Mude Stone Antiquities of Brittany. By Miss Russell. 507 



them as they are now, but banks of earth ; though the larger 

 stones may have formed battlements. The rows are ten deep in 

 one place, and though now interrupted, they would seem to have 

 run across the country for several miles. The largest stones 

 are at Erdeven, some miles from Carnac ; I should suppose the 

 parts which have now disappeared between were of lighter 

 materials. The country with its seaports was fully peopled 

 and important in Cresar's time, but there is no defensible line of 

 coast. 



There were formerly four rows of standing stones at the sea- 

 side town of Penmarch, in Finistere, but they are now destroyed ; 

 they must have been between the town and the sea. These lines 

 of stones may be of later date than the dolmens, or they may 

 not ; but both are evidently results of the materials available. 



There is material for any number of dolmens and menhirs (or 

 "long stones") close to the surface still, large slabs of rather 

 soft limestone, which is probably, as stones go, rather light in 

 weight ; but there seems a very limited supply of smaller stones. 

 At Penmarch the stone is granite, but the case is the same. 

 The innumerable fences which take up so much of the very small 

 farms and fields are absolutely made of turf, the surface of the 

 ground stripped off in the most provoking way, and built up to 

 the height of an ordinary wall. Stones are used when they are 

 to be had. 



The old Scotch fail-dyke (which probably went out when sheep 

 husbandry was introduced, for such dykes would not keep sheep 

 in for any time) was probably made in this way for a permanent 

 boundary ; but I was told by the son of a farmer, who had him- 

 self assisted in inakiDg them, on his father's farm immediately 

 north of the Firth of Forth, that their fail-dykes were merely 

 two lines of sods, supporting a thick fence of branches and 

 brushwood. I have seen something very like this in the Midland 

 Counties of England, in a field where there were sheop on turnips. 

 An old Roxburghshire name, which I find occurs in the confir- 

 matory charter of Jedburgh before 1150 — Quihhag, the live 

 hedge — suggests that where the country was cultivated at all at 

 that time, it was usually fenced in the way describ 3d, with dead 

 hedges. It is on record that Bamborough Castle was originally 

 fortified with a hedge, probably one of cut branches ; and Dr 

 Joseph Anderson remarks, without any reference to this, that the 

 old Scotch forts look as if they must have had palisades in 



