britain and Ireland. So
were rectangles. In Brittany they j ostle.
Infrequent in Morbihan where horse-
shoes dominate elsewhere in northern
Brittany they exist in Ile—et—Vilaine and
the Cote-de-Nord. In Finistere, the
département closest to Britain, there
were at least half a dozen, the now-lost
granite quadrilaterals of Parc ar Varret,
and Lanvéoc on the Crozon peninsula,
uprooted in the 19th century but
planned and sketched before their
destruction. In the British Isles,
however, only two are known, both in
southern England.
Q
&
91 0
..............__..-_...........‘
i5 421
0w
c 0'53
-._----_---__.._-.
o 0
92
oQ
One is on Bodmin Moor.
King Arthur's Hall is an earth-banked
rectangle, internally lined with
closely-set stones of alternating low
at-topped slabs and long, lean
pillars like the parapet of a battle-
ment. The symmetrical oblong and
the cardinal orientation are critical.
Prehistoric rectangles and horseshoe-
shaped settings hardly exist in
Britain. But less than six miles from
King Arthur’s Hall there is a massive
D-shaped horseshoe of low stones on
East Moor.
With only fourteen proven
horseshoes and two certain rectangles
for the 121,400 square miles of
Britain and Ireland but more than
thirteen hundred stone circles the
statistics demonstrate how atypical
the horseshoes and rectangle of
Stonehenge were if created by
natives. Conversely, there are some
twenty-seven U-shaped settings and
rectangles in Brittany, a departement
of 10,500 square miles, a twelfth the
size of the British Isles.
In the comparative densities
to the square mile of rectangles and
horseshoes in the British Isles and
Brittany a ratio of 22:1 greatly
favours the latter and makes it prob-
able that the architecture of the
Stonehenge sarsens was inuenced
by the Breton geometry and
astronomy of the rectangle and the
monumentality of the horseshoe. Its
Breton carvings have been analysed
elsewhere.
ODD
0 N QQ
Oé
Q
Q
0
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57
E.4
00 ‘5
QQ
0
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3rd Stone 4.7 page II
 NW oblong inside the earthen bank of the early
Stonehenge. It was almost perfect, laid out with
great care. The four corners are close to right-
angles, forming a regular parallelogram whose
long sides were aligned SE«NW.
‘Aligned’ is intentionally chosen. In
you 337

:-
‘;-._
.
.- _ ._
L. 1846 the short SW—NE sides were recognised to
.ar . point to the midsummer sunrise. In that year the
ling-i
n -v

1. i rf '\ r
s f .

Rev. Edward Duke who introduced the term

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‘Stations’, wrote that ‘The astronomer taking his
station [at Stone 92]... at the summer solstice,
and turning to the north-east, would see that
“Kme ARTHUR‘S HALL,3,.....51 BREWARD CORNWALL. majestic luminary in all his splendour mounting
in the horizon, and making his rst appearance
over the gnomon’ [Stone 91].
King What remains unclear is the reason for Over a century later in 1961 Hawkins,
Arthur is these incursions from Brittany. Were the using the impressive novelty of a computer,
Hall, Bodmt’n incomers driven, as Childe speculated, by reli- demonstrated that the long SE-NW sides of the
Moor, gious fervour? ‘Like Celtic missionaries the rectangle were in line with the most northerly
Cornwall. megalithic saints would have sailed to the coasts setting of the moon. In 1906 Lockyer explained
of Scotland, Ireland and the remoter isles why a rectangle had been preferred to a square.
inspired by equally unwordly motives”. Or were The NE-SW diagonal of the rectangle ‘would
they homeless people seeking land? Or mark the sunset place in the rst week in May’, the
William merchants as the misinterpreted ‘circle’ of May Day or Beltane sunset. Coincidence is
Sitwell Is Machrie Moor I suggests, one of a medley of unlikely.10
1930 plan of stone settings, all stylistically different and There is no comparable monument in
Crucuno, crowded together on the staging-post of an island Britain or Ireland but there is a strong correlation
Morbihan, like traders assembling at a popular market- with the lateral and diagonal alignments in the
showing the place?9 That could have been true at great settle- Crucuno quadrilateral west of Camac. Its long
original ments like Avebury but unlikely at ritual places sides lie neatly east-west towards the equinoctial
internal such as Stonehenge. sunsets and the NE-SW diagonal is in line with the
megalz'tht'c The four sarsen pillars known as the midwinter sunset. Its use of a diagonal is repeated
triangle. Stations once stood at the corners of a long SE- at Stonehenge.
Stonehenge and Avebury are archaeolog-
ical war-horses. Arminghall, Achavanich, King
*uoo-oo-‘v-rov

W. Arthur’s Hall are in the literature. So are

Dartmoor’s famous stone rows. Few readers, even
enthusiasts, have a detailed knowledge of the
strange monuments on Exmoor.
‘Dartmoor for wildness, Exmoor for
-.-

beauty’. Contrasted with the harsh austerity of its

'CRUCUNO' neighbour, Dartmoor, Exmoor is green with
rounded hills that end abruptly at the steep cliffs
..-.. ...

between Porlock and Ilfracombe. The countryside

is heather and bracken, slopes and valleys,
3'1s

dangerous bogs west of Brendon Two Gates, but

a...cyds-.-JG

c
a
I
quiet moorland, almost somnolent. And, unlike
5"-
‘01 Dartmoor with its tumble of broken tors, boulders
<1 ‘
are scarce. Exmoor is not granite. From Barnstaple
‘CJ-
93'. ‘ Bay to Wellington there are four hundred square
51'

- .-~I.--..o-.—c.o-u
:
:- 5...-.. IL 1" 51..- —h_-.—b— - n.-
miles of splintering Old Red Sandstone and slate
in an east-west rectangle north of a huge expanse
.a-.-

.--.. -.... .-.. 21d---_- '91-— '--h“-‘ -. i----—-‘-*

of millstone grit with the square of Dartmoor
-
---

bulging at its south-east corner. Large stones are

infrequent on Exmoor. And the environment was
u-ioyd

challenging. Exmoor suffered from the worst

weather in southern England where the exposed
F1

landscape ‘can be for days on end a swirl of

driving rain’.11

page 12 3rd Stone 4.7

7"

The moor is a prehistoric mystery, its ARMS

PLATE. 1V. WOODBARROW
unphotogenic monuments huddled at its north on _‘ vu. s.w.
the exposed and treeless upland of Exmoor Forest, ' 0 /0/2. 3°"J'07rf‘X2"
r“ ’90 Am J/ /0 15,4"
a scatter of unnoticed lithic peculiarities from .3! Q.
1'?

"e-
' r_ B "____;_.__...._.... ' v.
Parracombe in the west to the gaunt heights of Ioniz'lT‘Nx {30‘
FIGJ.

‘9
'8

“"11;
nun—:o-F'q-rII-I-d—

0
w? d3 ’2/2 26h ,’ ‘ x‘ 40'
\ \ - ‘26"h. broken. I a l ‘H.
Dunkery Beacon, 520m 0. D., fteen miles to the \ I
a.
“\

-~———-
—-——--..._...___,
x O I
east. The Forest was an irregular oblong of one g:
\
‘9'...

hundred and twenty square miles, an arid highland

of prehistoric oddities: quadrilaterals, ‘high-and-

23'-a"-
low” boxes, and a third form almost non-existent broken. OH at“ ‘ 5‘

N
O
ground level’z

-.
elsewhere, the triangle.

3'
'

#3
2.4.

'z
I
p
Although only thirty miles north of

.._...
Dartmoor Exmoor has, until recently, been almost

'-“-"‘-'-i—-v—-
an archaeological terra incognita split between

/
\
Devon and Somerset. Far from cities its remote-

\
x
\\
ness discouraged surveys. And the monuments

\
n—n—au...

X
76' :I‘ 1 I

"0.3?
2'a is">1
IN.
14-h,
have contributed to their own neglect. Whereas

i-u-n
R
K:

I
N
o‘

I
I
“i;

I
03

I
:rI-P

“f
l
\

I
'I
‘3'
0|
at};

ea
many Dartmoor rows are romantically megalithic

3‘
‘5

1
Ev

those on Exmoor are minilithic, dwarfed in grassy
tussocks and weeds, tiny and fragile shafts of
stone that can be overlooked from even a few steps
away, sunken in peat and unalluring.
It was a sad region for Neolithic settlers
with no int or good stone, an upland of grim
weather and poor soil. Just one megalithic tomb is
known, Battle Gore whose denuded stones by the
coast are miles from the unusual Bronze Age
sites.12
On Exmoor there are rectangles, ‘quin—
cunxes’ and triangles like exercises in Euclidean
geometry. Because boulders were almost absent
the stones were tiny and could easily be sledged by
two or three men. Unprotected and vulnerable, as
recently as the 20th century one in ten of the
recorded sites has vanished and of the remainder a
quarter have lost stones.
In 1879 R. N. Worth commented, ‘The
antiquities of this district have never received the
attention they deserve, and the Forest may there—
fore be commended to the attention of zealous and
discreet archaeologist”. Apart from the studious
attentions of his son and the Rev. J. F. Chanter in
1905 and 1906 who limited their eldwork to the
Devon side of Exmoor, and a few recent excep-
tions the neglect continued until the admirable
survey and inventory published by the Royal
Commission in 1992.13
There are stone circles at Porlock and
Withypool but it was the straight line that was
obsessive on the moor. Angular designs were
unusual in the British Isles but not in Brittany. As
well as Crucuno, Le Narbon and Jardin aux
Moines in Morbihan even farther north in Finistere
there was an oblong at Ty-ar-c’Huré, a square at
Lanvéoc on the Crozon peninsula, even a polygon
at Kermorvan near the shing-port of Conquet,
and a quadrilateral on Ushant in the Atlantic.
Similar box—like shapes, although much shrunken,
are known on Exmoor.
‘5.
Finistere, over two hundred miles from Rev. J. F
Barnstaple Bay, might seem an improbable birth- Chanter & R.
place for the Exmoor settings. Dartmoor was H. Worth 19
much closer. Less than thirty miles separated it plan of
from Exmoor’s southern slopes. But the miniscule Woodbuow
sites on Exmoor lie to the north with the dreadful Hangings,
barrier of The Chains between them, a long, bleak Exmoor; a
ridge surrounded by mires and marshes. It was not megalithic
impassable but the passes between its hills were quincanx and
treacherous. triangle.
Like the contents of an untidy fairy’s
playpen Exmoor Forest is littered with midget
remains. Their distribution is signicant. They are
near the coast and close to river tributaries. It is as
though voyagers had beached by Lynmouth’s red-
streaked cliffs and gone inland to the sheltered
valleys between the hills.
The double ‘rows’ like Hoar Oak and
Cheriton Ridge of these hypothetical incomers
were unlike the long lines on Dartmoor being both
short and broad like rectangles. They are small,
characteristically short and wide, formations
easily construed as oblongs and rectangles. The
ratio between length and width is so similar that
such settings could more aptly be called ‘boxes’. It
is an architectural ambiguity compounded by the
question of the sites’ antecedents.
A major trait amongst them is that their
builders aligned them towards cardinal points,
often north-south, sometimes east-west, directions
presumably obtained by bisecting the risings and
settings of the sun. Astronomical analysis is
needed.
Often of no more than four stones these
unobtrusive quadrilaterals are termed ‘quin-
cunxes’ when there is a fth stone at their centre.
Such settings are not uncommon, occurring at
Brendon Two Gates, Chapman Barrows, Trout Hill

3rd Stone 47 page 13

and elsewhere. Short, none is more
than 46m long.
Their design resembles the
letter ‘X’ tted inside an oblong, a
saltire like St. Andrew’s Cross, its
diagonals creating four opposed trian-
gles and it may be that from these
already unusual settings that the even
more strange shapes of triangles devel—
oped.
At Woodbarrow Hangings, a
site high up on the Chains, quincunx
and triangle actually combined. A
rather imprecise rectangle with a 600m
high central stone had a triangle
attached to its southern side. Complete
when planned in 1891 a century later
one side of the triangle was ‘only 0.1m
high and may be stumps of broken
stones’.“
The ancestry of these little-
mentioned, minilithic delicacies might
seem inexplicable. But they are not
exclusive to Exmoor. There are some
on the Yorkshire Moors, others on
Anglesey. Such settings so many miles
from south-west England make a
Dartmoor origin for the triangles on
Exmoor unconvincing. Proven three-
stone settings in coastal positions in
both Yorkshire and Anglesey make
Brittany more plausible as the source
of the Exmoor rectangles and triangles.
Frank Elgee mentioned
several on the moors of Yorkshire,
stating emphatically that ‘Some trian-
gles are certainly not the remains of
circles’ and listed them: Commondale
Moor; Black Howes; Easington High
Moor. Near Ramsdale, two miles from
Robin Hood’s Bay, three tall stones
stood in an irregular triangle whose
sides measured 8m x 13m x 15m.
Almost two hundred miles
WSW on the sea-bound island of
Anglesey there is a megalithic triangle
of three gigantically heavy pillars at
Llanfechell two miles south of Cemaes
Bay on the north coast. Two miles way
at Llanfairynghornwy another site
‘possibly had three stones originally’.
It is noticeable that like the horseshoes
these triangles are coastal, close to
bays convenient for landings.IS
On Exmoor itself there are
several, spread in forty square miles
from Furzehill Common in the west to
Codsend. They lurk at Clannon Ball,
Challacombe, on Long Chains
page 14. 3rd Stone 4.7
Coombe, Trout Hill, Lancombe and
others, their midget stones camou-
flaged like predatory winter-white
stoats peeping from long grass.
A sceptic might question a
Breton ancestry for such eccentricities,
claiming that whereas horseshoes like
Tossen-Keler and rectangles such as
Crucuno are known in Brittany no
triangles have been recorded there.
Scepticism is unjustied.
In the Spring of 1926 William
Sitwell visited the elegant Crucuno
quadrilateral. Near its centre there
were ‘three remarkable stones forming
an equilateral triangle, six yards
[5.5m] to each face. They are very
much worn from exposure. . . ’. Like so
many other stones in Brittany they
disappeared but not before they were
planned.“5
There were horseshoes,
rectangles, even triangles in Brittany.
The evidence of their abundance there
and their scarcity in the British Isles,
their coastal distribution, the proven
artefactual Breton/British links all
combine to support the argument for
continental inuence even in such
‘made-in-Britain’ monuments as
Stonehenge.
Seemingly this continental
connection was forgotten until the last
few years when the associations
became suspected by the present
writer. But there is a surprise. The
Exmoor triangles were known
centuries ago.
Those miniature stones,
arranged in a three-sided pattern
unparalleled in Britain have been
known since medieval times. In his
Britain of 1610, the rst English
edition of his Latin Britannia of 1586,
‘hic u. (Isca) fonies habet in
Exmore... ’, William Camden recorded
them. 'This river [Exe] hath his head
and springeth rst in a weely barren
ground named Fxmore. .. wherein,
there are seen certaine monuments of
anticke work, to wit, stones pitched in
order, some triangle wise, others in a
round circle’."
In Gibson’s 1697 edition of
Britannia, John Aubrey repeated
Camden’s words. Gough paraphrased
the note in his own edition of 1806 but
added nothing archaeologically to it.
Nobody else even bothered.
Camden’s reference to the
Exmoor ‘triangles’ had a tortuous
history. Although the quotation is from
his Britannia of 1586 the settings had
already been referred to by William
Caxton in his best-selling The discryp—
cion 0f Britayne of 1480. That book
itself was a distillation of John
Trevisa’s 1387 English translation of a
compilation entitled Polychronicon,
1327, by Ranulf Higden, a Benedictine
monk of St. Werberg’s, Chester. The
work was described by Caxton himself
as ‘a well—woven tissue of materials
from many sources’, a collection of
stories, reminiscences and guesswork
by monks and clerics such as Gildas,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, Giraldus
Cambrensis and William of
Malmesbury.
The triangles on Exmoor,
therefore, may have been rst
observed by some curious churchman
riding across the moor from a visit to a
monastery in southern Ireland and,
high on his horse, noticing the Trinity-
like settings lurking in the trampled
grass. That could have been no later
than the end of the 13th century some
six hundred years ago. Research into
prehistoric questions does not gallop in
this country!‘8
Coda
In conclusion the writer would like to
offer comfort to those aficted with
wishful thinking and suffering from an
uncritical trust in folk-stories.
From the foregoing evidence it
is feasible that some Breton explorers,
having sailed from Ushant to Scilly,
went on to Comwall’s Padstow Bay
and its access to Bodmin Moor. Others
may have gone even farther north-
wards to Barnstaple Bay, the River
Taw and the unpopulated wastes of
Exmoor.
More enterprising explorers
ventured northwards to south-west
Wales and the harbour of Milford
Haven. The voyage demanded
crossing fty miles of open sea but the
adventurers had already sailed more
than twice that distance from Ushant.
The landmark of the Preselis
guided them, mountains that on a clear
day, were visible from the Wicklow
Mountains in eastern Ireland; from
Snowdon in North Wales; and from
Dunkery Beacon in north-east
Exmoor. Such a magical range may
have seemed to those daring crews to
be composed of powerful stone, potent
material ideal for a new Breton sanc-
tuary on Salisbury Plain.
In a deant gesture they chose
the weathered earthwork of the rst
Stonehenge for their intrusive fer-ci—
cheval of bluestones. They set up not
one but two horseshoes, one inside the
other with the sandstone pillar of the
future Altar Stone erected like a phallic
statement at their mouth.
It is a commendable theory and
has one enormous benet. Such an
undertaking would have occurred at
the right time quite unlike the favourite
candidates for such a unique feat, the
Wessex/Middle Rhine beaker metal-
workers. Dates unarguably prove that
they were prospecting for copper and
gold in Ireland more than two
centuries too late for the Stonehenge
bluestones. Nor were there other native
rivals.
Unlike the Beaker phantoms
desperately accepted by romantics
believing in the non-existent human
transportation of dolerites from the
Preselis, Breton hauliers around 2700
BC could be identied as the heroes of
that prehistoric triumph, rafting the
tons of stones across turbulent waters,
heading like homing-pigeons through
the unmapped tangle of tidal estuaries,
hills and rivers to Salisbury Plain.
It is persuasive. The
chronology is perfect. It explains why
geologists have discovered no trace of
doleritic deposits in Wiltshire and
although the theory contains no
comforting ley-line it does have sex in
accord with current thinking about
prehistoric societies and stone circles.
There is one discordant note.
I am at one with Professor Giot.
I do not believe in one paddling raft or
where-are-we dragging of a sledge of
this geological fairy—tale. But those
who do wish to adopt it will have to
accept that a major part of Stonehenge
was a product from Brittany.
‘Thus the height of Antiquity ends in
Fable; and the depth of Ignorance
discends to Credulity’.
John Aubrey, The Naturall Historie
of Wiltshire, c. 1685.
Notes
1. Herity, M., Irish Passage
Graves. Neolithic Tomb-Builders in
Ireland and Britain, 2500 BC, Irish
U. P., 1974, 200; Giot, P—R.
‘Michael Herity, Irish Passage-
Graves, a Review’, Antiquity 49,
1975, 232-3.
2. Derek Simpson, in: J. V. S.
Megaw & D. D. A. Simpson, An
Introduction to British Prehistory,
Leicester U.P., 1979, 223.
3. ‘Boat’ carvings in Brittany: P.-R.
Giot, Brittany, Thames & Hudson,
1960, 52. Patton, Statements in
Stone. Monuments and Society in
Neolithic Brittany, Routledge,
1993, 87-9. A contrary interpreta-
tion was given by Elizabeth
Twohig, The Megalithic Art of
Western Europe, Oxford U. P, 1981,
63, 114.
4. Brittany and Severn-Cotswold
tombs: G. Daniel, The Chamber
Tombs ofEngland and Wales,
Cambridge U. P., 1950, 155-6; T.
G. E. Powell, in: Powell, Corcoran,
Lynch and Scott, Megalithic
Enquiries in the West ofBritain,
Liverpool U. P, 1969, 259-60.
5. Achavanich: Sir H. Dryden, in: J.
Fergusson, Rude Stone
Monuments..., John Murray, 1872,
530-1; Thom, A., A. S. & Burl, A.
Stone Rows and Standing Stones,
II, BAR, 1990, 288-9.
6. Hethpool: A. Burl, A Guide to
the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland
and Brittany, Yale U.P., 1995, 71.
7. Resistivity and Avebury’s horse-
shoe: Ucko, P., Hunter, M., Clark,
A. J. & David, A., Avebury
Reconsidered... , Unwin Hyman,
1991, 221.
8. E. H. Stone, The Stones of
Stonehenge, Scott, 1924, 33; E.
Barclay, Stonehenge and its
Earthworks, Nutt, 1895, 35-8.
9. Missionaries: G. V. Childe, The
Prehistory of European Society,
Penguin, 1958, 129. Machrie Moor:
A. Burl, The Stone Circles of
Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale
U. P. 2000, 87-102.
10. Duke, Rev. E., The Druidical
Temples ofthe County of Wiltshire,
Russell Smith, 1846, 144; Hawkins,
G. Stonehenge Decoded, Souvenir,
1966, 134; Lockyer, Sir N.,
Stonehenge and Other British Stone
Monuments Astronomically
Considered, Macmillan, 1906, 93.
ll. Exmoor weather: J. Hadeld,
ed. The Shell Guide to England,
BCA, 1973, 337-
8. 12. Neolithic Exmoor: L. V.
Grinsell, The Archaeology of
Exmoor, David & Charles, 1970,
22—7.
13. Exmoor surveys: Chanter Rev.
J. F. & Worth, R. H., ‘The rude
stone monuments of Exmoor and its
borders, 1’, Trans. Dev. Assoc. 37,
1905, 375-97; ibid, II, 1906, 538-52
; Quinnell, N. V., ‘Lithic monu-
ments within the Exmoor National
Park.’, ed. C. J. Dunn, RCAHM,
1992.
14. Woodburrow Hangings: Chanter
& Worth, 1905, 392-3; Quinnell,
‘Challcombe 15’.
15. Elgee. F. Early Man in North-
East Yorkshire, Bellows, 1930; F.
Lynch, Prehistoric Anglesey,
Anglesey Ant. Soc., 1970, 116.
16. The Crucuno triangle: W.
Sitwell, Stones of Northumberland
and Other Lands, Reid, 1930, 96.
17. Camden, W., Britain, George
Latham, 1610, 203.
18. Caxton. The Description of
Britain, selected and modernised by
M. Collins, Sidgwick & Jackson,
188; Mendyk, S.A.E., ‘Speculum
Britanniae’. Regional Study,
Antiquarianism, and Science in
Britain to I 700, Toronto U. P.,
1989, 41-2, 259, notes 20, 21.
3rd Stone 4.7 page 15
 Stormy Weather
Unholy storms, demonic hordes, swarmingfairies, short—tsing
earth currents... its a hard life being a treasure hunter,
says Jeremy Harte.
FTERWARDS THEY ALL AGREED IT HAD BEEN
a dismal night to go treasure-hunting.
There were the bystanders, for one thing
— about twenty or thirty of them, all apparently
determined to make a joke out of the whole busi-
ness, so that they kept disturbing the man with the
divining rods. Then there were the dead bodies.
That was what came of starting in Westminster
Abbey, every bit of holy ground seemed chockfull
of unmarked burials. The labourers kept shovelling
Below left. into them whenever they were told to dig down for
A portrait of treasure. And then there was the weather...
William Lilly Personally, William Lilly blamed the foul
c. l 645 weather on demons. He had been brought in on the
scheme as occult advisor, so perhaps that was to be
Below right. expected. The treasure-hunters had just hit on a
The Devil is promising spot when ‘upon a sudden (there being
abroad, as no Wind when we began) so erce, so high, so
conceived by blustering and loud a Wind did rise, that we verily
Eric Fraser; believed the West End of the Church would have
I 950 fallen upon us’. The candles were puffed out, and
page 16 3rd Stone 47
even the torches burnt pale. Quickly Lilly used his
art to dismiss the spirits, but he knew that this was
a short—term measure at best, for midnight would
soon be upon them. Prudently, the party broke up
and that was their last attempt at the treasure of the
Abbey (Parker 1975: 74-6).
They were more shaken than surprised.
Back in 1634, the year of their abortive dig,
everyone knew what to expect when trespassing on
the concerns of demons. ‘It is a common opinion
when there are any mighty winds and thunders
with terrible lightnings that the Devil is abroad’,
sniffed the Puritan George Gifford (Thomas 1973:
563). He preached that this was a popular error, but
it was one which many churchmen from St.
Augustine onwards had felt to be quite reasonable.
Demons, after all, were creatures of the middle air,
too spiritual for earth and too wicked for heaven. It
was all too easy for them to stir up the element
which formed their natural home.
The intelligence of demons was quicker
and more penetrating than that of men, just as air is
more subtle than earth. They were immensely old,
almost as old as creation itself. There was so much
that they knew — and a handful of bold magicians
were always prepared to take the risks of sharing
that knowledge. Human nature being what it is, the
quest for occult knowledge usually degenerated
into a search for hard cash. Dr. Dee and Edward
Kelly may have begun their séances with the
loftiest motives, but within a few years they were
quizzing the spiritual creatures on hidden treasure,
and growing very excited over the results. Huteos
Cros was one of the ndspots, along with many
other crosses, the barrow at Mountegles Amid, and
other mysterious places in South Wales and
Somerset — all of which must still be guarding their
secrets, as Dee never gained anything from them.
Another celebrated name from the Renaissance,
f—

Benvenuto Cellini, had never been very spiritual at
all and when he teamed up with two magicians
their aims were quite blunt: ‘we should demand of
the Demons that they should show us some of the
treasures of which the earth is full, and by that
means we should become very rich’ (Beard 1933:
98-9, 233-7).
The project was not successful, but at
least Cellini’s companions knew what they were
about. In the course of their midnight ritual, the
ruins of the Colosseum were lled with a thousand
devils, who laughed in a nasty sort of way at the
protective suffumigation of asafoetida and prowled
around the magic circle until driven away by the
rising dawn and the sound of bells ringing for
matins.
Other attempts to raise the devil do not
even seem to have got this far, which may be
because they are recorded in the dry language of
lawsuits and not in a colourful autobiography. A
sad story of treasure-hunting was acted out on the
moors near Halifax, in 1510 or thereabouts. Like
the Italians, the Yorkshiremen drew on the
expertise of a priest with occult training. There was
also a cunning man from Harrogate, brought in as
a kind of second opinion by one of his clients,
together with several more priests and some local
men who, it was hoped, would know how to nd
their way around the moors in the hours of dark-
ness. By this stage anyone who got wind of the
project was being enrolled as a fellow conspirator,
so that the group numbered upwards of nine. The
rumour had gone round ‘that there was as moch
goode in a place besides Halifax as wold raunsome
a kyng; and that oone Leventhorp nowe dede had
scene the foote of the kist, and the devell sitting
upon it, and that he put a swerd to remove it, and
he nypped it a soundre in the myddist, as it had
beene a rish’ (Raine 1859: 79).
Evidently this demon was a subterranean
spirit rather than an aerial one; he belonged to the
class of ‘keepers’ who according to Dr. Dee (and he
should have known) were set to watch over hoards
of buried treasure (Denham 1892-5: 2.203).
Perhaps it is just as well that the team from
Yorkshire never met up with him. After all their
preparation, they met on the moors near Mixenden
at sunset, a good time for getting lost, which they
proceeded to do while searching for the cross
which marked the treasure. Harsh words were
spoken, and their cover was blown, which was
probably how the whole business came before the
ecclesiastical courts. In any case, it would have
each of which had its own keeper — a man spirit on
the gold and a woman on the silver. This wasn’t
uncovered either, but lack of success didn’t stop
other treasure-hunters from digging up the roads at
night. The combination of potholes and blasphemy
was enough to call down the majesty of the law.
Thus the preamble to the 1542 Witchcraft Act
speaks disapprovingly of those who ‘devised invo—
cations & conjurations to get knowledge in what
place treasure of gold & silver might be found in
the earth, and have digged up and pulled down an
innite number of crosses’ (Kittredge 1929: 205,
209)
Treasure-hunting may have been made a
felony, but it was by no means stamped out. The
tradition was still very much alive in the late eigh-
teenth century, when a doctor living at Broomeld
in Somerset heard of the iron castle ill of gold and
silver which lay beneath the innocuous green
ramparts of the hillfort at Ruborough Camp. Being
‘an uncommon book—learned man’, he soon found
out the day and hour at which the door into the hill
would be revealed; he wasn’t going to do any
digging himself, but was prudent enough to entrust
that part of the work to a single labourer. It seems
that, like Lilly’s friend, the doctor had some skill in
dowsing, since he was able to mark the right spot
with a hazel wand: at all events, come the night of
the full moon, the two men set off to work, one
with a spade and the other with a Bible. ‘At last the
servant’s spade struck on the iron door; and at once
horrible groans and shrieks and cries were heard
underground in the castle, and spirits of all sorts
began to come out at the door, ready to carry away
the poor servant.’. It took some nifty work with the
Bible to get him out, and at once the earth closed
up again, leaving green turf where the trench had A pot afgold is
been (Collins 1857: 296-7). the least of
Tradition says these were ‘spirits’, not their
devils, though the difference must have seemed expectation:
rather academic to the terried labourer. In any treasure
case the word has a rather loose semantic eld. The hunters by
keepers of the gold at Kettering were spirits, too; in Niels
mediaeval Latin spiritus is a ghost, like ysbrz'd in Pedersen, 1990
- / 41"}:
l . r. I”; .1
// VF 4-. L" 6 xi I. “1'“ 1‘!
"49/9”? ' \‘ WWI)”, m, m
7/ ’. .l’

been easier to maintain secrecy if the devils had not ’ lye/S i. '
’l /. , -
chosen such absurdly public places to guard their (I‘m ‘(///fr \W'; -/:=:

l deg/,9, If; 13”."-

loot: underneath an old cross, usually, and very Jll/p ll”! 4 /
often by the public highway. Such was the treasure x" {I
gill/f, Eli/95
II!" " "i, I. ’.£~ f - .an _
g?
.9 "1’3"“ ‘ I ; ' 5 ' .4“:- - Ill/Mg {If/5% sérgi'm
that could be found at the cross outside Kettering, L0 aw ’ll/I’III/Illli’xrrr/lI!I’m’i', Hm” 1"”
' [{f/ (({1’ {ff/x rf/lz'
‘\\ \xurf/ ((//
according to rumour in 1527. It was in two pots,

3rd Stone 4.7 page 17

 Welsh. In Cornwall, spriggan is said to refer to a
race of fairies, although as the plural form of the
word is used as a singular there has probably been
some confusion in the transition from Cornish to
English. Closer investigation was not be encour-
aged. ‘They were in countless numbers... as ugly
as if they would eat him’, said a man who saw them
when he set out to dig up treasure on Trencrom
Hill. It was a ne moonlit night when he started
work, but soon the sky was covered with clouds, an
eerie wind was succeeded by claps of thunder, and
streaks of lightning lit up the old stones of the hill-
fort. It was then that he saw the spriggans pouring
out of the rocks and growing in size all around him
as he blundered his way down the slopes (Hunt
1865: 1.78).
Other Comishmen were more sceptical:
the historian Richard Carew, for instance, who felt
uncertain how he should interpret the fate of some
treasure seekers at the Castle Dor stone near
Fowey. They, too, had set out on a moonshiney
night. ‘A working they fall, their labour shorteneth,
their hope increaseth, a pot of gold is the least of
their expectation. But see the chance; in midst of
The treasure their toiling the sky gathereth clouds, the moon-
oflfor Back, light is overcast with darkness, down falls a mighty
by Ivor Owen, shower, up riseth a blustering tempest”. Still,
I 953 Carew cannot quite bring himself to draw the tradi-
page 18 3rd Stone 4.7
tional conclusion. ‘Whether this proceeded from a
natural accident or a working of the devil I will not
undertake to dene’ (Carew 1953 [1602]: 211). His
reservations were theological, not meteorological.
Could a end really have nothing better to do than
to sit for ages like a toad under a stone? Such a
notion no longer suited the moral curiosity of the
Elizabethan age. And why should treasure seekers
be subject to the devil’s power anyway? — was it
because they were covetous, or had gone tres-
passing on someone else’s land, or were trying to
rob the Crown of its lawful revenue? These were
not the kind of questions which would have
occurred to previous storytellers.
In the Middle Ages, everyone had known
that old stones and earthworks marked hidden
treasure; that treasure was guarded by demons; that
demons had a natural power to raise storms; and it
stood to reason, therefore, that any attempt to mess
around with the old sites would bring down
thunder and lightning. 1n the modern period, there
is a steady erosion of the middle term in this equa-
tion — the demon. In some stories, the ends lose
much of their power by being presented in animal
form. Hence that array of snakes, black dogs,
ravens, and eagles which are seen squatting on the
chest by the venturesome seeker. After all, even if
demons were no longer acceptable, there had to be
some mysterious power which prevented the
hidden gold from being raised to earth. How else
could treasure-hunters explain their failure to come
up with the goods?
In other versions the keepers of gold have
changed into fairies, as seems to have happened at
Trencrom. From demon to fairy is not so big a step
as might be imagined: already in 1510 the
Mixenden treasure seekers had been prepared to
invoke the spirit Oberion — that same Oberon who,
in the romance of Huon of Bordeux, can ‘cause it
so to rain on you, to blow, to hail, and to make such
right marvellous storms that you will think the
world is going to end” (Denham 1892-5: 2.175). In
Wales, treasure was protected ‘by erce storms of
hail and wind, or violent thunder and lightning;
sometimes by mysterious noises, or swarms of bees
which are supposed to be fairies in disguise’. At
Banwan Bryddin, near Neath, a stone pillar stood
on an old barrow which was fairy-haunted ground;
at least, it did until Lady Mackworth decided it
would make a nice ornament for her new grotto.
Finally the work was completed, at an expense of
several thousand pounds, with the old stone in
pride of place. That night a storm to end all storms
broke over the estate, burying grotto and stone in
one sweeping landslide. As the last scattered drops
fell from the grey clouds, the gardeners heard the
sound of fairy laughter (Sikes 1880: 374-5).
_ More often, the demonic presence disap-
peared entirely from the story, leaving only a
 —P-———_—-——————i'

mysterious sense of retribution to link the hunt for

treasure with the inevitable thunderstorm (Grinsell
1967: 15). ‘A gust of rushing wind sweeps over the
land or bursts from the opening the treasure hunter
has just made. It tears the clothes from his back,
snatches the spade or pick from his hand, and
whirls him like a leaf to a distance from the spot”.
That was the belief in the Western Isles, confirmed
by incidents like that reported from Arran in the
early nineteenth century. Here a barrow stood at the
head of a cliff, and it was full of treasure. The local
farmer decided to search for this, and was making
good progress when a storm sprang up. It blew
(D

from the land outwards to sea. Before he could stop

work, a gust of wind had caught the farmer and Then came the archaeologists. ‘These Rev. A. C.
HHI—d

hurled him headlong over the cliff (Beard 1933: obscure traditions are not unworthy of notice’, Smith ’3 view of
18). wrote the gentleman in charge, but his concern was Silbury Hili,
On Moel Arthur near Nannerch, treasure not to celebrate the lore of the barrow, but to break 1861
lay buried in an iron chest with a great round it open, and that in the name of science rather than
handle. Sometimes a light from heaven would rest treasure. For an hour or so it seemed as if the old
on this ring, and then the daring explorer could order would hold its own against the new, since
seize hold of it, but always a storm of wind would ‘the work was much impeded. . .by a violent thun-
blow up and hurl them senseless away from their derstorm, which the country people regarded as in
prize. At Caerau in Cardiganshire, treasure hunters some manner caused by the sacrilegious under-
had just reached a mysterious oaken door when taking to disturb the dead. One of the labourers
they took a break for lunch, only to find on their employed left the work in consequence, and much
return that torrential rain had washed away every alarm prevailed”. But excavation went on, tearing
trace of their excavation (Sikes 1880: 387-8). Other apart the delicate fabric of story that had clothed
treasure seekers were frustrated in the same way at the barrow as brusquely as it dissected the mound
Caer Caradog, Carneddau Cader ldris, and itself.
Carnedd Cerrig (Grinsell 1976b: 242, 262, 264). When local people reacted to the storm,
This same vague, unfocussed sense of they did not draw on the old stories of fairies, but
retribution appears in English tradition. ‘In Culeaze on a sense of outrage at the spoliation of the dead.
at Milborne St. Andrew a golden coffin is said to be This was something new. Beedon was opened in
buried — and they do say that every time anyone 1815, during the heyday of barrow-digging. All the
goes to dig for it, it thunders and lightens”. Stories real work in this pastime was carried out by hired
of the golden coffin run through the folklore of the labourers; they were under orders to hack away
West. Maybe it lies below Badbury Rings, or until they found an urn or bone, and so they learned
within Hod Hill, or somewhere near the rugged to think of barrows as depositories for the dead, an
stones of the Grey Mare and Her Colts (Harte idea which would not have occurred to their fore-
1986: 7). There are half a dozen locations in fathers. Both gentlemen and labourers saw the Barrow-
Wiltshire, too (Jordan 1990: 23—4). And when Pitt— same archaeological facts, but made different diggers take
Rivers was digging in Cranborne Chase, old people moral conclusions, although the language of the shelter; 1844
whispered that he was looking for the golden
cofn, or maybe for the lost treasure of King John.
It was a fair assumption to make: in the early days,
archaeology was barely distinguishable from
treasure hunting.
At Beedon in Berkshire, there was a
mound called Burrow Hill. Local people remem-
bered the great Burrow, who was buried there in a
coffin of precious metal; they knew, too, that the
fairies (they arefeeresses in Berkshire) lived within ,3. .
-
.. .rIi}? I; -z. 3/. “4' f '-‘"".'. _'
‘ .’ " i
the hill and had once mended a labourer’s
I “DELL/1:}: ' . :I I .- . _- .1; " .'. i ‘i‘ I I . -. I - .I 1 .
I, ..'. I}. , 'f(-_‘C_ 1, , ;_ at?" .‘t.-' I. '_. . 1“". - "'_'nl . I
‘ (I. A a ,- r"’\-‘,» I . _ _\\_ \I‘ifi- -"_'_ ._Z'"-
ploughshare. Within living memory (this would be 1
.. f. ._., ._ " ._m' ‘1- .-
. J. a ,
‘\
in about 1790) an attempt was made in the middle “m
j N 1 , .II \\\\\\ .‘h'.’ I d!
, . __ ..._ . . . It" I If: I, ’
M 4.1“ . ‘ Fr... . - Elms ' . 'i '
of the night to break into the hill, in search of . {a .z .
., \
. _ _ .1”e
‘ a‘f,-.. ”—
_
If
I" _.'..h_. '
. —..~ »-.>-..
treasure, but it was frustrated by a sudden thunder-
storm (Long 1850: 65-7).

