198 rxtde stone monuments of coenwall. 



Men-an-Tol. 

 The holed stone monuments, of which the Men-an-Tol is the 

 leading example, are the chief crux of the western archaeologist. 

 They do clearly embody a religious sentiment of some kind, but 

 precisely what that sentiment might be, it is more difficult to 

 conjecture. The holed stone at Stennis, in the Orkneys, was 

 made the means of adding solemnity to oaths, men holding each 

 other's hand through the aperture, and so swearing faith. The 

 holed stone at Applecross was held to cure disease. There are 

 people yet who believe that the Madron Men-an-Tol, or the 

 Gweek Tolven, will heal crick or rickets ; and who pass their 

 children through cloven ash trees, both in Cornwall and in 

 Devon, for the relief of rupture. Dr. Borlase noted, from 

 Martin, that libations of beer were poured into holed stones in 

 the Shetlands to propitiate a spirit called Browny ; but query 

 whether these were holed stones in the present sense. And very 

 recently, I learn, children have been passed through a natural 

 perforation in the menhir at Minchinhampton for the cure of 

 whooping cough and measles. 



Superstitious practices, connected with passing through 

 narrow openings, by way of ordeal, are and have been common 

 enough in all parts of the old world. They are even grafted 

 upon Christianity, as for example the slit- way in the Saxon 

 crypt at Eipon, called St. Wilfred's Needle, threading which was 

 regarded as a test and proof of chastity. It seems idle, however, 

 to conclude that the "needle" was formed with this object, and 

 not subsequently made the instrument of an older superstition. 

 And I think we shall see, by and by, that this may very well 

 have been the case with our Men-an-Tol. There is a trace of 

 the same idea in the fact that penitents who squeeze themselves 

 through a sacred perforated stone at Malabar obtain remission 

 of their sins. But the original significance of such holed stones 

 seems rather to have been connected with re-birth, after death ; 

 and this might easily become the parent of the idea of re-birth 

 from sins. 



I may say at once that I exclude from the category of 

 tolmen such stone "deities" as Dr. Borlase cites at St. Mary's, 

 SciUy, and the island of North wethel in the same group, with the 



