
1891.) © Among the Prehistoric Monuments of Brittany. 877 
single upright slab in the dolmen we are now describing there 
are eighteen such axes figured, with others in the same gallery. 
The marks themselves roughly resemble the tattoo marks of 
Pacific Islanders. As Cartailhac remarks in his “La France 
Préhistorique ” (1889), they are diverse linear combinations, being 
straight, curved, waved lines, either isolated or parallel or ramified 
like fern leaves, or arranged in segments of concentric circles, 
either limited or not, and trimming. certain compartments of 
spirals with short turns, recalling exactly the figures made by 
the wrinkles of the skin on the palms of the hands and the 
finger-tips. 
The last-described marks are certainly the most typical and 
abundant, and perhaps were suggested to the proto-Celtic engraver 
by studying the lines on his hands. The artist was not hurried 
in his work, and, as Cartailhac says, the sculptures must have 
been made before the stones were put in place. 
But the tide is going out, and we must unwillingly leave this 
fascinating ruin and return to Lockmariaquer, to visit other 
dolmens, One of the most notable, situated south of the 
town near the base of an elliptical mound, thirty-nine feet high, 
is the dolmen Mané-er-H’roeck (the mountain of the fairy). The 
opening to the gallery, as in all the other dolmens, faces to the 
east; and to enter it we pass by two enormous but prostrate 
menhirs, one thirty-one and the other twenty-five feet long. The 
walls of the dolmen are built in horizontal layers, and one of the 
stones raised on the right side of the entrance is ornamented with 
very beautiful and curious sculptures, some like escutcheons, 
besides ten figures of symbolic axes with handles. Thence 
walking across a potato field, occasionally stopping to pick up 
fragments of Roman tiles, we approach the “ king of the menhirs,” 
called Mane-ar-Groac’h. His monolithic majesty is second in 
size and height to none in Europe, or any other country; the 
next largest one in Brittany being thirty-seven feet high. It lay 
however, prostrate, and broken into four pieces. When entire it 
was sixty-seven feet six inches long, seven feet six inches thick 
in one diameter, and thirteen feet six inches in the broadest 
portion. This colossal menhir, as usual when one or'two stand 
