144 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 191 1 



rising or the setting sun, or, as Professor Frazer supposes, 

 with reference to the tribal totem.' The case of the great 

 stone circles, like Stonehenge or Avebury, is different, and 

 there is some reason to believe that these erections may have 

 been used as primitive observatories and for the regulation of 

 the seasonal feasts and other ceremonies which were so closely 

 associated with the religious and social life of their builders. 

 This view receives still further confirmation from the fact that 

 recent excavations at Stonehenge, conducted by Professor 

 Gowland^ prove that the monument was erected at a date 

 which closely corresponds with that assigned to it by Sir 

 Norman Lockyer from astronomical data. 



We must also be very cautious in assuming, as I think 

 Dr McAldowie is inclined to do, that our barrows are in any 

 way connected with the astronomical studies of the Babylonian 

 or other Eastern races. If the evidence of archaeology is of 

 any value, it certainly goes to show that the evolution of our 

 culture is not due to the foreigner, but is mainly of indigenous 

 growth. It has been suggested by Sir L. Gomme and others 

 that the Druids, about whom we know so little save from the 

 confused accounts of Roman writers, and whose ritual and 

 customs are said not easily to conform with the so-called 

 Aryan culture, were really the medicine men of the conquered 

 and enslaved neolithic people, retained by their new masters 

 to exercise priestly functions because they were supposed to 

 be more familiar than the newcomers with the appropriate 

 methods of controlling the local spooks and bogies. This we 

 know to be the case in India and elsewhere. But there are 

 strong arguments against this view, which have been stated 

 by Canon McCulloch in a paper read before the Third Inter- 

 national Congress for the History of Religions, held at Oxford 

 three years ago. " There is," he urges, " no evidence to show 

 that the Druids were the priests of a non-Celtic people, nor is 

 it easy to see how the priests of a conquered race could ever 

 have obtained such influence over their conquerors as the 

 Druids certainly possessed. The case of conquering peoples 

 who resort to priests or magicians of a subject race, because 

 the latter possess more powerful magic, is not really analogous. 



1 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 1, 454 seqq. , ii. 190. 



2 See his paper read before the Society of Antiquaries on 19th December, 1901, and the Summary 

 n Man {1902), ii. 7 seqq. 



