By the Rev. W. C. Lukit. 167 



The tri^ 13 that the application of the term "cromlech" to 

 monuments such as these is quite modern, not older probably 

 than the close of the 16th centur}'-, and Welsh Historians or 

 Antiquaries may have originated it. The Celtic form of the word 

 has favoured its general use, and led to wild theories and absurd 

 mistakes. It is very remarkable how soon it was forgotten that 

 the word was of modern origin, and the definitions given of it by 

 antiquaries of the last and present centuries are very amusing. 

 The universal idea was that these denuded stone chambers were 

 altars. Accordingly Mr, Toland in 1726, in his " History of the 

 Druids," a most dogmatic work, says : " the larger kind of altar 

 was termed by the Britons, cromlech," and gives the definition of 

 the word from " crom or crum, which in Armoric, Irish or "Welsh, 

 signifies bent, and lech, or leach, a broadstone, because people bowed 

 down in reverence before it," (vol. ii., pp. 96, 97). "These altars" 

 writes Mr. Rowland, " were and are to this day vulgarly called by 

 the name of cromlech, either from their bending position, which is 

 generally believed, or rather that these first men, I shall adventure 

 to guess, carried the name with them from Babel, as they did 

 several other words, and called it ' caeremlech ' from the Hebrew, 

 'a devoted stone or altar.'" (Mona Antiqua, p. 47.) 



It is impossible to say what name " the first men " gave to these 

 structures, but we know that the Anglo-Saxons called tumuli by 

 the names of Low (hloew) and barrow (beorh, bearw). Cromlech 

 was a name unknown at that period. It had its origin in a time 

 of archaeological ignorance, when the true nature and use of these 

 structures were not understood; and was invented to express the false 

 ideas that were then afloat respecting them. A recent writer (Sir 

 J. Gard. Wilkinson) on "British Eemains on Dartmoor," remarks 

 that the age of the word is unimportant, and that no one requires 

 it to have been current in the time of the Druids. I must dissent 

 from this, and say that the age of a word is a matter of considerable 

 importance when erroneous notions are originated and propagated 

 by its adoption and use. The observation of the same writer that 

 " cromlech is a name used by the peasants," is not borne out by 

 my experience. In Ireland, e.g. these structures are popularly 

 VOL. vni. NO. XXIII. p 



