STONEHENGE — STEVENS 477 



red and transparent, though pale amber has also been found. They 

 are mostly in the form of necklaces, either of beads or graduated 

 plates, strung together. 



STONEHENGE AND THE DRUmS 



There is a very persistent story that Stonehenge was connected 

 with the Druids and with human sacrifices. There is, indeed, a 

 considerable literature on the subject and not a few prints depicting 

 Druidical ceremonies at Stonehenge, with blazing fires on the Altar 

 Stone itself. But there are considerable difBculties in accepting the 

 Druid "legend." 



The Druids were a Celtic priesthood of whom we have no knowl- 

 edge before the first century B. C. That being so, it seems very 

 difficult to associate them with a monument which has yielded so 

 much evidence of races at least 1,800 years previous to our first knowl- 

 edge of their existence. The Druids do not appear in the earliest 

 accounts of Stonehenge. 



It was John Aubrey, the antiquary, who first put forward the 

 claim of the Druids, but even this was a very qualified claim, as he 

 himself admits "This enquiry is a groping in the dark." But the 

 idea, once started, did not die, and William Stukeley in the next 

 generation, 1740, working on Aubrey's suggestion, was a whole- 

 hearted champion of the Druid theory. He was obsessed by the 

 Druids. Of all writers on Stonehenge he was more completely suc- 

 cessful than any in the propagation of his doctrine, and no one seems 

 to have disputed his conclusions, which were accepted on the Conti- 

 nent, so that the French monuments also became Druidic. 



By the early days of the nineteenth century, Stukeley 's theory was 

 an article of general belief. 



The Druids were a late Celtic priesthood, whom Caesar found 

 established in Gaul in the first century B. C. He was told that they 

 originated in Britain, but the first historical record of them in this 

 country is in Anglesy in the first century A. D. They seem to have 

 continued to exist until about the fourth century, when they dis- 

 appeared until Stukeley brought them to light 1,300 years later, and 

 provided them with beliefs, knowledge, ritual, and ethics of a sin- 

 gularly picturesque but quite unreliable nature. 



CONCLUSION 



It has become customary to dismiss Stonehenge as a monument 

 of mystery whose origin will never be solved. Such an attitude of 

 mind is not likely to add to the existing knowledge of Stonehenge. 

 As a matter of fact, it is possible to look back upon a period of some 

 JiO years, during which very material facts have come to light, when 



