275 



ON THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM " SARSEN 



STONES." 



By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., Vice-President. 

 [Read April i6th, 1904.] 



IN my remarks on the Greywetbers of Grays Thurrock 

 (Essex Nat. Vol. XIII., pp. 197-202) I expressed an 

 opinion that the deriva,tion of the word Savsen from Saracen is the 

 correct one. But as the question is one of folk-lore, and as the 

 derivation of savsen is usually ignored in our dictionaries, I am 

 not surprised to find my view considered somewhat doubtful. 

 We may find the word savsen used many times in dissertations on 

 Stonehenge, Avebury, and other primitive stone monuments, by 

 antiquaries of more or less eminence in their day, without a line 

 on the origin of the term. Dr. J. A. H. Murra}^, in the greatest 

 of dictionaries, is still far from the letter S. And though the 

 Rev. W. W. Skeat, in his Concise Etymological Dictiotiavy of tht 

 English Language (Oxford, 1882), gives Sarcenet or Sarsnet," a thin 

 ^ilk, O. F. Sarcenet, a stuff made by the Saracens," the word 

 Sarsen does not appear there. 



On searching the volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine 

 Lihvavy likely to contain any reference to Sarsen-stones, I can 

 find but one short passage bearing on the origin of the name, 

 though many pages are devoted to descriptions of ancient stone 

 monuments and speculations about them. In " Archaeology 

 Part II.," p. 93, there is an article, dated 1829, on " The present 

 state of Abury, Wilts," by Joseph Hunter, which contains the 



following remarks : — 



" The common people of Abury uniformly call these stones sazzen-stones. 

 This orthography more correctly represents the sound than Sarsen-stones, which 

 <occurs in the ' Ancient Wiltshire,' but whether the term is applied exclusively 

 to these, oris common to blocks of stone like these but in their native beds, I 

 cannot say." 



The important point is, of course, the fact that sazzen or 

 savsen was the term used by " the common people " of Abury in 

 1829. Those were days in which the village folk of Salisbury 

 Plain and Marlborough Downs may fairly be presumed to have 

 given simply the traditional name, and not one suggested by 

 anything they had read themselves, or by the speculations of 

 more learned persons. And it is obvious that the author of 

 Ancient Wiltshire (Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 1758- 1838) and Joseph 



