WISTMAN'S WOOD. 41 



exceed twelve feet in height, but at the top they spread far and 

 wide, and " branch and twist in so fantastic and tortuous a manner 

 as to remind one of those strange things called mandrakes." Their 

 branches are literally covered with ivy and creeping plants, and their 

 trunks so thickly embedded in a coating of moss that at first sight, 

 says Mrs. Bray, " you would imagine them to be of enormous thick- 

 ness in proportion to their height. Their whole appearance conveys 

 to you the idea of hoary age in the vegetable world of creation ; and 

 on visiting Wistmaii's Wood it is impossible to do other than think 

 of those ' groves in stony places' so often mentioned in Scripture as 

 being dedicated to Baal and Astaroth." * 



That heathen rites were celebrated here in the pre-historic era 

 seems very probable, the best etymologists agreeing that the name is 

 a corruption of Wise-man, or Wish-man ; that is, of the old Norse 

 god Woden, who is still supposed to drive his spectral hounds across 

 the silent wastes of Dartmoor. Celtic or Cymric memorials, as we 

 have previously hinted, are very abundant and very various. There 

 are cromlechs, where the Britons buried their dead ; stone pillars, 

 with which they commemorated their priests and heroes ; avenues 

 of upright stones leading up to the circles, where, perhaps, their 

 priests celebrated their religious rites ; kistvaens, or stone-chests, 

 containing the body unburned ; tolmens, or holed stones, whose 

 meaning cannot be determined, but which may probably have had 

 some astronomical uses ; bridges, huts, and walled villages, all bear- 

 ing traces of the handiwork of our "rude forefathers." There is no 

 spot in England so thronged as this with the shadows of a remote, a 

 mysterious, and an irrecoverable past. 



From Dartmoor our wanderings take us to the eastern coast, and 

 the district of THE FENS, now so rapidly yielding to the labour of 

 the agriculturist as to exhibit but. rare glimpses of their ancient 

 "savagery." It extends inland, around an arm of the North Sea 

 called the Wash, into the six counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, 

 * Mrs. Bray, " The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy " 



