631 
"Some remnant of Druidical worship," is the common 
remark. If they had but a voice, what wondrous tales 
could they tell of the old lords of the soil! And yet now are 
they beginning to speak, and to tell the feelings of their age, 
even as their descendants in our churchyards tell their tale 
of hope and faith, or of sorrow. As the cairns and sepulchres 
of unhewn stones, with their urns and rough implements of 
war or domestic use, or articles of female ornament, can most 
surely claim to be the forefathers of the vaults and shrines 
of later days, so these venerable stones can point to our 
crosses and obelisks and pillars and tomb-stones, and say, 
" These are our children ; from us came the idea that has 
pervaded each age, although stamped with its own peculiar 
mark, and each telling its own tale of religious belief and 
social feeling." But whence are the stones themselves? 
However natural it may now seem to place a tomb-stone, it 
could not have been very natural in those early days ; for 
the carriage of huge slabs of stone, sometimes sixteen or 
twenty feet in length (and in some instances even sixty feet, 
and weighing about 250 tons), for many miles over a rough 
and wild country, and afterwards erecting them in their 
upright position, at a time, too, when metal was not much 
in use, so that their machinery could not have been very 
powerful ; — surely this was not " natural," not so natural and 
easy as the cairn. 
These ancient stones tell us, indeed, that at that spot may 
lie the ashes of some hero, or that there was fought some 
great battle, or that some grand covenant was made there ; 
but they tell us more : they tell us their own history ; they 
tell us the feelings and worship of their day, even as our 
crosses will tell to those who come after us, what were the 
hopes and belief of this age. They utter with silent tongue 
the name of their God : the God by whose strength the 
battle was said to be won, the God who was invoked as a 
witness to the covenant. 
