By Professor T, Rupert Jones, F.RS., F.G8., §e. 129 
being “outlandish.” My notion, however, is that the word 
“Saracen” has been applied since Saxon times by those who, 
not knowing Saxon words, applied something, having a near sound, 
that they did know; and this word “Saracen” was foreign and 
opprobrious enough for these awkward mysterious stones. Indeed, 
as Mr. Swayne intimates, they were in a peculiar sense “outlandish” 
to the peasants, for they believed (and some still believe) that both 
the blocks and the field-flints grow out of the land. 
In Palsgrave’s Dictionary “ Sarsin”’ is a Saracen. In Halliwell’s 
“Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,” 1850, we find :— 
“Sarsens. Round bolder stones. Wilts.” (They are not round, 
nor are they true boulders.) Omitted in the new edition, 1859, by 
Halliwell & Wright. In dictionaries Saraseyn or Saresyn comes 
close to “ Sarsen,” and suggests itself as a verbal ally ; and, in the 
sense of heathen or pagan, it has had warm supporters as the root 
of Sarsen. As the “ heathen ” are the Heath-men (out of the reach 
of civilization, &c.), and as Sarsens are Heath-stones, there is a 
roundabout association, but not intended. 
In Richard Symonds’ “ Diary of the Marches kept by the Royal 
Army,” &c., edited by C. E. Long for the Camden Society, 1859, 
the term “ Saracens’ Stones” is applied to Sarsens thus :—“ Tuesday 
[12th Nov., 1644] . . . . to Marlingsborough, where the 
King lay . . . . the troopes to Fyfield, two myles distant, a 
place so full of a grey pibble stone of great bignes as is not usually 
seene; they breake them, and build their houses of them and walls, 
laying mosse betweene, the inhabitants calling them Saracens’ 
Stones, and in this parish, a myle and halfe in length, they lye so 
thick as you may goe upon them all the way. They call that place 
the Grey-weathers, because a far off they looke like a flock of 
sheepe” (p. 151). Quoted by Mr. Long, Wilts Mag., vol. xvi., 
1876, in his remarks on the “ Geological character of the Stonehenge 
Stones,” pp. 68—74. Possibly the gallant soldier, not under- 
standing the local word “ Sarsens,” confounded it with the somewhat 
similar word “Saracens,” with which he was acquainted. So also 
_ he mixes the place and the stones under the name Greywethers. 
_ In the Notes and Queries, vol. xi., 1855, pp. 369 and 494, 
VOL. XXI1I.—NO. LXVIII, K 
