43 
PREHISTORIC TOMBSTONES. 
O much controversy has of late years centred around 
Stonehenge that the public is in danger of forgetting 
that we possess other ancient stone monuments. The 
havoc wrought by prosaic husbandmen and matter-of- 
fact masons has been grievous, yet these monuments, grim and 
fretted by a thousand storms, are still numerous, massive, and 
mysterious. Such remains are termed by the archaeologist 
“ megalithic,” a word which, strictly denoting a “ big stone ” 
relic, is yet conveniently extended so as to embrace barrows and 
earthworks. There is, indeed, good reason for the inclusion of 
burial mounds, for the Neolithic, or long, barrows at first often 
concealed large structures of stone, from the simple dolmen, 
shortly to be described, to the complex tomb with its galleries 
and subsidiary recesses. Even the round barrow which belonged 
to the Transitional, or to the later stage of Bronze culture, not 
unfrequently covered small stone chambers or cists, and many 
earthworks, again, are plainly connected with the stone monu- 
ments in their immediate neighbourhood. 
Dismissing from the mind most of the popular lore about 
“ Druidical stones,” it may be affirmed that some of the monu- 
ments, at least, date from the time of the occupation of Britain 
by the Iberians, that little, long-headed, swarthy race which 
ushered in the Newer Stone Age. Other objects of this nature, 
probably the majority, were raised by the Celts of the Bronze 
period, an epoch thus alluded to in Sir Francis Palgrave’s 
“ Visions of England ” : — 
“ Dark rites of hidden faith in grove and moor ; 
Idols of monstrous build. 
Wheel’d scythes of war, 
Rock tombs and pillars hoar.” 
Expressing this antiquity roughly in figures, we may say that 
these stone monuments date back from three or four centuries 
before Christ, to the same number of thousands of years. Their 
distribution in space carries us from the Himalayas to Peru, 
and from Denmark to the isles of the Southern Pacific. Some 
seven or eight distinct types of monuments are discernible, and 
specimens of each are extant in Britain. The simplest kind is 
the vertical standing stone, or menhir, to which the provincial 
name of long, hoar, or tingle-stone is given. Good examples 
occur at Motteston, in the Isle of Wight ; Minchinhampton, in 
Gloucestershire; Rollright, in Warwick; and Studland, near 
Swanage. Wherever it is evident that a menhir is not merely 
the survivor of a row of stones of which the other members have 
been destroyed, we may conclude that this ancient form of 
obelisk is commemorative — perchance of a burial, or it is a tribal 
boundary stone. It is interesting, moreover, to notice that 
during the course of ages, the menhir has been transformed into 