3rd Stone 4.7 page 19

 antiquaries tended to disguise how much they had
in common. Thus the misgivings of the rustics
were dismissed as ‘superstitious dread’ by Dean
Merewether when he opened a barrow near
Yatesbury in unsettled weather and saw a storm set
in. The good Dean was made of sterner stuff, and
revelled in the experience — ‘one of the most grand
and tremendous thunder-storms I ever recollect to
have witnessed, made the hills re-echo to the
crashing peals, and Silbury itself, as the men
asserted who were working in its centre, to tremble
to its base’ (Merewether 1851: 35—6).
The crackle of lightning over the ancient
ruin had become a Romantic topos, most memo-
rably expressed in Tumer’s Stonehenge water-
colour of 1828 (Chippindale 1994: 105). Imagery
of this kind can be traced back to the 17403, when
John Wood raised a storm by surveying
Stonehenge — not even excavating it, just meas-
uring the stones. The same thing happed when he
made a plan of Stanton Drew (Grinsell 1976a: 15).
Lightning served a more practical purpose c1800,
when it interrupted an attempt by Colonel Lacey to
remove Long Meg and Her Daughters from the
landscape by blasting the stones with gunpowder.
“The slumbering powers of Druidism rose in arms
against this Violation of their sanctuary... A storm
of thunder and lightning, and such heavy rain and
hail ensued... The labourers ed for their lives,
vowing never more to meddle with Long Meg’
(cited in Farrah 2003: 21).
Colt Hoare fondly remembered the “awful
circumstances’ that attended his opening of a
barrow at Woodyates. Surprised by the storm, and
far from any house or barn, the excavation party
The crackle of had to take shelter in the trench which they had just
lightning over dug. ‘The lightning ashed upon our spades and
the ancient iron instruments, and the large ints poured down
SIOHBSI upon us from the summit of the barrow’ until ‘we
engraving were obliged to quit our hiding place and abide the
after J.M. W. pelting of the pitiless storm on the bleak and
Turner, 1844 unsheltered down’ (Hoare 1812: 1239-41).
page 20 3rd Stone 47
Seldom can the experience of getting wet have
been described in such an erudite fashion. But one
member of the drenched company, William Lisle
Bowles, went a step further and turned their expe—
rience into verse. In this version of events, “the
spirit of the mighty dead’ is moved to anger,
“vindictive thunder rocks the sky’, and 10!
‘See Taranis descends to save
His Heroe’s violated grave,
And shakes beneath the lightning’s glare
The sulphur from his blazing hair...’
They don’t write excavation reports like
that any more. With the advent of scientic archae—
ology, those pitiless storms which had so thrilled
the barrow-diggers passed into limbo, along with
superstitious rustics, the mighty dead, and other
props of the Romantic sensibility. But as time went
on, not everybody was happy with this triumph of
reason; certainly not the developing earth
mysteries movement, which introduced a more
colourful way of writing and thinking about
ancient sites. As part of this process, old mounds
and stones began to regain some of the respect
which had been given to them in folk tradition, and
it was generally agreed that archaeologists were to
blame for messing around with them. Already in
the 19303 John Foster Forbes had suggested that
the stones of Long Meg and Her Daughters were
‘used by the Atlantean adepts for control of the
wind and rain’ (Screeton 1981: 11). Now the Bords
took up the theme, devoting a whole chapter of The
Secret Country to the stormy or disastrous fates
which befell those who abused the sacred places _
or, in the new language, disrupted their earth
currents (Bord & Bord 1978: 191-216).
Drawing on the accounts which had lately
been gathered in The Early Barrow Diggers
(Marsden 1974: 35, 40, 79), the Bords gave the
impression that thunderstorms followed invariably
on the opening of barrows. This was a little disin-
genuous of them; their source mentioned only three
instances, not a very large percentage of the
barrows opened in the nineteenth century. Still,
even pseudo-facts call for an explanation, and
shortly afterwards the dowser Tom Graves
provided a very attractive one. In the original
(Graves 1978: 108-111) it comes complete with
diagrams. We are to imagine a standing stone next
to a barrow, with a blind stream running beneath
them both. The energy charge of passing clouds is
drawn off by the stone, which functions as a
conductor, and then stored in the barrow, acting as
a capacitor. Then it slowly leaks into the under-
ground stream. To move the stone, or to cut into the
barrow, is to short—circuit the system and voila! a
torrential rainstorm will follow within minutes.
It is not sure whether Graves quite
believed in this, even at the time. No matter: the
v
details are less important than the
general sense. Here was switchboard
circuitry being worked out in earth and
stone. If old folklore could be trans-
lated like this into the language of
science, people thought, maybe there
was something in after all. So it seems
that we are always children of our age,
like it or not; if we set out to be super-
stitious, we cannot help being supersti-
tious in a modern way. We will talk of
energies and conductors, not of the
spirit Oberion, and the end who
could snap a sword in sunder as if it
was a rush. Alas, poor demons, to
come to this!
References
Beard, Charles R, 1933, The Romance
of Treasure Trove, Sampson Low
Bord, Janet and Colin, 1978, The
Secret Country, Granada
Carew, Richard, 1953 [1602], The
Survey of Cornwall — ed. F.E.
Halliday, Andrew Melrose
Chippindale, Christopher, 1994,
Stonehenge Complete, Thames &
Hudson
Collins, Joseph William, 1857, ‘On
Ruborough Camp, Somerset”, J. of the
British Arch. Assoc. 13: 294-8
Denham, Aislaby, 1892-5, The
Denham Tracts, Folklore Society
Farrah, Robert, 2003, ‘Stones of
power. . .raised in magic hour’, 3rd
Stone 46: 20—3
Graves, Tom, 1978, Needles ofStone,
Tumstone
Grinsell, Leslie, 1967, “Barrow
treasure in fact, tradition and legisla-
tion”, Folklore 78: 1-38
Grinsell, Leslie, 1976a, ‘The
legendary history and folklore of
Stonehenge’, Folklore 87: 5-20
Grinsell, Leslie, 1976b, Folklore of
Prehistoric Sites in Britain, David &
Charles
Harte, Jeremy, 1986, Cuckoo Pounds
and Singing Barrows, Dorset Nat.
Hist. & Arch. Soc.
Hoare, Richard Colt, 1812, The
Ancient History of Wiltshire, William Are you worried?
Miller
With 3rd Stone about to rest
Hunt, Robert, 1865, Popular in peace, how will you
Romances of the West ofEngland, know about forthcoming
John Camden Hotten titles from Heart of Albion?
Jordan, Katy, 1990, The Folklore of
You might miss
Ancient Wiltshire, Wiltshire County
Council
Explore Green Men
Kittredge, George Lyman, 1929, Mercia MacDermott
Witchcraft in Old and New England,
Harvard University Press Explore Shamanism
Alby Stone
Long, Charles, 1850, ‘Investigation of
a British tumulus in Berkshire”, Explore Sacred Places
Archaeological J. 7: 65-7 Bob Trubshaw
Marsden, Barry, 1974, The Early Authors of other planned
Barrow Diggers, Tempus
titles include 3‘”d Stone
contributors
Merewether, John, 1851, Diary ofa
Dean, George Bell
Andy Worthington
and Jeremy Harte.
Parker, Derek, 1975, Familiar to All:
William Lilly and Astrology in the But don’t panic!
Seventeenth Century, Jonathan Cape To receive details of these
and future Heart of Albion
Raine, J, 1859, ‘Proceedings titles simply send your
connected with a remarkable charge email or postal address to:
of sorcery, brought against James
Richardson and others, in the diocese
of York, AD 1510’, Archaeological J. Heart of Albion Press
16: 71 -8 l
2 Cross Hill Close
Wymeswold
Screeton, Paul, 1981, ”Ancient stones, Loughborough
thunder and lightning”, Northern LE12 6UJ
Earth Mysteries 13: 10—12
01509 880725
Sikes, Wirt, 1880, British Goblins, albion@indigogr0up.co.uk
Sampson Low
www.h0ap.co.uk
Thomas, Keith, 1971, Religion and
the Decline ofMagic, Weidenfeld &
Nicolson
Acknowledgements
John Billingsley, editor of Northern
Earth, helped greatly with the genesis
of this article by supplying a copy of
the proceedings against James
Richardson.

3rd Stone 4.7 page 21
 The staffs of
Asklepios and Hermes
Bari Hooper reconsiders the mythology and potent symbolism
ofsnake-entwined staffs.
N HIS INTERESTING ARTICLE “DREAM
I Incubation’ (3rd Stone 46), Bob Trubshaw
states that Asklepios’ snake-entwined staff,
‘has come down to us as the caduceus”. I would
like to take issue with him on this point, for though
the caduceus is also snake-entwined (in this instance
with two snakes), it is an independent symbol in its
Figure I .' The own right, not a late development of the Asklepion
caduceus from staff. In order to show the distinction between the
Longene, two staffs it is necessary to look briey at how
Sicily, now in Asklepios, the god of healing, and Hermes, the
the British messenger of the gods, whose principal attribute the
Museum. caduceus is, acquired their respective rods of office.
Avery brief glance at the symbolism of
the serpent in Greek mythology
is also relevant to the subject.
Asklepios and his staff
The most ancient source for
Asklepios (Aesulapius) is the
great 8th century BCE epic poem
the Iliad, attributed to Homer, in
which he emerges not as a divinity
but as a mortal warrior—king and
father of Machaon and Podaleirius
the hero-physicians of the Greek army
in the Trojan War (ii.73). The physician of
the Olympian gods in the Iliad is not
Asklepios, but Paeéon, the healer of the
wounded Ares and Hades (v. 401, 899-900).
In post-Homeric times the divine Paeéon
gradually became conated with Asklepios
until the latter eventually replaced the former
as god of healing and medicine. It is important
to note apropos of the present discussion that
in neither of his epic poems does Homer
mention a snake-entwined staff as being an
attribute of either Paeéon or Asklepios. Nor
does he mentioned it in the Homeric Hymns
page 22 3rd Stone 4.7
traditionally ascribed to him, parts at least of which
were probably compiled in the 7th century BCE.
The precise time of the establishment of
the cult ofAsklepios is not known. The failure of the
Homeric poems to afford him divine status or to
mention his myth suggests that it was a post-
Homeric phenomenon. However, a writer’s silence
on a subject does not necessarily mean that it did not
exist at the time, and as the cult contains certain
archaic elements, the possibility of a pre-Homeric
origin cannot be ruled out. None of this however is
of particular relevance to Asklepios’ snake-entwined
staff, which, according to the evidence of surviving
monumental sculpture seems to have been attributed
to him from the 5th century BCE, if not a little
earlier.
The principle temple of Asklepios was at
Epidaurus, where, according to Pausanias, writing in
the 2nd century CE, there stood in his sanctuary a
gold and ivory statue of the god seated on a throne,
holding a staff in one hand, with the other resting
upon the head of a large serpent; at his side lay a
dog. There are several conicting accounts of the
birth of Asklepios, but in one version told by
Pausanius, his mother Coronis abandoned him
shortly after his birth on a mountain-side at
Epiduarus, where he was suckled by a goat and
guarded by a dog (11. 26, 3-5). Thus the goat and the
dog became his sacred animals, the dog expressing
the same psychic function at his cult sites as his
sacred snake. In the Epidaurian records the dog and
the snake constantly appear in tales of miracle cures
experienced by devotees of the cult in search of
health. The sacred dogs kept at Epidaurus some—
times cured the sick simply by licking them. While
some sought relief in physical contact with the
sacred animal, others withdrew into the incubatio,
the innermost chamber of the sanctuary to seek
divine guidance in their dreams.
V"
As well as dogs, at least one sacred snake Thousands of ecstatic well-wishers are
was kept at Asklepieia, and when subsidiaries of the said to have gathered on the banks of the Tiberis to
Epidaurus sanctuary were established, a snake was greet the arrival of the ship carrying Asklepios in
solemnly transported to the new site to imbue it with his guise as a snake to Rome. Within the limits of
the god’s psychic power. (1) The species of snake the city the river is divided by an island known as
believed to have been sacred to Asklepios is the the Insula Tiberina, and it was here that the snake-
large slender EZaphe longissima, appropriately god chose to come ashore and establish his new
known today as the Aesculapian Snake. Its present sanctuary, which was ofcially consecrated on
European range is from Central France to Southern January lst 291 BCE. The church of San
Greece, where its average recorded length is below Bartolommeo now dominates the island, but traces
140 cm. (2) Larger exotic snakes were sometimes of its former pagan glory can still be seen at its
brought into Europe from as far away as Ethiopia, southern tip, where some large stones, part of a
and Aelian reports three such arrivals measuring great wall fashioned in the form of a ship in
respectively nine, seven and six cubits in length (3) commemoration of the god’s sea journey to Rome,
being placed in an unnamed Asklepieia, most prob- remain in situ. Here cut into the stone may be seen
ably Epidaurus. (XVI, 39). a mutilated fragment of a relief of Asklepios
The snake is a highly complex universal holding his snake-entwined staff.
symbol, and like other creatures belonging to the Once the cult of Asklepios was rmly
great symbolic menagerie it can be interpreted in established in Rome, its physicians, taking their
bonam partem or in malam partem. That it played a cue from their Greek counterparts the asklepiadai
vital role in the earliest Greek fertility rites is hinted formed themselves into a sacerdotal brotherhood
at in such myths as that of the half-serpent and called themselves asclepiades, with each
Erichthonius who was born from the Spilled seed of member transmitting his jealously guarded
Hephaistos. And in the early years of her cult the medical secrets only to his chosen successor. For
snake was also associated with Pallas Athene their insigne they adopted their divine spiritual
(Minerva), goddess of wisdom, an association which Fgure 2:
suggests that she may have developed from or The
displaced an earlier chthonic deity. As well as printer is
symbolizing wisdom, the snake was a chthonic, trade-mark
solar and phallic symbol, and perhaps because of its ofMichel
annual sloughing off of its old skin it came to be Fezendat.
seen as a symbol of rebirth and by implication
healing. It need therefore afford no surprise that it
became the attribute ofAsklepios, the saviour-healer
and his daughter Hygeia (Salus), as well as the
physician Hippocrates.
In 293 BCE Rome suffered a dire pesti-
lence, and such was the people’s misery the city
fathers sent emissaries to Delphi to consult the
oracle and beg Apollo to put an end to their
suffering. The oracle bade them seek the assistance
of Asklepios at Epidaurus, and on their arrival at the
sanctuary the supplicants begged the cult elders to
allow them to take their god to Rome. The
Epidaurians were divided as how they should
respond to the request, some were inclined to favour
it, while others were vehemently opposed to deliv-
ering up the source of their prosperity. The impasse
was nally solved by' Asklepios himself when he
appeared in a dream to the head of the Roman dele-
gation, saying:
Fear not! I shall leave my sanctuary and
come. Gaze upon this serpent which
twines around my staff, x it with your
eyes that you may learn it. For I shall
transform myself into this, only larger,
like a celestial body when it changes. So
saying, he vanished.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses XV’ 658ff.)

3rd Stone 47 page 23

 ancestor’s snake-entwined staff, a device, which
far from having metamorphosed into the caduceus,
as Trubshaw states, remains in use today
throughout the world as the badge of numerous
military and civilian medical services. (4)
Hermes and the caduceus
The earliest sources for Hermes (Mercury), the
son of Zeus and Maia, are Hesiod and Homer. He
is mentioned briey by Hesiod in Works and Days
and in other works attributed to him, and he also
appears in both the Odyssey and the Iliad, but the
fullest description of his exploits occur in the
Homeric Hymns. In this last great work of the Epic
School the burlesque Hymn to Hermes tells of the
god being born at dawn, inventing the lyre at mid-
day, and stealing the cattle of Apollo in the
evening. For these remarkable acts of ingenuity
and misappropriation, the aggrieved Apollo took
the precocious infant before his father Zeus to
demand the return of his beasts. Hermes denied the
theft, but Zeus, fully aware of his infant son’s
duplicity, ordered him to take Apollo to where the
cattle were hidden. Unable to resist his father’s
irrepressible will he did so, and it was at this time
Figure 3: The that Apollo discovered the newly invented lyre
printer Is lying nearby. So charmed was he by its sound he
trade-mark of promptly concluded his quarrel with his infant
Johan Froben. step-brother, and on being assured by the young-
Fivsme cno’mum a5 .
uatcu ML: 9 .LCHQ Lama EQELUCI
'i 1031 ibroun; smtotlduns suapmd
3 I c c \ mythologists had no problem with explaining their
axegawt w; a: wegtgegaa.
page 24. 3rd Stone 4.7
ster that he would never again steal from him, in
exchange for the lyre he gave him his magic three-
branched staff of gold, Zeus conrmed the trans—
action and appointed Hermes messenger to Hades
and lord over birds of omen, lions, boars, dogs and
sheep (IV, 568-73)
The magic staff in the Homeric poems, is
called ravdos (rod or wand) or hreesorapis (golden
wand), and it is described as having three
branches, which suggests that it may have been an
olive branch. But whatever its original form, with
the appointment of Hermes as the divine
messenger, it inevitably became conated with the
kerukez'on, the staff of ofce customarily carried
by Greek heralds. The kerukez'on, better know to
us by its Latin name, caduceus, in its earliest form
differs markedly from the caduceus we associate
with the Hermes of Late Antiquity and the
Renaissance. On black-gured vases and other
ctile wares dating from the sixth through to the
fourth centuries BCE it is depicted as a long slim
rod tipped by a circle and crescent. Earlier caducei
of similar form occur on Assyrian, Hittite and
Punic monuments, suggesting that the Greeks may
have borrowed the design from one of their neigh-
bours. They may have adopted it from the
Phoenicians by way of Greek colonists at
Cyreniaca who were instrumental in introducing
Punic and other near eastern elements into
Hellenic mythology.
The wings symbolizing the alacrity with
which Hermes carried out his divine orders were
added to the caduceus at least as early as the 6th
century BCE. A black-gured vase of this period
in the Musee Antoine Vivenel at Compeigne
depicting Hermes, has what appears to be a single
wing (or possibly a pair of closed wings) attached
to, and running parallel to the lower half of the
shaft of his staff. In later examples the wings (not
always present) are usually shown in the middle or
upper half of the staff.
The earliest caducei depicted on painted
vases are too small for the inclusion of any details,
but a 5th century BCE bronze caduceus from
Longene, Sicily, now in the British Museum, has
its top fashioned in the form of two opposed
snakes. (g. 1). Whether the circle and crescent
metamorphosed into snakes before the 5th century
BCE is uncertain, nor is the reason for the trans-
formation apparent. It has been suggested that the
white ribbons which were customarily attached to
heralds’ caducei were erroneously interpreted by
later artists into snakes, but this seemingly plau-
sible explanation takes no account of the Longene
example whose snakes appear to have developed
directly from the circle and crescent. Whatever the
reason for the introduction of the snakes, later
presence, they simply fabricated tales to account
F.
for them. One such recounted by
Hyginus tells of Hermes, while travel-
ling in Arcadia, separating with his
staff two quar'relling snakes which
immediately entwined themselves
about it and faced each other in a state
of peaceful equilibrium (Astronomy ii.
7).
In his capacity as the divine
messenger, Hermes was regarded as
the god of roads, in recognition of
which images in his honour were set
up on pillars (hermae) and erected at
crossroads and before temples and
gateways. Travellers embarking on
journeys invoked his protection, and
his presence was considered to be an
encouragement for social and mercan-
tile intercourse, from which circum—
stance he was also worshipped as the
god of commerce. In this last role both
he and his caduceus are widely
employed today as a symbols of
commercial enterprise on banks and
other buildings.
The Renaissance caduceus
with which Trubshaw illustrates his
article is the trade-mark of the cele-
brated Swiss printer Johann Froben,
who printed in Basel from 1491 until
his death in 1527. Figures of Hermes
symbolizing wisdom, concord and
enterprise were adopted for their
trade-marks by a number of 15th
century printers and publishers. A
typical example utilised by Michel
Fczendat, who ourished in Paris
from 1538 until 1566, is shown here
(figure 2.) Others, like Froben,
adopted the caduceus as a symbol in
its own right without calling upon the
services of Hermes himself Although
it is primarily a pagan symbol, Froben
unequivocally invested his several
caducei trade-marks with Christian
signicance, and to ensure that those
who bought his books understood
this, in one instance, shown here in
gure 3, he environed the device with
the mottoes Prudens simplicitas
amorque recti (Wise simplicity and
the love of right), the Greek version of
‘Be ye therefore as wise as serpents,
and harmless as doves’ (Matthew x.
16), and the Hebrew version of Psalm
cxxv 4, ‘Do good, 0 Lord, unto those
that be good, and to them that are
upright in their hearts. ’. In accordance
with this eclectic approach to the
symbol, instead of putting wings on
the staff, the artist responsible for the
design placed a bird at the top to
represent the dove of the gospel
quotation. (5) Many of the caducei
adopted by the printers and publishers
of the 16th century, like Froben’s
examples, are depicted being held in
either the right hand or in both hands
of God, the deity himself remaining
concealed in clouds. This curious
convention of Renaissance emblem-
atic imagery appears to be an echo of
the reluctance of western artists of
Late Antiquity to depict the deity as a
whole person.
To sum up. The staff
entwined with a single snake was
introduced in or before the 8th century
BCE as the principal attribute of
Asklepios the god of healing.
Removed from the hand of Asklepios
it continues in use today as the insigne
of the medical profession.
The staff of Hermes also
appeared in its original form in the
epic literature of the 8th century BCE,
but the serpents which are entwined
about it in its later form as the
caduceus, appear to date from about
the 5th century BCE. It too remains in
use today, with or without its mytho—
logical bearer, symbolizing either
commerce or the swiftness of modern
communication systems. (6)
Footnotes
1. Kerenyi, C., (1960), Asklepios,
London, 103.
2. Arnold, E. N. ~ Burton, J. A.,
(1978), A field Guide to the Reptiles
and Amphibians ofBritain and
Europe, London, 199-200.
3. Aelian wrote in Greek, but as he
was a Roman I assume that he refers
to the Roman cubit which was 443.6
millimetres, if so, then the three
snakes were respectively 3. 9, 3.1
and 2.6 metres in length
4. In the British army the staff of
Asklepios is featured on the badge of
the Royal Medical Corps.
5. The birds in Froben’s devices are a
motley looking lot, resembling wood-
peckers or crows rather than doves.
Some are even crested, but in spite of
these ornithological differences, the
quotation from Matthew’s gospel
clearly shows the printer’s intention.
6. As a symbol of commerce the
caduceus is featured in relief on each
of the two main bronze doors of the
Bank of England. On one door the
staff has the wings of a slow—ying
bird, and is surmounted by a sailing
ship representing the mercantile eet
upon which the bulk of Britains’
prosperity formerly rested; while on
the other the staff bears the wings of
a fast-ying bird, and is surmounted
by a hand holding bolts of lightning,
symbolizing the swiftness of
commercial transactions using elec-
trical telegraphic communication. As
a symbol of swift wireless communi-
cation the figure of Hermes is
featured standing upon a globe, with
the motto Certa cito (Swift and sure),
on the badge of the Royal Corps of
Signals.
Bibliography
Aelian, 0n the Characteristics of
Animals, trans. by A. F. Scholfield,
(1958), Cambridge, Mass.
Apollodorus, The Library, trans. Sir
J. G. Frazer, (1921), New York.
Homer, Iliad, ed. G E. Dimock,
(1995), Cambridge, Mass.
“, Odyssey, ed. G. E. Dimock,
(1995), Cambridge, Mass.
“, Homeric Hymns, ed. H. G. Evelyn—
White, (1936), Cambridge, Mass.
Hyginus, Astronomy, trans. by H.
Forder, (1888), London.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by F. J.
Miller, (1984), Cambridge, Mass.
Pausanius, Description of Greece,
trans. by W. H. S. Jones & H. A.
Ormerod (191 8), Cambridge, Mass.
3rd Stone 4.7 page 25
 doing so contemplates the nature of prehistoric landscapes, monument re-use and archaeological
reconstructions.
Cornelius Holtorf presents an alternative view of the ‘wholeness’ of megalithic monuments, and in
Fra/gmen/te/d me/gali/th/s
Transported landscapes
Megaliths consist either of stone
fragments or of complete stones
that may be considered fragments
of the earth. The task of the
builders of a megalithic monument
is to find the right stone material,
work it to the right size (if neces-
sary), transport it to the chosen
location, and construct the mega-
lith according to a desired design. |
suggest that it was important for
building a megalith that it
consisted of several parts or frag-
ments. These fragments could
differ not only in substance, size
and shape but also in place of
origin. They were "pieces of
places”, as Richard Bradley (2000:
88) called it. None of this may have
been visible to the visitor of a
completed monument, as an
earthen mound would have
covered most, if not all, of the
stones. Nevertheless, the partic-
ular properties of the invisible
stones mattered.
At Vale de Rodrigo, in
southern Portugal, geological
analyses were carried out at the
stones used in four megalithic
graves (Dehn et al. 1991; Kalb
1996). The result was surprising
(Fig. 1). The stones had been
brought to the site from different
locations of up to 10km distance.
Geological research established
that this choice was probably
predominantly motivated by func-
tional and practical reasons. The
different kinds of rock have
different appearances and/or
page 26 3rd Stone 4.7
physical characteristics, so that
one or the other may have influ-
enced their uses. Fragments of
different rocks were chosen in
correspondence with a previously
conceived design of the finished
monument. But there is more to it
than that. The locations of the
sites of origin of the different
materials represent main celestial
directions from the megalith. This
makes it likely that the monuments
also represented certain symbolic
values associated with the land-
scape and certain cosmologies. In
short, the design of these mega-
liths included not only the use of
different rock fragments as such,
but also their previous fragmenta-
tion from natural rock formations
at locations of presumably special
cultural significance. Similar rela-
tionships between megaliths and
their surrounding landscapes have
been observed elsewhere (see
especially Bradley 2000). In Brl'J na
Boinne on Ireland, the stone mate-
rial used in the major passage
tombs of Newgrange and Knowth
comes from several sources, two of
which are approximately 40 km
south and 35 km North East from
the tombs (Cooney 2000: 135-8). In
these cases, megaliths became "a
transported landscape in which
structural elements were
extracted, carried and re-assem-
bled to link together physically
places that had been distant”
(Cooney 2000: 136). In effect, this
may have constituted a physical
expression of certain people’s
7—“?
knowledge and power
celebrated in ceremonies

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selves, the collective burials seen as animate, living
they often contain tend to draw
entities. They suggested
meaning from the individual

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life—histories of their parts. that "Avebury is not a
Perhaps these megaliths were structure for the ances—
pesn sum
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seen as places of fragmentation tors but represents a

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as such — nothing complete

carefully choreographed

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would be allowed in, or out.
gathering of them” (1999:
m9u 101

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pots had already been broken 184; original emphasis).
before their deposition In the Falbygden
9pn19111 K9111 's9s0dmd

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(Whittle 1996: 255-6; cf.

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11 111115

standings. materials but they were

also located at places
with the best vistas
Figure 2: A megalith at Rabuje near Monforte, Alentejo, Portugal. Some of the side-stones towards dominant moun-
have been broken up at ground level and obviously found a use elsewhere. tains, even mimicking the
(Photograph: Cornelius Holtorf, 2001) surrounding landscape: by
orientation, in relation to
topographical axes and
edges; and by selecting
igneous rock for stones
lying above others of sedi-
mentary rock, in relation
to the same visible order
towards the horizon
(Tilley 1996: 124-5, 209).
For Christopher Tilley,
therefore, megaliths
represent "the landscape
in miniature” (1996: 209)
(18). Similar arguments
have been made in rela-
tion to Scotland. On the
island of Arran, the
building material used in
its chambered tombs is
mostly very local, but in
each case care was taken
that both red and white

3rd Stone 47 page 27

stones were used, representing the
colours of the two types of stones
(white granites and schists, red
sandstone) that make up the entire
island (Jones 1999). In relation to
Neolithic Orkney, Colin Richards
argued (1996) that the landscape
and topography of the natural
world of the island is re-created in
tombs and henge monuments, and
Gillings and Pollard have made a
similar claim for the henge at
Avebury (1999: 185).
Symbolic values of rocks
associated with different places
are also documented for another
form of megaliths — the so-called
Gorsedd Circles in Wales. These chosen from the mountains or in
are stone circles which, since the quarries according to size but
early 19th century, were built for otherwise at random, their
the annual ceremonies of The specific place of origin too could
Gorsedd of Bards of the Isle of acquire significance. On one occa-
Britain which formed part of the sion, in 1986 in Fishguard, selected
annual Eisteddfod, the National parishes were each asked to
Arts and Music Festival of Wales contribute one stone each to the
(see Holtorf 2000-3: 7.1). One circle (Dillwyn Miles, pers. comm).
account of the Eisteddfod held in Selecting and transporting the
1914 in Aberystwyth states that stones to the site of the Gorsedd
the stones in and outside of the Circle and the Eisteddfod became
circle represented the Welsh coun- therefore firmly linked with the
ties, as well as the Welsh Abroad symbolic, national significance of
and in England (Allcroft 1923: the performances and ceremonies
121). Although the stones used in of the The Gorsedd of Bards.
Gorsedd Circles were normally

Fragment added by Andrew Jones in order to complete the argument

What of the fragmentation process in relation to morality (of. Bauman 1995)? You allude to this at the end of your
paper. if we rid ourselves of the solidity/certainty of modernist evaluations of wholeness/togetherness equalling a
moral/ethical path, how are we to re-conceptualise morality in a fragmented world? This is important in relation to the
morality associated with the preservation of wholeness. If we fragment materials, do we also fragment moral values?
How are we to arbitrate the morality of completeness/ wholeness if the whole is broken and circulated far and wide?
Who then owns megalithic monuments — how do they relate to nation states? Is it important that big stones are held
in place or can they be circulated? What does this mean for the alteration of previously held values?

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page 28 3rd Stone 4.7

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References Cooney, Gabriel (2000) Landscapes of Neolithic
Ireland. London: Routledge.
Allcroft, A.Hadrian (1923) The circle and the
cross. Archaeological Journal 80, 115—290. Dehn, Wolfgang, Philine Kalb and Walter

ings III' churchvard BIIGIDSIII'GS “IBM" Vortisch (1991 ) Geologisch-petrographische

moo-3:1'3l'
III “I0 late 19th and earlv
- —
20'“ GGIIIIII'IGS, Stone? we'e III great
lllllll “I! "I0 BI'IBBIIIIII 0' war and
- -
BEIGE IIIIIIS 0' memorrals ill dermanv
and. as a result. manv more megalithic
IIIIIIIIIIIIEIIIS were [momenta] [Iloltori
_ Routledge.
2000-3: 5.2.3]. IronIcaIIv. one nart ot
“I8 381 I S III I'BIIIBIIIIIGI'BII II
II a IIB
sulliectinll IIIIOIIIBI lo lllllillioll- “I8"! is
a considerable IIIIIIIIIBI‘ 0! war memo-
_ _ _
[IBIS In Which canslones 0' megalrthlc
mm”; [lava IIIIIIIII new uses. This is
osneciallv IIIIViIIIIS WIIBII "a, IIIBIIIII-
Bauman, Zygmunt (1995) Life in fragments: Untersuchungen an Megalithgrabern Portugals.
essays in postmodern morality. Oxford: Madrider Mitteilungen 32, 1—28.
Blackwell.
Ebbesen, Klaus (1993) Stendysser og
Blake, Emma (1999) Identity-mapping in the jcettestuer. Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag.
Sardinian Bronze Age. European Journal of
Archaelogy 2, 35-55. Gillings, Mark and Joshua Pollard (1999) Non-
portable stone artefacts and contexts of
Bradley, Richard (2000) An Archaeology of meaning: the tale of Grey Wether
Natural Places. London and New York: (www.museums.ncl.ac.uk/Avebury/stone4.html
) World Archaeology 31, 179-193.
Burgess, Colin (1989-90) The Chronology of Hansen, W. (1933) Zur Verbreitung der
V Cup-and-Ring Marks in Britain and Ireland. Riesensteingraber in Norddeutschland. Mannus
Northern Archaeology 10, 21 —26. 25, 337-352.
_
Cassen, Serge (n.d.) Funerary stelae reused in Holten, L. (n.d.) Death, danger and destruc-
the passage graves of western France: towards tion and unintended megaliths. Paper
a sexualisation of the carvings. Unpublished presented at the session "Fragmentation”,
paper, 1998. EAA-1999, Bournemouth, September 1999.

rials feature cull marlts. As a conse- Figure 4: Entrance gate to a farm opposite Herdada Feral de Cima, near

Ituenco. several war memorials are Gafanhoeir, Alentejo, Portugal. (Photograph: Cornelius Holtorf, 2000).

now uroteeted as nrehistoric monu-

mems. en. in Ilamllerge [Iloltori 2000-
3: 8.3]. llansen drew attention to a
single megalithie tomh In llagen-
dranitz on lliigen. the stones of which
were reused in tour diilerent memo-
rlals llig. 3]. Interestinglv. this did not
haunon in a single ovem hut over a
time ueriod ol some so vearsl
llll this could he ctutlained hit
the tact that large stones used in
megaliths slmnlv orovided convenient
huilding material tor other ourooses'
But it mav annear even more Illtelv that
[at least some oil these fragments.
whether decorated or not. were delih-
eratelv Integrated into later monu-
ments because thev had heen used
Indore and were associated with older
shes

3rd Stone 4.7 page 29

 FIGURE 1. TRANSPORTATION ROUTES AND DIRECTIONS OF THE
DIFFERENT KINDS OF ROCK USED FOR CONSTRUCTION AT THE FOUR
MEGALITHIC TOMBS OF VALE DE RODRIGO, ALENTEIO, PORTUGAL
(SOURCE: KALB 1996: FIG. 1).

