By the Rev. W. C. Lukis. 



83 



Pierre, Quiberon, the circle is seventy seven yards on the south side of 

 the lines; at Menec the centre of the circle is south of the direction of 

 the central avenue ; at Kerlescant it is a large segment, and not a 

 complete circle. In no case is there, strictly speaking, an attach- 

 ment of the circle to the lines. 



Now just as the same facts often produce opposite impressions on 

 different minds, so it is with regard to these monuments. Archseo- 

 logists and travellers appear to have viewed them through different 

 coloured glasses, and have drawn strange and opposite conclusions 

 from what they have seen. It is very difficult to banish from the 

 mind pre-conceived and favourite ideas, and the glasses they have 

 used have thrown such an agreeable colouring around the objects, 

 that the opinions are adhered to in spite of their fancifulness and 

 palpable falseness. 



The peasant population, for many generations, have been looking 

 at these lines through a highly-coloured-glass, and if you ask them 

 how these stones came to be thus arranged, they will tell you with- 

 out hesitation, and expect you to believe, that these ponderous 

 masses are the Pope's soldiers. They say that St. Comely, Pope, 

 and now patron saint of the parish church of Carnac, chased by 

 an army of Pagans, fled pursued to the sea shore. Finding no boat 

 or means of escape, and on the point of being captured, he exercised 

 his saintly power, and converted into granite pillars the soldiers who 

 thought to seize him. 



However absurd this idea may seem to us, it is quite equalled by 

 that of a French engineer officer (Mons. de la Sauvagere) of the 

 last century, who imagined that the Romans erected these lines for 

 the purpose of protecting their tents from the fury of the tempest. 



The hypothesis of our countryman who saw here a temple in the 

 form of an enormous serpent, is not more satisfactory. Nor are 

 other opinions admissible which would make these stones me- 

 morials of the defeat of the Veneti by Caesar ; or a cemetery of the 

 same people after a battle ; or an enormous astronomical calendar ; 

 or a military trophy in honour of Hercules ; or a grove of sacred 

 oaks, and these great stones placed in lines like rows of trees. 



My friend Canon Jackson suggests that a key, that may fit this 



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