BESIDE THE CROMLECH. 205 



the valley below. Then they piled up the 

 great mound of earth above it, to keep the 

 body safe from beasts or birds ; and around 

 the fresh heap they performed I know not 

 what barbaric orgies of dancing and sacrifice 

 and human massacres. Perhaps the wives 

 and slaves of the dead man were slain and 

 buried with him, to attend him in the other 

 world ; perhaps the blood of human victims 

 was poured over the new-made grave as an 

 offering to the thirsty ghost. Sitting in this 

 peaceful industrial nineteenth century on the 

 dry heather under the shadow of these 

 picturesque old stones, one can hardly 

 realise what nameless horrors they may not 

 have witnessed on the day when the neo- 

 lithic dwellers in the Llanfair valley first 

 raised them above the summit of Mynydd 

 Mawr. We think of them only under the 

 softening and romantic influence of time ; we 

 look upon their lichen-covered surface through 

 the tinged halo of poetical imagination ; they 

 are to us the hoary remnants of our fore- 