Figure 5: Reconstruction drawing of the passage

grave at Jamet, Kreis Wtsman Mecklenburg—
Vorpommern, Germany. (Source: Schuldt 19721):
Tafel 26).

Axing Menhirs
It is now well established
that some megaliths at
Locmariaquer in Brittany
were in fact built from the
fragments of older deco-
rated menhirs (L'Helgouach
1983; Cassen n.d.). Cap—
mm btzt—fm/r? 4::
stones of three different
Mm palpmhcar Memo”? *—
megaliths even turned out to
mm,” abut—Hama/em— fmafi! <1—
be fragments of one and the
1:! mm gmékmr'ger, mummam arbor—Gram? <I---
same huge menhir (Le Roux
1985). Mark Patton (1993)
listed eight different
menhirs that had probably
been fragmented in the

page 30 3rd Stone 47

7,
Neolithic, and re-uses of
some of these fragments in
up to seven different mega—
lithic tombs, all in Brittany
(Patton 1993: 56-7). In
recent excavations near the
site of Le Grand Menhir
Brise, on the Locmariaquer
peninsula, Brittany, archae-
ologists have discovered a
place where menhirs were
taken to be broken up into
smaller pieces. The small
chippings produced by the
pecking of the stones have
been found in profusion
(John Chapman, pers.
comm). Given this
emphasis on fragmentation
and breaking up monuments,
it may come as no surprise
that the axe is a prominent
element of the decorations
on the menhirs (Thomas &
Tilley 1993: 233). For
Sardinia, Emma Blake
established at least seven
cases where menhirs were
re-used in megalithic tombs,
and she found another three
such re-uses in Bronze Age
nuraghi, although in all
these cases the menhirs had
remained complete (Blake
1999: 44-6). On the British
Isles too, older standing
stones, perhaps an entire
stone circle, were recycled
in the passage grave of
Maeshowe on Orkney
(Richards 1996: 197). By the
same token, various deco-
rated stones of Neolithic
monuments were used
during the Bronze and Iron
Age in secondary contexts
(Burgess 1989—90).
Holtorf, Cornelius (1994) Die heutigen Bedeutungen
des Gollensteins von Blieskastel. Fijr eine
empirische Rezeptionsforschung der Archaologie.
Saarpfalz 1994 (4), 11-21.
Holtorf, Cornelius (1999) Megaliths :-(. In: A.
Gustafsson and H. Karlsson (eds) Glyfer och arkeol-
ogiska rum — en vdnbok till Jarl Nordbladh, pp.
441—52. Goteborg: Gtiteborgs universitet,
Arkeologiska institutionen.
Holtorf, Cornelius (2000-2003) Monumental Past:
The Life-histories of Megaliths in Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern. Electronic monograph. http://citd-
press. utsc.utoronto.ca/ holtorf/ .
Jones, Andrew (1999) Local colour: megalithic
architecture and colour symbolism in Neolithic
Arran. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 18, 339-50.
Kalb, Philine (1996) Megalith-building, stone trans-
port and territorial markers: evidence from Vale de
Rodrigo, Evora, south Portugal. Antiquity 70,
683—685.
Le Roux, Charles-Tanguy (1985) New excavations at
Gavrinis. Antiquity 59, 183—187.
L‘Helgouach, Jean (1983) Les idoles qu'on abat...
(ou les lissicitudes des grandes stéles de
Locmariaquer) Bulletin mensuel de la Société
Polymathique du Morbihan 1983, 57—68.
Lillios, Katina T. (1999) Symbolic Artifacts and
Spheres of Meaning: Groundstone Tools from
Copper Age Portugal. In: J. E. Robb (ed.) Material
Figure 6: Schematic overview of the
cycle of continuous fragmentation and
(re—)assemblage of megaliths.
i Assemblage l Q
Q I
i Fragmentation f
Q '  'i'sembiage I
Symbols: Culture and Economy in Prehistory, pp.
173-187. Centre for Archaeological Investigations,
Occasional Paper No. 26. Southern Illinois
University.
Moreland, John (1999) The world(s) of the cross.
World Archaeology 31, 194—213.
Patton, Mark (1993) Statements in Stone.
Monuments and Society in Neolithic Brittany.
London and New York: Routledge.
Renfrew, Colin (1973) Before Civilization. The
radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Richards, Colin (1996) Monuments as landscape:
creating the centre of the world in late Neolithic
Orkney. World Archaeology 28, 190-208.
Schuldt, Ewald (1972a) Der Riesenberg von Nobbin,
Kreis Riigen. Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg,
Jahrbuch 1971, 153—160.
Schuldt, Ewald (1972b) Die mecklenburgi-schen
Megalithgra'ber. Untersuchungen zu ihrer
Architektur und Funktion. Beitrage zur Ur- und
Friihgeschichte der Bezirke Rostock, Schwerin und
Neubrandenburg, vol. 6. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag
der Wissenschaften.
Strohmayer, Ulf (1997) Belonging: Spaces of
Meandering Desire. In: G. Benko and U. Strohmeyer
(eds) Space & Social Theory. Interpreting
Modernity and Postmodernity, pp. 162-185.
Oxford: Blackwell.
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mpv ‘adJoui
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atu (test) Kenn Jeudmsuun Due uennr ‘sewoui
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3rd Stone 4.7 page 31
 Geomagnetism
From dream incubation to dowsing
Bob Trubshaw continues the theme of his article in 3rd Stone 46
about ‘Dream Incubation ’, this time looking at the possible influence
of the Earth Is magnetic eld.
E KNOW THAT OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS
were alert to the sound of their
surroundings and could understand the
subtle and complex aspects of astronomy. What
else were they aware of? Rationalist thought
would add smell, taste and touch to sight and
sound. More interestingly, during the last thirty
years it is becoming clear that humans are sensi-
tive to magnetism, specically the weak levels of
magnetism associated with the Earth's magnetic
eld a known as geomagnetism.
Magnetic sensitivity in other species
Other animals have been shown to have more
developed sensitivity to geomagnetism. For
instance the ‘homing instinct‘ of pigeons can be
'turned off by tying small magnets to their heads,
showing that their prodigious feats of navigation
rely on sensitivity to geomagnetism. Biologists,
such as Frank Brown working in Massachusetts in
the 19603, have also shown that some species of
snails, insects, sh, whales and even some obscure
species of aquatic bacteria also have highly func-
tional homing instincts that rely on detecting
geomagnetism. By the late 19703 there was a vast
literature (summarised in Pressman 1970 and
Dubrov 1978) which showed that various organic
and inorganic processes varied in accordance with
changes in the geomagnetic eld. Among these
were in vivo and in vitro blood processes and elec-
trodermal activity. In the 19803 and 19903 Michael
Persinger was the most prolic of a number of
researchers who looked ever more intensely at the
effect of electromagnetic elds on human
consciousness. De3pite a vast number of papers
published by Persinger, there remains the possi-
bility that any really interesting ndings have been
classied as military secrets.
page 32 3rd Stone 4.7
Human sensitivity to geomagnetism
Also in the 19703, Dr Robin Baker of Manchester
University showed that humans' sense of direction
is also lost when magnets are placed either side of
the head. He took a coach-load of blindfolded
students on a circuitous journey. Most of those
with non—magnetic metal bars either side of their
heads could indicate roughly which direction they
had come from. Those with magnets on their heads
could not (Baker 1980; 1981).
Baker's research was repeated in
America. This revealed that students there have a
poor sense of direction even without magnets.
Presumably this is because Americans are accus—
tomed to nding their way around rectilinear cities
and not the more chaotic European cities, 30 their
ability to respond to their body's innate sense of
direction atrophies. In contrast, people whose lives
depend on keeping their bearings over large
distances have a better sense of direction than
Manchester students. For example, James Cowan
reports that Australian Aborigines have an
'absolute compass sense'. When transferred to
hospital many hundreds of miles from their home,
Aboriginal patients can readily and reliably point
to the direction of home (Cowan 1992: 13).
Scientists have yet to decide which
human organs are sensitive to magnetism,
although the main suspect is the pineal gland. This
is situated in the middle of the head (but techni-
cally not part of the brain). The shape and internal
structure vary greatly. Although it is only about the
size of the nail on our little nger, only the kidneys
and pituitary gland receive similar blood ow. The
outside of the pineal gland hardens during adoles-
cence and at this time becomes responsive to
changes in magnetic elds (Roney-Dougal 1989;
1991; Roney-Dougal and Vogl 1993).
 3rd Stone 47 page 33
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 The pineal gland's complex qualities
The inuences that the pineal gland has on
consciousness are subtle but effective. The gland
is most closely associated with the production of
serotonin (a neuro—transmitter) and melatonin (a
neuro-hormone). The nerves to and from the
pineal connect only to the autonomic nervous
system. Interestingly the autonomous nervous
system is implicated in various aspects of healing
and 'psychic' responses. This may be because the
pineal also releases beta-carboline, closely related
to naturally-occurring psychoactive chemicals
such as harmaline. Harmaline is one of the active
ingredients in ayahuasca, used by the indigenous
Illustration by people of South America to induce an altered state
of consciousness in which they contact spirit
Ian Brown
page 34. 3rd Stone 47
guides for various 'psychic' activities such as
precognition, clairvoyance, healing and out—of-
body travel.
Curiously, in Indian metaphysical tradi—
tions the pineal gland corresponds to the ajna
chakm, or 'Third Eye', which is regarded as the
psychic centre. More pertinent to the idea that
sensitivity to geomagnetism is linked to 'psychic'
activity is the study by, William Brand and
Stephen Dennis of apparent links between the
natural variation in geomagnetic activity and
telepathy, following up the work of earlier
researchers who 'found that ESP [extra sensory
perception] testing which occurred on geomagnet—
ically quiet days yielded signicantly better (more
accurate) results than test which occurred on
geomagnetically "stormy" days.‘ (Braud and
Dennis 1989: 1243). Other researchers at this time
looked at the effect of changes in geomagnetic
activity on the accuracy of telepathic dreams
(Persinger and Krippner 1989).
Serotonin and melatonin help to control
our waking and sleep cycle (Roney-Dougal 1991:
Ch.4). One proof that the pineal gland is sensitive
to geomagnetism appears when people are kept in
constant low light. This means that the pineal
gland cannot use daylight to cue the
serotonin/melatonin cycle. The body defaults to a
25 hour cycle. This is the frequency of the moon
circling the earth and strongly suggests that the
body is responding to the subtle 'tides' in geomag-
netism. One of the main causes of disruption to the
serotonin/melatonin cycle is severe stress, and I
suspect that many readers will have experienced
the disruption to sleep patterns this causes. Writing
this article on a dull November day and ghting a
feeling of lethargy reminds me that
serotonin/melatonin imbalance is linked to
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which can be
alleviated by bright lights. However the magnetic
eld created by the computer monitor (much
stronger than the Earth's eld) is not fooling my
body's serotonin/melatonin cycle.
Melatonin normally peaks about six
hours after dusk. Think of how many religions
regard 3 am. as the most powerful time to chant
matins, mantras or Buddhist scriptures. Could this
be the origin of the 'witching hour', the time when
Cinderella must go home?
Dream incubation and geomagnetism
Given the close links between sleep, stress and the
search for psychic states of consciousness, the
long-standing therapeutic practice of 'dream incu-
bation' may be linked to natural magnetic 'hot
spots'. Over ten years ago I speculated that Greek
and Roman dream incubation temples may have
been associated with such geomagnetic anomalies
(Trubshaw 1991; 1992). As discussed in my article
on dream incubation in the previous
issue of 3rd Stone, my starting point
was the recognition that the two
Roman temples in Britain where the
ground plans reveal the type of build-
ings used for dream incubation (Lydney
in Gloucestershire and Thistleton on the
Leicestershire/Rutland border) are both
situated above rich deposits of iron ore.
Quite independently James
Mavor and Byron Dix compared an
aerial survey of geomagnetism in
New England with the location of
native 'praying Villages'. The correla-
tion is impressive (Mavor and Dix
1989: 294). As if to support the links
with geomagnetism, a Montville
‘prayer seat' in New England had been
erected since 1950 under a high
voltage electrical transmission line —
as if to deliberately use the resultant
changes to the electromagnetic eld
as part of the vision quests associated
with such native sacred sites (Mavor
and Dix 1989: 264). Independently of
this research, James Swan reports
that:
All across the United States
there are mystery spots...
Two of the best known are
located at Gold Hill, Oregon
and Santa Cruz, California. I
can nd no Indian legend
that says these were sacred
places, but you ought to go
visit them to see what you
think. Strange things seem
to happen there. . . .I think
they're magnetic anomalies,
probably due to some
geological anomalies.
(Swan 1990: 230)
The idea that changes in geomag—
netism might inuence mental
processes seems to have rst been
popularised by Janet and Colin Bord
in their 1976 book The Secret Country
(Bord and Bord 1976: 52—60). These
suggestions led to experimental eld-
work in the 19803 by members of the
Dragon Project, led by Paul
Devereux. The preliminary results of
this research were published as Places
of Power (Devereux 1990: 62—3).
Philip Burton has followed up this
research by surveying numerous
prehistoric stone circles in Britain for
magnetic 'anomalies' (Burton 1993;
1995; 2002). Such anomalies include
a natural stone 'seat' in a stone at
Gows Fawr stone circle in
Pembrokeshire. The 1,138 feet high
peak of nearby Carn Ingli has many
remarkable magnetic areas and is
where, according to legend, St
Brynach used to sleep and talk with
the angels who sat around him. (See
also David Kaiser's article on 'Sacred
Preseli' in the previous issue of 3rd
Stone.)
The later stages of the
Dragon Project involved various
volunteers sleeping at prehistoric
sites and being woken While in REM
sleep and asked about their dreams.
As part of this research one of the
volunteers, Laurence Main, spent
many nights camped on the peak of
Carn Ingli. The results were
subjected to sophisticated statistical
analysis by Stanley Krippner, an
America sleep research expert.
[Note: See ‘News’ this issue for the
recently-published ndings of this
study]
Magnetism in the past
There is clear evidence that the
Classical world was aware of
magnetism. Homer, Pythaogoras,
Epicurus, Pliny and Aristotle all refer
to the powers of magnets, although
the Alexandrian poet Claudian
(c.370—404 CE) is the rst to use the
word 'magnet'. In his book Riddles 0f
the Magnet trefers to a magnetic
image of Venus held suspended in the
air at a temple and describes the
magnet as 'the dark, invisible stone
which in storm and lightning its
power seems to rule.‘ The sixteenth
century alchemist Paracelsus attrib-
uted many of his healing powers to
magnetism. Indeed, following the
precedent of the Orphic poets,
occultists had long associated the
magnet with the 'magic wand' of
Hermes or Mercury the same
serpent-entwined caduceus also asso-
ciated with Asklepios, the god most
frequently associated with Greek
dream incubation temples. Was
Asklepios’s magic rod also magnetic
and, if so, did the entwined snakes
symbolise what we would now think
of as the 'magnetic eld'?
Curiously, one of the
'mystery cults' with the greatest inu—
ence throughout the Greek and
Roman world was based on the small
and isolated island of Samothrace.
Archaeologists have found a number
of iron rings in the sanctuary and
relevant records suggest that the initi—
ates received an iron ring and the
‘effect of some hidden, moving power
was demonstrated with the phenom-
enon of magnetism.’ (Burket 1993:
187—8) There is no indication that the
Samothracian mystery rituals
involved dream incubation, but they
do suggest that the effects of
magnetism were known and used
ritually.
A friend who works at the
British Geological Survey was able
to provide me with some large-scale
maps of Greek geology. Sadly the
geological information available for
Greece is not sufciently detailed to
justify trying to correlate the 300-or-
so known temples to Asklepios with
underlying rocks. The geological
maps did show that the most impor—
tant of these temples at Epidauros is
unlikely to be associated with iron
ore deposits. However photographs
of adjacent cliffs reveal a major
unconformity in the underlying rocks
(limestone overlying igneous rocks),
which could lead to changes in the
geomagnetic eld akin to those
caused by iron deposits.
The geomagnetic field is
subtly distorted by changes in the
underlying rocks, particularly at fault
lines and unconforrnities. Fault lines
are widespread. However some faults
may have more pronounced or ’inter-
esting' effects on the geomagnetic
eld than others. The human sensi-
tivity to magnetism seems to be
suited to detecting subtle changes in
geomagnetism, so walking over a
series of fault. lines and/or unconfor-
mities (perhaps as part of a recog-
nised pilgrimage route) could induce
an efcacious sequence of subtle
Changes on the consciousness.
By studying levels of
magnetism trapped in ancient pottery
scientists have shown that the Earth's
magnetic eld is now less than half
the strength it was 4,000 years ago.
According to the British Geological
3rd Stone 4.7 page 35
Survey, the rate of change is
increasing and geomagnetism has
weakened by more than ve percent
in the last hundred years (Thomson
2003). If my underlying hypothesis
regarding changes in geomagnetism
causing subtle changes to conscious—
ness is correct then 4,000 years ago
such effects would have been twice
as noticeable. Coupled with this,
people at that time could be expected
to be far more sensitive to such
changes, as is suggested by the excel-
lent sense of direction shown by
traditional Australian people today.
However if there is a plau—
sible link between geomagnetism
and New World 'vision questing‘ and
'prayer village sites‘ and with at least
some of the Greek and Roman 'dream
incubation' temples then might
human sensitivity to these subtle
changes in the Earth's magnetic eld
manifest in other ways? For example,
dowsers may be picking up exceed-
ingly subtle variations in geomag-
netism. David Taylor has reported
that:
The average reading for the
Earth's magnetic eld is
about half a Gauss. Dr
Zaboj V. Harvalik has made
a considerable number of
magnetometer measure—
ments which seem to indi-
cate that dowsers react to
magnetic gradient changes
as weak as one
milli-microGauss or,
expressed another way,
10'9Gauss (0.000,000,0001
Gauss). Physicist Yves
Rocard, a Professor at
Ecole Normale in Paris, has
similarly been able to show
that human beings can
detect magnetic changes
down to 10'8 Gauss.
(Taylor 1993: 12)
One thing we do know about the
Earth's magnetic eld is that it is not
constant. If dowsers are, indeed,
sensitive to subtle changes in
geomagnetism then they are not
picking up some 'constant pattern’
but, rather, a complex interaction
affected by the moon, changes in the
page 36 3rd Stone 4.7
water content of the soil, sunspots,
variations in the very pervasive man-
made electromagnetic radiation, and
a large number of other parameters.
Clearly underground water and
buried archaeology will provide
dowsable responses that will
outweigh any changes in the 'noise'.
But any attempt to dowse more
subtle 'energy' could well be picking
up transitory effects rather than a
persistent pattern.
Tom Graves (whose 1978
book Needles of Stone set the stage
for much energy dowsing investiga-
tion) described this as ‘muddling
with the meta-pattern' (Graves 1991).
In this article he shows how 'patterns'
of lines, grids, geometric shapes, or
serpent-like spirals can all be
imposed on the same
randomly—generated 'eld’. Graves
accepts that there is some undened
'energy eld' but concludes that
dowsers are simply picking up
'percez‘ved patterns of perceived
energy. . . . And that is all. Anything
else is a ction of a fool...‘
I discussed how such specu-
lative ideas came to be so widespread
in an article published a decade ago
called 'Dowsing: the good, the bad
and the muddled‘ (Trubshaw 1993)
which is available online at
www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/dowsi
ng.htm. The key distinction I made in
that article was that dowsing for
water, buried archaeological remains
and other 'physical‘ evidence is quite
distinct from so-called 'energy
dowsing'. While there is no direct
evidence that such 'physical‘ dowsing
is related to a sensitivity to geomag—
netism, it remains a plausible possi-
bility and would link rather neatly
with the other sensitivities to
geomagnetism already explored in
this article.
Parallels between dowsing and
divination
When reading Paul Devereux's
recent book Living Ancient Wisdom I
was intrigued by the way he distin-
guishes between two types of divina-
tion. One type requires the interpre-
tation of chance movements of
objects, animals or events — whether
this is reading tea leaves at the
bottom of a cup, observing the ight
of birds, or analysing the entrails of
sacriced animals. The other type
requires the diviner to enter a trance
state and then offer prophetic or
oracular guidance. Cicero called the
rst entechnos, 'divination that can
be taught', and the second atechnos
or adidactos, a natural ability rather
than one that could be learned. In
practice the two types can be
combined, so someone with a 'natural
ability' for divination should get a
more accurate response from, say,
tarot cards than someone who has
merely learnt the correspondences
(Devereux 2002: 156).
In a similar way some
people who use dowsing also have
psychic abilities, such as clairvoy-
ance or precognition. It is not neces-
sary to be psychic to be able to
dowse, but the two skills seem to
reinforce each other. Quite plausibly
dowsing and psychic abilities are
'picked up’ subliminally and brought
to awareness via the autonomous
nervous system, just as the pineal
gland is seemingly linked to detecting
geomagnetism. Some individuals
could be born with greater sensitivity
to such processes. The more this
'process‘ is used, the more 'sensitive'
(and, presumably, more accurate) it
becomes.
Other people do not have an
innate sensitivity but learn to use
some aspects of these processes.
They do not regard themselves as
'psychic‘ but, nevertheless, may be
good dowsers or diviners. If the
detection of geomagnetism, 'physical'
dowsing and more psychic activities
are based on three quite distinct
'sensors' but share similar 'pathways'
to more conscious awareness then it
is fairly clear that there could easily
be confusion as to which sensor is
feeding the subliminal processes.
Further insights into
geomagnetism and dream incubation
Jill Bourn, who read my article on
dream incubation in the previous
issue of 3rd Stone, noted my
comments on the Iron Age and
Roman temple site at Thistleton on
the Leicestershire/Rutland border,
and my observation that this is situ-
 ated on rich ironstone deposits. She
has a friend who owns a cottage in
Harston, which is one of the villages
situated on'the ironstone ridge, and
the cottage is built from the ironstone.
Her friends experience persistent
poltergeist-type activities, such as
paintings falling from the wall, books
tumbling; the television switching on
and off by itself. When staying there
she experienced unpleasantly intense
dreams, such that she does not stay
there anymore.
Another reader, Tony Roe,
has also commented on the number of
folk recipes around the world for
potions which encourage dreaming,
suggesting that seeking dreams was
once a widespread activity.
My attention has also be
drawn to the work of Dr Alvaro
Pascual-Leone who is exploring a
new technique called transcranial
magnetic stimulation (TMS), which
uses powerful magnets to disrupt
your memory, ability to recognise
faces, or even momentarily make you
mute or blind. Speech can be
disrupted (although curiously,
although verbs are harder to say,
nouns are unaffected). However all
these effects are achieved by
magnetism a great many times
stronger than natural levels and
suggest that, although the human
brain is disrupted by strong
magnetism, this is probably quite
unrelated to the sensitivity to mush
subtler levels of magnetism discussed
in this article.
Where next?
Many of the ideas in this article are
speculative. However the underlying
assumptions are all entirely plausible,
even though the huge gaps between
the approaches of different disciplines
of 'hard sciences‘ mean that I can only
bridge some major chasms with
nothing more substantial than
thoughts. I would welcome contact
with any readers who are interested in
exploring these suggestions further.
Bibliography of works cited:
BAKER, RR, 1980, 'A sense of
magnetism‘, New Scientist, 18 Sept.
BAKER, RR, 1981, Human Navigation
and the Sixth Sense, Hodder and Stoughton.
BORD, Janet and Colin BORD, 1976, The
Secret Country: More mysterious Britain,
Paul Elek.
BRAUD, W.G. and SP. DENNIS, 1989,
'Geophysical variables and behaviour:
LVIII', in Perceptual and Motor Skills,
Vol.68, 1243—54.
BURKET, Walter, 1993, 'Concordia discors:
the literary and the archaeological evidence
on the sanctuary of Samothrace', in N.
Marintos and R. Hiigg (eds), Greek
Sanctuaries: New approaches, Routledge.
BURTON, Philip, 1993, 'Stone magnetism',
Gloucestershire Earth Mysteries, 15, 5.
BURTON, Philip, 1995, ’Magalithic
enquiries', The Ley Hunter, 124, 22—4.
BURTON, Philip, 2002, 'Magnetic mega-
liths', 3rd Stone, 42, 48—53.
COWAN, James, 1992, The Elements of the
Aborigine Tradition, Element.
DEVEREUX, Paul, 1990, Places ofPower;
Batsford.
DEVEREUX, Paul, 2002, Living Ancient
Wisdom Vega.
DUBROV, AR, 1978, The Geomagnetic
Field and Life, Plenum.
GRAVES, Tom, 1978, Needles ofStone,
Gamstone.
GRAVES, Tom, 1991, 'Energy Dowsing:
Muddling with the meta-pattern', The Ley
Hunter, 113, 1—6.
KAISER, David, 'Sacred Preseli‘, 3rd Stone,
46, 34—7.
MAVOR, James W. and Byron E. DIX,
1989, Manitou: The sacred landscape of
New Englandis native civilization, Inner
Traditions International.
PERSINGER, M and S. KRIPPNER, 1989,
'Dream ESP experiments and geomagnetic
activity', Journal of the American Society
for Psychical Research, Vol.83, 101—16.
PRESSMAN, A.S., 1970, Electromagnetic
Fields and Life, Plenum.
RONEY—DOUGAL, Serena, 1989, 'Recent
ndings relating to the possible role of the
pineal gland in affecting psychic ability',
Jounralfor the Society ofPsychical
Research, V0.55, No.815, 313—328.
RONEY-DOUGAL, Serena, 1991, Where
Science and Magic Meet, Element.
RONEY-DOUGAL, S. and G. VOGL,
1993, 'Some speculations on the eects of
geomagnetism on the pineal gland‘, Journal
of the Societyfor Psychical Research, 59
(830).
SWAN, James A., 1990, Sacred Places:
How the living Earth seeks ourfriendship,
Bear and Co.
TAYLOR, David, 1993, 'Earthing the para-
normal', Mercian Mysteries, 17, 12—13.
THOMSON, Alan, 2003, reported in 'Pole
ip reversal', Fortean Times 67, p12 and
based on an article in Nature 416, p620.
TRUB SHAW, Bob, 1991, 'Does magnetism
distort your dreams?', Mercian Mysteries, 6,
30—1.
TRUBSHAW, Bob, 1992, 'Magnetisrn does
distort your dreams', Mercian Mysteries, 10,
214.
TRUBSHAW, Bob, 1993, 'Dowsing — the
good, the bad and the muddled', Mercian
Mysteries, 15, 26—29. Online at www.indi—
gogroup.co.uk/edge/dowsing.htm
Bob Trubshaw has two recently published
books: Explore Mythology and Explore
Folklore. Both are available from Heart of
Albion Press at £9.95 each (post free to 3rd
Stone readers).
Heart of Albion Press
2 Cross Hill Close, Wymeswold,
Loughborough, LE12 6UJ
www.hoap.co.uk
3rd Stone 4.7 page 37
 Science and Sorcery
a millennium before Harry Potter and Terry Pratchett...
Could ancientfolktales contain accounts of events which might be
supported by scientific analysis? Ian A. Morrison casts a
post-scientic eye over an example ofpre-scientic
Icelandic literature to find out.
I CELAND IS AN EXCITING PLACE. BETWEEN THE
era of the Viking settlement and the present
day, glaciers have overrun farms. There have
been literally dozens of volcanic eruptions. With their
lava ows and ash falls these have smothered crop-
land and poisoned livestock and people. Such great
quantities of ash have been cast up into the strato-
sphere that the climate of the planet has been
affected. And when the volcanoes have erupted
beneath glaciers and icecaps, catastrophic oods
have resulted. In a previous contribution to 3rd Stone
(Morrison 2002), l explored possible interfaces
between modern science and the prophecies of a
Norse Witch. Let us now consider Wizards...
This did not
taste like
seawater...
’."-l_.-Ih- qqqqq
1.
_
-
RH”,
«r,
9.97,
page 38 3rd Stone 4.7
As I suggested in that previous article, it
would be most surprising if spectacular events
such as these had not left their mark on the diverse
and copious corpus of Icelandic literature and
folktales. In many cases it does seem legitimate to
bring in the verdict that 'natural causes' were
indeed involved.
Landnamabok (The Book of Settlements)
is concerned essentially with recording the
genealogies of the families who settled Iceland.
However, it also includes stories. Since these are
about the places where the settlers lived, they are
set in actual landscapes, with their features specif-
ically named and thoroughly familiar to readers.
On occasion, particular natural events are
described. Sometimes this is done in what may
seem from our modern standpoint to be a thor-
oughly fanciful way. Their intention can however
be that of providing a serious explanation: serious
to them, though to our eyes 'pre-scientic’.
However, we should not forget Iceland's
long dark sub-Arctic nights. Brainwashed as we
are by TV, we must not underrate the sheer enter—
tainment value to medieval Icelanders of a good
yarn set locally... Remember, this was a commu-
nity who were amongst the leading creators and
connoisseurs of Sagas, in the original soap-free
sense.
Let us investigate what may be involved
in a tale of a ood and Sorcerers, the Wizards
Thrasi and Lodmund. This survives in a copy of
the early 12th century Landnamabok, contained in
Sturlabook (written down between AD 1275 -
1280), but it refers back to an event set in the early
10th century (Palsson and Edwards, translation
1972)
The story runs that one morning, Thrasi
was roused by a roaring ood of frigid water
coming to his farm at Skogar. By his powers of
wizardry he sent this east to Solheimar, where
Lodmund stayed. Seeing this, Lodmund’s bondi
(slave) told him that the sea was ooding the land
from the north (the coast is actually to the
south). Lodmund, who was old and blind, told
the scared slave to get a basin, and fetch him a
sample of the water.
This did not taste like seawater, so he
told the slave to lead him to the ood and to
put the point of his sorcerer’s staff into the
water. Gripping the staff with both hands,
Lodmund bit the ferrule, and by his sorcery
turned the torrent back westwards towards
Skogan
In rotation, each Wizard exercised his
powers to wrathfully redirect the flood away
from his own farm. Eventually they decided on
a truce. They agreed to make the river ow
down the middle of the wide valley between
their holdings, where the distance to the sea is
shortest. Landnamabok tells us that this river is
called the Jokuls River, and forms the Quarter
boundary (Palsson and Edwards, pages 115-6).
It is true that if you go there now, there He told the
actually is such a river. But on rst visiting the slave to lead
area, my initial impression was that the story did him to the
not make a great deal of sense in terms of the ood and to
present day situation. Certainly, it is true that the put the point
sites of the two farms can be positively identied, of his
and these do in fact lie on either side of the wide sorcerer is“ sta
strath containing in its upper reaches the into the
Solheimajokull. This valley glacier leads down water...
from the massive Myrdarsjokull ice cap, which
surrounds the volcano Katla. The meltwater from
Solheimajokull still feeds the river, which does
ow directly to the sea between the farm sites,
lying well clear of them. Furthermore, there is a
broad sandur (a plain) along the coast, with ample
geomorphological and stratigraphic evidence that
jokulhlaup, catastrophic glacial oods, have
indeed issued from this valley on many occasions.
As noted above, such oods are characteristic
results of volcanically induced melting.
Nevertheless, despite all this, at the present extent
of the glacier it is difcult to envisage either farm
being endangered. Each Wizard
exercised his
powers to
wrath/ally
redirect the
ood away...

