84 



On the Stone Avenues of Carnac. 



" very rusty old lock/' which so many have vainly essayed to open, 

 may possibly be found in the account of the ancient chronicler, 

 Geoffrey of Monmouth. According to Geoffrey, in the year of our 

 Lord 381 a large body of British soldiers passed over to Armorica 

 under the command of Clemens Maximus for the purpose of attacking 

 and dethroning the Emperor Gratian. On the defeat of the emperor, 

 Maximus resolved to establish his army as a colony in Britanny, 

 instead of sending them back to England. Wishing to avoid all 

 mixture with the Gauls, he sent over to England for wives for his 

 soldiers and emigrants. Ursula, daughter of the prince of Cornwall, 

 and eleven thousand ladies of the higher class, to say nothing of a 

 much larger number of others of a lower class, embarked for Britanny. 

 Contrary and stormy winds dispersed the fleet, most of the ships 

 foundered, and nearly all the ladies perished. 1 



This story, whether true or not, is presented to archaeologists, 

 that they may manufacture it, (if they can,) into a key to Carnac. 

 " Upon reading this event in the old British history/"' writes my 

 learned friend, "and happening to recollect, first, the situation of 

 Carnac, upon the very sea coast of Armorica, and, next, the peculiar 

 number of eleven rows of monumental stones, it struck me that the 

 whole number of stones having been estimated by unprejudiced trav- 

 ellers to have been probably ten or twelve thousand, the original 

 arrangement may have been designed to be a thousand in each row, 

 making in all eleven thousand. The whole might thus be intended 

 to be a great national memorial of the tragic end of the eleven 

 thousand British ladies/'' 



Unhappily for this ingenious theory, this key does not fit the rusty 

 old lock at all. It is presumed that the Carnac lines are composed 

 of eleven rows, but as I have shown that they are in reality three 

 distinct monuments, one having eleven, another ten, and the third 

 thirteen rows of stones, and that, besides these, there are five or six 

 other monuments of a like nature, not one of which has eleven rows, 

 I do not think the foundation a very good one whereon to erect such 

 a theory. 



1 See Notes and Queries for July, 1869, 



