BTTDE STONE MONUMENTS OF CORNWALL. 189 



it upon record. And some of the field posts, extant in the 

 West, are undoubtedly of very high antiquity. 



The sacred stone pillar of the East is closely linked to the 

 simple form of Pagan altar of the "West, which was indeed 

 nothing more than a rudely shapen monolith. When Jacob 

 erected his menhir at Bethel and poured oil upon it, his act was 

 absolutely identical with the practice of anointing such stones 

 with oil yet current in India, and referred to by various 

 authorities as having been a common pre-Christian custom 

 throughout the civilized world, which Christianity by no means 

 found it easy to destroy, and in fact has not destroyed. We 

 need not hold that such stone idols were absolutely believed to 

 be themselves deities. It was enough that they were regarded 

 as emblems of the gods, or that in some special sense the gods 

 were thought to dwell in them ; nor are there wanting reasons for 

 concluding that this belief in their sanctity developed from an 

 original idea that they in some sort typified the life energy of 

 nature, as in certain localities similar stones are regarded as 

 doing now. But such inquiry cannot be followed out here. 

 There is later evidence that Menhirs were at times the scene of 

 human sacrifices, and that they were anointed, not merely with 

 oil, or with the blood of animals, but with the blood of the 

 human victims. And this really appears to be all we know 

 concerning the religious ideas connected with them. There is no 

 trace anywhere that they had any special association with solar 

 worship, though in G-reece and in Rome the Sun-god was one, 

 among others, to whom certain sacred stones were regarded as 

 dedicated, and, as we have seen, the same idea is found to 

 prevail in the Ultima Thule and Skye. 



The general problem to be solved with regard to the Menhirs 

 of Cornwall, is, to which of these classes they belong; and 

 whether, if to both, we are able to identify a special purpose in 

 individual cases. The fact that they are simply called "menhirs" 

 in Keltic phrase, or "longstones" in Saxon — a purely descriptive 

 and not ascriptive epithet — suggests indeed that no special 

 purpose was present to the minds of those who named them. 



Now, in the first place, we can at once eliminate from this 

 enquiry the somewhat numerous inscribed stones — the Men 