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3rd Stone 4.7 page 39

 However, the present situa-
tion is not that prevailing at the time
to which the story refers. As with
the Witch, so too with the Wizards -
it seems there is scope for discourse
between our modern science and the
timeless art of tellers of tales.
As an ongoing programme
of meticulous eldwork and labora-
tory analyses by Dr Andrew
Dugmore has demonstrated (many
references, from 1987 onwards), the
situation in the 10th century was
quite different. Though most other
glaciers were not advancing then,
Solheimajokull was anomalous, not
least because of the conguration of
the underlying bedrock. This partic-
ular glacier not only extended much
farther down the valley then, but
filled it to a higher level. Thus, at
that period, volcanically triggered
floodwater pouring from the big ice
cap inland would have had access to
the lateral meltwater channels
which are a marked feature of the
landscape there. These now stand
high and dry above either side of
the main valley.
Down below, sections
excavated by Dr Dugmore show a
typical high-energy jokulhlaup
deposit, in which the chaotic
bedding of pumice gravels demon— suggests might have occurred?
strates turbulent water ow. He has Those ancient Icelanders, like their
shown that this catastrophic ood modern descendants, were
washed right into the home elds of renowned for their wry humour.
Lodmund's farm, reaching to within This must thus remain an intriguing
a few metres of the steading itself. enigma...
We agree that such an event offers a
striking basis for the story in References
Landnamabok.
On Thrasi’s side of the Dugmore, Andrew, 1987, Holocene
valley, floodwaters could only have glacieructuations around
reached his steading at Skogar if Eyaallajokull, south Iceland: a
they passed through a narrow tephroclzronological study. Ph.D.
ravine. This cuts into a deposit of Thesis, Univ. of Aberdeen.
volcanic material, and the stratig-
raphy is compatible with the event “ and many subsequent papers. His
taking place in the same time band ongoing research is now based at the
there too. School of Earth, Environmental &
The col where the ood- Geographical Sciences, University of
gorge breaks through is dominated Edinburgh.
by Thrasaklif (Thrasi's Cliff). As we
stood there, with clouds racing over Morrison, Ian, 2002, ‘Exploring
Solheimajokull and swirling round interfaces between science and the
the peaks, it was not difcult even prophecies of a Norse Witch’, 3rd
for our team of sceptical scientists Stone 45, 22-25.
to imagine the Wizard up there on
his crag, hurling curses as the icy Palsson, H. and P. Edwards, trans.
torrent poured through the col onto 1972, Landndmabék: The Book of
his home. Settlements. University of Manitoba
But just how seriously did Press.
those pre-TV Landnamabok
Icelanders take their dramatic
personalisation of what science

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page 4.0 3rd Stone 4.7

_ Daddy Long-Legs:
The Shape-Shifting Wilmington Giant
Rodney Castleden reveals the results ofhis geophysical survey of
the Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex and reconstructs the hillgure Is
appearance before its ‘improvement’in the 19th century.
IWAS BORN IN SUSSEX NEARLY 60 YEARS AGO,
but it was not until I returned there in 1980
and saw the landscape afresh that I started
wondering about the Long Man of Wilmington’s
origin, and wondering even more about the
shortage of literature about this mysterious hill
gure. Why was so little known? So little written?
In an attempt to move the situation forward I
trawled the libraries, gathered everything I could
nd about the chalk hill gure, reviewing all the
existing theories and speculations, and wrote a
book called The Wilmington Giant. I launched a
theory of my own - that the Long Man was a
neolithic midsummer harvest god - in the hope of
stimulating further debate. The exercise probably
left many readers dissatised and thinking that it
must be possible to nd out more. On the other
hand I know from the letters that I received when it
was rst published, and twenty years later still
receive, that something about the book touched
some readers very deeply.
Since then I have worked on other proj-
ects - Stonehenge, neolithic Britain, Knossos,
Atlantis and Santorini, Mycenae, even an opera
about a Saxon saint - but part of my mind has gone
on thinking about the Long Man and wondering
what more could be done. The pioneer geophysical
survey Ken Gravett carried out in 1969 was based
on too few readings from too small an area to
produce any kind of image. The fact that it had
been done and produced such ' illegible results
somehow implied that geophysical survey was a
dead end, a technique that would not work at
Wilmington, but I sensed that a resistivity meter
designed with the right ‘focus’, ie tailored to the
soil depth at the Long Man site, just might produce
a result, especially if a larger area was covered. The
steepness of the slope was a severe problem to Ken
Gravett, who found even the small survey he
undertook physically very demanding, and I knew
I would have to cover a much bigger area to get
real results.
I decided on a pilot survey on an easier
site. I designed a meter that would reveal buried
trenches dug through a soil 15cm deep, and with
National Trust and English Heritage approval I ran
a series of surveys on the Ceme Giant, where I
knew from tests with probes that the soil was
shallow and a consistent 12-~lScm deep. The
Cerne Giant surveys were very successful,
revealing the double outline of a cloak draped over
the outstretched ami. Encouraged by this, I set
about designing and building a new meter to deal
with the deeper soil on the Long Man. The Sussex
County Archaeologist Andrew Woodcock gener-
ously offered to lend me his Geoscan meter, so I
ended up surveying about half of the Long Man
with that, about 5,300 square metres in all. I
returned afterwards with my own meter to re-
survey some areas where I needed extra additional
detail and clarity.
The surveys were carried out in 1996—97
and it has taken me until now to computer process
the thousands of numbers. Each point on the three-
dimensional surface constructed in the computer
had to be located by means of three co-ordinates:
how far across the map, how far ‘up’ the map, and
how high the electrical resistance was.
A brick outline
What was I looking for? Many visitors are disap-
pointed to nd that the Long Man of Wilmington is
made of concrete blocks. Installed in 1969, these
blocks make an image 70m tall and until recently
everyone assumed that this coincided with the
brick outline made in 187341, and most people
3rd Stone 4.7 page 41

Fig. I. The earliest drawings of the Long Man. A: John Rowley, 1710. 8: William
Barrell, I 781.
assumed that that outline in turn faith-
fully recorded the position of an
ancient turf outline. We now know that
the ‘restorations’ were inaccurate in
several places and are left in the unsat-
isfactory position of having no reliable
overall image of the Giant as he was
before 1873. My aim is to assemble a
reconstruction — on paper - of the old
Giant.
The original 1873—4 outline
was made of yellow bricks loosely
resting on the turf. It was not long
before the vicar of Wilmington, the
Revd Dearsley, reported that ‘the
bricks have been dislodged [by
vandals] from nearly a half of the
gure, down to the waist.‘ Substantial
sections of the upper outline had to be
re-created when the gure was
repaired in 1891—w2 with white bricks.
Many of these too were thrown down
the hill by ‘excursionists’. The loose
bricks were cemented into position
from 1925 onwards, and eventually
they were all replaced, in 1969, by
heavy cement blocks.
At the time of the initial
bricking, the Long Man had been
grassed over for at least 160 years, so
the lower half of the gure was dif-
cult to make out; the slight depressions
marking the Giant’s lower legs and the
lower ends of his staves had vanished
page 4.2 3rd Stone 4.7
under a slowly rising tide of soil and
grass. The Revd de St Croix, the vicar
of Glynde, initially intended to re-cut
the gure down to the chalk bedrock,
but the soil turned out to be deeper
than expected. Exposing the solid
chalk was going to create too many
problems, so the marker outline of
7000 yellow bricks had to suffice. The
1874 brick image came to be regarded
as denitive surprisingly quickly, but
H .(”“9
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A B
Fig. 2. Early and mid nineteenth century drawings of the Long Man. A: Revd D. 7?
Powell, 1807. B: Revd G. M. Cooper; 1850 (enlarged tracingfrom the engraving in
Cooper 1851).
even at the time of the ‘restoration’
therewere dissenting voices. Many
people were sure it was wrong.
Doubting eye-witnesses
The scholar who had inspired the
bricking, John Phené, had carried out a
certain amount of antiquarian research
on the Long Man and did not whole-
heartedly support the new design.
When Phené addressed the AGM of
the Sussex Archaeological Society on
the lawn at Wilmington Priory in
October 1874, his remarks were
ambivalent. He admitted that he had at
rst disagreed with de St Croix’ design
but that ‘after a careful comparison of
the gure with that in Dorsetshire’ he
had changed his mind. ‘His own opin-
ions of the original design were not at
rst as positive as at present, although
now found they were quite correct”,
because of analogies with the Ceme
Giant. Phené’s rst thought was right
and, if he had steadfastly opposed de
St Croix’ design, we might have inher-
ited a more authentic, dramatic and
beautill image.
Other eye-witnesses were
more convinced than Phené that a
mistake had been made. It was
possible for people to disagree on the
matter because the gure had been a
turf image for longer than anyone
could remember; it was often invisible
and when visible it was ill-dened.
l
 The Rowley drawing of 1710 (Fig. 1A) is in dashed
features of the drawing, such as shading and nely
lines, implying that it was an indistinct grass
detailed facial features, can never have been part of
outline rather than a cut chalk outline. William
a hill gure and must be projections of Burrell’s
Burrell saw it in the same condition in 1781 (Fig.
imagination. I am doubtful whether the scythe and
1B). Royer’s 1787 guidebook describes the Giant
rake existed. The overall shape, symmetrical with
as the ‘gure of a man, eighty yards in length
, feet turned outwards, is nevertheless similar to that
which, by the different shades of grass, each hand
shown in the Rowley and Powell drawings.
appears to grasp a staff.’ Around 1800, the gure
The 1807 drawing made by the Revd
was known locally as the Green Man. In 1835, ‘the
David Powell (Fig. 2A) shows a symmetrica
gure of a man 240 feet in height may occasionally l
gure holding two vertical staves with nothing
be seen by a remarkable difference in the verdure’. on
their tips, a blank face and no clothing but a v—nec
The gure was described in similar terms sixtee k
n collar. The drawing shows well-developed calf
years later (Figs. 2 and 3B). The Long Man was
muscles, legs turned outwards, feet turned
either drawn or described as a grassed-over gure
outwards and pointing slightly down the hill, the
in 1710, 1781, 1800, 1835, 1851 and the early
left more than the right and with its toe a little
18703. There is no hint in any of the accounts that
further down the slope. The general legs-apart and
it was re-cut in between these dates, and there is no
toes-pointing-outwards posture is similar to that
surviving local tradition of scourings - in fact star-
shown in the earlier drawings by Rowley and
tlingly little in the way of any tradition about the
Burrell. The irregularity in the shape of the head
Long Man.
clearly shown by Rowley is also hinted at
At least three credible eye-witnesses are by
Powell. The V on the chest is shown by both
on record as having seen the turf Giant ‘standing on
Powell and Burrell, and Powell has evidently not
his toes’. In 1912 the Revd Bunston gave a lectur
e copied Burrell.
in which he mentioned that the feet had been
The 1851 engraving (Fig. 3) shows a
altered during the 1874 bricking. ‘Originally the
scene with a gate and a hay wagon in the fore-
feet pointed downwards in the line of the form’,
ground. The Long Man is tucked away in the back-
meaning that the feet continued down the slope in
ground, frustratingly small and sketchy. The staves
the same direction as the legs. Ann Downs lived at
are complete, and so is the rest of the gure, though
Wilmington Priory below the Giant as a girl in the
the feet are missing, showing that there was at least
18503, and she was sure the bricking had been done
doubt about the position of the feet, which Cooper
incorrectly; ‘The feet have been altered.
conrms in writing; ‘the lower parts are at all times
formerly the Giant appeared to be coming down
extremely indistinct.’ The left leg is bent slightly at
the hill’. In 1900 another witness, T. C. Woodman,
the knee, showing that the leg is turned outwards;
wrote that the Long Man had ‘undergone a most
if that is correctly observed, the left foot must have
deplorable restoration some twenty years ago. .
. turned out as well. The right leg has been drawn
The feet of the gure have been quite altered, now
more or less straight. The western staff carries a
they are turned sideways, formerly they were fore-
short scythe blade or crook, but facing inwards, not
shortened, and the form was coming straight
outwards as in the Burrell drawing.
forward’. Fig. 3.
Phené drew the Long Man in 1873 imme-
Both feet were incorrectly bricked. A Engraving of
diately before the bricking started, and the
1990 survey disconcertingly revealed that the the Long Man
engraving published in The Graphic in Febru
concrete blocks do not even reliably follow the ary (Cooper
1874 was made from his drawing (Fig. 4). The tops
lines of the earlier bricks. At the elbows a few of 1 851).
the original yellow bricks are still in place, and the
concrete outline misses them by 60cm.

Pre-1874 drawings and writings

The 1710 Rowley drawing (Fig. 1A) shows the
legs straddling, emphatically turned outwards. The
image as a whole is short and broad, the man
plump and at-footed, implying foreshortening. I
think Rowley must have sketched the Giant from
fairly close up, which would tend to atten the feet
even if they actually sloped diagonally downwards.
Burrell’s 1781 drawing (Fig. 1B) simi-
larly shows a rather fat and at-footed gure. It
also shows the staves converted into a rake and
scythe, and there has been much discussion about
whether these features really existed. Other

3rd Stone 4.7 page 4.3

 of the staves, above the sts, are missing, but other-
wise the top half of the gure is much as it is now.
The lower part of the gure peters out. The bottoms
of the staves have gone, below the level of the
knees, and so have the feet. The calf muscles have
nevertheless been carefully drawn in and they
show that the feet must have turned outwards,
whether horizontally or diagonally. The drawing is
careful, credible and consistent with the earlier
representations of the gure; it also helps to
explain the mistakes made in bricking the feet.
Measurements
De St Croix gave the distance between the staves as
119 feet, but they are now 117 feet apart at the top
and 114 feet apart at the bottom. Rowley’s drawing
suggests that he thought the distance was 200 feet,
which is obviously just a wrong guess, not a meas-
urement. Burrell says the gure was 80 feet high,
clearly a slip for 80 yards, which is an accurate
gure, as we shall see. Perhaps de St Croix made a
mistake. But the original lines were broader than
the 150m bricks or 22cm concrete blocks; the
ghosts of trenches found in the 1969 excavations
imply that the staves were shallow ditches 600m
wide before the bricking. If the pre-1873 outlines
were 600m wide, the ‘119 feet’ could easily repre-
sent an accurate overall measurement of the
distance from the outer edge of one staff to the
outer edge of the other.
The bricks and blocks represent an unin-
tentional and inauthentic narrowing and rening of
the image, an alteration which has had a profound
effect on people’s perception of the Long Man over
Fig. 4. The the last century and a quarter. Today the Long Man
Graphic is a delicate, spidery gure that is quite hard to
iZlustration make out more than a mile away - a giant Daddy
published in Long-Legs. The original outline, a ditch two or
1874, based on four times wider and packed with dazzling white
a drawing by J. chalk rubble, would have been far bolder. My close
S. Phené done look at the Ceme Giant showed that in the past the
in I 8 73. Dorset gure had outlines up to a metre wide in
WILMI. 0'5
\'.\' OFFLINE OF .1 PIESL‘RED DI'L‘I'DICM. EAHIHCIAL DEI‘I‘Y :40 FEET HIGII ON
page 44. 3rd Stone 4.7
places, and probably varying quite a lot round the
gure, as compared with the uniform 380m (15
inches) which the present Warden carefully main-
tains. The Cerne Giant would once have looked
more vigorous and barbaric. Widening the
Wilmington Giant’s outlines to 300m or 60cm
would make him too stronger, more conspicuous.
The earliest known photographs
When the bricking was nished in the spring of
1874, the Eastbourne photographers G. and R.
Lavis took three photographs, the earliest known
photographs of the Long Man. Prints of two of
these were still in the possession of the de St Croix
family in the 19703 and Eric Holden, the leading
expert on the Long Man, had no hesitation in
preferring the one taken from closer up to illustrate
his 1971 paper. Holden admitted to seeing on it
‘faint markings in the turf [that] can be interpreted
as an alternative outline of the Long Man’s left
leg’, but they may have been ‘rabbit runs or the
traces of footpaths formed by the workmen who
laid the bricks’. Holden’s reluctance to accept ‘the
somewhat doubtful evidence of the photograph’ is
odd, in that he goes on to say that he accepts that
the restoration of the left leg was mistaken, that the
left foot should point either west or north—west —
and this is exactly what the photograph shows.
The photograph was taken from some
distance away, under conditions that favoured the
revelation of a shallow trench; the long shadows of
the horses below and to the west of the gure show
that it was taken on a sunny spring afternoon with
a clear, slanting light brushing the turf. Although
the outline shows up well on the photograph, the
depressions were so slight that they could easily
have been missed by workmen walking about on
the gure.
It is surprising that de St Croix, who not
only saw but owned a copy of the photograph that
shows the results of his labours so well, either did
not notice the correct outline of the left leg or, if he
did, chose not to rectify the mistake. It is also
surprising that, when the opportunity arose on the
occasion of the re-bricking in 189 l——-2, the mistake
was still not put right.
I traced the original negative plate of the
re—print and had a high-contrast enlargement made
of the central area containing the gure, and an
alternative position for the entire left leg shows up
well. The phantom foot appears long and tapered,
continuing the diagonal thrust of the leg, and now
it is possible to see exactly what Bunston was
getting at. Viewed as a whole, the ghost outline
forms a consistent alternative leg, the earlier leg
that was entirely overlooked during the 1873—74
restoration. The photograph shows slight indica-
tions of an earlier position for the lower right leg
GIANT
TI"; 5]."!!! DOWN!
too, making the original image more symmetrical.
 On the shelves of the Sussex
Archaeological Society Library at the Barbican
House in Lewes, Ifound a scrapbook on the Long
Man kept by yet another Sussex vicar, the aptly
named Revd Parish, Vicar of Arlington in the
18705. In it was a second print of the Lavis photo-
graph of the Long Man. This time it was a contem—
porary print from the original Lavis negative. I had
the central area of this re-photographed and
enlarged. It reveals an earlier position for the fork
of the legs about a metre higher up the hill and to
the right (east) of its present position, which I had
previously not suspected. It also shows an earlier
position of the right foot. Its toe was below the sole
of the present foot, reaching roughly the same
contour as the toe of the original left foot. Both feet
pointed diagonally down the slope before 1873.
The 1996—7 resistivity survey across the head
and staves
1 am going to pass over all the physical and tech—
nical difculties associated with the 1996--7 resis-
tivity surveys, to get more quickly to the meat of
the results. I took a high density of readings over a
large area and processed them using computer
techniques not available to Gravett in the 1960s;
this seemed likely to reveal the location of any
lled-in trenches there might be on the hill side. I
took resistivity readings every 0.5m over an area
50 metres across and 10 metres high, taking in the
tops of the staves and the crown of the head. I also
re-processed the 1969 data so that I could compare
the results. Both 199F97 and 1969 data showed
that the staves were once slightly taller, by about
3m.
The hill side is striped by terracettes,
some exaggerated by livestock. They showed up in
the results as parallel lines of low resistivity (the
moist soil-covered paths) and high resistivity (the
dry rubbly outer edges of the terracettes). These
interfered with the hill gure outlines and made
them difcult to see.
A diagonal line of high resistivity leads
down to the west from the top of the west stave.
Within it is a faint, narrow line of lows, implying a
trenched outline of the same type as the stave. It
coincides with a line of resistivity anomalies in the
1969 survey and is evidently an enduring soil
feature. It also matches well the blade of the
haymaker’s scythe that William Burrell drew (Fig.
1B). The shape could as easily be interpreted as a
shepherd’s crook or a ail, but whether it really
represents part of the hill gure drawing or is a
natural feature is hard to tell without some further
evidence.
About 2.5 metres above the head there is
a thin halo of high resistivity. Its rounded form
suggests the crown of a helmet or a rustic wide-
awake hat or maybe an earlier position of the Long
Man’s head. The lows above the head form three 4-
metre-long plumes or antlers springing from the
top and sides of the crown, but before readers get
too excited about a possible Cemunnos image I
must emphasize that these indications are very
indistinct and are much more likely to be the result
of random variations in soil texture. The western
one and the lateral branches of the central one are
in fact created by terracettes. The plumes were
never part of the hill gure design.
The 1996—7 resistivity survey of the hips and
upper legs
In a similar way I surveyed the whole of the lower
half of the Giant, an area 30 metres wide and 40
metres high. I surveyed right out to the staves, so
that I would not miss any features that might have
been previously overlooked within the frame of the
staves.
As in the zone above the head, the
terracettes crossing the image as lines of lows made
the faint and ambiguous resistivity variations
behind them difcult to decipher. The modern
outline of the Long Man’s legs shows up as lines of
lows with occasional highs. There are only the
faintest indications of even the present body outline
from the waist down to the knees, and no sugges-
tion of an alternative outline. An outstanding
feature of the survey of the centre of the gure is
the uniformity of the resistivity readings; most lie
within a very narrow range, and the small number
of peaks can easily be explained in terms of chalk Fg. 5. The
blocks in the soil or possibly brick fragments from reconstructed
the dismantled 1873—4 and 1891—2 gures. lower part of
There is no sign in the middle of the gure of any the gure in
additional features, no sign of any changes. There relation to the
are no indications of a phallus, belt, kilt or tunic. 1969 block
This area of the hillside in the middle of the gure outh'ne.
L 10 metres
right or east 1
stave (1969) i
left or west
stave (1969)
\
outline inferred //
from resistivity
survey data
outline on 1874
l Lavis photograph
outline on 1874 ,.
(Holden copy)
Lavis photograph ‘ l
(Parish copy) I
\
body outline
\/ (1969 blocks)
3rd Stone 4.7 page 45
 seems to have remained completely undisturbed, is a large error even on an image as large as the
unchanged except for the cutting of the lines that Giant.
we can still see. Indistinct lines of lows crossing the
present right foot diagonally, and stretching 3—4111
The 1996—7 resistivity survey of the lower further down the slope, show where the Giant’s
legs and feet right foot was until 1873. It points diagonally
The readings from the area adjacent to the modern downwards and to the east, which would make it
feet contain wider variations. The soil has been symmetrical with the left foot on the Lavis photo-
disturbed there and this is entirely consistent with graph (Fig. 5). The original right foot — which I am
the feet having been changed, perhaps more than sure is what we are seeing - appears to have been
once, making the resulting shapes difcult to read. tapering, triangular and roughly 6m long by 2—3m
The area indicated by the Lavis photograph as the wide, comparable with the original left foot. I
pre-1873 location of the left foot shows as an indis- should emphasize that the resistivity indications for
tinct area of lows, indicating a foot 3m wide and both left and right feet are very slight.
about 7m long. It is not possible to extract the
shape of the foot from the resistivity readings on A Longer Man
their own; but when they are compared with the In the 19705, Eric Holden, who knew more about
foot outline on the Lavis photograph it is possible the Long Man than anyone else and is the only
to see that the indistinct patch of lows coincides person to have excavated on the gure, wrote to a
Fig. 6. with it. The diagonal form of the foot is visible. The correspondent, ‘We shall never know, I fear, what
Reconstruction original foot was well clear of the present foot and the correct outline was.’ I hope readers will feel
of the pre- 1873 entirely separate from it. The toes of the two left that this fresh look at some of the old evidence
Long Man. feet point in opposite directions 11m apart - which (which is always worthwhile) and the laborious
application of some new techniques have brought
us a little closer to the pre-1873 hill gure. I hope
we can go on from here to nd out more.
A
.p C
The mid-nineteenth century Giant was
more nearly symmetrical than it is today - and 3m
taller. The combined evidence of the new resis-
tivity surveys and the old Lavis photograph shows
that the legs were more splayed than today (26
degrees instead of 16), with the feet pointing diag-
onally down the slope, continuing the diagonal
thrust of the legs, just as Bunston remembered in
1912. This signicantly alters the overall effect of
the image. If we add the lengthened, downward-
pointing feet to the 70-metre—high gure, we arrive
at an original pre-bricking height of 73 metres (239
feet 6 inches) - a signicantly Longer Man than we
see on the hillside today, by ten feet, and almost
exactly the ‘80 yards’ or ‘240 feet’ given in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Incorporating the inner edge of the right
leg taken from the Parish copy of the Lavis photo-
graph and moving the outer edge of that leg half a
metre eastwards in accordance with the geophys-
ical evidence makes the right leg approximately as
thick as the left. When these small changes are
added something interesting happens to the image.
The Giant’s hips swing slightly to the right so that
he appears to carry his weight on his right leg,
something hinted at in both the Powell and Cooper
drawings. He is coming down the hill (Fig. 6).
To get an impression of what the recon-
structed Long Man would have looked like on the
ground, tilt the top of the page away from you and
view the image at an angle of about 45 degrees.
The Giant becomes distinctly livelier and more
energetic, less Earth-bound; he is moving now,

page 46 3rd Stone 4.7

walking down the hill to meet us, just
as he was described by some of those
who saw him before the bricking.
Perhaps one day this paper restoration
- or something close to it - will be
realised in chalk on Windover Hi11,
replacing the clumsy, unsatisfactory
concrete blocks.
But who is this stranger from
the past and what is his mission? For
how long, for how many centuries, has
he been coming down Windover Hill?
How long frozen mid-stride? The
work is far from finished. It is almost
as if the answers will take as long to
nd as the Giant has taken to descend.
REFERENCES
Bellam, J. 1990 Preservation of the
Long Man of Wilmington.
Unpublished report.
Bunston, T. 1912 The Long Man of
Wilmington. Lecture given to the
Literary & Social Guild, Hailsham,
27 February, 1912.
Castleden, R. 1983 The Wilmington
Giant: the quest for a lost myth.
Wellingborough: Turnstone Press.
— 1996 The Ceme Giant. Wincanton:
Dorset Publishing Company.
— 2000 Ancient British Hill Figures.
Seaford: S.B. Publications.
Cooper, G. M. 1851 Illustrations of
Wilmington Priory and Church.
Sussex Archaeological Collections 4,
63—4.
Curwen, E. C. 1929 Prehistoric
Sussex. Homeland Association.
— 1928 The Antiquities of Windover
Hill. SAC 69, 92—101.
Croix, W. de St 1875 The
Wilmington Giant. SAC 26, 97—112.
Dearsley, W. A. St J. 1891 The
Wilmington Giant. The Antiquary 21,
108—10.
Farrant, J. H. 1993 The Long Man
of Wilmington, East Sussex: the
documentary evidence reviewed.
SAC 131, 129—38.
— 1995 A Drawing of the Long Man
of Wilmington. SAC 133, 282—4.
Holden, E. W. 1971 Some Notes on
the Long Man of Wilmington. Sussex
Archaeological Collections 109, 37—
54.
— Working papers. SAS Library
Holden Papers, Box 4D/ 10.
Horseld, T. W. 1835 History,
Antiquities and Topography of the
County of Sussex, p. 326.
Marples, M. 1949 White Horses and
Other Hill Figures. Country Life.
Newman, P. 1997 Lost Gods of
Albion. Sutton Publishing.
‘Octogenerian’ (Ann Downs) The
Herald Magazine, 10 November
1923, 4.
Parish, W. D. 1873 Wilmington - the
Giant 1873. MS notebook in SAS
Library
Petrie, F. 1926 The Hill Figures of
England. Royal Anthropological
Institute Occasional Papers No. 7.
Phené, J. S. 1872 Results of a recent
investigation into ancient monuments
and relies. Trans. R. I. B. A. 23,
181—96 (Lecture given 19 May,
1873).
Plenderleath, W. C. 1892 The White
Horses of the West of England.
London: Alfred Russell Smith.
Royer, J. 1787 East-Bourne, being a
Descriptive Account of that Village
and its Environs.
Woodman, T. C. 1900 The Long
Man of Wilmington. Pamphlet:
Brighton Reference Library Stock
No. 21059.
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 Spirits in the Sky
The Spirit of Manitou Across North America
Herman E. Bender describes how the ancient Native American
principle ofManitou could be manifested in the landscape by day,
and in the stars by night.

INCE ANCIENT TIMES THE NATIVE OR INDIAN number of places said to possess Manitou are an
people of North America have believed in indication, both the landscape and their daily
the existence of a supernatural, lives were seemingly filled with it.
Figure la: omnipresent and omniscient ‘force’ or ‘pres- Most individuals in our modern
Profile view of ence’. All encompassing, it is universal in scale. (western) culture of total reliance on technology
Bear Butte For many of the Native people living here, mani- and a regard solely for the monetary value or
near Sturgis, festations of the supernatural could be expressed worth of land cannot appreciate or identify with
South Dakota. by one word: Manitou. In a previous article, the Native people’s profound View of and rever-
A signicant ‘Manitou Stones in Wisconsin’ (3rd Stone 45:26- ence for the natural world. Their world was a
landmark on 31), what Manitou actually represents in Native spirit-lled realm based on an animistic and
the open thought and traditions was discussed. As phenomenological ’sense’ of the natural world
Plains, it is of mentioned in the article, the word Manitou is and (control) of forces such as the sun, thunder
extreme reli— derived from the Algonquin language meaning and wind (Kinietz l965:284&326). This ’sense’
gious and (in the simplest context) ‘spirit’ although the of a spirit lled world where spirits who dwell in
spiritual aboriginal perception is far more complex, being it, upon it, above and below inuenced everyday
importance to completely profound in nature. The word for life was noted by many (western) observers over
both the Manitou can differ from one language group to the centuries. In Native beliefs, everything has a
Cheyenne another and does. But no matter what the linguis- soul: lakes, rocks, plants, animals and even
(Isistsistas) tics, the profoundness of a spiritual ‘presence’ of certain manmade objects. In what was a homog-
and Sioux Manitou and ‘through’ it, recognition of the enous universe, all were looked upon as living
(Lakota) supernatural, was and is a tangible entity seen beings capable of transformation, sometimes into
Indian and certainly felt by hundreds of generations of persons or human form (Bowden 1981:74, 80,
nations. the Indian people of North America. If the 109)
W
For most Native American people, this
recognition of phenomenal transformation of ‘the
real’ or any natural forces into the animate, thus
becoming sacred, was embodied by the word (or
minor variations) and ideal of Manitou. To the
Iroquois, the ideal was known as orenda. For the
Siouan people it is Wakan and to the Cheyenne it
is maiyun (Bender 2003:26; Powell 1969:437-
440; Powers l982:46&47, Schlesier 1987:4-9).
Linguistics aside, the ideal and beliefs were
freely shared (if questioned about them) and well
documented.
Although not purely intended as a
historic record when written, almost all the
current knowledge of Manitou comes from
Native oral traditions recorded by early European
"M... . .

page 4.8 3rd Stone 4.7

Mummy-AW
 and then later American explorers, settlers and
historians. Sometimes even the individual
Manitou stones were pictured, described, located
and/or conjectured about in those early times, or
later recounted in local histories. These accounts
documented the Native people’s recognition of
an unseen universal power inuencing almost all
aspects of daily life. They also offer insights into
how the Native people viewed not only their own
personal existence, but the land they had inhab-
ited for hundreds of generations. To them,
creation was alive with Manitou in myriad form,
permeating all of it and them. The sacred inter-
posed wherever Manitou was thought to exist or
the individual stones encountered. Fundamental,
yet transcendental, the idea of Manitou was an
integral part of a cultural landscape few nowa-
days can perceive or truly understand; an ideal
which had from ancient times spread across an
entire continent.
It was in the mid—continent of North
America where the tree-covered expanses of the
east eventually gave way to the openness of
savanna, grasslands and prairie that Manitou
could be seen or experienced in ways less
‘visible’ to more eastern people. On this open
landscape, the complete 360° dome of the sky is
clearly visible. Panoramas with unobstructed
vistas and views toward the horizon can extend
for miles in any direction. In this environment,
sensory and emotional contact with the realm of
the sky above cannot be avoided; one is a part of
it. The sky is home to the Sun whose light and
warmth represent Gitchi—Manitou, the Creator. It
is where the winds, thunder, lightning and the
stars exist. The sky realm may start literally
inches above the ground or atop a mountain peak.
In most Native cosmologies the sky consists of
multiple layers and each layer may be inhabited
by its own pantheon of spirits. In the sky realm as
on earth, both daytime and night time were sepa-
rate halves of the same coin, one representing
light, the other the dark, both halves containing
their distinct spirits (Bowden 1981:110-111).
Wherever one was on the circular plane
of the earth under the broad open sky, having or
receiving direction in both a physical and spiri-
tual sense was important. Often times this
‘duality’ of direction became a symbolic part of
tribal cosmologies and ceremonies. The natural
quartering of the earth and shifting of four
seasons by the annual movements of the Sun
established the sacredness of four directions. For
these reasons and others, the number four is a
sacred number to most Indians (Goodman
1992:50: Hoebel 1960:15; Powers l982:4&47;
Radin 1927:278). The Cheyenne had personal
spirit names for the cross—quarter (solstice) direc—
tions and considered them to be superior to
almost all other forms of maiyun, and were able
to reveal themselves in human form (Schlesier
l987:8). The four cardinal directions of North,
South, East and West were also recognized as
spirits by the Cheyenne and had personal names
(Grinnel 1972: 94).
Like the Cheyenne, the Sioux inhabited
a world imbued with the power of the Creator
and one manifested through various Manitou
spirits which included the winds. For them,
Manitou was (named) Wakantanka, Wakan or
wakan depending on the hierarchy of importance.
Wakantanka, is “The Great Mystery”, the
supreme spirit, ruling above all (Powers
1975:45-55). Wakan in either form is supernat-
ural meaning ‘extraordinary and sacred’ and each
Wakan or wakan could also have an individual
name (Powers 1976:51-55; Stolzman 1986:46).
In the Sioux tribal ethos and cosmos each of the Figure 1b:
four winds, i.e. East, South, West and North, Sicangu
possessed wakan and in the ‘spirit‘ of what (Rosebud)
Manitou represents, could all be regarded as Lakota
personal existences associated with a distinct women 's
season (Parkman 1983:390; Powers 1982:75-77). favored view
In the night sky of the mid to northern ofBear Butte
latitudes, the spectacular yet ephemeral phenom- resembling a
enon of the Aurora Borealis or ‘Northern Lights’ pregnant
was seen as Manitou. East of the Mississippi female lying
River, the Ojibway looked upon the colorful on her back.
nighttime display as ‘the dead who dance’ Lakota women
(Heming 1896:178; Fertey 1970: 264). The and midwifes
Kootenai, Blackfeet and other inter-mountain have held the
tribes in the west also held this belief. They tradition of
reported that the Aurora was the ‘dance of the journeying to
Manitou or spirits’ (Terrel 1964:204). The Sioux Mata paha to
have the word hanwakan which, freely translated give birth for
means ‘Aurora’, with the literal translation as centuries. The
‘night’ or ‘sacred’ (Powers 1982:50). Most tribes great Sioux
and people living far enough north to observe the leader Crazy
celestial ether shimmering above held a similar Horse is said
belief or meaning. The Cheyenne concept of the to have been
Northern Lights, however, could extended born near
beyond the recognition of ‘dancing spirits’. Bear Butte.
3rd Stone 4.7 page 4.9

