56 Stonehenge atid its Narrows. 



was set up, call this the " slaughtering stone : " but there is reason 

 to believe that it was originally erect. 



Mr. Cunnington, F.S.A., writing to Mr. Britton f rom Heytesbury, 

 April 12, 1808, says " I will pledge myself to prove that Mr. King's 

 ' slaughtering stone ' stood erect ... To ascertain whether the 

 ' slaughtering stone ■* stood erect, I dug round it, and also in to the 



the compilers of the Tirut Tysitio has anything to say about the Druids, whose 

 privileges were transferred to the Christian Church. Mr. Herbert, struck with 

 this silence of the chronicler on the subject of the Druid hierarchy, thought 

 there was a systematic concealment of tlie truth ; but the inference is plain, 

 that the Druid extinguished by Paulinus, in A.D. 58, had not been resuscitated 

 in the the tenth century," (p. 332.) " If we find in the oldest compositions in 

 the Welsh language no traces of the Druids, or of a pagan mythology, still less 

 do we find evidence of the existence of any peculiar philosophical or theological 

 doctrines, such as it has been the fashion to represent as Ijing concealed in 

 these compositions under the somewhat vague title of Bardic mysteries. The 

 whole tenor of the result of an investigation into the supposed evidences of this 

 mystery leads to the conclusion that the Welsh Bards neither of the sixth nor 

 twelfth century had any mysteries to conceal, beyond the secrets, such as they 

 were, of their profession," (p. 339.) With one more extract upon this im- 

 portant fact of the non-existence of any traces of the Druids in the oldest 

 British writings, the subject shall be dismissed: ''The Welsh minstrelsy, 

 instead of dating from a time beyond the limits of history, or deriving its 

 materials from a source hidden in the obscurity of a pre-historic age, enters 

 the circle of the romantic literature of Europe during the tenth and succeeding 

 centuries, and will probably be found to have received more from, than it 

 communicated to its continental neighbours. It is, however, no small merit 

 which must be conceded to the Welsh romance-writers, that what they borrowed 

 from others they stamped with the impress of their own genius, and gave 

 currency, under their own peculiar form, to the treasures derived from the 

 mines of the stranger. In the hands of the Welsh, every tradition, every 

 legend, no matter from what source became Welsh, — the events localized in 

 Wales, and the heroes admitted into the cycle of the Welsh heroic genealogies ; 

 and it is probably to this process of naturalization that we owe the preservation 

 of the Welsh romances. The Welsh poems, such as we find them in the 

 Myvyrian collection, we have shown to be replete with reference to the extant 

 tales, and to others of a similar nature not known to exist ; but of any other 

 mysteries than such as can be exj lained by reference to the current religious 

 philosophy of the age, or to these romantic tales, not a particle of evidence can 

 be discovered. Wherever such evidence has hitherto been supposed to have 

 been discovered, investigation has demonstrated it to be a fallacy, originating 

 in an erroneous conception of the meaning of the passages produced, or derived 

 from documents tainted with the suspicion of modern forgery or fraud." 

 p. 340—1.) 



