168 Druidism in connection with. Wiltshire. 
As some of our modern philologists seem inclined to repudiaw 
Stukeley and to disclaim any connection between our national or 
local names and words and the Phenician or Celtic language, it 
may be proper to remark, that the term Hycsi remained in Wor- 
cestershire in the time of the Romans, and; as Stukeley informs us, 
“even to the time of the venerable Bede.” The natives of Wor- 
cestershire were called “ Huiciii to which Orduices and Vigornienses 
is synonymous.” All these three words denoted shepherds or per- 
sons addicted to a pastoral life, such as the Hycsi in Lower Egypt 
and the ancient Canaanites in Abraham’s time are known to have 
been. 
In reply to some philological heresies of this kind, an excellent 
antiquarian and admirer of Stukeley, lately made the following 
remarks in connection with the word Sarsen, whose Pheenician 
derivation had been denied. He suggested a much nearer source 
than Pheenician (in the first instance at least), the county namely 
in which these Sarsen stones are chiefly to be found. “The Anglo- 
Saxon word for a rock or stone,” according to Mr. Falkner, 
(of Devizes,) “is Ses, in the plural Sessen, Sessan. The letter e is 
sounded ase in there, or in fair, and as ein apres. The people where 
the stone is found” (on the Marlborough Downs) “call them Sasens or 
Sassens, so that perhaps the word Sarsen is no other than the Anglo- 
Saxon word for rock properly pronounced, as many other words 
from the same origin are, in the present day. This makes good the 
remark of some writer, that the illiterate, in their pronunciation 
and use of words, both in the present times and the past have not 
gone from us, but we from them. Sesse in Anglo-Saxon is a settle 
or seat, which brings to mind the stone seats in church porches, 
called settles.” 
It is more than probable, however, that Stukeley’s conjecture is 
correct, and that Sarsen and many other words have descended to 
us through the Anglo-Saxon from a more primitive and general 
language, such as the Phoenician or Celtic. No one asserts Anglo- 
Saxon to be a primitive or very ancient language, and philologists 
are in general agreed that the Greek and Roman and all the 
modern dialects have a common and primitive source. 