Figure 2a (top): View ofthe Devil ’s Tower in northeastern Wjioming taken
from approximately ten miles distant. Rising nearly 1 300feet above the
Belle Fourehe River; it can be seen for 100 miles on a clear day.
Figure 2b (above): Close-up view of the Devil 's Tower showing thejointed
basalt columns and‘ flat top. In this view, it does resemble a giant tree stump,
part of the Cheyenne Bear baiting traditions and equated with the Pleiades
(see Figure 3). The Sioux see it as a reection ofGemini (Figure 4).
According to Hoebel (1960:45), the
Cheyenne symbolically linked the Northern
Lights with the northeast and maiyunemistist,
‘the Big Holy People’ said to be omniscient and
who were instructors to both Cheyenne cultural
heroes Sweet Medicine and Erect Horns.
Furthermore, these Manitou possessed higher
powers than the maiyun. They were the
Mayehuno or ‘the four sacred guardians of the
universe’ and had specic names, the northeast
personification known as Notamota (Powell
1960:436; Schlesier 1987:8)
In addition to the wind and Aurora
Borealis, the stars held special power as Sky
Manitou (Miller l997:54,64&65). Stars, like
many other animate and inanimate objects, could
be acquired as personal Manitous during the
page 50 3rd Stone 4.7
traditional quest (Parkman 1983:386). Father
Belcourt, a Jesuit priest who administered to the
Indians in the western Great Lakes, noted that
“[the] stars give them [Ojibway] magic council”
whenever they were in need of personal advice,
for travel or divination (Heming 1896:123).
Approximately two centuries later in 1855,
Father Florimund J. Bonduel, a missionary to
several tribes in the Wisconsin Territory wrote,
“They [Menominee] look to the stars which they
worship as guardian gods” (Rosholt & Gehl
1976:226).
Native traditions of stars as Manitous
and sentient beings was widespread. Farther west
lived the Plains groups who had migrated to the
vast prairie areas from the upper midwest and
western Great Lakes. Their beliefs in what
constituted Sky Manitous were almost identical
to those rst identied by the missionaries in the
eastern half of North America, the only real
differences being the words used to express
‘Manitou‘. For the Cheyenne, an Algonquin
speaking people, Manitou is collectively called
maiyun. Stars are known as hotoxceo and consid-
ered to possess spiritual power and/or physical
form, therefore they are maiyun (Schlesier
1987z7). Power from individual stars is still
sought by some Native people as a ‘guardian’ or
to help ‘harness energy’ or for ‘blessings’
according to Mr. Ralph Redfox, a Cheyenne
traditional healer (personal communication). It is
apparently a widespread and ancient custom
amongst the Cheyenne, a tradition likely carried
with them during their migration west from the
upper Great Lakes (Schlesier 1987:15; Taylor &
Sturtevant 19962136).
Another Siouan plains group, the Lakota
in South Dakota, say the stars in the heavens are
‘the holy breath of the Great Spirit’ (Goodman
1992:1). They, like the Cheyenne, see far more in
the night sky than twinkling pin-points of light.
The sky is virtually alive with wakan in a
universe where star spirits and man may live in
harmony (Powers, 1982:55). In legends like the
various ‘Fallen Star’ stories, women married
stars, and one child of such a union (Fallen Star)
became a person of light and renown, a protector
(spirit) associated with certain landmarks of spir-
itual importance (Goodman l992:3; Spence
1994:155-159&173)). In Siouan legends, a
grander correlation of the cultural hero named
‘Fallen Star’ with meteorites may be hinted at.
Meteorites, actual rocks from space, are revered
as gifts from above, spirit beings which are literal
‘falling stars’ (Williamson & Farrer 1992:18).
According to Leola One Feather (Goodman
l992:37&64), meteorites, like the cultural hero
Fallen Star, have the ability to interact with
human beings (personal communication).
 Mirroring Earth and Sky
Rock, because it appears to be so
permanent, is thought to live forever,
and is therefore an ideal representa-
tion of the immortality of Manitou.
Pebbles, stones, rock outcrops, boul-
ders and mountain peaks can all
represent manifestations of Manitou
(Bender 2003:26—31). In Native
thought and beliefs, some of these
manifestations can be more than
earthbound rock spirits and are actu-
ally linked with the sky. The Sioux
looked upon rocks as possessing
Wakan (Manitou), the ‘Rock’ known
as Inyan. Small stones or pebbles
were also seen as representing or
being Inyan with the fuller name of
Inyan Was ’icu meaning ‘The Rock
Spirits’. Quartz and other unusual
stones were especially sought as
Inyan Was ’icu, apparently the shinier
and smoother the better . Used in the
sweat bath or lodge, vision quests
and other ceremonies, there are said
to be exactly 405 of these little stone
spirits. Of celestial origins to the
Sioux, they are said to come to earth
from the stars, a direct link with the
Sky Manitou and the ‘above‘
(Stolzman 1986:108).
In the broader Native
concept of creation and the universe,
the belief in linking rock (spirits) to
the stars and other sky spirits exists
on greater scale than pebbles alone.
The Cheyenne View all rocks
including pebbles, boulders, rock
outcrops, buttes, mountains, etc. as
entrances or ‘doorways‘ to ‘deep
earth’ where powerful maiyuns live
(Schlesier 1987:4-6). The ‘deep
earth’ maiyuns metaphysically are
and physically can be connected to
“sky spaces’ maiyuns (Hoebel
1960186; Powell 1960:437-439;
Schlesier 198728) This zone of direct
contact between ‘deep earth’ and
‘near sky’ where mountain peaks and
buttes rise up to touch ‘near sky
space’ or setovoom is especially
sacred (Schlesier l987:5&6).
Spread throughout the
Black Hills area of western South
Dakota and eastern Wyoming are
several well known sacred land-
marks, ‘rock’ peaks which touch
‘sky‘. They are distinctive places of
prominence projecting upward from
the land and visible for miles in any and Pollux, to the Lakota mato tipi la
direction , a phenomenal, yet or ‘The Bear’s Lodge’. During the
common attribute for sites acting as time of the summer solstice in
sacred places (Bender 2003:27). Of ancient times, the sun had ’entered’
these landmarks, Bear Butte is most into this background of stars
holy to both the Sioux and Cheyenne signaling the advent of the Sun
(Figures la & lb). Here, Manitou in Dance ceremonies (Goodman
the form of wakan and maiyun l992:9). When the Sun Dance was
abounds. This most holy place is performed, the Devil’s Tower was
usually called Mato paha or ‘bear again transformed, becoming one
butte’ by the Lakota (Goodman horn of a giant buffalo head on the
l992:9) and Nowah’wus or ‘where
the people are taught’ to the
Tsistsistas/Cheyenne (Schlesier
198714). It is a favored place, espe-
cially in summer where ‘the people‘
gather, for fasting and vision quest
rites, and to ask for and celebrate Figure 3 (below): The asterism of the
seasonally the blessings from above Pleiades, the jewel box of the northern
bestowed upon men and the earth night sky. The Cheyenne regard the
below. Devil ’5 Tower as the Pleiade's earthly
Another massive landmark reection while the Lakota or Sioux
prominent on the Great Plains and equate Harney Peak (Figures 5a & 5b)
visible from miles away in many with it during certain times ofthe year.
directions is the Devil‘s Tower
(Figure 2a). Close up it is indeed an Figure 4 (bottom): The constellation
awesome sight, resembling to some a Gemini which, in this orientation, is seen
giant flat—topped tree trunk or stump by the Sioux or Lakota as a celestial
(Figure 2b). The Devil’s Tower plays image and reflection of the Devil '5 Tower
a key role in both Lakota and (Figures 2a & 2b).
Cheyenne symbolism and
cosmology. To the Lakota, the
Devil’s Tower is seen as place where
two children were chased to a knoll
by a giant bear, then rescued by
Fallen Star who commanded the
ground to rise up carrying the chil-
dren away from the bear. In Lakota,
the Devil’s Tower is called mato tipi
la paha, ‘The Hill of the Bear’s
Lodge’ (Goodman 199229). The
joints between the columnar basalts
are seen as scratches left by the giant
bear as it tried to claw its way to the
top (Goodman, 1992z4). In a version
of the story told by the Lakota medi-
cine man Lame Deer, a union
between Galeshka, the spotted eagle
and a woman who ed upward on the
Devil’s Tower produced twins who
became the founders of the Lakota
nation (Milne 1995230). The ‘uplift
into the sky’ part of the story is
important as it establishes an impor—
tant earth-sky connection. To the
Lakota, the celestial reection which
correlates to the Devil’s Tower is the
constellation we call Gemini (Figure
4), containing the ‘twin’ stars Castor
3rd Stone 47 page 51
 Black Hills’ landscape, a head spiritually alive.
The Lakota name for it at this time of the year
was/is Pte He Gi meaning ‘the gray buffalo horn’.
Small pebbles collected at another sacred site, Pe
Sla or ‘the center of Black Hills’ were carried to
the purication lodge at Pte He Gi during the time
of the Sun Dance, all the stones and places
connected by wakan (Goodman 1992:13).
The Cheyenne hold what are very similar
stories to the ‘Fallen Star’ legends of how the
Devil’s Tower was formed. For them, it also
considered a most sacred place where deep earth
touches setovoom and, like the Lakota, has a
mirrored—counterpart in the night sky. Most
Cheyenne stories recorded about the Devil’s
Tower typically relate the same theme although
details may change. There are always seven
Figure 5a (below): Harney Peak, at 7242 feet (2207 meters), the highest
point in South Dakota. It is a traditional vision quest location for the Sioux
and where Black Elk had his vision. View is looking westfrom Keystone,
South Dakota.
Figure 5b (bottom): View ofHarney Peak looking south from US.
Highway 385. To the Sioux or Lakota it becomes a reection of the
Pleiades (Figure 3) during the late Winter/early Spring of the year It is
known as Hinhan Kaga Paha or "makes like an owl " by the Lakota.
page 52 3rd Stone 47
brothers, sisters or number of people, a giant or
enraged bison chasing them to a tree, perhaps a
cultural hero coming to the rescue, and an
upwelling which takes the tree and the seven into
the sky where they become the Pleiades (Figure 3),
the ‘seven sisters’ (Leman 1987:304~3l3). The
prevalent number in all versions of the Cheyenne
stories is always seven, also sacred number (with
four) among most North American Indians (Mails
1972:66; Mails 1991:155&156; Powers
l982:4,7&4 7; Schlesier 1987292). Furthermor e,
the resemblanc e of the Devil’s Tower to a giant
tree trunk may have been a visual factor inu-
encing the Cheyenne’s adaptation of this particular
landmark with the old (eastern) stories of a tree
and the Pleiades. As Powell (1969:26) says of the
Cheyenne, “The Cheyennes adapted their earlier
ceremonies to the new life of the prairies. The
People did what others have done before them,
they carried their holy places with them.” Once on
the open prairie, holy places of spiritual force such
as the awe-inspiring Devil’s Tower would
certainly have been established and, perhaps
helping to play a key role in site selection, the idea
of ‘iconic congruence’ between the Devil‘s Tower
and a tree (Bender 2003228).
There are other clues which indicate that
the spiritual connection, traditions and key
elements in the Devil’s Tower stories originated
more to the east. According to Schlesier
(1987:50&51) the stories about the Devil’s Tower
as an earthly mirror of the Pleiades come from a
children’s game nakonistoz or “bear play” and are
based on a giant bear (Nako) chasing a child or
children who eventually ride a mountain
upwelling into the sky where they are rescued.
These stories are also said by Schlesier to be reca-
pitulated bear hunting rules originating during
ancient times in the (former) Proto-Tsistisistas
northern homelands long before the ‘People’
became the Cheyenne proper. Perhaps then it
should come as no surprise that the Cheyenne
name for the Devil’s Tower is Nakoeve or ‘Bear
Peak’. In some versions of the story the cultural
hero Motseyoef (Tsistsistas/Cheyenne for ‘sweet
root standing’), better known as Sweet Medicine,
uses his spiritual powers to save the children. But
in all the stories, four recurring themes are always
included: seven people, a giant animal pursuer, an
upwelling of the earth or a tree and the Pleiades.
The seven people are Manohotoxceo or ‘Seven
Brothers’, i.e. the Pleiades. They are standing on
top of Nakoeve , the Devil’s Tower, a mirror of the
blue jewel box-like star asterism above.
So important was the Pleiades as a spiri-
tual and celestial icon that the Sioux also incorpo—
rated it into their cosmology and reected it on the
Landscape of the Black Hills. In another of the
Fallen Star legends, seven girls were taken to a
 high place by a ‘red eagle’ where they
were killed. Fallen Star answered the
prayers of the people, came and slew
the ‘red eagle’, then placed the spiritis
of the seven girls in the heavens as a
constellation (Goodman 1992:3). The
seven girl’s spirits became the
Pleiades, to the Lakota wicincala
sakowin or ‘Seven Little Girls’
(Goodman 1992:7&29) The high
place in the story was Hinhan Kaga
Paha or Harney Peak, a traditional
Sioux Indian vision questing place
and, at 7242 feet, the highest elevation
between the Rocky Mountains in
North America and the Alps in Europe
(Figures 5a & 5b). ‘Long, long ago’
when the sun rose into background of
stars containing the Pleiades, bands of
Lakota would walk from their winter
camps to Harney Peak. At this time of
the year, Hinhan Kaga Paha or
Harney Peak was transformed into the
mirrored reection of the Plieades.
There they performed a ceremony
called Yate Iwakicipi or ‘They are
Dancing for the thunders that are
theirs’ (Goodman 1992:12, 29&47).
The inference to the approaching
Spring and arrival of thunderstorms
with the thunder and lightning, both
powerful wakan, are obvious. The
change of seasons also brought the
buffalo, the life sustaining force of the
Lakota people. All human and animal
movement on earth was ‘reected’ by
what the spirits, Wakan, were doing in
the world above at the same time and
in the same way. What was above was
below (Goodman 1992: 49).
This association between
earthly rock (spirits) and stars is an
important one which should not go
unnoticed. It absolutely establishes
the mirroring of the celestial realm
with the earthly realm both spiritually
and physically. It is likely as ancient a
tradition as can be found, one origi—
nating long before in the east (Powell
1969:26; Taylor & Sturtevant
1996:136-139). With regard to the
Native perception of the land and sky,
spirits upon the land and in the sky,
‘the people’s’ place in it and how all
was intermingled, perhaps the idea
was ideally expressed by Thor
Conway (1992:257) who said, “To the
Ojibwa [Chippewa], the knowledge
preserved in the[ir] origin tale can be
seen and interpreted daily on the
surrounding landscape. At night, they
see their history in the stars.“ And, in
the surrounding landscape by day and
stars by night was the spirit of
Manitou, a vital and important part of
existence in both worlds and all of
life.
References
Bender, Herman E., 2003, ‘Manitou
Stones in Wisconsin’. 3rd Stone, 45, pp.
26—31.
Bowden, Henry Warner, 1981, American
Indians and Christian Missions.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
London.
Conway, Thor, 1992, The Conjurer’s
Lodge: Celestial Narratives from
Algonkian Shamans. Earth & Sky, edited
by Williamson & Farrer, pp. 236-259.
Fertey, Andre, 1970, The Journals of
Joseph N. Nicollet. Minnesota Historical
Society, St. Paul.
Grinnel, George Bird, 1972, The
Cheyennes Indians, 2 Volumes, University
of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London.
Hemming, Harry H., 1896, The History of
the Catholic Church in Wisconsin,
Catholic Historical Publishing Company,
Milwaukee, WI.
Goodman, Ronald, 1992, Lakota Star
Knowledge. Sinte Gleska University,
Rosebud, South Dakota.
Hoebel, E. Adamson, 1960, The
Cheyennes: Indians ofthe Great Plains.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York,
Chicago, San Francisco.
Kinietz Vernon W., 1965, Indians ofthe
Western Great Lakes 1615-] 760.
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor,
MI.
Leman, Wayne, 1987, Algonquian and
Iroquoian Linguistics Memoir 4.
Algonquian and lroquoian Linguistics,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Mails, Thomas E., 1972, Mystic Warriors
ofthe Plains, Doubleday and Company,
Garden City, New York.
Mails, Thomas E., 1985, Plains Indians:
Dog Soldiers, Bear Men and Bualo
Women, Bonanza Books, U.S.A.
Miller, Dorcas, S., 1997, Stars of the First
People. Pruett Publishing Company,
Boulder, CO.
Milne, Courtney, 1995, Sacred Places in
North America. Stuart, Tabori and Chang,
New York, NY.
Parkman, Francis, 1983, France and
England in North America. 2 Volumes.
Library ofAmerica, New York, NY.
Powell, Peter J., 1969, Sweet Medicine. 2
Volumes. University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, OK.
Powers, William K., 1977, Oglala
Religion. University of Nebraska Press,
Lincoln and London.
Radin, Paul, 1927, Primitive Man as a
Philosopher. D. Appleton, New York and
London.
Rosholt, Malcolm and Gehl, Msgr. John
Britten, 1976, Florimund J. Bonduel:
Missionary to Wisconsin Territory.
Rosholt House, Rosholt, WI.
Schlesier, Karl H., 1987, The Wolves of
Heaven. University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman and London.
Spence, Lewis, 1994 , Myths ofthe North
American Indians. Gramercy Books, New
York and Avenal.
Stoltzman, William, 1986, The Pine and
Christ, Red Cloud Indian School, Pine
Ridge, S.D.
Taylor, Colin F. and Sturtevant, William,
C., 1996, The Native American.
Smithmark, New York, NY.
Terrel, John Upton, 1964, Black Robe,
Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden
City, New York.
Williamson, Ray A. & Farrer, Claire R.,
1992, Earth & Sky. University of New
Mexico Press, Albequerque,
New Mexico.
5
3rd Stone 47 page 53
 Changing Avebury
Heritage plans mean that Stonehenge is about to change, and while
the details of those changes are still being debated, Avebury is
changing too. Brian Edwards looks at what change has brought to
Avebury in the past.

F THE NEW STONEHENGE VISITOR EXPERIENCE After John Aubrey introduced Charles II
Signs erected fails to attract the ofcially estimated million to Avebury in 1663, the monarch was keen that
recently cars that each year cruise the A344 for a drive— the site was recorded and protected. Which is
around by x ofprehistory, then the present plan to close this rather ironic as only two years later Charles 11
Avebury greet road and put the A3 03 in a tunnel may have a knock- gave assent to the Five Mile Act (1665) that insti-
visitors to the on effect. Some will drive round Salisbury or down gated a ve mile exclusion zone around towns
World the A303 to Stourhead, but the possibility remains precluding those non-conformists dispossessed
Heritage Site. that a signicant number may head for Avebury. by the Act of Uniformity (1662), and Avebury
But will plans Even a small percentage increase in visitor numbers just happened to be a little over ve miles from
for Stonehenge would alter Avebury considerably, and we should Marlborough, Pewsey, Devizes, Calne, Wootton
lead to many perhaps recall what happened after state-enforced Bassett, Wroughton, Chiseldon and the
more visitors? change induced the inux of ‘Five Milers’. .. Ogbournes. Avebury was thus highlighted as an
ofcial haven for ‘Five Mile” refugees.
Avebury presented such an oasis that
“t
Noah Webb travelled each week from Hampshire
to preach and Thomas Rashley, who had been
dispossessed of Barford St Martin, relocated.
John Baker, dispossessed of Chiseldon in 1662,
AVE ' _ started a chapel at Avebury with Thomas Mills of
Calne in 1670, and other dissenters followed. In
Wbrld Heritage Site _ '- 1670 there were 25 non-conformists and 181
Anglicans in Avebury, but by 1715 the non-
conformist congregation had swelled to 130. As
the Act of Indulgence was introduced in 1672 the
increase was perhaps not all due to incomers, but
.

if it was not an inux of Puritanism that sought to

awn-wwn-mmw .

destroy the Avebury stones, then the expansion in

population and focus saw sarsens removed to
create plots and pasture with the stones broken up
for building material.
Among the leaders of the Avebury non-
conformists at the turn of the century was
William Stukeley’s arch-villain Thomas
Robinson, who, through stone clearances of indi—
vidual pasture plots and sarsen~breaking for inll
housing, was accommodating and speculatively
encouraging colonisation of the Avebury circle
by immigrant dissenters. The congregation also
included ‘stone-breaker’ Thomas Grifn, whose

page 54. 3rd Stone 4.7

 father was a founder member of the
chapel. John Grifn purchased his
farm in 1681 as did Richard Phelps,
and land Was purchased by Mary
Stevenson who was to marry Walter
Stretch landlord of the Catherine
Wheel, giving birth to George
Stretch who was perhaps one of those
dissenting offspring refused Baptism
by Avebury’s vicar who also refused
to bury non-conformists.
Despite the hostile attitudes
demonstrated towards non-
conformist settlers by the Anglican
local establishment of squire, vicar
and parish clerk (a hostility, noted by
Aubrey as the result of eating too
Avebury Five Mile Chapel, and search marks on the chapel sarsens.
much cheese, and interpreted by the
soon to be ordained Stukeley as indi-
vidual fondness for sarsens); Tithe Avebury was thus trans- non-conformist chapel, in a design
disputes had undermined Anglican formed from a church settlement he adored.
worship in the parish and indigenous pattern adjacent to a henge, much The Five Mile Act saw the
parishoners viewed the ‘separatist’ akin to that found at Marden today, internal boundaries of Avebury
incomers as ordinary folk more like to housing a quite separate and redrawn a century prior to being
themselves than the establishment distinct satellite community nucle- redrawn again under the enclosure
were ever likely to be. Thus Avebury ated throughout a centre circle farm. movement. Stones that remained part
parishoners dug graves for Walls, paths, and buildings were of boundaries tended to survive unless
dissenters, and even tolled the church constructed of sarsen, as was the they fell, in which case they were
bell for their loss. The neighbourly ‘Five Mile’ Gothic styled chapel. broken up and removed (see Figures 1
disposition was thereby welcoming William Stukeley loved this and 2).
when a geographical chapel commu- sort of low constructed Gothic, so it A pocket of stones also
nity, based around the chapel built in must have proved painfully ironic survived the building programme
Samuel Morris’s centre circle garden, for the conformist father of eld that followed the inux of Five
grew in focus to form a chapel archaeology to record that Milers on ground petried between
village quite distinct from Avebury Avebury’s ‘Temple’ had been the chapel’s west boundary and the
church village. robbed of sarsen to build such as a pre-existing common pound that

Figures l and 2. Avebury: the inclusion of boundary lines explains sarsen survivals.
(Images courtesy ofthe Wiltshire Archaeological
and Natural History Society Library)

3rd Stone 4.7 page 55

Above left (Figure 3): Large sarsen survivors, notably all to the west of the chapel boundary on a strip of land within dotted line (see
Figure 4, above right) between the common pound and the chapel take—over of the eastern sector of the circle (inside solid line). Detail
om the Enclosure Map of I 794.
bordered the road from the south (see Figures 3
and 4).
The stones protected on this no-man’s
land were destined to survive, except those that
remained on the corner of the Kennett Road and
Green Street. They fell prey to the convenience
and increased speed of wheeled transport
entering and leaving the Five Mile village.
Change begets change, and the timing of
the Five Mile Act had an effect as catastrophic as
the inux it caused. For following the Civil War,
the Restoration, and Great Fire of London, a
gradual programme of uplift and modernity
upgraded main routes linked with London to
support the carriage of building material. The
geographical misfortunes of the Five Mile Act
was thus compounded by Avebury’s position
Figure 4: betwixt London and Bristol, and the draw created
Stukeley is by dissenters regularly travelling to Avebury was
Engraving of an incitement to those piloting haulage and later
I 724 showing coach routes on what frequently were no more
a horseman than droves. Littered as the Downs are with
using the west sarsens, the stones were destined to feed the at
ditch entrance. rst sporadic and local then later systematic and
‘l a..Jvm’1‘5./Mzm fit;
' . Maniac: a” 4‘55”"-
pagc 56 3rd Stone 4.7
national road repairs, and the increased trafc
this eventually witnessed in turn supported an
expanding roadside infrastructure including the
building of roadhouses and the extension of inns.
A dining room extension was added to Avebury’s
Catherine Wheel at this time, much the same as
the Red Lion dining room being extended to
accommodate a dance band when Keiller brought
prosperity to Avebury.
Such refurbishment was both a reaction
to increased custom arising from travel and proac-
tive in attracting travelers. The enlargement and
improvement of facilities at this time encouraged
carriers to patronise those routes with refurbished
inns over routes that could prove more direct for
freight or convenient to passengers.
Landlords thus helped shape England’s
road tapestry, and the timing of inn expansion
could be measured in cost to sarsens, for after
churches, monasteries and manor houses, the
buildings most notably utilising stone were inns.
It is instructive that those most criticised
by Stukeley, if not separatists, were actually land-
lords: Walter Stretch of the Catherine Wheel, John
Fowler of the White Hart at Kennet, and Richard
Fowler of the Hare and Hounds, Beckhampton.
These landlords were entrepreneurs and subse-
quently seized upon the rising trade following the
inux of Five Milers to Avebury. For while
Puritans were perhaps not all inn users as such,
not all separatists were devout Puritans, and of
more signicance is the timing and resultant
inuence of their inux. The timing of the draw
their gatherings created was not only signicant
in relation to the adoption of routes in the carriage
of goods from Bristol to London, but the Bristol
route gave rise to embryonic service areas on the
developing route between London and the
budding resort of Bath.
With Bath’s popularity attracting
increasing numbers from and to London,
Stukeley’s sketch of the remains of the
 Beckhampton Avenue showing the state of the
river crossing (see Figure 5) suggests why ‘New
Bridge’ was built south of this crossing in 1701.
The old western approach, while still in use, was I
\17

becoming increasingly impassable to developing ‘4'

.

travel, and a by-pass would have avoided both

.............._. ..

the hazardous river crossing and corners difcult

for horse teams noted by James Waylen as an“,
.mw

increasingly great in length and number. Such CM"; 5"“; ““

uy’h

was the enforced change that the old boundaries,

routes and paths, superseded through wheeled
transport demanding easy convenient speedier
access, regressed to make Avebury unrecog-
niseable by 1794 (see Figure 6), yet so often the
seeming permanence of this landscape sees this
palimpsest described as ‘timeless’.
In 1724 Avebury’s south bank was cut
back to facilitate the faster passage of coaches,
and the danger posed by further main road
improvements was to linger for some time.
Avebury’s development on the Bath Road
happened in part because the present Fyeld to
Marlborough route north of the Kennet had, from
the Norman Conquest, been blocked to through
trafc by the extent of the castle grounds from
which Aubrey rode to hounds with Richard Figure 5 (top): Stukeley’s sketch of the remains of the Beckhampton
Seymour. The alternative routes had approached Avenue in 1724 (redrawn from the original). Figure 6 (above): Detailfrom
Marlborough either south of the river after the 1794 Enclosure Map, by which time the old boundaries, routes and
crossing the Kennet at Fyeld, or from the north, paths to the west Avebury were almost unrecognisable.
as Pepys had travelled, leaving Avebury on Green
Street then passing the Old Eagle at Rockley. Below: The northern (top) and southern (bottom) approaches to Avebury
Marlborough was somewhat circumnavigated
during recent roadworks.
leading to a loss of trade, and while trafc was
rerouted over Castle Bridge c1706 to make the
High Street a thoroughfare, petitions complained
that ‘passengers and droves from London to
Bristol’ were using ‘bye-ways and trespass on
corn and commons’ to by-pass the town because
of the state of the roads. The Marlborough to
Beckhampton road was nally turnpiked in 1743,
Celia Fiennes having witnessed c1700 the demo-
lition of the early 17th century civil war damaged
house that had succeeded the castle estate,
clearing the way for the magnicent house that
would become the famous ‘Castle’ coaching inn
of the Bath Road 01751. The new route
inevitably accounted for yet more sarsens. The
White Hart at Kennett came to the fore around
1710-1720 as the riverside route was tending to
fruition, and the owner of Avebury’s Catherine
.. .,...._.n._~—o-.u——.nu-_....N_ . .

Wheel foresaw the change which is why he built

another inn of the same name at Beckhampton.
The Five Mile Act instigated a chain of
tremendous change between the times of Aubrey
and Stukeley, the latter complaining bitterly that
the destruction of Avebury was so recent he could
write the obituary of each stone. The pace of
this change we might judge as a coach took
Samuel Pepys into Avebury in 1668, only three

3rd Stone 4.7 page 57

 years after the Five Mile Act and before the
founding of the chapel. In 1697 Joseph Howard
of Beckhampton cleared some fields and
meadow of stones, and opened a local shop. In
1706 Avebury had a market, and around 1694 the
Great Bank was to accommodate a large
threshing barn north-east of the church. Newly
built, so large no doubt to accept the produce
from local agricultural expansions, to which
Farmers Green and Grifn were to contribute.
This was the ‘Parsonage Barn’, drawn by
Stukeley. Many of the buildings he was to draw
were new or newly extended, and although
Stukeley never mentioned it, the Revd. James
Mayo gave the Vicarage and its garden a make-
over when he took over from John White
(d.1712).
While the Five Milers accounted for a
number of the stones Aubrey found present that
had disappeared by Stukeley’s day, it is fair to
note that the Five Milers did not introduce stone
breaking to Avebury, or import the knowledge of
how this was achieved more efciently by stone
burning. The vicar of Winterbourne Monkton,
Parson Brinsden, informed Aubrey how the
stones were being heated up to be broken, and in
1644, more than twenty years before the Five
Mile Act, Richard Symonds noted stones being
broken on Fyeld Down.
Until the seventeenth century, stone
buildings in the vicinity were few, restricted
perhaps to church, manor, and priory. The
process of using natural landscape materials to
construct simple vernacular buildings was
mostly restricted to timber, chalk, wattle and
daub. Simple simple structures had no founda-
tions, and prior to the discovery of the re and
water method for breaking megaliths, whole
sarsens of a manageable size were introduced at
the base of vernacular structures as footings.
Surviving buildings that deploy sarsens in this
fashion remain evidence of both the simple early
uses of sarsen, and an indication of the period
when they were rst used.
The Forge demolished at Overton in
1986 had whole uncut sarsens in its make-up,
and dated from a coin in the base of the struc-
ture, was of early 17th century origin.
Conveniently supporting the supposition that
while Aubrey started recording Avebury after
stone-breaking had begun, it was perhaps not
very long after sarsens were put to wider use.
The Restoration seems an ironic starting point
for the wholesale destruction of sarsens albeit
primarily for roads, but had it started very much
earlier then it seems likely that Aubrey would
not have found so many stones remaining. -
Avebury visitor numbers have appre—
ciably climbed since access to Stonehenge was
page 58 3rd Stone 47
limited during the 1980s. Even before the
proposed road closures at Stonehenge, change
once again visits Avebury. The Five Mile chapel
has recently undergone major building work,
being converted into the Tourist Information
ofce. Roads and paths have been dug up to lay
pipes and cables, and modern facilities installed.
Double yellow lines have been painted along the
Avenue, wooden posts line the northern
approach, parking is now restricted and charged
for, and huge new signs have been installed
marking the World Heritage Site that also
embraces Stonehenge.
From Stonehenge the average saloon
car can reach Avebury in around 30 minutes.
Most will not recognise the irony as they pass
the new World Heritage Site signs located on the
four main approach roads, around ve miles
from Marlborough, Devizes, Calne, and
Wroughton. . .
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Ros Cleal for commenting on the
rst draft of this article.
Photo credit
Many thanks too to Pete Glastonbury for the
photographs of signs, lines and posts.
Additional currency
In addition to the usual sources see: Compton
Census (Canterbury, 1676): William Salt
Library Salt MSS. 33; DA. Crowley (ed),
V.C.H. Wilts. XII (1983), p.103; Hilary
Dunscombe, Avebury: A Five Mile Chapel
(Avebury, n.d.); David Boyd Haycock, William
Stukeley: Science, Religion and Archaeology in
Eighteenth-Century England (Woodbridge,
2002), especially pp. 109—133; B. Haynes, ‘Plan
of Allotments and Exchanged Lands in the
Parish of Avebury’ (Salisbury, 1794); W.H.
Hyatt, ‘Avebury Wilts” (1820); RB. Pugh and
E. Crowley (eds.), V.C.H. Wilts. III (1956),
pp.104-7; Donald A. Spaeth, The Church in an
Age of Danger: Parsons and Parishoners l 660-
1 740 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 150—1; ‘Marden
19 August 1776’: WSRO, 510/11, and
Ordnance Survey 1886 as illustrated in John
Chandler, The Vale ofPewsey (Bradford on
Avon, 2000 edition).
Contending with Monsters
Satan, the Primitive and the Power of Place in
19th Century Cornish Folklore
David Sivier describes the cultural background to a particularly
unusual example of Cornish folklore and investigates its relevance to
avenues of modern research .
NE OF THE MORE INTRIGUING TALES
O recounted by the 19th century Cornish
folklorist Robert Hunt is that of the
‘Hooting Cairn’ Kenidzhek, situated on the north
road from St. Just to Penzance. Described as a
landscape of prehistoric monuments ruled by the
dead, the place was feared in local legend as the
site where Satan hunted lost souls over the moor
and demons held midnight wrestling matches illu-
minated by a lantern held by a shadowy form.
Hunt illustrated further the weird nature of the
place with a tale, which he considered was a
mixture of Celtic and monastic legend. The tale
may also be relevant to contemporary Earthlights
research, illustrating the conception of the
ancient, pre-Christian, prehistoric past both in the
popular folklore of the area, and as reinterpreted
in formal, educated history and science, and the
numinous power of place in the human imagina-
tion.
The story describes how two miners,
after an evening spent ‘half-pinting’ in Morvah
Churchtown, passed the cairn on their way home.
As they did so, the cairn began to make a low
moaning sound, which occasionally became a
hoot, while gleaming light illuminated the rocks
despite the darkness around them. They were then
overtaken by a rider in black who told them he
was going up to the cairn to watch the wrestling,
and commanded them to follow him. Once at the
cairn, they saw a crowd of ‘men of great size and
strength, with savage faces, rendered more
terrible by the masses of uncombed hair which
hung about them, and the colours with which they
painted their cheeks’ (1) coming out of the rocks
and assembling by the plain, to which the rider
descended with two more giants. Sitting down,
the rider threw off his black gown to reveal
himself as Satan, who illuminated the scene with
two beams of fire from his eyes. Eventually, after
a titanic struggle, one of the giants lifted his
opponent into the air, and threw him to the ground
with so much force that ‘the rocks trembled, and
the ground seemed to thunder with the force of
the fall.’ Feeling pity for the fallen creature, the
miners scrambled over the rocks to it while the
other demons crowded around the victor, and one
of the two men, a lapsed but still sincere
Christian, whispered into the demon’s ear ‘the
Christian’s hope’. (2) The result was dramatic.
‘The rocks shook with an earthquake; everything
became pitchy dark; there was a noise of rushing
hither and thither, and all were gone, dying man
and all, they knew not whither’. Falling to their
knees in fear, the two miners saw, ‘as if in the air,
the two blazing eyes of the demon passing away
into the west, and at last disappear in a dreadfully
black cloud.’ (3) Furthermore, although the
miners knew the ground perfectly well, they
became hopelessly lost, so that they were forced
to huddle down together on the plain until day
came and the spell was lifted.
The tale’s relationship to monastic
stories of the supernatural is fairly clear, in that
there is a distinct Christian moral. The miners’
encounter with the Devil and his demons serve
both to prove the existence of such supernatural
forces, and the efcacy of Christian prayer in
dispelling them. Equally obvious is the story’s
connection to Celtic folklore. Cornish folklore
abounds in stories of giants, and the background
to the story is a recognisably ancient Celtic land-
scape of barrows and standing stones. The
miners’ confusion at the end of the tale also links
it to stories of pixie-led travellers losing their way
over otherwise familiar terrain. Furthermore, the
story attests to the continuing strength of
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s mythical account of the
3rd Stone 4.7 page 59
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page 60 3rd Stone 4.7

