201 
The Paynim of the Carloman age, and the pagans who fought 
with Alfred at Ashdown, took the place of foes who had long 
been forgotten. 
I may mention that there is a tradition connected with the 
stone circle at Bolleit, in Cornwall, which cannot be more than 
three hundred years old in its present form. The nineteen 
stones which once surrounded a sepulchral cromlech or dolmen 
are nineteen maidens who were turned to stone for dancing on 
the Lord’s Day; and two menhirs, the relics, it may be, of an - 
avenue, are the pipers who played the inviting tune. The 
same tradition is attached to the circles of Boscawen-Un, 
Tregaseal, and Wendron. But nowand then the older story crops 
up; and the unshapen granite pillars are the foes with whom 
Good King Arthur contended, or giants who lived and fought 
in Britain before the coming of Brutus and his Trojan crew. 
Mr Evans winds up his very able lecture with the sugges- 
tion that the central object of worship within these megalithic 
circles was an oak tree. He gives examples in Greco-Roman 
art of triliths like those at Stonehenge, or rude unshapen 
stones, such as we have at Abury, standing in front of a sacred 
tree. At Rome Jupiter Feretrius was worshipped on the Capitol 
as a lofty oak; before it stood an altar, and around the tree and 
the altar was the sacred enclosure. The special sanctity of the 
oak amongst Celtic races, and hence the origin of the name 
“Druid” for a Celtic priest, is often referred to by ancient 
classical writers. Maximus Tyrius (Disc. 38) says:—Kearos ceBoucs 
piv Ala, dyadrwa de Aros xedrindy obyay Spis. The Celts worship 
Zeus, and the Celtic form of Zeus is a tall oak. 
As in religion, as in dress, so in Archeology it would seem 
_ that every new phase is to some extent a return to what has 
gone before. The challenge of Ferguson is at last accepted. 
The conceits of Borlase and Stukeley are not altogether so 
_ mythical as we have lately been taught to consider them. 
Until another and more brilliant theory develops itself, we 
may cling to our Druids, and our Mistletoe, and, as before, 
let the weird Sarsens and Granite boulders conjure up the 
shades of heroes who fought and died before our English fore- 
fathers had left the primeval forests of central Germany. 
H 
