CHAPTER II 



STONEHENGE AND OTHER GREAT STONE 

 MONUMENTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES 



STONEHENGE, the most famous of our 

 English megalith ic monuments, has excited 

 the attention of the historian and the legend-lover 

 since early times. According to some of the 

 medieval "historians it was erected by Aurelius 

 Ambrosius to the memory of a number of British 

 chiefs whom Hengist and his Saxons treacherously 

 murdered in A.D. 462. Others add that Ambrosius 

 himself was buried there. Giraldus Cambrensis, 

 who wrote in the twelfth century, mingles these 

 accounts with myth. He says, " There was in 

 Ireland, in ancient times, a pile of stones worthy 

 of admiration called the Giants' Dance, because 

 giants from the remotest part of Africa brought 

 them to Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not 

 far from the castle of Naas, miraculously set them 

 up. . . . These stones (according to the British 

 history) Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons, 

 procured Merlin by supernatural means to bring 

 from Ireland to Britain." 



From the present ruined state of Stonehenge 

 it is not possible to state with certainty what was 



'5 



