118 



The Anticjuitics of the [No. 



I now proceed to describe the 



Afittquiiies at Achenny. 



A village lying about three miles eastward of Kotagherry. At the 

 extremity of a field beyond the village and overlooking a ravine, rises 

 an artificial terrace twenty-one paces in length by ten in breadth, 

 supported by slabs and masses of stone. Along the Western side of 

 this platform I found a row of those remarkable relics of antiquity 

 belonging essentially to the Druidical religion, called Cromlechs. 

 There are twelve still standing, ten on the side of the terrace 

 and two in the centre of it. The ruins of several others are 

 apparent. Most of the entire ones consist of three upright slabs 

 planted firmly in the earth and supporting a fourth, which is 

 poised horizontally on the top of them. Four of the Cromlechs 

 are larger than the rest, being about five feet square, and five 

 high, the length of the upper slab measuring seven feet. The 

 neighbouring villagers assured me no gentleman had previously 

 taken notice of these relics, which may be accounted for by their 

 having been almost wholly covered by underwood, which I was 

 obliged to have removed before I could make my measurements 

 and drawings. Inquiring of the people what they knew respecting 

 these remarkable structures, I was told with much gravity they had 

 been constructed by a race of beings not a foot high, who existed 

 before mankind and were destroyed at a flood which overwhelmed 

 the earth, an account remarkable as manifesting the universal belief 

 in fairies, and important as exhibiting a tradition of the deluge 

 amongst the lower orders of the Hindoo peasantry, who cannot have 

 access to the Brahminical accounts of the Cataclysm. 



The Cromlech is a vestige of antiquity well known in Europe, 

 and is thus described by a modern writer. 



Cromlech, literally stone table. Bemarkable structures learn- 

 edly ascribed to the Druids ; unlearnedly to the dwarfs and fairies ; 

 and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large 

 and massive flat stones overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in 

 the ground, form a rude and sometimes very -capacious chamber or 

 grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten 

 antiquity stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the 

 peasantry. Grolte aux fees, Roche aux fees, Sfc^ 



It is very remarkable that not only are the Cromlechs of the Neil- 



