1 62 MY DEVON YEAR 



be connected, and no man may declare that the 

 "sacred" circles, so called, date from the same period 

 as the familiar barrows with their kistvaens, or such 

 settlements as are represented by Grimspound and 

 like scattered villages. Of the solitary circles that 

 lift their separate stones in rings, and steal from under 

 grey mists, or shine in yellow twilights to startle the 

 wanderer by their sudden apparition, we only under- 

 stand that they are megalithic, and that they are 

 universal, for similar monuments shall be found in the 

 desert places of the Old World and the New. 



Their aim is not known, and whether they stood 

 for the house of the stone-man's god, for his market- 

 place, his necropolis, or other end has yet to be dis- 

 covered. That they survive from a past of great 

 antiquity has been proved beyond question ; and the 

 tin-streamer's ancient works, lying scattered within 

 sound of every river, together with the ruins of 

 his blowing-house and the fragments of his mould, 

 are, like the spacious times wherein he flour- 

 ished, affairs of a mediaeval yesterday, beside the 

 hoary years that saw these stone - circles uplifted. 

 These still stand, but the thews and muscles that set 

 their rude pillars have vanished ; the very bones of 

 the old men have helped to furnish strength to the 

 heather and the fern, because the peat lacked that 

 property their ashes held. Now they that trod these 

 wastes are part of it, and the blood they shed has 

 helped to enrich the earth, and the tears they shed 

 have driven with rain to the roots of the bilberries. 



