&6 LIST Otf DOLMENS, MENHIRS, ETC. 



Dame at the foot of Le Mont Gibel, " La Fontaine du Vau 

 Laurens ' ' in the lane north-east of Candie Library, and 

 "La Fontaines des C or bins " half way down the steep hill 

 below Les Cotils. The waters of these Holy Wells were 

 considered by our old folk to be a sovereign remedy for 

 ' l Les maux de la f ontaine " — diseases of the eyes, of the 

 skin and glandular swellings. That of "La Fontaine des 

 Corbins " was even thought to cure consumption. The 

 worship of fountains, as has already been said, is one of the 

 most ancient cults in Western Europe; and in France, where 

 the sources of some of these Holy Wells have been excavated, 

 as at Fontaine Sauve, Commune de Vic-de-Chassenay 

 (Cotes d'Or), (1) an unbroken sequence of votive offerings of 

 all ages has been found, going back to the flint knives and 

 stone axes of Neolithic man. 



I think that the circles, first of sacred fountains, then 

 of menhirs, and lastly of dolmens upon the hills surrounding 

 the Town all point to the fact that a settlement of Neolithic 

 man existed either on the actual site of the old town of St. 

 Peter-Port surrounding the site where the church now stands, 

 or, upon the plain that must have existed, four to five 

 thousand years ago, extending seaward as far as Castle 

 Cornet, if not even much farther and probably bounded by, 

 and including, the rocky promontories which are now known 

 as the islands of Herm and Jethou; for we know there has 

 been a considerable subsidence of our island since Neolithic 

 times. The sequence of divinities points to such a settlement. 

 First the Holy Wells, sacred, we may suppose, as in France, 

 to the lesser pantheon nearest to it, then crowning the hills 

 the menhirs, which were, according to Dr. Marcel Baudouin, 

 and other French "prehistoriens " the symbols of the Sun 

 God and of the fertilising influence of nature, and then, 

 farthest away, the large group of dolmens sacred to the 

 dead, and also to the great mother goddess — the earth- 

 mother — whose features we find sculptured upon the cap- 

 stone of the dolmen of Dehus, and on the statue-menhirs of 

 the Castel and St. Martin's. 



ST. ANDREW'S. 



La Grosse Roche. — Beyond the St. Andrew megaliths, already 

 mentioned in the Section dealing with St. Peter-Port as forming 

 part of the Foulon-Fauconnaire group, there is only one other place 

 name in the parish which might have denoted a menhir, namely, 

 " La Grosse Roche," near Le Villiaze on the Fief de l'Abbesse de 

 Caen (Perchage, 1889). 



Holy Wells. — There were also two Holy Wells in the parish. One, 

 " La Fontaine de St. Clair, " close to the church and on the opposite 

 (1) A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, p. 20P, 



