160 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



skeletons where their kind are said to go punctually to 

 die. There are enough of the dead; they outnumber the 

 living; and there those trite truths burst with life and 

 drum upon the tympanum with ambiguous fatal voices. 

 At the end of this many-barrowed moor, yet not in it, 

 there is a solitary circle of grey stones, where the cry of the 

 past is less vociferous, less bewildering, than on the moor 

 itself, but more intense. Nineteen tall, grey stones stand 

 round a taller, pointed one that is heavily bowed, amidst 

 long grass and bracken and furze. A track passes close 

 by, but does not enter the circle; the grass is unbent 

 except by the weight of its bloom. It bears a name that 

 connects it with the assembling and rivalry of the bards 

 of Britain. Here, under the sky, they met, leaning upon 

 the stones, tall, fair men of peace, but hal f- warriors, 

 whose songs could change ploughshare into sword. 

 Here they met, and the growth of the grass, the perfec- 

 tion of the stones (except that one stoops as with age), 

 and the silence, suggest that since the last bard left it, 

 in robe of blue or white or green the colours of sky and 

 cloud and grass upon this fair day the circle has been 

 unmolested, and the law obeyed which forbade any but 

 a bard to enter it. Sky-blue was the colour of a chief 

 bard's robe, emblematic of peace and heavenly calm, and 

 of unchangeableness. White, the colour of the Druid's 

 dress, was the emblem of light, and of its correlatives, 

 purity of conduct, wisdom, and piety. Green was the 

 colour of the youthful ovate's robe, for it was the emblem 

 of growth. Their uniformity of colour signified perfect 

 truth. And the inscription upon the chair of the bards 

 of Beisgawen was, " Nothing is that is not for ever and 

 ever." Blue and white and green, peace and light and 