 origins of Britain even in Hunt’s day.
In The History ofthe Kings ofBritain
the earliest inhabitants of the British
Isles are giants, who are eventually
slain by the incoming Trojans under
their leader Brutus, who then gives
his name to Britain. Although Hunt
does not mention Geoffrey of
Monmouth himself, he does quote at
length Milton’s History of Britain of
1678, (4) which recounted the myth
as history long after it was discred-
ited in the sixteenth century. The fear
felt by the miners as they go past the
cairn also hearkens back to the tradi—
tional view of the Druids as godless
heathens who were punished for their
sins by being transformed into the
fairies, and so as objects of supersti—
tious fear. Similarly, by the early 18th
century the Celts themselves had
become the giants of legend. Hunt
cites the opinion of M. Pezron, who
traced the ancestry of the Celts to
Gomer in the Old Testament, whose
descendents, through the Scythians,
became the giants. Although Pezron’s
ideas today are wholly discredited,
they were part of the rst attempts at
modern ethnology, which necessarily
was permeated by contemporary
Biblical ideas.
Despite the displacement
from the late 15th century onwards of
the Bible as an authoritative text for
science, European scholars still
viewed the world around them
through ancient Biblical history, and
so constructed origins for its peoples
based on those of the Old Testament.
Similarly, Hunt’s story preserves at a
deeper level other attitudes towards
Celtic identity informed by the
racism generated by the conict in
16th and 17th century Ireland
between the Gaels and British
colonists.
While Caesar’s description
of the ancient Britons as woad—
daubed naked savages has been
familiar to generations of school chil-
dren, English and Scottish writers in
the 16th and 17th century added to
this image of Celtic tribalism an
explicit comparison with the
American Indians. The frontispiece
to Thomas Hariot’s Brief and True
Report of the New Found Land of
Virginia of 1584 shows a pair of Irish
..
m»ww..
Bum
Gaels above a pair of Native
Americans. The leaders of those
expeditions— Raleigh and Grenville —~
were closely involved in the
Elizabethan invasion of Ireland and
the plantations, and saw their Gaelic
Opponents as the European equiva—
lent of the savages they found in the
New World, an attitude which was
later taken up to include the Scots
Gaels. Like the indigenous American
peoples, the Gaels were viewed as
nomads living without private prop—
erty. The characteristic ‘glib’ fringe
worn by Gaelic men seemed to
mirror the tribal haircuts and paints
of the Amerindians. Although
certainly not as savage as previous
centuries’ View of the Celts, Hunt
nevertheless shared his contempo—
raries’ attitude towards the Celtic
peoples as romantically backward.
The persistence of such attitudes
possibly accounts for the tribally
‘painted cheeks’ of the giants in the
tale, reminiscent of the images of
mid—Western American Indians in
their war paint which were beginning
to enter Britain in the 19th century.
From being seen as the British equiv-
alent of tribal Native Americans, the
pre—Christian Celts, as imagined in
the form of the ancient giants,
became viewed almost as
Amerindians in dress and body paint.
A similar process appears to
have occurred at Callanish on the isle
of Lewis in the Hebrides. In the 2000
AD cartoon strip Slaine, the writer,
Pat Mills, based the Rmoahals, Black
aboriginal Atlanteans, on the local
folklore about the standing stones.
(5) These, according to one tradition,
were supposed to have been built by
a priest king and his retinue of subor-
dinate priests and black men, all
wearing robes of bird skins and
feathers. This particular tale has been
received with a degree of scepticism
by some folklorists, for whom it
smacks of Druidism, (6) and there—
fore of the learned Opinions of the
antiquarians rather than a genuine
folk tradition. Nevertheless, parallels
with Hunt’s giants can still be made.
The description of the builders’ dress
as bird skins and feathers is surely
another product of the increasing
identication of the Celts with Native
Americans and their elaborate feather
headdresses and cloaks, though as
another folktale records that the
‘Shining One’ (see “Small Stone’ this
issue) walks down the avenue of
stones at sunrise on Midsummer Day,
heralded by the cuckoo, the bird of
Yir—Nan—Og, the Gaelic Otherworld,
their costume could also be seen as
indicating a connection with the
avian world, perhaps as euhemerised
bird deities, such as the Catha Badua,
the ‘Battle Crow’, or Morrigan.
As for the presence of the
black men, these had long been a
staple of British folklore since the
twelfth century. Although the associ-
ation of the colour black with night
and evil long predates contact with
sub—Saharan Africa, it is possible that
contact with Black Africans, particu—
larly during the slave trade and the
19th century imperial ‘scramble for
Africa’ caused them to become
assimilated to the legends as another
image of primitive tribalism, in the
same way that the Black Man of the
Wild Hunt gradually became imag-
ined as an Ethiopian. For example, a
group of heretics from Aquitaine
reported the presence of a black man
at their meetings at their 1022 trial at
Orleans. Nearly seventy years later,
Orderic Vitalis reported that a priest
of Bonneville, while walking at night
in January 1091, encountered a
procession of the souls of the dead,
including a group of Ethiopians
carrying a tree trunk on which a man
had been crucied. The leader of the
procession was a giant. A 1650 illus-
tration of a giant’s skeleton from
London also showed it in a feather
headdress. (7) The presence of
feathers in the Callanish folktale
would certainly not be an obstacle to
this process of identication. 18th
century advertisements for escaped
slaves in newspapers generally bore
an image of an African in a grass
skirt, with a spear and feather head-
dress. On the other hand, according
to a more structuralist interpretation,
they could personify night, illus—
trating the transition to light at
Midsummer dawn with the advent of
the Shining One himself.
The Wild Hunt is derived
from Germanic legend. Although in
3rd Stone 4.7 page 61
its original form the huntsman was
the god Woden, the Anglo-Norman
cleric Walter Map records him as the
King, Herla leading his troop forever
onwards, after spending 200 years in
a fairy palace under a hill. Hunt also
records that the Gump, another tract
of land near the cairn by St Just was
also reputed to be haunted by the
fairies, who held their revels there,
accompanied by eerie music. (8)
Subsequent centuries saw the legend
assume a more overtly Christian form
with the figure of the huntsman
viewed as the Devil himself pursuing
lost, or unbaptised souls, as in the
tales of Dando’s dogs elsewhere in
Cornwall. With such an uncanny
reputation, it is no wonder that the
area generated fresh tales of encoun-
ters with the supernatural.
There remains, however, the
distinct possibility that there was an
objectively real stimulus behind the
two miners’ extraordinary experi-
ence. Although Hunt states that ‘there
was but little wind”, (9) it is possible
that the incident can partially be
explained as hallucinations and
emotional distress brought on by
intense ultra- and infrasound. In
1998, Vic Tandy, a scientist at
Coventry University, discovered that
his lab’s haunting was caused by a
malfunctioning extractor fan, which
created a l9-hertz standing wave.
(10) This brought on feelings of
oppression, fear, and physical symp-
toms such as hyperventilation and
breathlessness, while the physical
resonance of his eyeballs with the
wave caused him to see a shadowy
gure emerge. It is possible that the
wind at the cairn, although low, was
sufciently powerful to set up a
similar wave and so cause the
phenomena reported by the miners. If
this was the case, it may also be
possible that these effects were delib-
erately designed as part of the cairn’s
function. Recently archaeologists and
acousticians, including Paul
Devereux, have been researching the
possibility that the Neolithic builders
of such monuments designed them to
enhance their acoustic properties,
with a view to inducing mystical
states. Experiments have been tried at
various monuments in the Orkneys
page 62 3rd Stone 4.7
where the acoustic properties of some
chambers have enhanced the sounds
in other rooms, and chanting or music
performed there has induced mystical
feelings amongst the listeners else-
where in the monument.
It is also possible that the
piezo-electric earthlights generated
in fault lines within the earth’s crust,
ionising the air above them and
inducing hallucinations and transper-
sonal experiences through stimu-
lating the temporal lobes, may also
be responsible. While this theory is
best known as an explanation for the
alien abduction phenomenon, it has
also been applied to ghosts by
Howard Wilkinson, a former
psychology lecturer at the University
of Nottingham, and Alan Gauld of the
Society for Psychical Research, who
noticed the coincidence of hauntings
from the mid-18003 onwards with
fluctuations in the terrestrial
magnetic eld and sunspot activity.
William Roll of the State University
of West Georgia has investigated two
cases, which had their origins in
extremely localised geomagnetic
disturbance. One was of a notorious
haunted hunting lodge in Texas,
which he found was due to the piezo-
electrical currents generated by
intense pressures in the geological
fault directly below it, while another
was due to a metal mesh, mounted
with wall plaster, focussing the
house’s magnetic elds. Again, there
is the possibility that these electro-
magnetic elds may indeed possess
consciousness. According to the
American ghost investigator, Randy
Liebeck, the electric component of
these strange magnetic elds is more
like the static DC eld of biological
systems such as animals, than the AC
eld of electrical circuits. Liebeck
himself goes further, and states that
‘It’s an energy form of consciousness
and the psychological conditions of
the person who died and something
in environment allow someone to
stick around”. (11)
Elsewhere, research into the
Near Death Experience suggests that
it, and ghosts, may have an objective
existence arising from quantum inter-
actions. According to the mathemati-
cian Roger Penrose, who presented
the case for the quantum physical
origin of human consciousness and
intelligence in The Emperors New
Mind, and the American surgeon Dr.
Hameroff, tubulin molecules in the
cells of the brain act as quantum
computers, storing information and
generating consciousness. Quantum
entanglement ensures that this infor-
mation structure remains coherent
even after death. This information
then leaks out into the world at large,
suggesting that the human person-
ality does indeed survive death.
Moreover, quantum physics has also
been suggested as a possible cause
for the apparently intelligent,
conscious behaviour of some earth—
lights, a possibility given support by
Hameroff’s and Penrose’s research.
In opposition to this, however, are the
arguments advanced by the biologist
Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian
Stewart, both of Warwick University,
one of which is that there is too much
water present in cellular tubulin for it
to act as a waveguide. (12)
Regardless of whether or not
earthlights do actually constitute
conscious entities, there is also the
possibility that the repeated appear-
ance of earthlights at specic loca-
tions inuenced the sites chosen in
the Neolithic for the construction of
the standing stone and henge monu—
ments. According to Paul McCartney
all the stone circles in England and
Wales were located within a mile of
either a surface fault or an associated
intrusion of igneous rock. (13) The
great megalithic circle of Carnac in
Brittany, according to Pierre
Mereaux, also lies on granite intru-
sions, with the surrounding area
severely faulted, and subject to the
most intense seismic activity in
France. It is possible that the high
levels of radioactivity produced by
the radon gas exhaled from mega-
lithic structures’ granite blocks may
contribute to the appearance of earth-
lights. It is therefore possible that the
granite landscape of the wilder parts
of Cornwall and its Neolithic monu-
ments should also generate such
phenomena. Furthermore, the associ-
ation of such lightforms with earth-
quakes, produced by the intense pres-
sures just before a quake, certainly
seems reected in the text by the tremors and
crashes produced by the nal throw of the
defeated giant, and the rush of the escaping
Illustration by Ian
demons afterwards. Experiments with the appli—
cation of electromagnetic elds to the brain have
even shown that they can cause a loss of sense of
direction.
Of course, it is also possible that there
were more mundane causes. Certain meteorolog-
ical conditions, such as ice crystals high up in the
atmosphere, can cause unusual optical effects,
magnifying or distorting other objects and light
sources present. For example, one report of twin
beams descending from a UFO around
Cheltenham has been explained as the headlights
of cars negotiating turns in the road several miles
out of town. It may be that similar conditions
distorted lights elsewhere in the region, or even
bright planets, like the moon or Venus, to generate
the eerie illumination reported by the miners, and
which they subsequently interpreted according to
local tradition as produced by the baleful eyes of
Old Clootie. A shifting light would naturally cause
the shadows cast by the rocks to move, and so give
the appearance that there were gures physically /r.-’"i' it: , w-f'
‘ 'J
'2’“ .‘lll‘rtil.
present and moving amongst them. Other atmos— "
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pheric conditions, such as high pressure, also ”I‘llkilqiihv"

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magnify sounds. Horses certainly were present on 'll' ”All l""'f,)' i‘ V y". ””1l ‘ :ul ln 1' .i :11. "'2
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the Gump, and so there is the possibility that the if"‘, Mi M} “I ””1
utq’i‘ Hi".I.Ji ”4’ Mil '1'". 3,:
l“ll?“l A“ k,“ t”. 1,: I" l'i\‘
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thumps and noises made by the wild horses, or i i l".
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H" ',‘_.
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produced by other, natural or human activity in the I l

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area, could have been magnied to sound like
rushing demons. There is also the psychological
state of the miners themselves to be considered.
They were presumably tired after working a long
shift in the mines, and, although not drunk, were
possibly more suggestible than otherwise. They
were also already frightened by the cairn’s reputa—
tion, and so, presented with a sight distorted by the
prevailing weather conditions out of all recogni—
tion, interpreted it according to the motifs and
images of the area’s folklore. Thus, the mysterious
light was produced by Satan himself, while the
strange gures were wrestling, antediluvian
giants, marked by the body paint of ancient
heathendom.
At the heart of the experience was the
sheer power of the place itself, as Hunt recognised.
‘Giants ... belong to'the wilds of nature’, he wrote,
stating that he had never found traditions of giants
in fertile plains or valleys. ‘The untaught mind’
regarded ‘the grander phenomena of nature’ with
terror, and attempted to explain them by ‘errors’
passed down ‘since the days when the priests of
superstition sought to rule the minds of men by
exciting their fears.’ (14) While modern readers
may cavil at his castigation of the undoubtedly
complex religions of previous ages as ‘supersti-
tion’, he was undoubtedly correct in ascribing the
creation of legends about giants to the wilderness
in which local people found themselves, a wilder-
ness whose power demanded the existence of
equally titanic beings as its creators. Moreover, as
Hunt himself demonstrated, these ancient tales
were still sufciently powerful in his day to assim-
ilate contemporary images of tribal primitivism
from America and Africa to the traditional narra-
tives of giants and pre-Roman Celtic identity, as
well as the edgling ethnographic ideas of the
formal antiquarian elite. Indeed, the tale shows
just how inuential such mystical and legendary
pseudo-history was amongst members of the
educated classes, despite the gradual disenchant-
ment of history from the mid-16th century
onwards. As for the cairns and ancient monuments
themselves, it is a sobering thought that if they
were deliberately constructed to harness acoustics
and the geomagnetic properties of the surrounding
area to produce earthlights and transpersonal states
of consciousness, these grand works of spiritual
technology should still be weaving their spell on
the people of the European enlightenment three
thousand years after their builders and their culture
had passed into legend. If this is true, then, intel-
lectually the henge builders were titans: in those
days there were indeed giants in the Earth.

3rd Stone 4.7 page 63

References
(1) Hunt, R., The Drolls, Traditions
and Superstitions of Old Cornwall,
First Series: Giants, Fairies,
Tregagle, Mermaids, Rocks, Lost
Cities, Fire Worship, Demons and
Spectres, Llanerch, Felinfach, 1993,
p. 218.
(2) Hunt, R., ibid, p. 218.
(3) Hunt, R., ibid, p. 219.
(4) Hunt, R., ibid, p. 44.
(5) ‘Slaine «— A Guide to Time
Killer’, 2000 AD, prog 412, July
1985,p.7.
(6) Westwood, J ., Albion: A Guide to
Legendary Britain, Book Club
Associates, 1986, p. 398.
(7) Austin, R., cover page, ‘The
Wonder of Times’, in Friedman, J.,
Miracles and the Pulp Press during
the English Revolution, UCL Press,
1993.
(8) Hunt, R., ibid, pp. 98—101.
(9) Hunt, R., ibid, p. 217.
(10) Coghlan, Andy, ‘Midnight
Watch’, New Scientist 19/26
December 1998 — 2 January 1999,
p. 44.
page 64. 3rd Stone 4.7
(11) Coghlan, Andy, ibid, p. 45.
(12) Cohen, J., and Stewart, 1.,
Evolving the Alien — The Science of
Extraterrestrial Life: What Does a
Real Alien Look Like? Ebury,
London, 2002, p. 232.
(13) Devereux, P., Earthlights
Revelation - UFOs and Mystery
Lightform Phenomena: The Earth is
Secret Energy Force, Blandford,
London, 1989, p. 178.
(14) Hunt, R., ibid, p. 36.
Bibliography
Coghlan, Andy, ‘Midnight Watch’,
New Scientist 19/26 December 1998 —
2 January 1999, pp. 42-45.
Daunton, M. and Halpem, R., Empire
and Others: British Encounters with
Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1800,
Philadelphia, UCL Press,l998.
Devereux, P., Earthlights Revelation -
UFOs and Mystery Lightform
Phenomena: The Earth is Secret
Energy Force, Blandford, London,
1989.
Encyclopedia of World Mythology,
Peerage Books, 1975.
Friedman, J., Miracles and the Pulp
Press during the English Revolution,
UCL Press, London, 1993
Hunt, R., The Drolls, Traditions and
Superstitions of Old Cornwall, First
Series: Giants, Fairies, Tregagle,
Mermaids, Rocks, Lost Cities, Fire
Worship, Demons and Spectres,
Llanerch, Felinfach, 1993.
Kelley, DR, and Sacks, D.H., The
Historical Imagination in Early
Modern Britain: History, Rhetoric and
Fiction, 1 500-1 800, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
Penrose, Roger, The Emperor Is New
Mind — Concerning Computers,
Minds and The Laws ofPhysics,
Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1989.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton , Witchcraft in
the Middle Ages, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca and London, 1972.
‘Slaine — A Guide to Timekiller’, 2000
AD, prog 412, August 1985, pp. 7-8
Westwood, Jennifer, Albion: A Guide
to Legendary Britain, Book Club
Associates, London, 1986.
See also the BBC Horizon programme
on the Near Death Experience broad—
cast January 2003.
§
 le 1'. t e r 3
You HAVE BEEN SENDING YOUR BLOTTS, REPETITION AND NONSENCE To 3RD STONE
AT PO Box 961, DEVIZES, WILTSHIRE SNIo 2T8 OR EMAIL neil®thirdstone.demon.co.uk
HELP REQUIRED
please can u help, i had a past life
reading done and remeber 3 tall
stones in a triangle shape. i know it
was somewhere in england but ifelt a
strong connection with this palce as
if i belonged there, i know that may
sound strange.
SARAH JANE
VIA EMAIL
JUST SAY MAYBE
I cannot surely be the only reader to
raise a quizzical eyebrow at Brian
Porter’s letter on smoking (Letters,
3S46). The sentiments he expresses
are not only more suited to an
American publication, but are also
based on at least two misconceptions.
Firstly, a t-Shirt bearing the image of
a personage of the Georgian era
engaging in a pursuit (id est, pipe—
smoking) which was undoubtedly
popular during the Georgian era, can
only be described as historically
accurate. Mr Porter would no doubt
have complained of anachronism had
the t-Shirt shown Dr Stukeley
relaxing with a ‘game-boy’ or a 3rd
generation mobile ‘phone!
And secondly, Mr Porter
informs us that 75% of adults do not
smoke, 70% of smokers want to
abandon the habit and “100 percent
of our prehistoric ancestors did not
smoke”. He should explore the work
of A.G.Sherratt (for example in
Consuming Habits: Drugs in History
and Anthropology, Routledge, 1995),
or he could look at page 113 of Ann
Woodward's British Barrows: A
Matter of Life and Death (Tempus,
2000). Shocking to tell, our prehis-
toric predecessors did not spend their
time sipping sparkling mineral water,
breathing fresh air and eating low-
calorie salads. No, indeed not, until
the puritans of the early Bronze Age
weaned them off the habit by intro-
ducing alcohol (“strange mixtures of
mead and mixed fruit wines, laced
with opiates” says Woodward), the
folk were busy smoking, not tobacco,
but opium and cannabis. Perhaps Mr
Porter would argue that all of our
prehistoric ancestors are now dead,
thus proving the ill-advised nature of
their habits, but take note that they
were careful to bury the pottery
braziers and pouches of hemp seeds
with their dead, in case such pleas-
ures were needed in the afterlife...
Personally, the strongest
thing I inhale is Friar's Balsam, but I
wish Mr Porter would get his facts
right and, more seriously, lay off the
anti-smoking hysteria. Your illustra-
tions are wonderful: keep them as
smoky as possible!
DR PAUL KITCHENHAM
BEXHILL-ON-SEA, EAST SUSSEX
IN THE SKIP
Brian Porter’s sardonic letter in 3rd
Stone 46 worked rather better as a
satire on political correctness than it
did as an appraisal of the themes
explored by Cornelius Holtorf’s
‘Vandalism and the meaning of
Monuments” in 3rd Stone 45. The
question of how, exactly archaeolo-
gists manifest their urge to preserve
ancient monuments is an interesting
one, not least because digging is a
destructive and irreversible process.
The decision has to continually be
taken on what to preserve, and what
to throw away. Anything destroyed
survives only through publication,
which all too frequently fails to
materialise. Even structures and arte-
facts which are preserved require
publication to record the context in
which they were found.
In his Great Excavations
television series, John Romer visited
the temple of Dendera in Upper
Egypt, pointing out that, in exposing
the full glory of the Ptolomaic era
temple there, the excavator, Auguste
Mariettei had removed all trace of
the Coptic monastery and Arabic
town that had later occupied the Site.
He just buzzed them over the wall,
said Romer laconically.
However, it is not easy to
feel charitable towards early
Christians and Muslims if you are
interested in Pharaonic monuments.
The squatter occupation of these eras
hacked-out the faces and hands of
otherwise quite sublime sculptures
and wall reliefs owing to the suspi-
cion that these evil Spirits might be
able to ‘See’ or ‘Seize’ them. This
damage, though regrettable, is part of
the history of a site, and I personally
feel just as aggrieved when I see the
way that the unique wall paintings
from the 4th century AD legionary
headquarters based in Luxor temple
were ruthlessly scrubbed away to
reveal the routine and repetitive
ritual formulae of the Pharaonic era
beneath. However, many of the
reliefs in this temple had been
vandalised long before the Site was
taken over by Roman fortications
3rd Stone 4.7 page 65
 and churches. The ‘heretic’ pharaoh,
Akhenaten, had seen to it that the
name of the hated god, Amen, was
removed wherever it appeared in the
temple, even within the name of his
beloved father, Aaenhotep (III). At
other points on the site,
Tutankhamun’s reliefs were usurped
by Horemheb. Much later still, a
town grew up on the buried temple
around the mosque ofAbu el Hagag,
a Sheikh whose moulid (festival)
involves hauling boats through the
streets: probably a memory of the
ancient ‘Opet’ festival. The houses
of consular agent, Mustafa Aga
Ayat, and British writer, Lucy Duff
Gordon, also nestled in the columns
but were cleared by archaeologists
early in the 20th century. The
mosque survived to steadily rot-
away the main pylon of the temple
with its waste water.
So who were the real
vandals? Heretics, Romans,
Muslims or archaeologists? This
being a politically correct age, we
tend to blame our own ancestors
(imperialist, colonialist, slave-
owners to a man, no doubt), or the
empires of former times, rather than
‘native’ populations, no matter how
destructive. A much more insidious
problem is encountered on UK sites
where ephemeral Dark Age struc-
tures may be taken off by the JCB or
be dug through unrecognised. It was
only when Phil Barker carefully
cleared the entire area of the Roman
baths basilica at Wroxeter that he
was able to recognise, between
earlier trenching, the faint footings
of once substantial buildings. When
I dug on the site, impressive
herringbone floors of the 4th
century AD were being exposed.
These, however, were removed, as it
was the earlier building which was
to be preserved for the benet of
visitors. I am interested in the end of
Roman Britain but archaeologists
seem to prefer the beginning, rather
than the end, of things, and set their
sights on digging down to the
‘natural’.
Whilst digging at Silchester
I found myself working alongside a
bloke who was enthusiastically
turng ‘boring’ Roman and Iron
page 66 3rd Stone 4.7
Age pottery into the wheel-barrow,
in search of ‘interesting’ neolithic or
earlier nds beneath. The reverse
situation occurred when an area
within the legionary fortress of York
(Britain’s second capital in the
Roman period) was being excavated.
There, so long was spent carefully
drawing the foundations of Victorian
stables, that the Roman levels were
never reached before the developers
moved in and destroyed them
forever. One way or another, my
period is in the Skip.
DYLAN BICKERSTAFFE
SHEPSHED, LEICESTERSHIRE
EARLY SILBURY
The following appears to be the
earliest reference to the the Duke of
Northumberland’s shaft. 0f partic-
ular interest is the age suggested for
Silbury as 2776 BC — pretty well on
the money more than 200 years
before we produced a carbon date !
“A subscription has been set
on foot at Bath for opening Silsbury
(sic) Hill, the largest tumulous or
artificial mound of earth in this
island. It belongs to, and is part of,
that stupendous monument of antiq—
uity, the Temple of Avbrey (sic), and
stands by the Bath road between
Devizes and Marlborough. Tho’
supposed to be of between 3 and
4000 years duration, there is no
account of its having yet ever been
searched into”.
Felix Farleys Bristol Journal, 21
September 1776.
BRIAN EDWARDS
DEVIZES, WILTSHIRE
ROMAN GREEN MAN?
I’ve been following the items about
the Green Man with interest and the
possible routes by which he came to
Britain. I possess two slides of a
Roman villa in Paphos, Cyprus that I
took about 10 years ago, and the
borders of the mosaic oors
contained Green Men with leaves all
round their heads and tendrils
winding out of their mouths. So
where does he come from?
ANNE INDUNI
VIA EMAIL
RIVER BURIALS
I was somewhat surprised to read in
Shortcuts (3846) about Bradford
Council’s re-authorisation of river
burials. Given the impossibility of
destroying prions by the process of
incineration and the increasingly
sophisticated steps being taken by
Health Professionals to prevent envi-
ronmental contamination by poten—
tially harmful material, it seems
incredulous that the euphemistically
named ‘ashes’ should be allowed to
enter the water system. Reassuringly,
the group most likely to use this
method of burial are the least likely
to unwittingly transmit CJD or its
cousins!
ROE NORRIS
VIA EMAIL
GRAFFITI
I recently read your article regarding
graffiti painted on the stones of
Avebury in an old issue of 3rd Stone
(no. 24, Autumn 1997). I live in
southern California, and have been
working on pictographs of the local
Native Americans (The San Luis Rey
Band of Luiseno Indians)) through
my university. We are studying a
large hilltop boulder, which carries
gures made in the course of girls’
puberty ceremonials hundreds of
years ago. The rock receives new
grafti every time the site is publi-
cised. Presently, there are large white
and blue markings on the rock, put
there less than a year ago. It’s a sorry
Sight. However, members of the
Luiseno, and local rock art authori-
ties, maintain that such modern paint
weathers off the rock within a few
years. The ancient pigments persist. I
hope the stones of Avebury are as
resilient.
EANNE ROGERS
POWAY, CALIFORNIA
RIVER OF STONES
Having lived within sight of the
Preseli Hills for many years and for
the past three at the bottom of Carn
Meini itself, I thought that readers
concerned with the Stonehenge trans-
portation issue may be interested to
know about the ‘river of stones’.
 From close-up the full face
of Carn Meini looks as if had been
blasted by a major earth upheaval
with stones scattered in front over a
wide area. Perhaps the work of
Merlin! I think it would have taken
all of the 14,000 Irish navvies
mentioned by Geoffrey
Monmouth to choose and dress, as
well as transport the sixty odd blue-
stones from here. And probably at
that period the slopes could have
been heavily wooded.
An easier and more acces-
sible site of the bluestone’s origins
could be from Rhestr Gerrig, ‘a line
or way of stones’, that curves south—
wards for roughly 2km between Carn
Meini and Cam Arthur. A periglacial
feature formed prior to ten millennia
ago under very cold conditions, now
it is roughly ve metres wide and
strewn with boulders. The sound of
the stream below is audible and
water is quite evident in places. The
River of Stones appears to begin in a
gully just below a ruined circular
cairn (OS 14043262). The capstone
is off and reveals the interior
chamber in the centre of the ring of
boulders that formed the cairn. A
triangular passage stone is upright
and gives quite a ringing tone when
struck.
At the end of the stream,
closest to Mynachlogddu village, is a
large quantity of dolerite stones of all
shapes and sizes, many of them over
3m in length. The rst time I passed
this stretch of the stream, the fact that
there were so many bluestones
readily available in one place imme-
diately answered one conundrum I
always had in relation to the massive
disturbance of Carn Meini, and the
difculty of gathering dolerites from
there. It could also answer the ques-
tion posed by the David Kaiser in 3rd
Stone 46 as to why the stones from
here may have been particularly
venerated and therefore worth
moving to Stonehenge. Not only
would it have appeared that the
stones themselves had been mysteri-
ously moved from the hillface, but in
winter they would have been contin-
uously washed smooth by running
water. A cosmic marriage of sky god
and earth goddess. In fact when I
went there to check it out before
writing this, a two-foot long adder
was basking on a white quartzite
boulder by the side of the stream!
JOHN SHARKEY
MYNACHLOGDDU, PEMBROKESHIRE
of
Goodbye...
We thought that readers would enjoy
reading some of the messages other
readers have sent in regarding 3rd
Stone’s closure, so here is a a small
selection of some of the hundreds
(really!) of messages we’ve received
over the last six months. Because
these letters were sent to the maga-
zine without the intention of them
being published, the name of indi-
vidual letter writers is not included,
but we’d like to thank everyone who
got in touch and would like you to
know that you warmed the cockles of
our little hearts. What a lovely bunch
of people you are!
...I’ve always been impressed with
the consistently high scholarship of
your contributors, as well as the way
it brings together people from very
different vieWpoints - professional
archaeologists, folklorists, historians
and those from modern mystical and
occult subcultures ......me and my
friends have had a lot of fun arguing,
disbelieving and learning from the
mag - we’ll miss it...... customers
have been expressing a genuine
sorrow and feeling of impending loss
at the magazine ceasing to exist. We
share that mood...... there is nothing
that can take its place - please recon-
sider...... wouldn’t want to miss the
last one. Hope she rises again...
...Hail and farewell. Parting is such
sweet sorrow ...... the only magazine
where you can be interested in weird
stuff without having to entirely
believe in it. What now for curious
cynics ...... typical! I nd a magazine
I like and then it shuts down...
...don’t stop, charge more if you
have to. I’d pay twice as much as
there’s nothing half as good...
...along with Fortean Times and
Gardeners World my essential
reading ...... Eek! No more 3rd Stone?
It’s a disaster......A great loss. Come
back soon...... terrible news. Is this
really the end or will there be a
resurrection......please change your
minds... I am desolate to learn that
the next issue will be the last 3rd
Stone. I am left with an antiquarian-
shaped hole in my life ...... I espe—
cially enjoyed Jeremy Harte’s rude
book reviews ...... I cannot believe
the magazine is nishing. It’s the
best read of the year. I’m upset...... a
most interesting magazine which has
introduced me to an ever widening
area of history and mystery, and has
encouraged the study of the sources
of our fascinating myths and
legends ...... thanks for the many
thought provoking articles and also
for the creation of a wonderful
magazine...... sort yourselves out 3rd
Stone - where else will I be able to
read Burl and Devereux all in one
place ...... I was disappointed at rst,
but I suppose nothing lasts for ever...
...3rd Stone was the best earth
mysteries magazine - you’ll be
missed by a lot of people ...... The
departure of 3rd Stone magazine into
the realms of recent history will
leave an aching void in the world of
the Small Press: any successor
magazine would be hard-pressed to
full a similar role as stylishly as
3rd Stone. Imagine my depression
when the news of your impending
closure arrived on the same day as
the wonderful Green Man Bookshop
in Eastbourne (where I rst set eyes
on 3rd Stone) closed its doors for the
last time. I am now awaiting the
third hammer-blow of fate ...... I
always get a buzz when I pick it up
off the doormat, .many thanks for all
the good times...
SEEDLING REQUEST
[The following mysterious message
arrived at the 3rd Stone ofces a few
months ago. We think that it’s a
tting nalé to the 3rd Stone letters
page!
Robin, Midweek - could you give
seedlings on oor and washing
machine in utility room a spray with
bottle on kitchen surface. _ _
Thanks, Gary 
3rd Stone 4.7 page 67

