Archceologia. 73 



Scilly Islands are not few in number, like the Cassiterides, and 

 no tin was ever found in them. According to Diodorus Siculus, 

 who wrote at the same time as Strabo, that is, about half a century 

 before Christ, the tin of Britain was carried to the Mediterranean 

 through Gaul, and perhaps the Cassiterides islands was a name 

 without any truth — a fiction of the Carthaginians, to conceal their 

 commerce in tin along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, if the 

 story of the ship being watched by the Romans and voluntarily 

 wrecked, be not itself a mere legend. It would, indeed, be strange, 

 if our islands had been so much frequented by the Phoenicians, that 

 Diodorus, proverbial for his careful research and great historical 

 knowledge, Julius Cassar, who was especially interested in the 

 metallic produce of Britain, and Tacitus, who had inquired par- 

 ticularly into the ethnological history of our island, should never 

 have heard of them. It is our belief that the Phoenicians were 

 never in Britain. The facts probably are that the tin mines of 

 Cornwall were opened by settlers from Gaul, and perhaps from 

 Spain, and that the Phoenicians had obtained tin in these countries, 

 and monopolized the trading before it was carried over to Marseilles. 

 With regard to Cromlechs and Druidical Circles, which 

 ProfesGor Nilsson ascribes to Phoenician workmanship, there are 

 circumstances which seem to show that they are by no means 

 necessarily of the extreme antiquity which some people would give 

 to them ; and we would call attention to one record especially, 

 which, we believe, has not been noticed by antiquaries. 

 Among the ecclesiastical laws of the Anglo-Saxons, there is 

 one code entitled " The Laws of the Northumbrian Priests," 

 which appears to belong to the ninth or tenth century (after 

 Christ), and which contains some provisions against practises 

 of Paganism then existing. One of these laws forbids people 

 making a frith-geard round a tree, or a stone, or a fountain, 

 all which three we know were objects of superstitious worship 

 among the Anglo-Saxons. The words of the original, literally 

 translated, are, " If there be a frith-geard on any one's land, 

 about a stone, or a tree, or a fountain, or any folly of that kind, then 

 let him who made it pay the penalty of the breach of law." The 

 word frith-geard, literally peace-yard, means simply a sacred in- 

 closure, exactly such as was contained within that circle of stones 

 which has been so often called Druidical, for a circle is the natural 

 form of a small inclosure of space. The circle round the sepulchral 

 tumulus marked the space belonging to the dead, within which 

 nobody was allowed to trespass irreverently ; the circle round the 

 object of worship limited the space into which none but the priest 

 was admitted. We look upon this law as showing not only that 

 the circles of stones did not always belong necessarily to sepulchral 

 interments, but that the construction of them was continued to so late 

 a period as that of the compilation of these laws. Trees, to have become 

 an object of worship, were probably ancient at the time the circles were 

 raised round them, and have necessarily decayed and perished long 

 ago, and accordingly we not unfrequently find circles of stones with 

 no object remaining in the interior ; circles of stones, with a single 



