fore, probably, to the Welsh. The trade in tin from Cornwall 
across France to Marseilles seems to have followed a track coin- 
ciding with the line of these dolmen-building, ac-speaking tribes 
(331-333). We have, therefore, at once a suspicion of great 
antiquity. On the other hand, Mr. Fergusson proves that 
megalithic monuments continued to be erected till a compara- 
tively recent date. Indeed, the custom of erecting these is still 
extant amongst a hill tribe in India.* 
We cannot, then, certainly determine the age of such a 
monument as Stonehenge from its megalithic character. We 
must find, if possible, some other sources of information. 
Now tradition, if it can be at all relied upon, assigns a greater 
antiquity to the inner circle of “ blue stones” than to the 
more striking surrounding circle of trilithons composed of 
sarsen stones found in the neighbourhood. The eleven U blue” 
stones are of a different nature, being all cut from igneous 
rocks, such as are not to be found nearer than Cornwall or 
even Ireland.” It is, then, not at all improbable that these 
may be of an older date, and brought, on account of their 
supposed sanctity, from Ireland, as tradition records. None 
of these are large — one of the finest only 7 feet 6 inches high ; 
but it is quite consistent with what we learn elsewhere, that the 
peculiar sacredness of the place may have attached to these, 
and that the more majestic trilithons may have been erected 
afterwards as a memory of the British chiefs slain there by 
Hengist. 
Nennius records that, “ at a feast held at the palace or 
monastery at Amesbury, to which it was agreed that all should 
come unarmed, three hundred British nobles were treacher- 
ously slain by the followers of Hengist, who had concealed 
their weapons under their cloaks.” But why was the feast 
appointed at this out-of-the-way place, except that on account 
of its sacredness it was the national gathering-place of the 
Britons ? 
This, indeed, is what we gather from the British bards. It 
is called the great circle or sanctuary of the dominion, by 
Cuhelyn in a verse to the praise of Eidiol, who was 'presid- 
ing in the circle , a man eminently distinguished for wisdom. 
“ A proclamation was issued inviting equal numbers to a conference at a 
banquet of mead. The mead and wine are distributed by the knights of the 
enclosure at the appointed spot, and the spot appointed was the precinct of 
lor, in the fair quadrangular area of the Great Sanctuary of the Dominion.”! 
* See The Early Dawn of Civilization , p. 23. 
f Edwards’s Mythology and Sites of the Druids, p, 313. 
