12 Stonehenge and Us Barrows. 



Llan Iltud Vawr, in Glamorganshire ; the choir of Amhrosius, in 

 Ambresbury ; and the choir of Glastonbury. In each of these three 

 choirs there were 2400 saints ; that is, there were 100 for every hour 

 of the day and night in rotation, perpetuating the praise of God 

 without rest or intermission.''^ (Probert Triad, 84.) He continues, 

 *' In the older Welsh poems we sometimes find allusions to a conflict 

 which appears to have taken place about some nawt, or sanctuary. 

 It has been keenly contested that these allusions refer to the massacre 

 of the British nobles by Hengest, and that the nawt was the heathen 

 sanctuary of Stonehenge. One of the poems which are supposed to 

 allude to this subject is attributed to Cukelyn the Bald, who ac- 

 cording to Owen Pugh, flourished in the sixth, and according to the 

 compilers of the Archaeology, in the eighth century. It represents 

 Eitol ' excelling in wisdom,^ as the chief of this mysterious locality; 

 and the structure itself is described as 



* . . . . mur lor 



Maus Pedir pedror 

 Mawr cor cyvoeth.' 



* . . . . the wall of the Eternal, 

 The quadrangular delight of Peter, 

 The great Choir of the dominion.' 



I would venture to suggest that this celebrated nawt may have been 

 the Christian monastery instead of the heathen temple, and that the 

 legend which makes Stonehenge the work of Ambrosius (Gwaith 

 Emrys) may have arisen from his having built or re-edified one of 

 the ' Choirs of Britain ' in its immediate neighbourhood. An at- 

 tempt on the part of the invaders to surprise this monastery — 

 probably during one of its great festivals — may have given rise to 

 the charge of a treacherous massacre ; and Hengest would naturally 

 figure in the tale, as being the Saxon chief best known to Welsh 

 fable. The story seems to have been a favorite fiction in the sixth 

 and seventh centuries, for it is also told of the Saxons who invaded 

 Thuringia. . . . There is reason to believe that the choir of 

 Glastonbury arose after that of Amesbury was destroyed. The choir 

 of Ambrosius was probably the monastery of Britain — the centre 

 from which flowed the blessings of Christianity and civilization. 



