iv. DEVIL'S COITS. 57 



the Danes being often credited for dykes, forts, and tumuli, whose 

 origin had been forgotten before the days of Hollo. 



The ' Whispering Ring' is about 100 feet in diameter ; the 

 'King' stands 100 yards to the north; and the ' Knights' did 

 stand at 350 yards to the south-east ; but they have been over- 

 thrown by the farmer. 



On Speed's Map of Oxfordshire, more than two centuries and 

 a half old, and Morden's Map, about a century and a half old, I 

 find, near Eynsham, the words { E/olrich Stones,' and some attempt 

 to mark their place. These are doubtless the stones mentioned 

 by Plot at Stanton-Har court, near a tumulus. 



' As for the stones near the barrow at Stanton-Harcourt, called 

 the Devil's Coits, I should take them to be appendices to that 

 sepulchral monument, but that they seem a little too far removed 

 from it ; perhaps therefore the barrow might be cast up for some 

 Saxon, and the stones for some Britans slain hereabout (and vice 

 versa) at what time the town of Eignesham, about a mile off, as 

 Camden informs us, was taken from the Britans by Cuthwolf the 

 Saxon. . . . They are about eight feet high, and near the base seven 

 feet broad ; and they seem not natural, but made by art, of a small 

 kind of stones cemented together, whereof there are great numbers 

 in the fields hereabout/ 



The stone here referred to, a natural conglomerate of late geo- 

 logical date, was employed in building the fine old church of 

 Stanton-Harcourt. Plot's conjecture of the concurrence here of 

 Saxon and British remains, was unexpectedly supported by ex- 

 cavations made a few years since at the neighbouring village of 

 Brighthampton, which disclosed a British settlement with many 

 pit-houses, and Saxon burials with abundance of ornaments, fictilia, 

 instruments, and weapons. These are now in the Ashmolean 

 Museum. 