Abstracts
Compiled by Jeremy Harte
Down By The Riverside
If someone reports mystic insights into the
streets of Amsterdam, you might well
wonder what they’re on, but Boudewijn
Bakker provides supporting evidence for a
startling theory of ‘New Atlantis: the
geometric ideal and Amsterdam’s ring of
canals’ in The Low Countries 2003 pp54-
64. The beautiful canals which transformed .
the city 1600-1660 were not added piece—
meal but planned in a single great system,
one which turns out to be a tribute to the
circular and square geometry of an ideal
city. Behind this Michellian geomancy lies
the unmistakeable outline of Plato’s
Atlantis, another circular city with its island,
harbour, and ring of canals set at the heart of
a maritime empire.
If You Go Down To The Woods Today
Just what was it like in the chilly forests of
the early Mesolithic? You could specialise
in excavations of the period: or you could
read Archaeology International 2002/3
pp33-6, where Peter Jordan reports on
‘Sacred landscapes of Siberia: symbolic
uses of space by hunter-gatherers’. The
Khanty of the River Ob dedicate shrines to
the forest spirits, each spirit being associ-
ated with particular lineages; hunting and
trapping is banned here. Many of these
sacred places lie in what we would think of
as areas of great natural beauty, and they are
visited in a yearly round, leaving as physical
evidence only the middens for the disposal
of bone offerings.
76 Trombones In The Big Parade
The links between booze and folk custom
are deep-rooted, so it’s like a cold douche to
nd a Scottish tradition taking a different
view. Ian Russell writes on ‘Flute bands and
their annual walks in north-east Scotland:
music, tradition, and community’ for
Review of Scottish Culture 15 (2002/3)
pp99-l 11. On Walks Day, at Christmas and
New Year, you can hear them coming down
the street with utes playing en masse (the
effect is a bit like bagpipes). Mostly it’s
hymn tunes, as this is traditionally a temper-
ance affair: in fact, it began as an excuse for
rowdy sober young men to parade down the
street shouting abuse at their peaceable
drunken neighbours.
page 68 3rd Stone 4.7
Roll Of Thunder Hear My Cry
Ultrasound makes weird things happen, or
so they’d have you believe. The secret
weapons people think it can turn your
entrails to jelly; the ghost-hunters suspect
that many reports of ghostly apparitions are
caused by the subliminal effects of ultra—
sound at ‘haunted’ locations. Then a concert-
cum—experiment was put on by electro-
acoustic composers and the National
Physics Laboratory. Mark ‘I was a sonic
experiment’ Blacklock reported for Fortean
Times 174 (2003) p56, after listening consci-
entiously about the proposed l7hz radia-
tions. Yes, he did feel a bit mny during one
or two pieces. Problem was, those were the
ones in which ultrasound was not broadcast.
What’s New, Pussycat?
‘Is there a cat in the house?’, asks Ruben de
Somar in Northern Earth 95 (2003) pp7-ll.
An innocent question, until you remember
those mummied cats found in walls and
under rafters, most of whom, one gathers,
didn’t die of old age. When rediscovered by
new owners, these cats receive much more
attention than they did when living,
becoming a kind of mascot for the house or
pub. And here the lore of foundation sacri-
ce and folk magic overlaps with traditional
ghost stories. The removal of a mummied
cat from a building leads to trouble. And a
lighthouse in America was haunted by a
playful phantom cat, until the day when an
actual physical mummied cat was discov-
ered in the airvents.
You Can Be Magic
Since the palmy days of Dr. Dee, magic has
seldom attracted cultural greats: except
Wittgenstein. The philosopher set out to crit-
icise the naive view of The Golden Bough, in
which magic is just misguided science. He
proposed a number of alternative views,
including expressionism - the idea that ritual
serves to act out feelings dramatically - and
showed how magic rites could sum up a life—
view of wonder at death, sunrise, harvest
and other things that matter. D.Z. Phillips
reviews the position, with a lot of donnish
point—scoring, for Religious Studies 39
(2003) pp185-209 as ‘Wittgenstein,
Wittgensteinianism and magic: 3 philosoph-
ical tragedy’
Get Your Kicks En Route To The Styx
Dead people are appearing in public a lot
these days. From London Bodies, which
was conducted with great respect and taste,
to Body Worlds, which wasn’t, the dead are
posing questions which Neil Curtis hopes
to answer for Public Archaeology 3 (2003)
pp21-32 - ‘Human remains: the sacred,
museums and archaeology’. He highlights
the racist distinction by which ‘indigenous
people’ have to jump through legalistic
hoops to prove their ‘rights’, while dead
white males can hope to rest in peace.
Should gravegoods be respected, too? The
museum object can itself be a category of
the sacred, though that’s hardly a good
enough excuse for turning your granny into
one.
Did Jesus Have A Sister?
A media nine days’ wonder, the tomb of
‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’
gets the heavy treatment from Joe Nickell,
Writing on this ‘Bone (box) of contention:
the James ossuary’ for Skeptical Inquirer
27ii (2003) ppl9-22. It was bought in Old
Jerusalem from a man whose name no-one
can remember (though apparently not in a
pub). There are bones to go with it, or
maybe there aren’t. It’s decorated, but on
the wrong side from the inscription for a
genuine ossuary. The decoration is blurred
by time, but the inscription is rather crisp,
and has the look of having been copied
from two separate sources. Dearie me. We
almost expect the nd the alien from the
Santilli autopsy nestled inside.
Girls, Girls, Girls
Forget the Fat Slags: there are more virgins
up north. This is just one of the conclusions
to come from a national survey of maidens’
garlands undertaken by Gereth, James and
Sarah Spriggs for Essex Archaeology and
History 33 (2002) pp280-7. When a maiden
of unblemished reputation died, a hoped
garland was carried in her ineral proces-
sion and hung up in the church. The earliest
examples date from the seventeenth
century, and there are photos of slightly
awkward~looking mourners carrying
garlands up to the 1950s. “Maidens’
garlands: an Essex example’ gives conser-
vation details of the Theydon Mount
example, where paper tassels had been
substituted for the usual hanging white
gloves.
Just Hanging Around
There is a certain macabre interest about a
history of Norfolk gibbets, as contributed
by Nicola Whyte to Landscapes 4 (2003)
pp24-39. But ‘The deviant dead in the
Norfolk landscape’ were a source of fasci-
nation even at the time, when every
hanging was surrounded by a drunken
festival. The gallows has a long history
going back to mediaeval and earlier
language of boundaries and wasteland.
It’s not coincidental that many sites were
at barrows. The mediaeval gallows tree, a
private perk of landowners, gave way to
the gibbet on which bodies of criminals
hung on show to passers-by, witnessing
the power of the state. Like other land-
marks, they were swept away by
Enclosure.
King’s Cross
There’s plenty of Cambrian rock art, but
one piece is unusual. It’s not cup and ring,
as might appear at rst glance, but a series
of ring-crosses. And these Christian
elements appeared on a stone which had
been added to the barrow of an unmis-
takeably pagan ninth-century Viking.
What’s going on? David Petts explores
the story in ‘Beacon Hill, Aspatria: an
early Christian carved stone rehabili-
tated’, Tr. 0f the Cumberland and
Westmorland Ant. And Arch. Soc. 3rd
ser.2 (2002) pp103-110. It seems that the
Norse overlords took an interest in the
symbols of Christianity, nding they were
so venerated by their tenantry, and wanted
to incorporate this authority into their
own monuments.
Like The Circles That You Find
One of Wiltshire’s stone circles is going
to have to be scrubbed from the books,
according to Andrew David et al in
Wiltshz're Studies 96 (2003) pp195-205. In
‘ ‘A Family Chapel...to an Archdruid’s
Dwelling’: an investigation into the stone
circle at Winterbourne Bassett, Wiltshire’,
they begin with one of William Stukeley’s
sketches and then report on a geophysical
survey of its supposed site. Nothing there:
just a bunch of natural sarsens. The true
stone circle seems to have been on the
crest of a hill nearby. Oh, and fans of the
Archdruid will also want to check out
Rick Petersen’s ‘William Stukeley: an
eighteenth-century phenomenologist’,
Antiquity 77 (2003) pp394-400
There’s No Place Like Home
We have been trying for many years to
distinguish ritual sites from mundane
ones. Is this wise, asks Richard Bradley in
‘A life less ordinary: the ritualization of
the domestic sphere in later prehistoric
Europe’, Cambridge Archaeological
Journal 13 (2003) pp5—23. Do hillforts
and henges really represent two different
ways of using place? We speak of
‘shrines’ as if they were a distinct cate-
gory of site, but this depends on a prior
belief that sacred space should follow
certain rules. But the home is still a home,
even when geomantic rites take place
there. Perhaps we should stop thinking of
ritual as a particular kind of activity, and
speak instead of the degree to which we
ritualise our lives.
You’re The Devil In Disguise
Most mediaeval spirits make the briefest
of appearances in history. Detailed auto—
biography is not an option. But there are
exceptions, and Sylvia Huot focuses on
them for Speculum 78 (2003) pp400-420
in her study of ‘Dangerous embodiments:
Froissart’s Harton and Jean d’Arras’s
Melusine’. Harton was a poltergeist who
acted as a news agency, supplying infor-
mation on current events to Gaston
Phébus in fourteenth-century France; he
vanished when his master insisted on
seeing what he looked like. Melusine was
the snakey lady who disappeared every
month for her bath and was not to be spied
on. It seems that secrecy about physical
form is essential to supernatural beings.
Sitting On Top Of The Bay
Metaphors abound in ‘Places of transfor-
mation: building monuments from water
and stone in the Neolithic of the Irish Sea,
Chris Fowler and Vicki Cummings’
contribution to the J. of the Royal
Anthropological Institute 9 (2003) ppl—
20. Built of wavy or water-worn slabs, the
tombs stand by mountains, looking
towards the sea. Beach pebbles and shells
are found in them, so is quartz, which glit—
ters like the ocean. Cupmarks on the
stones hold water. Burial is like diving
into darkness. Enough! - no, there’s a
similar exercise, all about stone and
wood, by Vicki Cummings with Alasdair
Whittle, as ‘Tombs with a view: land-
scape, monuments and trees’ in Antiquity
77 (2003) pp255-266
My Mistake
Jeff and Kimberley Saward provide a
much-needed critique of maze myths in
‘13 that a fact’, Caerdroz’a 33 (2003) ppl4-
27. The popularity of the labyrinth, espe-
cially in some less critical quarters, has
led to an alarming scrub—growth of
factoids on the Web. The Sawards show
that the Arizonan Casa Grande labyrinth
is not pre—Contact; that the Rocky Valley
carvings need not be earlier than nine-
teenth century; that several artefacts
published as ‘the most ancient labyrinth’
are tourist forgeries; and that the labyrinth
in Chartres Cathedral, though a striking
work of art, does not incorporate mystic
measurements and geometry, and was
never engraved with a penitential psalm.
All I Have To Do Is Dream
The uneasy boundaries between folk
belief and real experience are explored by
Owen Davies in ‘The nightmare experi-
ence: sleep paralysis, and witchcraft accu-
sations’ for Folklore 114 (2003) pp181-
204. Sleep paralysis is a real medical
syndrome, experienced by up to a fth of
the population. But its most frightening
aspects, including sensations of a pressing
weight, choking, and a sense of something
present in the room, have taken form in a
number of supernatural narratives
involving fairies, the devil, the dead, and
witches. Dual interpretations of the night-
mare, both medical and magical, were
current in the time of witchcraft trials but
that didn’t stop people being accused of
causing it.
Several Species Of Small Furry
Animals, Gathering Together In A
Cave, Grooving With A Pict
Death in the Neolithic was followed by
excamation, where the rats or similar
nibbled your esh off the bones. But did
this rather icky process take place in the
open air? No, says Stuart Reilly, in his
‘Processing the dead in Neolithic Orkney’,
Oxford Journal ofArchaeology 22 (2003)
pp 1 33-154. Even at Isbister, the celebrated
Tomb of the Eagles, bodies were stacked
on shelves to decay, then moved into
ossuaries further down. In the stalled
cairns of southern Rousay, skulls and
longbones were moved from low—lying
tombs to those higher up; but later on,
bones were kept in the original tomb. All
the different tomb designs in Orkney
followed the same tradition.
When I Behold The Wondrous Cross
Symbolic monuments in a devastated
setting are the subject of Nicholas
Saunders’ ‘Crucix, calvary and cross:
materiality and spirituality in Great War
landscapes’, World Archaeology 35ii
(2003) pp7-2l. Even before the war,
wayside crosses provided easily under-
stood icons of sacrice, and in the ghting
that followed, the destruction rst of holy
places - and then of any sense of place at
all - seemed like a kind of crucixion.
Afterwards the sense of continuity
reasserted itself, with the transformation
of imported Breton menhirs into calvaries
for the dead, while a barrow, the Butte de
Warlencourt, was covered rst with the
dead and then with the crosses that
commemorated them. 
3rd Stone 4.7 page 69
 Small Stone
The Shining One
John Sharkey recounts a memorable midsummer visit to Callanish
on the Isle ofLewis.
ERALD PONTING's SEARCH FOR THE
'missing' stone from Callanish 2 circle in
3rd Stone 45 reminded me of another
mystery connected with the standing stones on
Lewis, especially the legend of the Shining One
moving through the main circle at the midsummer
dawn.
The 1980 dig was the rst large-scale
excavation carried out at the Callanish main circle.
Beginning on the 1st May, it went on over two
seasons. A mixed bunch of artists, photographers
and others had camped on the open moor less than
a mile from the site. We were there to monitor the
excavations in our own individual ways, generally
in terms of a group art project, but also, as most of
us then thought, to keep an eye on the stones. One
of the archaeologists that I met after the excavation
had ended told me that it was the most careful and
professional job that he had ever worked on. (1)
Later I travelled around the islands with
Keith Payne collecting stories and researching the
connections between ancient sites and the folklore
of the Outer Hebrides. When our book The Road
Through The Isles was published in 1986 I
returned to Callanish at the Summer solstice. I
Midsummer
full moon over
Callanish,
1 986.
(Pic: Marlene
Forster)
page 70 3rd Stone 4.7
wanted to give some copies to the islanders who
had helped us and also to ascertain rst-hand the
claims which we had made that the major moon
standstill would be visible from the main circle in
relation to the surrounding landscape, rather than
any of the other likely sites around East Loch
Roag. It was Somerville who rst suggested that
ancient astronomers used complex moon congu-
rations at Callanish, but it was Hawkins, then
Thom and others such as the Pontings and Ron
Curtis (who helped me make some sense of what
occured) stated that the moon’s southern
maximum setting at its extreme delineation would
cross the horizon every 18.61 years to set behind a
peak in Harris called Clisham. (2)
I knew the standstill was to occur the
following year (but learned later that the weather
was dismal for those who gathered in expectation
of a visual feast) so I was relieved and excited
when the sunrise on the solstice morning was as
perfect as one would ever hope to see. The clear
weather continued throughout the day. After
watching the sunset, a small group of us waited in
the main circle for the full moon to appear. The
scenario that was supposed to occur was that the
 rising moon would travel up the body of a curved
mountain form known locally as the Sleeping
Beauty, twenty miles away. The gure comprised
two large hills and so the moon moving up over
Mor Mhonadh would emerge full blown from her
‘brow’ at Sidhean an Airgid.
The dark outline of the Sleeping Beauty
was barely visible. I spoke to an American woman
beside me about the impending celestial
happening. She was astounded that such an event
was due to occur. During our conversation I
learned that she had travelled here from Miami in
order to photograph the full moon at the
midsummer. She was following some kind of
hunch on her own private journey and was as
uncertain as myself as to what to expect. A few
other women had been listening to all of this, and
when the light from the moon appeared behind the
mountain they gave a rousing cheer and leapt
about in a wild group dance. The only way I could
keep myself together as the lunar light lit up the
mountain gure like a laser beam was to try to
time the whole sequence from beginning to end.
I was on a honeymoon with a new wife. I
had not slept since we left London. The sunrise
that morning was so breath-taking that I could
hardly contain myself all day. The moon’s light
disappearing into the head of the goddess appeared
like a fusion of an alchemical wedding. That
sudden darkness as I held my breath was the
longest ‘wait’ I had ever experienced! Then it
appeared for the rst time. A round golden orb
moving from the ‘brow’ and illuminating the body
of the Sleeping Beauty.
Hebridean summer nights are short so I
spent the next two days here, there and everywhere
around East Loch Roag trying to sort out some of
the possible rituals of this celestial drama in rela-
tion to different aspects of the terrain. I did not
meet the American woman again, even though we
were both at the same B&B, until the evening of
the 24th. I was too knackered and wrapped up in
my own stuff to take in what this landscape archi-
tect was on about. She had read that a Shining One
had once walked through the stones at the
midsummer’s dawn, and was so convinced that
this was related to the moon that she had travelled
from America to check it out. I had come across
this story before as told by an antiquary staying
with the Mathesons' at Stornaway Castle: when he
was a young lad he heard about or had actually
seen the gure he called the Shining One walking
the stone avenue. Aubrey Burl mentions this
‘something’ in The Stone Circles of the British
Isles (1976) and again in the text to a more recent
portfolio of wonderful photographs by Max
Milligan, Circles ofStone (1999). “Could it be that
three thousand years after Callanish had been
abandoned there lingered a dim folk-memory of
night-time ceremonies when the full moon moved Moonwalk,
along the outline of the horizon...”, he asks. June 22nd,
When the American woman returned to l 986.
the cottage for lunch she was in much the same (Pic: Marlene
state that I had been a few nights previously, and Forster)
she could hardly contain herself. She told me that
as she approached the stones that morning the pre—
dawn light was behind her. Standing by the large
spear—shaped stone that terminates the double row
of stones, the moon appeared to be at the end of
the avenue in front of the circle. The sky behind
her brightened and a gradually enlarging lunar ball
appeared to move in and around the tall centre
stone. She said it was hard to be concise about it
because of the glare dancing over the stones.
Under a slow and gradually brightening sky she
moved slowly down the rising avenue. The lunar
orb appeared to nally rest between two tall stones
at the southwest edge of the circle. To her utter
amazement it began to expand vertically until it
lled the 3m high space between the stones. As
she came level with the circle, the ‘gure’
wavered, and like a ghost began to fade. It quickly
disappeared over Cnoc an Tursa, by which time
the sun had risen.
I remember thinking as I left Callanish
that a concerted effort to record the major lunar
standstill at many megalithic sites between Lewis
and Stonehenge would be a very interesting exer—
cise. Now that new technology has caught up with
the fantasy it would be no big deal for a like-
minded group to prepare for such a project during
the next major standstill of the moon in 2005.
References
(1) John Sharkey, 1981, ‘Mapping Beyond The
Minchs’. The Ley Hunter 92 (Winter 1981/82).
(2) John Sharkey & Keith Payne, 1986, The Road
Through The Isles, (Aldershot).

3rd Stone 47 page 71
 Small Stone
Blackstone, Redstone and
Southstone
Shirley Toulson describes three medieval rock-cut dwellings.
HERE ARE DWELLINGS CUT INTO THE
outcrops of red sandstone, surfacing as
high rock formations in Worcestershire,
Staffordshire and Shropshire, which were inhab-
ited as recently as the 1960s. However, I am not
here concerned with those ‘rock houses’ so much
as the medieval habitations, more ecclesiastical
than domestic, which were carved into the inte—
riors of some of these caves. It was from such
places that hermits, as well as groups of clerics
attached to monastic foundations, performed
various priestly duties as well as involving them-
selves in the more secular tasks of providing
hospitality for travellers. In the case of riverside
hermitages, such as the three under discussion
here, they were also expected to act as ferrymen
and undertake the upkeep of bridges.
According to legend, one of the hermits,
who lived in the network of caverns hollowed into
the great rock of Blackstone, just south of
Bewdley on the eastern bank of the River Severn,
was noted for saving children from drowning in
that treacherous river. However, there was always
a downside. Herrnits could be no more than
Southstone cunning beggars or fugitives from justice. ‘Lewed
cave (pic: eremites’ the 14th century Langland called them
S. Toulson) when he wrote Piers Plowman. However, 12th
page 72 3rd Stone 4.7
century priest Layamon, who lived down-river
from the Blackstone and who was himself a hermit
might have been more generous.
It is also said that Layamon was respon-
sible for making Bewdley a sanctuary town, and
naturally stories have grown up about those who
took advantage of such a safeguard and their rela-
tionship with the inhabitants of Blackstone. One
such story relates to the wealthy Stratford family
of Clopton, who appropriately enough built a
bridge across the Avon in the 15th century. The
story concerns Alice Clopton, who should have
married Sir Harry Wade. On her way to the church
for her wedding she was abducted by a scorned
lover, who carried her off while screamed for help.
Sir Harry followed in hot pursuit, causing Alice’s
abductor to hurl her into the River Rea, from
which her body was later retrieved and buried in
an uninscribed altar tomb in Stratford parish
church.
Meanwhile, Sir Harry had pursued his
adversary through Edgbaston and on to
Kidderminster, from there to Bewdley, where he
had to give up the chase for the wretch saved his
own life by applying for sanctuary. Thwarted of
vengeance, Sir Harry nursed his sorrow and his
wrath in the caves of Blackstone rock, outwardly
living there as a revered and trusted hermit. For
twenty years he dwelt in Blackstone, until one day
an elderly penitent approached him complaining
that Bewdley town had become more of a prison to
him than a place of refuge and that he now wished
to confess his crime. Although Sir Henry had not
immediately recognised his old enemy, as soon as
he heard the man’s confession he promptly relin-
quished sanctity for vengeance, and grappling
with the would-be penitent, hurled him from the
summit of the rock into the waters of the Severn.
He then returned to Stratford and is said to be
buried beside his Alice (1).
Real or imaginary, the hermits of
Blackstone were certainly not the last inhabitants
of that rock. Windows were added for a second

storey of caves hollowed into a
northern face of the rock. They are
visible in a drawing made in 1721,
where the whole outcrop is described
as Blackstone cave. In World War
Two, the caves were used by a dye
works and brick walls were built to
make further ‘rooms’ in the main
cavity. Long before that a chimney
appears to have been cut from the
lower level of the rock to the wooded
hill above it.
The Blackstone outcrop,
which rises to a height signicant
enough to make absailing a viable
sport, is a cone-shaped outcrop.
Further south, below Stourport, there
is another imposing red sandstone cliff
on the opposite bank of the Severn.
Like Blackstone, it runs at right angles
to the river, but in this case it is topped
by a large, level marshland. The elab-
orate dwellings that have been cut into
this cliff-face include a chapel, whose
apse is still clearly marked. Over the
altar space there is reputed to have
been a wall-painting showing an
Archbishop saying Mass, and above
that an inscription declaring an indul-
gence to any who came devoutly to
that place (2).
These caves, ironically
enclosed in a caravan park, are
reputed to have been the dwelling of a
truly authentic hermit. For it was here
that the hermit Layamon, one-time
parish priest of nearby Areley Kings,
is said to have written a Mercian
version of Wace’s Brut, a history of
Britain traced from the supposed
landing of the Trojan Brutus at Totnes.
The ‘rooms’ cut into the rock face
here are again on two levels and
certainly spacious enough to have
enabled the hermits of Redstone to
offer hospitality to travellers jour-
neying along the Severn.
Possibly, in a similar fashion,
the hermits who dwelt in the rock at
Southstone were able to provide food
and shelter for those making their way
along the Teme, the Severn’s western
tributary. Although this rock is still in
the red sandstone geological belt, it is
actually an outcrop of the local tufa or
travertine rock, which owes its porous
nature to the cavities caused over the
centuries by decayed plant life, calci-
ed by the waters of the spring that
emerges just above it.
If you climb down the path
through the densely wooded Rock
Coppice, set on the steep slopes that
fall to the river from Sapey Common
to the north of Clifton upon Teme, you
will nd on your right a great mass of
crumbling grey rocks. They are now
the only traces of the warren of hermit
cells which once burrowed into them,
and the chapel dedicated to St. John
which once stood above the cells but
which has long since vanished. It is
possible that one of the cells of these
rocks was once inhabited by Wulsi, a
Far Left:
BZackstone
(pic:
M Griiths)
Left:
Interior
passage at
Redstone.
(pic:
S. Toulson)
Benedictine monk, brought up in
Worcestershire, who lived at the time
of King Cnut.. He is reported to have
made his hermitage ‘in the neighbour-
hood of Evesham, on the slope of a
wood, enclosed in a cave deep down
in the grey rock’. That sounds like
Southstone to me.
When I last visited
Southstone a blue hosepipe connected
the spring on top of the rock to the
stream that runs by its base. In past
centuries people came to drink the
holy, health-giving waters of this
spring, which like that of more urban
and fashionable spas no doubt tasted
revolting. After the church had gone,
some of its stones were used to build
a cottage which stood nearby. Within
living memory, that cottage was
inhabited by an old lady and her four
sons; but now even the remains of
their dwelling have been obliterated
by a new building.
Notes
1. Isaac Wedley, 1914, Bewdley and
Surroundings.
2. Rotha May Clay, 1914, The
Hermits and Anchorites ofEngland,
Methuen.
3. Ibid.
3rd Stone 4.7 page 73
Small Stone
The Devil at large in Suffolk
Robert Halliday reports on more diabolical visitations...
EREMY HARTE’S ARTICLE, ‘THE
JDevil in church’ (3rd Stone 44)
was a fascinating compendium
of information. It is interesting to read
how lightning strikes on churches
could have been consistently and
repeatedly interpreted as diabolic
visitations across Western Europe
from the 9th to the 17th century.
It should be expected this
study would mention the ‘enemy’s’
alleged appearance in Suffolk on 4
August 1577 at Blythburgh church
and Holy Trinity Church in Bungay.
“The Black Dog of Bungay’ left its
impression on local consciousness.
Holy Trinity parish registers record
the burial of ‘John Fuller & Adam
Walker slayne in ye Tempest in the
belfry in ye time of prayer upon the
Lord’s Day ye iiii of August’. The
churchwarden’s accounts include
payments to four women for laying
out their bodies, and carpenters for
repairing the church tower. Bungay
still derives part of its identity from
the event: local athletic groups call
themselves “Black Dogs’; a town
centre shop has been called ‘Black
Dog Antiques;’ and the town’s coat of
arms, granted in 1953, has a black
dog against forked lightning as its
crest. Black Dogs are still said to
haunt the Bungay area. The full story,
with a modern reprint of contempo-
rary accounts can be found in
Christopher Reeve, A Straunge Arid
Terrible Wander (sic): The Story Of
The Black Dog OfBungay, (Morrow
and Co. publishers, Bungay, 1988,
ISBN 094809304X).
In the churchyard near the
west front of Holy Trinity Church in
Bungay there is a stone, roughly
circular at the base, about three feet
high and three feet in diameter.
Known as ‘the Druid’s stone’, there is
a belief that if one runs around it a
certain number of times the Devil will
page 74. 3rd Stone 4.7
appear. I tested the legend, but found
that I became so disoriented that I
soon lost count of my circuits and no
longer knew in which direction I was
facing. (Could the story be based on
the rather obvious fact that if one runs
a narrow circuit several times one
becomes disoriented)?
The enemy also left a
reminder of his visit to Blythburgh
church in 1577 (see photograph
below), making scorch marks on the
inside of the north door as he left.
These can be seen, and do look like
impressions of an unusually large set
of fingers!
There are other folktales
about the enemy’s appearance in
Suffolk churches. He appeared in
South Elmham St. James parish
church during harvest time. Local
children raised the alarm, and while
the parson was summoned to destroy
him with bell, book and candle, the
men and forced him into the tower
with pitchforks. Hearing the parson’s
approach the enemy ed with an
awful screech. A hole and black
marks in the tower wall that maked
his exit had been cleaned away by the
1930’s. (R. H. Mottram, East Anglia,
(1933), 226). Could this have been a
folk-memory of a lightning strike?
At Westleton children
believed that if you ran around the
church seven times, westward from
the south chancel door, you would
hear the Devil rattling his chains
under a grating by the chancel door.
Women’s Institute members recorded
the tradition in the 1920’s, but said
that it only circulated among villagers
aged over 35, so the practice may
have died out in the 1880’s. It was
generally thought that you should not
look at the grating when running past
it. (R. Anderson, “scraps of English
folklore: Westleton’, Folklore 35
(1924), 359). Recently I asked about
local ghosts in the second hand book-
shop at Westleton, and was told that
the devil appeared if you ran around
the church, so the tradition is
evidently still known, (possibly
because it was written down), even if
it is not practiced.
P. H. Emerson, Pictures of
East Anglian Life, (1888), 11, said
that Church Lane at Southwold was
protected from death and bad weather
by ‘a shaggy dog with eyes like tea
saucers’. I do not think that this dog is
known now, but could it have been a
survival of a belief in guardian spirits
at holy places?
Popular books on folklore
say that there was a belief that when a
child was baptized the Devil ed the
scene through the north door of the
church. Thus the north door of a
church is called ‘the Devil’s door’
and was often left open during
baptisms. However I can nd few
specic references to this belief or
practice. Was this ever a part
of popular religious belief, or
is it a modern invention?

Avebury: work in progress
Rick Kemp describes his personal response to artistic megalithomania.
N 1983 I WAS A STUDENT AT
Goldsmiths College. Someone
ran a minibus tour down to
Wiltshire, visiting Stonehenge, West
Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill and
Avebury. The trip had an enormous
impact on me. I took a lot of photo—
graphs and slides, and showed them
back at college. Avebury had a greater
effect on me than Stonehenge. I think
it was something to do with the inter-
connected megalithic landscape; the
way the monuments related to each
other. West Kennet Long Barrow
seemed like a mythic location from a
dreamtime scenario. It almost felt as if
the right actions, or a recital of certain
prescribed words or phrases might
invoke the long dead, the Neolithic
made esh.
But how to paint Avebury?
How to depict a circle of massive
stones you cannot even see all at
once? I balked at the conceptual enor-
mity of the task, and continued to
rene and experiment with drawing,
painting and photographic techniques.
I visited Avebury again soon
afterwards and then there was a long
hiatus - over a decade — during which
I had to come to terms with life in the
Composition no. I: Imbolc
world after art school. During the
summer of 2000 I heard about another
tour of Avebury and went along out of
interest and not a little nostalgia, not
really expecting to learn anything I
hadn’t already explored in my student
days. I saw people touching the stones
as I had seen before, and there was
much talk of ley lines.
As our group began to
converse, we discussed books about
Avebury including Michael Dames’
Avebury Cycle, Julie Wakeeld’s
Legendary Landscapes and Terence
Meaden’s Secrets of the Avebury
Stones.
After many years of experi-
menting with multiple exposures, in
February 2002 I decided to set
Avebury as my subject matter. I
recorded about a ve percent success
rate in cogent compositions. The
process interests me because it
involves an element of the unknown,
the random: chance. Backed up with
notes, sketches and visits to the
Wiltshire Heritage and Alexander
Keiller Museums, I began to tease out
compositions for paintings, sorting
through all of the visual and anti-
quarian data I was accumulating.
Composition no. 4: Imbolc
Small Stone
The possibility that the
colossus known as the Obelisk which
once stood in Avebury’s South Circle
may have functioned as a gigantic sun
dial suggested a seasonal cycle to me,
like the contemporary Pagan year of
two solstices and equinoxes, plus four
cross-quarter Observances; eight
compositions in all.
I nally began work on the
cycle in September 2002. There are
now nalised compositions for
Imbolc (February), the vernal equinox
(March) and the winter solstice,
which is taking shape at this moment
in time. You might encounter me at
Avebury, as the seasons revolve, and I
attempt to distil some of the mystery
and magic from their turning and the
charismatic presence of what remains
to us of Avebury's enigmatic mega—
liths, sacred monoliths of the
Neolithic. Wrecked in the past,
Avebury is being restored in the
present, for our future heritage.
More ofRicks paintings can be
viewed on the Web at
www.artesian-arts.orgirickkemp.htm
Rick can be contacted at
KR236RK@aol.c0m
Composition no. 6: Vernal Equinox
3rd Stone 4.7 page 75
Small Stone
Whales on the Rocks
Kalle Sognnes explores some interesting aspects ofScandinavian rock art.
OR A CENTURY OR MORE THE
prehistoric rock art of
Scandinavia has been divided
into two major traditions. The earliest
rock carvings are thought to be from
around 9000 bp, the later ones from
the rst centuries AD. Motifs
belonging to the later Agrarian or
Bronze Age Tradition can be dated
broadly by comparison with engrav-
ings on bronzes, especially razors (the
Scandinavian Bronze Age lasted from
c1,700 to c500 BC). The earlier
hunter-gatherer or Arctic tradition
examples are more difcult to date.
The Holocene land uplift of the
Scandinavian Peninsula provides,
however, maximum dates for many
sites. A majority of these maximum
dates fall around the
Mesolithic/Neolithic transition, indi-
1. A 35 cm long depiction of
a porpoise at Reppen in
Fosnes, Nord-Trandelag
(photo K. Sognnes).
2. A 3 m long pilot whale
depicted at Strand in Osen,
Ser—Trendelag (photo K.
Sognnes).
page 76 3rd Stone 4.7
eating that a substantial number of
rock art images were made during the
Neolithic.
Among the subject matters
represented in the Bronze Age
Tradition are concentric rings and
cup-and-rings familiar from the
Atlantic seaboard of Europe. The
northernmost examples of this meta—
tradition, as it may be called, is found
at the Trondheim Fjord in central
Norway, at 64° N.
In this region an even more
widespread meta—tradition is repre—
sented. This meta-tradition, which
covers the northern parts of the
Euraisan taiga, is dominated by depic-
tions of elks. The elk is also the domi-
nating subject matter in the Arctic
rock art of Scandinavia, sometimes
supplemented or substituted by rein-
deer or red deer. At the fjords and
coast of central and northern Norway,
where the taiga meets the North
Atlantic seaboard, a local tradition
developed, in which maritime
elements were added. While the
terrestrial part was focused on elk and
other large cervids, whales and
porpoises dominate the maritime part
of this tradition. Fish are depicted at a
number of sites, while images of seals
are extremely rare. The whales are
frequently found together with boat
images and also waterfowls seem to
be part of this maritime complex.
In total around 100 depic-
tions of cetaceans are known, the
majority at a few Trondheim Fjord
sites, especially at Evenhus in Frosta
(Gjessing 1936) and Hammer in
Steinkjer (Bakka 1988). The whale
depictions vary considerably in size;
the smaller ones are around 20
centimetres long, while the two larger
are 7.5 and 6 metres long respectively.
Most images seem to depict
porpoises, which still are frequent in
many fjords and along the coast.
Other species are, however, also
represented, among them grampus or
killer whale and pilot whale.
In 1918 carved images
were found at some small rock
outcrops at the Evenhus farm on the
Frosta Peninsula virtually in the
middle of the Trondheim Fjord. This
site differed from all previous known
sites with Arctic rock art and consid-
erably changed contemporary concep-
tions on this art. At the main panel a
previous unknown mixture of elks,
whales, and boats were found. These
images are frequently superimposed
on each other but due to weathering, it
is difcult to decide which are the
earlier and which are the later ones.
This discovery multiplied the number
3. (Above) A possible whale—hunting scene at Evenhus in Frosta,
Nord-Trendelag (after Gjessing 1936).
4. (Right) A group ofwhales depicted at Hammer; Steinlg'er, Nord-
Trendetag (photo F Gaustad).
of known whale and boat depictions,
strongly emphasizing the maritime
character of this site. Of particular
interest are two boats, in which small
shes or whales are depicted. One of
these boats also features a human
gure. Fish are rarely depicted and no
undisputable examples are known
from Evenhus. The marked dorsal n
further supports the notion that we are
dealing with whales. It is therefore
likely that this is actually a scene
depicting porpoises after they are
caught and brought into the boats.
Although Arctic rock art was most
probably made by hunter—gatherers
hunting is hardly depicted. Only in
Alta in Finnmark, northernmost
Norway indubitable hunting scenes
are found (Helskog 1988).
Near the inner end of the
Trondheim Fjord, rock art was discov-
ered at Hammer farm in 1909. In the
decades following World War II the
landowner Ole Folden discovered a
number of new panels. Today around
twenty panels are known, most of
which are located at the hill-foot,
which border the elds. Some are,
however, located on small outcrops in
the middle of the elds. At Hammer,
where several hundred carvings are
currently known, both Arctic and
Bronze Age Tradition rock-art is
found, sometimes on the same panels.
Although elks are frequent, a strong
maritime aspect is emphasized by
boats and whales. In fact around one
third of all known whale depictions in
northern Europe are found at this site.
This site also has the largest concen-
tration of bird images.
The Hammer farm forms a
low headland at the northern side of
the Beitstad Fjord, the innermost
larger Trondheim Fjord basin. While
emerging from the sea the higher
southern part of this headland
protected a shallow beach, which
gradually grew into a ridge of dry
land. Most of the rock-art panels are
found at the inner end of this ridge.
When they were discovered the panels
were covered by a former beach bar.
This covering-up could only take
place when the panel still was within
reach of high tides, which means that
the Holocene land uplift not only
provides a maximum date but also a
minimum date that is almost identical.
Currently available data indicates that
this happened in the Late Mesolithic
around 5,400 bp. Other Hammer
panels have maximum dates from the
Early Neolithic around 4,700 bp.
That whales were exploited
in Stone Age Norway is demonstrated
by bones recovered during excava—
tions of dwelling sites in caves and
rock shelters along the coast. Many
whales were likely to have been
stranded or were chased and forced
ashore, where the killing took place.
Both at Evenhus and Hammer
beaches suitable for this kind of
hunting existed. However, the
Evenhus depictions indicate that
porpoises may have been hunted from
boats. During later centuries whaling
was an important part of Norwegian
coastal economy, for meat and for oil
production. Traditionally, swarms of
whales were chased into narrow bays
and small fjords, which then were
closed by nets. Harpoons and cross-
bows were used for the actual killing.
This technique may have been used in
the Neolithic as well, but so far no
rock art depicting whales or porpoises
have been found at places likely to
have been used for this kind of
hunting. I
Turning back to the rock
carvings, they do not seem to depict
carcasses. On the contrary they show
animals full of life. The artists seem to
have preferred depicting jumping
animals, showing them in the short
moment when they left their natural
environment — the sea — entering the
air, which is the realm of mankind.
Perhaps this was the reason why
whales and porpoises came to play
such an important role in the North
Atlantic rock art. It may not have been
their role in subsistence but rather the
playfulness of these large sea
mammals and their ability to move
between the sea and air that led Stone
Age people to immortalise them on
rocks.
Bibliography
Bakka, Egil 1988. Hellert'stningane pa°
Hammer 1' Beitstad, Steinkjer, Nord—Trendelag.
Rapport arkeologisk serie 1988—7. Trondheim,
Vitenskapsmuseet.
Gjessing, Gutorrn 1932. Arktiske heltert'st—
ninger t' Nord—Norge. The Institute for
Comparative Research in Human Culture
series B 21. Oslo, Aschehoug.
Gjessing, Gutorm 1936. Nordenfjelske rist—
ninger 0g maltnger av den arktiske grappe.
The Institute for Comparative Research in
Human Culture series B 30. Oslo, Aschehoug.
Helskog, Knut 1988. Helierz‘stntngene i Alta:
Spor etter rt'tualer 0g dagligliv 1' Ftnnmarks
forhz'stort'e. Alta, Alta museum.
Sognnes, Kalle 2002. Land of elks — sea of
whales: Landscapes of the Stone Age rock-art
in central Scandinavia. In G. Nash & C.
Chippindale (eds): European Landscapes of
Rock-Art, 195—212. 3
3rd Stone 4.7 page 77
 Reviews
The Ancient Yew: A History ofTaxus baccata
Robert Bevan-Jones, tdgather Press, 2002, pb, £1 6. 99
Worn, twisted, serpentine, knotty
and rough, the trunk of an ancient
yew tree compels our attention. The
oldest trees, those with a girth of
thirty feet or more, seem like antiq-
uity made manifest. They have been
the objects of scientic curiosity for
going on four hundred years, but this
is peanuts to some of the estimated
dates for the trees themselves. The
most cautious botanists accept that
the yew can live for over a thousand
years. At the less sober end of
the spectrum, there are no limits
to the estimates of age: think of
a number, and double it, seems
to be the rule.
011 purely botanical
grounds, the veteran yews could
be as old as the bristlecone pines
of California. But much of their
attraction comes from their place
in the cultural landscape. All the
oldest yews owe their survival to
human care, usually because they
are in churchyards. Some of them
may have survived by chance
before the rst shrine was built
beside them, but this hardly seems
" H
likely for them all. The old yews are
found, in Britain at least, within the
natural distribution area of the tree.
There were veteran trees from an
early date in Ireland, but they have
all been lost. Normandy has a similar
tradition, which is as yet virgin terri-
tory for yew research.
So the debate over the age
of yews is as much archaeological as
botanical. Great naturalists have
written about the tree - de Candolle,
Lowe, Loudun and in more recent
times Alan Mitchell and Paul
page 78 3rd Stone 4.7
Tabbush. But there has been no
corresponding research by landscape
historians. The particular life-history
of an old yew, the fungal hollowing
which makes the oldest trees such
individual sculptured things, dees
any dating by radiocarbon or
dendrochronology. The trees must be
studied as monuments, not just as
organisms. This is where Robert
Bevan-Jones makes his contribution
to the debate.
.- : . Will! I..E§1-_:-“‘§?& by I?!
. afar”
' ' 'I Hi: (ans-smear
" "'..-':-'iEX-?9 '.:
Ig
iir
I -' 'Wiwngai
II
KF
He was raised in the timber
industry and knows his stuff. This
book combines botanical and histor-
ical sources, superseding the rather
more woolly—minded Sacred Yew,
and is illustrated by photographs
which capture the fascinating,
almost intimidating presence of the
great old veterans. Much good
advice is given on the care of the
trees, and this is certainly needed.
The tragic storm-death of the
Selbome yew - reduced now to a
carved altar and some souvenir
pieces - shows how vulnerable the
old trees are. As late as 1971, a vicar
could hack down a centuries-old yew
as a ‘shapeless’ impediment to his
tidy churchyard. Usually in such
cases the stump is left, and Bevan-
Jones urges preservation of these, as
they may provide clearer evidence
for date than the standing tree. There
are many of them available for
study, especially in Wales, a country
with the unique feature of yew
circles around churchyards.
He gives a valuable survey
of non-ecclesiastical yews,
including those acting as markers
for hundredal moots, which must
have been venerable trees even
before the Tudor revisions of
local government. Other old trees
grow, or grew, on a castle mound
at St. Weonards, a Norman castle
it I'Davijd: . . “ail -array, .ouih}ii~' at Merdon, and an Anglo-Saxon
. I__ y . _. .1 ;‘il'-Sm
manta-5915““
-I '2' ' " '
. .
' barrow at Taplow. Clearly these
must be later than the features
_
:
on which they grow, which
provides some upper limit to
their age. Then there are the church—
yard yews which belong to
secondary mediaeval settlements
into waste land. The sequence here
would be village, church, then yew;
it seems highly unlikely that an
existing tree would be enough to
determine the site of a settlement.
This applies equally well to the yew
trees found at Cistercian sites,
T—‘—'——'
although Bevan-Jones argues that
these may be older than their parent
abbeys, making a test case of the
trees at Strata Florida which appear
in mediaeval sources. At Waverley,
however, a respectably large yew
has grown over the post-reformation
ruins of the abbey.
From the seventeenth
century onwards, we have securely
recorded plantings, usually by
churchwardens. These have
received much less attention than
the older trees. Surveys of Victorian
plantings suggest that trees of the
same age can vary greatly in girth.
So when we survey a prodigious
tree like that of Ankerwyke, it
certainly looks older than the
twelfth-century priory which it
adjoins: but that would make it a
historical anomaly. If it the nuns
weren’t looking after it, then who
was? Great trees do not survive in
isolation.
Bevan-Jones interprets the
oldest yews as survivors from the
trees planted around the cells of
sub-Roman or early mediaeval holy
men. Outliving any other trees
around the shrine, these would
become charged with the memory of
the saint and would be preserved
beside the church which replaced
his original hermitage. This
certainly ts in with what we know
of the site histories, and suggests
that the most venerable trees are
some 1500 years old. Yews at wells,
to which he devotes a chapter, could
have a similar origin, and the trees
would also have been practical,
since the root structure acts to knit
together the loose earth around the
well.
Like his predecessors,
Bevan-Jones has been caught up in
the fascination of these trees. He
writes not just about the botany
and distribution of the yew, but of
its folklore, its place in poetry and
legend, the prehistoric artefacts
made of its wood and the bound-
aries and place-names that
preserve its memory. This book is
the best introduction to the
compelling and controversial
study of the ancient yew.
Jeremy Harte
Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas
Claudia Mller—Ebeling, Christian Ra'tsch, and Surendra Bahadur
Shahi, Thames & Hudson, 2002, hb, £29.95
This is a large, truly sumptuous
volume, richly endowed with
hundreds of magnicent, mainly
colour photographs (many of them
taken by Miiller—Ebeling and
Ratsch, to their great credit). But it is
no bland coffee-table book, for the
photographs are more than magni-
cent, they comprise rare and impor-
tant visual documentation. The
pictures show Nepalese shamans at
work healing, in trance, ying into
the air, beating drums at natural
sacred places, and leading esoteric
nocturnal rituals never
photographed before. There are
superb and creative photographs of
remarkable but little-known objects
such as ritual knives and tantric axes
with clear crystal blades, woven
crosses acting as spirit traps, shrine
sites of many kinds, both natural and
constructed, mudras (ritual hand
gestures), venerated rocks
displaying yoni (vulvic) and lingam
(phallic) simulacra, pilgrims,
temples, stunning Himalayan
scenery showing sacred peaks, over
a hundred superb tan/ca (or thangka)
paintings, and culturally signicant
plants. There are even visual
comparisons between
characteristic Nepalese
cloud formations and
traditional cloud depic-
tions in tankas, not to
mention powerful
imaging of concepts
using computer-enhanced
techniques. All too often
reviews marginalise or
even omit to mention the
value of the visuals in illustrated
texts, even when they form a
poweril part of a work’s overall
documentation, and to do so here
where over 600 illustrations are
involved would be especially
culpable. This book engages the eye
and the mind in a seamless stream of
information.
Miiller—Ebeling is an art
historian and anthropolgist, Réitsch
is an anthropologist well—known and
respected worldwide for his knowl-
edge of the botany and indigenous
and archaic ritual usage of psychoac-
tive plants (he was interviewed many
years ago for The Lay Hunter, and
took part in the Dragon Project’s
ancient sites dreamwork
programme), while Bahadur Shahi is
a Newari tanka painter and authority.
The content of the book is therefore
highly authoritative. It explores the
practices and varying states of
consciousness of Nepalese shamans
of various ethnic backgrounds,
making this the rst major published
study of its kind. It discusses the
possible identity of the legendary
mind—altering sacramental drink,
soma, and provides recipes, tables
and charts concerning about two
dozen plants used by Himalayan
shamans that have never before had
their psychoactive properties investi-
gated. lt exposes the often uneasy
relationship between Buddhism and
native shamanism, revealing a
certain Buddhist hypocrisy, explains
the ritual use of tankas, and
describes the conceptual
world inhabited by the
shamans and tantrists.
The book is
simply packed with infor—
mation, beautiilly organ-
ised and laid out, with a
good index, an excellent
bibliography, and even a
discography. The volume
as a whole is nothing short
of sensational. Anyone who thinks
that the subject area of shamanism
has been over—egged needs to get
hold of this mighty visual and textual
document as a corrective, while
those in any way interested in the
subject matter cannot afford to be
without it.
Paul Devereux
3rd Stone 47 page 79
Digital Domesday
Alecto.Historieal Editions CD-ROM 2002, various versions available, prices from
£2290. 00 (yes, really!) to £95.00, contact details below.
Readers of 3rd Stone will perhaps
recall the scene from the lm of
Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the
Rose (1980), where Sean Connery’s
character, a Franciscan Friar named
William of Baskerville, is having an
altercation with a senior monk - the
“Venerable” Jorge. In disputing
William’s opinion that Aristotle had
spoken of laughter as good and an
instrument of truth, Jorge asked if
William himself had ever read this
book by Aristotle, firmly in the
knowledge that William could not
possibly have done so. Jorge himself
had the only copy locked away and
access to it had been conned to an
elite few.
William of Baskerville of
course replied that he had not seen the
book, but these days he might have
added: “although I have a copy of it
here on CD-ROM”. ..
It might sound like a Monty
Python sketch but the possibility
remains, for the original manuscript of
the Domesday Book held in the Public
Record Ofce has been taken apart,
photographed, and a transcript and all
the necessary software added. You can
now view what is arguably the most
remarkable surviving historical manu-
script, the entire Domesday Book, on
your own PC or at the local library,
record ofce, college or wherever. You
will require lots of free disc space, and
according to the blurb what you get is
the Manuscript: all 888 folios from
page 80 3rd Stone 4.7
Great and Little Domesday, line by
line translations matched to the orig-
inal text, an Index of People and an
Index of Places including map refer-
ences, the rst reproduction of
Domesday, the Farley transcript of
1783, a General Introduction and
lrther introductions to each county,
some worked studies on medieval life,
a glossary and a bibliography
In other words you get
unprecedented access to the complete
original survey of 1086 listing what
was connected to the land, what it was
worth, and who held it. The original
can be viewed alongside a translation,
it can also be matched to the Farley
transcript ordered by George III in
1783. The translation of Great
Domesday was revised between 1985
and 1992 from the translations
published in the Victoria County
History from 1904 onwards, and the
translation of Little Domesday was
commissioned in 1999.
The translation makes Digital
Domesday easy to use, and the more it
is accessed the more the reader will get
used to the period terms and their vari-
ations in spelling without having to
continually look them up.
What Domesday offers is a
breakdown of England just 20 years
after the Anglo Saxon period ended at
Hastings in 1066. The survey is there-
fore not just of the new Norman
society after two decades and a bench-
mark for everything since, it also
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offers a glimpse back at Anglo Saxon
culture and a standpoint from which
the Roman and other cultures can be
judged prior to that. Michael Wood
worked a great example of this on
television to celebrate the 900th
anniversary that is still available in
paperback and in libraries,
(Domesday: A Search for the Roots
ofEngland, BBC Books, 1986).
For the not so experienced,
getting their hands on Domesday
will at first mean having a look at
where they live, or a well known site
such as Avebury: ‘Rainbold holds
Avebury church from the King with
2 hides Value 403’. (One hide is
about 120 acres, and an acre being
around the size of a football pitch.
We might wonder where Avebury’s
240 football pitches might be
found...)
Making comparisons of
your place of interest with other
Domesday places, however, is where
Domesday starts to demonstrate its
potential. A comparison of our
chosen example of Avebury with
other villages in the Upper Kennet
region not only shows that many of
today’s small places were surpris-
ingly big 900 years ago (Bedwyn is
the main place with over 150 people,
then Ramsbury which has over 100,
and then Pewsey with over 75), but
evaluating the numbers of working
people against acreage under cultiva-
tion produces enlightening results.
«(mama

