713 
of Edinburgh, Session 1871 - 72 . 
“ And it lichted doon frae the darken’d lift, 
Like the greedy Erne bird, — 
And there it stands i’ the atild kirk-lands, 
Half-buried in the yird.” 
These legends, in explanation of the transport of Scotch boulders, 
are of the same nature as the legend which professes to explain how 
the Blue Stones of Stonehenge came to Salisbury Plain in England. 
Jeffrey of Monmouth, who was the first author to write a descrip- 
tion of Stonehenge, says that certain of the stones were brought 
by Merlin and a band of giants from Ireland. Mr Fergusson, 
in his book on Ancient Stone Monuments, recently published, 
says that some geological friends of his have told him, that 
these blue stones of Stonehenge are a species of trap, which is not 
known in England, but is well known in Ireland; and therefore 
Mr Fergusson supposes that they probably were brought from Ire- 
land in ships. It seems quite as likely that these blue stones were 
boulders, and were brought from Ireland by natural agency, and 
deposited on Salisbury Plain in that way. There are strong proofs 
to show that there was an agency of some kind which swept over 
Ireland from the westward, and brought boulders across what is 
now the Irish Channel to the south-west districts of England. 
In these legends we see the efforts of the people in those early 
times to account, in the best way they could, for the transport of 
boulders into their districts. It is evident that they had investi- 
gated the subject, and had made considerable approaches to the 
truth. Finding that many of these great blocks differed in com- 
position from all the rocks of the district where the blocks lay, 
and inferring that their rounded shapes were probably due to 
friction, they inferred that they must have come into the district 
from some distant quarter ; and this inference was confirmed by 
discovering that in certain other districts there was rock of the 
same description as the blocks. But how blocks exceeding 100 tons 
weight could have been brought many miles, and over a tract of 
country uneven and broken in its surface, their knowledge of 
nature’s laws did not enable them to explain. The only agency 
which they could think of was superhuman and supernatural; and 
hence the invention of such legends as assumed the agency of 
Merlin, giants, Michael Scott, witches, and the devil. 
