84 =. On the Stone Avenues of Carnac. 
“‘ very rusty old lock,” which so many have vainly essayed to open, 
may possibly be found in the account of the ancient chronicler, 
Geoffrey -of Monmouth. According to Geoffrey, in the year of our 
Lord 881 a large body of British soldiers passed over to Armorica 
under the command of Clemens Maximus for the purpose of attacking 
and dethroning the Emperor Gratian. On the defeat of the emperor, 
Maximus resolved to establish his army as a colony in Britanny, 
instead of sending them back to England. Wishing to avoid all 
mixture with the Gauls, he sent over to England for wives for his 
soldiers and emigrants. Ursula, daughter of the prince of Cornwall, 
and eleven thousand ladies of the higher class, to say nothing of a 
much larger number of others of a lower class,embarked for Britanny. 
Contrary and stormy winds dispersed the fleet, most of the ships 
foundered, and nearly all the ladies perished. ? 
This story, whether true or not, is presented to archeologists, 
that they may manufacture it, (if they can,) into a key to Carnac. 
“Upon reading this event in the old British history,” writes my 
learned friend, “and happening to recollect, first, the situation of 
Carnac, upon the very sea coast of Armorica, and, next, the peculiar 
number of eleven rows of monumental stones, it struck me that the 
whole number of stones having been estimated by unprejudiced trav- 
ellers to have been probably ten or twelve thousand, the original 
arrangement may have been designed to be a thousand in each row, 
making in all eleven thousand. The whole might thus be intended 
to be a great national memorial of the tragic end of the eleven 
thousand British ladies.” 
Unhappily for this ingenious theory, this key does not fit the rusty 
old lock at all. Itis presumed that the Carnac lines are composed 
of eleven rows, but as I have shown that they are in reality three 
distinct monuments, one having eleven, another ten, and the third 
thirteen rows of stones, and that, besides these, there are five or six 
other monuments of a like nature, not one of which has eleven rows, 
I do not think the foundation a very good one whereon to erect such 
a theory. 
1See Notes and Queries for July, 1869, 
