near Littleton Drew, North Wilts. 167 
half-way between the barrow and Littleton Drew, close to a farm- 
house, is an ancient quarry, yielding large blocks of what the 
quarrymen still, as it would seem in Aubrey’s time, call “bastard 
freestone,” belonging to the great oolite, which occurs in this 
district of the Cotswolds. From this quarry, the stones of which 
the cromlech is formed, were evidently obtained. 
Both Aubrey and Sir Richard C. Hoare appear to connect the 
barrow with Littleton Drew rather than Nettleton ; and the latter, 
in particular, insists on its neighbourhood to “Littleton Dru or 
Drew, a name evidently of druidical antiquity.” There is perhaps 
no difficulty, in the fact of its position beyond the boundary of the 
parish of Littleton, in connecting it with this place rather than 
with Nettleton ; there being much reason for concluding that the 
existing parochial divisions, in many cases at least, do not ascend 
beyond Norman times. Whether, however, the epithet Drew had 
in its origin any reference to the Druids, may admit of enquiry. 
There are at least three other places, where are remarkable remains 
commonly called druidical, into the name of which this epithet 
enters. These are Stanton Drew in Somersetshire, where are the 
well known megalithic circles of unhewn stones, inferior only in 
size and number to those of Abury; Drews’ Teignton, Dartmoor, 
Devon, where is one of the best preserved cromlechs in England ; 
and Trer Drew in Anglesea, near the spot where the Romans are 
believed to have landed, and where are many remains of cromlechs 
and other early British monuments. Here, not improbably, were 
the groves devoted to superstition and barbarous rites, with altars 
dedicated to human sacrifices, which, Tacitus tells us, were destroyed 
by the Romans.' In all these cases, topographical writers to the 
1 Stukely, “Itin. Cur.” vol. Il. p. 91, plate. Camden, ‘“ Britannia,” vol. 
Ill. p. 197. Pennant’s ‘‘ Wales,” 1810, vol. II. p. 229; vol. III. p. 11. 
Rowland’s ‘Mona Antiqua,” 1766, p. 88—236. Compare Tacitus, “Annales,” 
Lib. 14. §xxx. Mr. Herbert, ‘Cyclops Christ.” p, 30, maintains that the 
Welsh word here should be written ‘ Dryw,—‘Tre’r Dryw,” meaning “the 
house of the wren.” He himself however quotes a passage from Taliesin, 
which at least shews that in the mystical system of the bards, the Druids were 
sometimes called wrens, 
ms v dwr, wyv dryw, “‘T am water, I am a wren, 
yV saer, wyv syw.” I am a builder, I am wise,” 
