90 THE RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF CORNWALL. 



Heshbon ; aud it turus out to be simply a hut circle, such as 

 abound on Dartmoor, the dolmen being the two jambs and lintel 

 of the doorway. This Arab teaching, then, is quite worthless 

 and misleading. 



We may apply precisely the same line of argument to the 

 case of Stonehenge. No doubt there seems very remarkable 

 exactness in the orientation of that monument. But Stonehenge 

 by its construction is one of the latest of its class. When it 

 was built, circle-building must have lasted long enough to give 

 the opportunity for its original meaning to have been obscured, 

 if not lost — just as in the case of the orientation of our graves 

 and churches. That it is however quite possible for the greatest 

 exactitude of astronomical design to be combined with a purpose 

 purely sepulchral, — Professor Piazza Smyth and his followers 

 notwithstanding, — the great pyramid attests. I see evidence too, 

 of the same sort of purposeless survival in the central groups of 

 stones, which have been called " coves," at Avebury, Stonehenge, 

 Stanton, Arbor, and elsewhere. They answer precisely the same 

 end as the enclosed menhir at Boscawen and Stripple Stones, 

 and are nothing more than a ceremonial reproduction of the 

 cromlech, in its turn originally a greater kistvaen — the first 

 purpose having been, as I have said, if not lost at least obscured. 

 Hence, no doubt, a few cases in which the circle seems to be used 

 as a mere accessory, to enhance the importance of a menhir or 

 other rude stone memorial. 



There surely should be nothing to surprise us in this. For 

 how many centuries have we not been putting utterly meaningless 

 urns in our churches and churchyards ? — though certainly the 

 growth of cremation seems likely to give them a turn of utility 

 and common sense again. And, indeed, the past lives in the present 

 most completely in our sepulchral memorials. What is the 

 modern headstone but the ancient menhir ; the grave mound but 

 the cairn or the barrow ; the altar tomb but the kistvaen ? Nay, 

 the cromlech is at times closely reproduced, as for example in 

 such churchyards as those of Bolton Abbey and sundry of its 

 neighbours, where a favourite form of monument is a slab of 

 stone free-standing on supports with open space below, the 

 structural cromlech or dolmen idea being in every point complete. 



