Rude Stone Antiquities of Brittany. By Miss Russell. 518 



propitiate the god of thunder. Mr Campbell was told by an old 

 Highland tinker, to whom he showed a flint arrow-head, that it 

 was lucky, and that lightning would never strike the house where 

 that was ; and Mr Romilly Allen has lately engraved a slab found 

 in Argyleshire, engraved with seven axe-heads, represented as of 

 metal. 



The Dol ar Marchand has a gigantic handled axe outlined on 

 the under side of the roof-stone ; a very large axe is actually in 

 use in Brittany, the blade eight or nine inches long. The scrolls 

 on the Gavr Inis slabs are intersected on two of them by narrow 

 wedges, which seem to be stone celts, seen sideways, and falling 

 point downwards, or the wrong way. One of the slabs of the 

 Grotte des Fees, or Fairies' Cave, one of three dolmens partly 

 covered by one mound in the Carnac district, is engraved with 

 bunches of rude zig-zag lines, like some of the representations 

 of lightning, and I believe something similar has been found in 

 Ireland. It is probably as representing lightning that red thread 

 and cord are sacred in many countries. (This suggestion seems 

 really to have originated with the author of " Folk-Medicine, " 

 for it is not to be found in the book to which he refers for it). 

 Two things are to be noted here; the lightning in this connection 

 represents life rather than death ; and the people who were 

 actually making stone axes could not believe they fell with the 

 lightning, as later generations have done. 



I see the idea, that deposits of rude stone agricultural imple- 

 ments may in some cases have been offerings to the god of 

 harvest, by the corn-growing Indians, has occurred to the 

 Canadian antiquaries. 



Locmariaker, a seaport town, is a French-speaking colony in 

 Lower Brittany, and the townspeople call the great cairn the 

 Butte d' Uriau ; St Thuriau is the favourite local hero. The 

 local French is peculiar ; the French q and the Breton k, are alike 

 turned into a sound like our ch, or as it would be written in 

 French, tch. The town is called by the sailors Locmariatcher. 



It is rather against the dolmens being tombs, that two or three 

 of the mounds on the picturesque ridge at Les Ttochers are regular 

 cairns, supported by a low regularly built wall, like one at least 

 of those at Clava, and like it containing ashes ; though the circle 

 of 14 standing- stones is wanting. 



I see it asserted, in a work of some importance, that the 

 cairns of Clava have certainly been houses originally ; but as 

 2 M 



