Recent Wiltshire Books, PamiMets, Articles, &c. 449 



importance of May day as a mark of time in very early agea. For the 

 theory that the original year was an agricultural year of which the im- 

 portant points were May and November— both of which Sir Norman 

 appears to think marked the new year period at different times— and 

 that this earlier agricultural year was succeeded by the later solstiaal 

 year with its crucial points at Midsummer and December, is bound up 

 with the whole theory of the orientation and alignment of the circles 

 and avenues. For many of these are found to point to the rising or 

 setting of some star which the author believes acted as a clock to warn 

 the " astronomer priest " of the approach of sunrise at the beginning of 

 May, or some other point in the May— November agricultural year. He 

 boldly claims, indeed, that the whole of the megalithic structures, the 

 circles, the avenues, the menhirs, the dolmens, and even the chambered 

 barrows, were all aligned to the rising or setting of sun or stars— in 

 other words that their whole original object was that of almanacks, by 

 means of which the priests were able to tell the people when to begin to 

 plough, and sow, and reap. He has satisfied himself that this was so 

 with the temples of Egypt and of Greece, and he believes that the 

 megalithic structures of Europe and Africa are lineal descendants of the 

 temples of Babylon and of Egypt. In other words he holds that the 

 civilisation of the builders of the megalithic monuments was Pre-Aryan 

 and had a Semitic or Phcenician origin. When a monument points to 

 a star which can be connected with the solsticial or June— December year, 

 but not with the May— November year, he regards it as a proof that that 

 monument is later than those which are in his judgment connected with 

 the older system of measuring time. 



As to dolmens and chambered barrows he believes that they were 

 erected for the living and not for the dead, to exhibit a light in, at night, 

 so as to give a line to the astronomer watching from the centre of the 

 circle, or through the holed stone, or over the top of the menhir ; or it 

 may be to keep the faggots for the fire dry ; or even as the dwelling- 

 place of the priest. The burials now found in them he regards as purely 

 an after-thought, and he points to Maeshowe, in the Orkneys— the 

 grandest of all chambered tumuli— in which no remains were found, 

 as a triumphant proof of his contention, but he omits to mention the 

 fact that Maeshowe differs in some ways from the ordinary chambered 

 barrow, and that it has admittedly been entered, and presumably 

 plundered, centuries before its modern exploration, by Northmen, who 

 left Runic inscriptions on its walls. 



This is a not unfair example of much of his argument. In fact a large 

 part of the book in which Sir Norman is dealing not with astronomy, 

 but with the collateral proofs of his theory, gives one the impression of 

 an ingenious piece of special pleading ; and one cannot help wondering 

 how the author would regard analogous arguments brought forward in 

 a matter within the domain of pure astronomy. 



The sections of the work which deal more especially with Stonehenge 

 have already been noticed in this Mayazine (vol. xxxiv., p. 121), as they 

 appeared in Nature in 1905. 