Those wondering why they
should bother accessing the original
when there are translations should
recall that direct public accessibility to
quality historical source material is of
fundamental importance, because
history, and archaeology for that
matter, isn’t exactly what it says on the
tin.
Not only are historical texts,
other documents, and even landscapes
too important and tremendously
powerful to be transcribed and inter-
preted by a monopoly who wish to
impose their will and outlook on
everyone else. The obvious example
would be the Dead Sea Scrolls, where
a closed shop of scholars appointed
their own successors and would not let
anyone else near the source. But we
might also recall that the National
Trust and English Heritage each have a
unique and tremendously strong stran-
glehold on public history, so the tin
does not even contain what is relevant
and required by one and all.
Check out Digital Domesday,
it’s what it says it is on the box!
The Digital Domesday is published by
Alecto Historical Editions, 9 Upper
Addison Gardens London
W14 SAL. Telephone: 0207 602 1848.
E—mail: susanbarnes@domesday—
book. com. (WW. domesdaybook. com)
Note: The review copy ofDigital
Domesday supplied by Alecto for this
review has been donated to the Local
Studies Department of the Wiltshire
and Swindon Record Ofce.
Brian Edwards
Explore Mythology
Bob Trubshaw; Heart ofAlbion
Press, 2003, £9.95
Contemporary life with its great
mixture of opportunities that cross-
cut the social classes provides an
equally complex mixture of schol—
arship that admits niches between
the ivory-tower scholar and popular
writer. Bob Trubshaw’s book
Explore Mythology is an example ~—
the author’s status as a noninstitu-
tionalized amateur, aware of the
professional treatments of his
personal interests, has freed him to
write for the “in betweens” of the
mythological scholarship. His
book seems aimed at a particular
British audience (though accessible
to others), and navigates around
some familiar ground to provide a
new slant on the subject. The
success of this book is best judged
according your aims: are you
seeking a book providing adequate
coverage of the well—known fields
of mythography, or have you been
there and now seek particular, even
unusual, applications of the mate-
rial? If the latter, then this book
will seem admirable in its cultur—
ally local application of mythog-
raphy.
Nothing being perfect, I
must say I was sometimes bemused
by the organization of the book.
The book is encyclopedic in an odd
way. Consider one case to stand
for my general criticism: The early
chapter “Pioneers” provides
capsule reviews of major mytho-
graphical theories, and while they
are adequate, they also seem unbal-
anced. Malinowski needed better
treatment whereas Eliade is exten—
sively treated. Levi Straus is said
to have a “fatal aw” but the same
might be said (and wasn’t) for
Eliade - indeed, many theories have
fatal aws because any single
theory is rarely a satisfying expla-
nation. Then this chapter takes a
curious turn when the summaries
of the pioneers turns toward the
theme of the “wildmen and wild-
women” in myth and fiction.
Though this is a welcome discus—
sion of the way myths handle
gender issues, and the author is
creative in the way he transitions
from classical myth studies to the
broader consideration of themes
spanning myth and contemporary
ction and cultural movements,
I’m left feeling this discussion
belonged elsewhere. '
If I was sometimes jarred by
what seemed an odd conjugation of
topics, or the sometimes loose use
of genres (I would have divided
some of his exemplar narratives
separately into myth and legend), I
was always aware that I am a
certain kind of reader, an American
reader, and the British audience and
other scholars may have a differ-
ence sense of what is right. As
well, my occasional bemusement
was balanced by my admiration of
the author’s extension of mytholog-
ical studies to the familiar genres of
British life (with enough cultural
overlap with Western life to keep
my interest).
If you are confused about
my position, that’s OK: so am I,
and of what use is an articially
thematic review when life is too
complex for that? In any event, I
too have written survey works and
understand the challenges involved,
the tradeoffs necessary. Writing
surveys is often more agonizing
than writing a meticulous article
for the experts. We did not really
need another summary of mythog-
raphy, and Trubshaw did not give
us one. His book is idiosyncratic
in a useful way and survives when
it jumps the rails. We live in direly
practical times, when scholarly
efforts are under increasing public
criticism; unconsciously or not,
Trubshaw applies scholarship
where the greater public can see
the connections between the
subject and their own local culture.
In some ways I view this as a more
courageous act of writing than the
presentation of bold new theories. I
leave that for you to ponder.
Wade Tarzia
3rd Stone 4.7 page 81

Quatermass
D VD Boxset
Acionados of cinematic megaliths
will be thrilled at the DVD release of
the 1979 television series Quatermass
(Clear Vision Video), Nigel Kneale’s
bleak but nonetheless gripping vision
of the near future covered in Leslie
Ellen Jones’ ‘Megaliths and Movies’
article in 3540. John Mills’ Professor
Quatermass is looking for his missing
granddaughter who has joined a youth
movement, the Planet People, a gnostic
cult with a creed of violence and anti-
science who want off of planet Earth.
The Planet PeOple roam the country—
side, travelling to ancient sites and
other signicant landmarks, chanting
‘ley, ley, ley’ and following dowsed
lines of energy. Speaking to some of
the Planet People in an effort to under-
stand what drives them, Quatermass is
told to ‘Stop trying to know things’, an
irresistible line which sums up
Kneale’s obvious antipathy to 19708
liberalism. The Planet People gather at
Ringstone Round, an imaginary stone
circle which the lmmakers had built
in lieu of Stonehenge which they were
unable to use as a location, and are
promptly incinerated by an unknown
energy of ‘lovely lightning’. Professor
Quatermass learns that an alien force is
behind the madness that is gripping
young people everywhere, and works
out a way to send the unseen extrater-
restrials packing...
The 3-CD DVD boxset also
includes the far lesser 90 minute
cinema version of Quatermass,
released as The Quatermass
Conclusion, an interview with Nigel
Kneale and various other extras.
Quatermass is a superb sci-f1 yarn in
the dystopian genre, which happens to
feature folkloric and archaeological
themes, but above that it is abrilliant
if cynical observation on the uneasy
relationship between scientic ortho-
doxy and the wide—eyed chaos of
popular myth. Kneale’s fable is of
course a one-sided argument, but one
that never fails to entertain.
Neil Mortimer
page 82 3rd Stone 4.7
Children of the New Age: A History ofSpiritual Practices
Steven J. Sutclwfe, Routledge, 2003, pb, £13.99
Great empires rise and fall, there is
strange mingling of faiths and races,
traditional beliefs lose all respect...
isn’t it time for a creed for the new
millennium? So historians of reli-
gion have been saying for many
years, but if this book is anything to
go by, they’ve got a long wait ahead.
The crucibles that once forged
Buddhism, Christianity and Islam
are broken for ever. No wild-eyed
warrior faith will burst aming from
the ashrams of the New Age to
lighten up our cities. Steven Sutcliffe
explains why.
In its origins, from the
19303 through to the years of nuclear
threat, ‘New Age’ meant something
physically real: an impending apoca-
lyptic event which only the spiritu-
ally elect could hope to survive.
When Alice Bailey or the
Rosicrucians talked about global
transformation, they meant that
actual supernatural transformations
of this world were imminent. But by
the 19505, like every eschatological
movement before them, they had
come to accept that the heavens were
not going to open. Not literally: not
now.
When the Messiah fails to
take personal control, every new
religious movement faces a crisis of
authority. Just who is in charge,
then? Usually it is upper-class men
with a air for seizing the centre of
communications who step in and
create a structure for the new faith.
There was no shortage of them in the
embryonic New Age movement;
Sutcliffe focuses on Peter Caddy,
who guided a mixed bag of spiritual
questers on their journey to become
the Findhorn Foundation. Wellesley
Tudor Pole also makes an appear-
ance, as does Sir George Trevelyan;
all good chaps, many of them ex-
colonial administrators, like Gerald
Gardner.
So the New Age had its
leaders, but it was followers that
were in short supply. People didn’t
want to become bricks in a new reli-
gious structure, they wanted to act as
yeast in a continual spiritual
ferment, making their free personal
journey from creed to creed. Those
were the only terms on which the
Sixties were prepared to accept spir—
itual guidance, and the pre-War
generation had to come to terms with
the hippy era if their movement was
not to die out altogether. There were
some difficult moments, at
Glastonbury and elsewhere, but the
older generation (who had enjoyed a
few discreet summers of love in their
own time) soon abandoned formal
structure in favour of loose-knit
networking. Prophecies of the End
were tacitly discouraged, and public
apocalypse gave way to private
gnosis.
It’s a familiar story in the
anthropology of religion, and
Sutcliffe employs the usual
academic discourse to describe it,
but he’s no outsider. Research
Fellow or not, his roots are in that
congenial mind-body-spirit fug of
incense and nonsense. You can’t help
warming to the guy, especially when
he sets out for Experience Week at
Findhorn. Against his best inten-
tions, he discovers something a bit
inadequate about the New Age
milieu. Conscientiously, he shared
his feelings with fellow Seekers. But
they soon realised that he wasn’t
Seeking any more: he had found his
true teacher, it seems, at the
University of Stirling.
There’s something sad
about this metamorphosis of New
Age, the way it began with small
groups facing down the apocalypse,
and ended up as yet another excuse
for talking about ourselves. Perhaps
that is why the term ‘New Age’ is
vanishing from the discourse
anyway, reduced to a useful tag,
along with ‘alternative’ and
‘holistic’, to describe the top shelves
in the spiritual supermarket. This
book is the study of an ambience, not
a movement. But in a modern
consumer democracy, where people
can pick and choose their gurus,
ambience may be all that is left of
religion.
Jeremy Harte
 Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James Vlis Demonology
and the North Berwick Witches
Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, University ofExeter Press, 2000, pl), £16. 99
This volume in the Exeter Studies in
History series is a detailed study of the
trials and executions in Edinburgh
between 1590 and 1591 known as the
North Berwick witch-hunt. This was
occasioned by an alleged attempt to
sink the ship of King James VI of
Scotland (later rst I of England) by
witchcraft as he returned to Scotland
with his bride, Anne of Denmark, at the
end of April 1590.
Document-based, the book is
essentially a reader designed to provide
an introduction to the subjects of
witchcraft and demonology. It is
divided into two parts: Part 1 provides
the contextual information needed to
understand the texts; Part 11 comprises
eighteen examinations, confessions
and depositions; eight “dittays” (court
records of the trials of the main
suspects); News om Scotland, a semi-
ofcial, sensationalized account of the
interrogations of the supposed witches;
and the Demonology of King James,
rst printed in Edinburgh in 1597.
James was uniquely qualied
to write the Demonology as not only an
intended victim of witchcraft, but as a
magistrate concerned with the proper
treatment, examination and punish-
ment of witches. Having begun by
doubting the reality of the witchcraft
belief, he became convinced of it after
spending months personally examining
the North Berwick witches, telling
jurors in 1591 that whatever evidence
had been garnered from them “hath
bene done by me my selfe”. Some of
his subject matter recalls specic
details mentioned in the dittays: the
Devil’s rst approach; the “shameful
i kiss”; the swift transport of witches
l
through the air; the conjuring of
storms; the making of wax andclay
images; the concoction of magical
curative powders.
Other material is drawn from
standard demonological treatises.
While it is difcult to be certain of the
inuences on James from so short of
text (only 81 pages in the 1597 quarto),
probably he had read Reginald Scot,
and, among Continental scholars,
Weyer, Bodin, Hemmingsen, and
Hyperius. As a Protestant monarch, he
was concerned to lay down “right”
belief for Protestants about witches,
including the importance of not
consulting them even for medical
advice (unlike the English witchcraft
act of 1563, the Scottish act in the same
year legislated not only against practi-
tioners of witchcraft but against those
who sought their help).
Consequently, many of
James’s points are commonplaces of
demonological writing. He asks stan-
dard questions about the nature of
witchcraft and gives standard
answers, accompanied by standard
biblical citations. He also follows a
standard format, casting the
Demonology as a dialogue, popular in
the fteenth and sixteenth centuries,
not least for presenting controversial
issues, and employs standard rhetor—
ical devices. As Normands and
Roberts remark, the importance of
James’s Demonology is not because it
is particularly ground-breaking, but
because it is the only demonological
treatise written by a Renaissance
monarch.
The Demonology is divided
into three books, dealing respectively
with magic, witchcraft, and the opera-
tions of spirits. Like his predecessors
in demonological writing, James
distinguishes between magic and
witchcraft, and different sorts of
magical practice, and embarks on
philological discussion of terms.
Among other subjects, he treats of the
nature of sorcery and of necromancy,
which he describes as “black and
unlawful science”, evidently
accepting the false etymology of Latin
nigromantia as “black art”.
From a folkloric point of
View, James is at his most interesting
in Book III, dealing with troublesome
spirits, which Protestant pneu-
menology declared to be either illu—
sions or diabolic manifestations. The
miscellaneous topics he covers are the
troubling of houses by spirits, were—
wolves, incubuses, fairies, and
demonic possession and exorcism
(here James comes close to acknowl-
edging that even the hated “Romish
exorcisms” might actually work).
If I have one problem with
this richly assemblage of texts, it is
with the pedantry of its apparatus. The
avowed aim of the Exeter Studies in
History is to bring research “in acces-
sible form to a student and general
readership”. The compilers appear to
have interpreted this as a need to talk
down. Their assumption of very
limited understanding on the part of
readers has led them into excessive,
time-wasting (for the reader) annota—
tion. Places mentioned in the texts,
matters of history, and probable
sources needed to be explained, as did
occasional antique turns of phrase; but
why on earth did they bother to gloss
“namely” as “especially”, “except” as
“unless”, and “hearing tell of” as
“hearing the matter being spoken
about”? None of the original vocabu-
lary was unintelligible in the context;
nor would one expect readers
studying historical documents to be
without access to a dictionary.
However, forget the glosses. Read the
texts.
Jennifer Westwood
3rd Stone 47 page 83
Explore Green Men
Mercia MacDermott, Heart ofAlbion Press, 2003, pb, £9. 95
The enigmatic silence of the Green all that, briey dismissing the usual
Man has been broken in the last suspects - Jack-in-the-Green, the
decade by a ood of books, with a Green Knight and so on — to concen-
new study coming out pretty much trate on the art as art. It is true that
every year since 1990. Most of them some texts, such as the Legend of the
were lavishly illustrated, which was True Cross, may be relevant but only
just as well, since much of the when they are understood as part of
commentary was nonsense. This one their social background. Just to bring
features new photographs from Ruth this point home, she arranges her
Wylie’s superb archive, and it has a narrative around thumbnail sketches
text which makes sense. of monasticism, mediaeval society,
Mercia MacDerrnott comes the Reformation and so on.
to this myth-laden territory with a Some people just like nding
cool head. Facts are what interest her, Green Man — and MacDermott offers
rather than the feel-good search for helpful clues here, including notes on
some Great Green Universal wonderful nds in museums. But she
Principle. The rst chapter gets rid of aims to classify Green Men, not just
collect them. She is careful to distin-
guish particular styles, such as the
Italianate, and to be very clear about
the differences between human and
animal, foliate and disgorging heads.
In a surprisingly effective strategy she
does her chronology backwards,
starting with the Victorians. After all,
nobody ever attributed mystical
insights to them, however many
Green Men they carved. The same
goes for the Renaissance, which
represents a cultural break with its
rejection of the indigenous tradition
and the revived use of classicising
motifs
It seems that there is no true,
archetypal Green Man. Each era rein-
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vents the image in its own way.
Gothic Green men are different from
those that came before and after; they
are very human, full of character, not
stylised and ornamental.
Grotesqueness is a particular feature
of the period, culminating in the
sprouting heads, where foliage spills
uncomfortably from nostrils, lips,
eyes and ears. Gothic is often seen as
the most mysterious period for the
Green Man, but that may reect our
own preconceptions. Certainly the
famous heads at Southwell and the
foliage that wreathes them were
chosen for decorative effect, not for
the magical signicance of the plants.
In Romanesque art, which has
received little attention so far, the
human head is the exception. It is cat-
masks which are the norm, though
admittedly some Romanesque art is so
crude that it is hard to tell the difference
between a man and a lion. Disgorging
leonine faces are particularly common
in early manuscripts, especially the
Beatus page which stands at the begin-
ning of the Psalms. And then at the
earliest period, in the eleventh century,
we meet with disgorging heads in
prole, rather than full-face, while the
foliage, far from being naturalistic,
consists of beaded lines ending in a sort
of r—cone.
It is these earliest heads
which have led Macdermott to a
remarkable discovery, one of the few ‘
really new conclusions to be published
in this eld of study. She traces the
evolution of these early disgorging
heads to motifs which appear in Indian
sculpture of the fourth and fth
.
century. The full-face monstrous head
-:. ';
is a standard decorative theme called
the kirttimukha; the animal head in
prole is a makara. The resemblance to
the western carvings is indisputable,
once pointed out: the ‘r—cone’ is really
a lotus bud. How these motifs came to
leap from one end of the continent to
another - on carved ivories? on silks? -
will be a matter for future research.
This is a major contribution to Green
Man studies.
Jeremy Harte

Male Witches in Early Modern Europe
Lara Apps, and Andrew Gow, Manchester University Press, 2003, pl), £12. 99
This book has something genuinely
new to say on the overworked topic of
witchcraft. Lara Apps and Andrew
Gow have looked at the literature and
asked a deceptively simple question:
what about the gender bias?
Well, we thought we knew
about that one. The witch—hunt was
patriarchy in action, wasn’t it, a
murderous oppression of women’s
lives. Very well, say the innovative
duo, but what about the men? They
made up between a fth and a quarter
of all victims in Europe as a whole.
73% in Normandy. A staggering 92%
in Iceland. These are not the sort of
gures anyone should ignore, but
generations of historians have done
just that, talking about the witch as
‘she’, and dismissing all evidence to
the contrary. Even the uninitiated
reader can see that pictures of the
Sabbat show lots of male witches. Yet
they have been dismissed as simply
relatives of the accused women - or
heretics accused of witchcraft by
mistake - or sufferers from a social
pandemic which spiralled away from
its natural victims, the women. None
of these theories hold up.
It’s ironic that the feminist
approach to witchcraft, by conning
its view of victims to the women, has
condemned a whole sector of society
to invisibility just because of their
sex. But that’s not altogether unex-
pected. Academics, male or female,
like to adopt the essentially masculine
persona of a cool, modern scholar tut-
tutting over the excesses of the past,
characterised by the ancient, supersti-
tious and essentially female witch.
They have written, not so much to
explain the things people thought at
the time, but to explain them away: as
if they were a sort of fungus on the
surface of real historical facts. Apps
and Gow point out that we habitually
talk about the belief in witches, thus
dismissing the whole business in
advance; nobody talks about a
‘belief’ in famine or war.
The history of witchcraft,
from Scott onwards, has been about
denying that there ever were witches.
To abandon that seems like a
complicity in the evil that the
prosecutors did. But the texts are
almost all written from the witch—
hunter’s perspective, and a book
such as Stuart Clark’s Thinking
with Demons which really engages
with this evidence is bound to
tread on slippery moral ground.
The alternative, as typified by
Anne Barstow’s Witchcraze, is a
polemical but basically phoney
sympathy with the dead. We don’t
know, we cannot imagine what it
was like. The famous letter of
Johannes Junius, reproduced here
from the text smuggled out after
his torture at Bamberg in 1628, is
as near as we can come to that.
Apps and Gow are
equally dismissive of the psycho-
sexual readings that suggest the
witch was somehow a partner in
the process of her torture and
examination, working out a play
of self-destruction. It’s easy to
imagine torture as eroticism when
writing about women, less so
when the experiences of men are
given equal validity. Suspected
witches, of both sexes, wanted
above all to retain the integrity of
their soul and keep faith with God,
in the face of the worst that
society could do to them. The
persecutors were convinced that
mental weakness lay at the root of
witchcraft, and though weakness
was gendered as feminine, in real
life it could be just as easily attrib-
uted to men. Magic, like language,
was a womanish domain. It smelt
of the kitchen; real men didn’t do
magic, and any man who did was
ipso facto not a real man. If patri-
archy is the rule of the strong-
minded, then everyone in that
society, male or female - espe-
cially male - has to struggle
against showing mental weakness.
Men who could not or would not
fit the role of oppressor were
compelled to take that of victim.
This book is their memorial.
Jeremy Harte
Stone Circles: A
Photographic Tour,
Version 2.0
Torn Bullock and Andy Burnham
CD-ROMfor PC and Macintosh
CD1: England, Wales and Brittany
CD2: Scotland and Ireland
Two CD set: £35.00, single CD:
£20. 00. Reductions available for
registered owners of Version 1.0.
Version 1.0 of Stone Circles: A
Photographic Tour was a great
success, earning rave reviews from
all quarters, so Version 2.0 has been
hotly anticipated among online site
hounds. Needless to say, it doesn’t
disappoint. So what’s new, and is it
worth the expense of updating to this
new version? Well, there is so much
new material in this new edition that
the complete programme runs across
two CDs, available individually or as
a 2-CD set. The gazetteer includes
written descriptions and photographs
of over 900 sites, 60 or so useful
maps and 130 short video clips. The
interface of the earlier version, which
my Mac did not always get on with,
is improved, and all the sites are
linked to the Megalithic Portal
website which offers access to online
updates for particular monuments.
Megaraks everywhere will thank 3rd
Stone contributor Andy Burnham and
Tom Bullock for the great job they
have done with this new, improved
and highly recommended version of
Stone Circles: A Photographic Tour.
Available from www.megalithic.co.uk
or contact c/o 6 Raymead Way,
Fetcham, Leatherhead, Surrey
KT22 9LK Tel: 01372 209769.
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3rd Stone 4.7 page 85

Also received...
Stuart McHardy’s The Quest for the
Nine Maidens (Luath Press, 2003, hb,
£16.99) looks at the curious ubiquity of
nine maidens in folklore, legends and
myths. A great spread of sources are
included, and some interesting specu-
lation on the early prehistoric origins
of this widespread motif.
A couple of Tempus county
archaeology guides; Stan Beckensall’s
Prehistoric Northumberland and John
Gale’s Prehistoric Dorset (both
2003, pb, £16.99). Prehistoric
Northumberland makes a nice
companion to Stan’s earlier
Northumberland: The Power of
Place, and Prehistoric Dorset was
tested and approved in the eld this
summer. Talking of which, has anyone
noticed the amazing number of
barrows you can see from the upstairs
cafe in Weymouth’s Debenhams?
A Secret History of
Consciousness (Floris Books, 2003,
pb £14.99) by Turn Off Your Mind
author Gary Lachman is an excellent
primer into the one of the last great
mysteries. Lachman has a knack for
making complex ideas readily under-
standable, and the book concentrates
on esoteric avenues of consciousness
research.
Robert J. Wallis’s excellent
Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, alter-
native archaeologies and contempo-
rary Pagans (Routledge, 2003, pb,
£19.99) is a rst-rate anthropological
exploration of the connections or
otherwise between modern, indigenous
and prehistoric shamanisms. One of
the book’s themes is that practitioners
of the various forms of modern
page 86 3rd Stone 4.7
shamanism are sometimes dismissed
as ‘inauthentic’, a charge which Wallis
argues persuasively is invalid if
enough people are following a partic—
ular path and getting ‘results’.
Groundbreaking stuff.
At the other end of the scale,
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural
History Society: The First 150 Years
(ed. James H. Thomas, 2003, hb,
£12.00) celebrates a century and a half
of the Devizes-based society, with
contributions from, among others,
Brian Edwards, Lorna Haycock, Josh
Pollard and Paul Robinson.
Mother of the Isles:
Landscape, myth and meaning in the
Western Isles of Scotland (2003, Dor
Dama Press/Meyn Mamvro
Publications, pb, £9.95) is Jill Smith’s
Goddess-inspired account of her rela-
tionship with the Hebrides and journeys
among Callanish, the Sleeping Beauty
and the warrior-huntress of St. Kilda.
Readers of a conventional outlook will
not agree with everything in the book,
but it makes a change to read some-
thing written from the heart, devoid of
boring PC ltering.
The latest addition to Tempus’
excellent ‘Folklore of...’ series comes
by way of Jacqueline Simpson’s
Folklore ofthe Welsh Border (2003,-pb,
£14.99), a revised edition of the 1976
Batsford county guide.
Paul Oliver’s Dwellings: The
Vernacular House World Wide
(Phaidon, 2003, hb, £35.00) is a
gorgeous global review of the many
types of buildings people build and live
in. As is always the case with Phaidon
publications, Dwellings has top-notch
production values and is part art book,
part reference guide.
On a similarly artistic tack,
Song of the Earth: European Artists
MOTHER OF
THE ISLES
JILL SMITH
and the Landscape (Thames &
Hudson, 2002, hb, £32.00) is Mel
Gooding and William Furlong’s
heavily illustrated overview of modern
European artists” interaction with the
land. Herman de Vries, Chris Drury,
Nikolaus Land and Guiseppe Penone
are all covered, but special attention is
paid to Richard Long, whose 30-year
career has touched on many issues
which would be of interest to 3rd Stone
readers. A particularly ne example is
Long’s ‘Sound Circle: A Walk on
Dartmoor”, which I’ve just noticed has
at its centre the cairn on Green Hill that
terminates the Erme Valley stone row.
Spooky.
Two books arrived too late to
receive detailed reviews but otherwise
would have done. Paul Devereux’s
Fairy Paths & Spirit Roads: Exploring
Otherworldly Routes in the Old and
New Worlds (Vega, 2003, £12.99)
proves that there’s still much to be
teased out of this subject. Devereux
draws on new and previously unpub-
lished research, the excellent introduc-
tory chapters describing the back—
ground to these phenomena on a
worldwide scale with reference to
much new material that has previously
not made its way into the literature.
Over half of the book contains a
gazetteer guide to 55 fairy, spirit and
corpse routes, 45 of which are in
Europe and the rest are examples of
allied phenomena from the New
World. Much more than a list of sites,
Devereux has researched each example
in detail, and in most cases carried out
eldwork at the site in question. His
accounts of research in Ireland, where
belief in and knowledge of fairy lore
is still current among some of the
elderly rural population, is particu-
larly prescient. Sadly, it won’t be too
many years before rst-hand
accounts of this nature will be a thing
of the past, which makes Devereux
and his co-researchers’ records of this
rapidly disappearing worldview all
the more important. Highly recom-
mended.
And, so new that the ink may
not yet be dry, Alby Stone’s Explore
Shamanism (Heart of Albion Press,
2003, pb, £9.95) arrived just this
morning. But we ’re out of time...
Neil Mortimer
 Small Press Magazines
3rd Stone may be going the way of the wanderer, but these Kings and @eens of the small press are still going
strong and deserve your support. Please include a SAE if writing for further information. All prices refer to
annual subscriptions unless otherwise noted.

ABRAXAS NORTHERN EARTH Avenue, Palmers Green, London,

(Incorporating the Colin Sacred Landscapes, Traditions, Folk N13 5DY.
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Single issue £3.50, payable to Paul Quarterly. £6.50 Mercian
Newman, Abraxas, 57 Eastbourne payable to Z 'i - Witchcraft,
Road, St Austell, Cornwall PL25 Northern Earth _ W W Magick and mm,
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 ”Tell me the Acts, 0 historian, and leave me to reason
upon them as I please, away with your reasoning and your
rubbish Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell
me the Why, and the How; I can nd that out myself,
as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into
opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve What
you think improbable or impossible”.
Rave on William Blake!
m “a. m.n 4,.”