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Archaic England, an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, placenames, and faeric superstitions

Harold Bayley · 1919 · Scanned text · Free in the US

239,194 words · about 16 h 45 min to read

Period artwork: Interior of the Bodleian Library, 1845
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About this book

Author
Harold Bayley
Language
English
Published
1919
Length
239,194 words · about 16 h 45 min
Sections
6 reader sections
Text
Scanned text, read from page scans by OCR; may contain errors
Rights
Public domain in the United States · PD-US by publication date

 

Contents (6)
  1. Front matter about 1 min
  2. Contents about 1 min
  3. Introduction about 40 min
  4. Chap. Ii.] The Magic Of Words 35 about 55 min
  5. Chap. Iii.] A Tale Of Troy 79 about 3 h 6 min
  6. III about 12 h 3 min

Continue:

Front matter

ISiLIf" • i^l;<r '^.t

QfotngU Hmoersitg ffithtarg

Jftijiaca. ^eui ^atk

Contents

OHAP. PAGE

I. Intboductoby 1

II. The Magic of Words 34

Introduction

*' If a man does nofe keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."— H. D, Thobeau.

This book is an application of the jigsaw system to certain archaeological problems which under the ordinary detached methods of the Specrtblist have proved insoluble. My fragments of evidence are drawn as occasion warrants from History, Fairy-tale, Philosophy, Legend, Folklore— in fact from any quarter whence the required piece unmistakably fulfils the missing space. It is thus a mental medley with all the defects, and some, I trust, of the attractions, of a mosaic.

Ten years ago I published a study on Mediaeval Symbolism, and subsequent investigation of cognate subjects has since put me in possession of some curious and uncommon information, which lies off the mainroads of conventional Thought.

The consensus of opinion upon A New Light on the Befiaissance,^ was to the effect that my theories were decidedly ingenious and up to a point tenable, yet nevertheless at present they could only be regarded as non-proven. In 1912 ^ I therefore endeavoured to substantiate my earlier

2 The Lost Language of Symbolism : An inquiry into the origin of certain letters, words, names, fairy-tales, folklore, and mythologies. 2 vols, London, 1912 (Williams & Norgate).

propositions, pushing them much further to the point of suggesting an innate connection between Symbolism and certain words — ^such, for example, SjS psychcy which means a butterfly, and psyche the anima or soul which was symbolised or represented by a butterfly. Of course I knew only too well the tricky character of the ground I was exploring and how open many of my propositions would be to attack, yet it seemed preferable rather to risk the Finger of Scorn than by a superfluity of caution ignore clues, which under more competent hands might yield some very interesting and perhaps valuable discoveries.

In the present volume I piece together a mosaic of visible and tangible evidence which is supplementary to that already brought forward, and the results — at any rate in many instances — cannot by any possibility be written off as due merely to coincidence or chance. That they will be adequate to satisfy the exacting requirements of modern criticism is, however, not to be supposed. Kef erring to The Lost Language, one of my reviewers cheerfully but disconcertingly observed : '' He must deal as others of his school have done with all the possible readings of the his tory of the races of men ".i To sweeping and magnanimous advice of this character one can only counter the untoward experiences of the hapless " Charles Templeton," as recounted by Mr. Stephen McKenna : *' At the age of three-and-twenty Charles Templeton, my old tutor at Oxford, set himself to write a history of the Third French Eepublic. When I made his acquaintance, some thirty years later, he had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. At his death, three months ago, I understand that his notes on the precursors

'^iManchester Guardian, 23rd December, 1912.

I.] INTRODUCTION 3

of Charlemagne were almost as complete as he desired. ' It is so difl&cult to know where to start, Mr. Oakleigh,' he used to say, as I picked my steps through the litter of notebooks that cumbered bis tables, chairs, and floor."!

But Mr. Templeton's embarrassments were trifling in comparison with mine. Templeton was obviously a man of some leisure, whereas my literary hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants, railway trains, and during such hours and half-hours of opportunity as I can snatch from more pressing obligations. Moreover, Mr. Templeton could concentrate on one subject— History — whereas the scope of my studies compels me to keep on as good terms as may be with the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archaeology, Philosophy, Keligion, Eomance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology. I mention this not to extenuate any muzziness of thought, or sloppiness of diction, but to disarm by confession the charge that my work has been done hurriedly and here and there superficially.

With the facilities at my disposal I have endeavoured to the best of my abilities to concentrate a dozen rays on to one subject, and to mould into an harmonious and coherent whole the pith of a thousand and one items culled during the past seven years from day to day and noted from hour to hour. Differing as I do in some respects from the accepted conclusions of the best authorities, it is a further handicap to find myself in the position of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah, who was constrained by force of circumstance to build with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other.

1 Soma.

To the heretic and the wayfarer it is, howeter, a comfortable reflection that what Authority maintains to-day it generally contradicts to-morrow.^ Less than a century ago contemporary scholarship knew the age of the earth with such exquisite precision that it pronounced it to a year, declaring an exact total of 6000 years, and a few odd days.

When the discoveries in Kent's Gavem were laid before the scientific world, the authorities flatly denied their possibility, and the proofs that Man in Britain was contemporary with the mammoth, the lion, the bear, and the rhinoceros ^ were received with rudeness and inattention. Similarly the discovery of prehistoric implements in the gravel-beds at Abbeville was treated with inconsequence and insult, and it was upwards of twenty years before it was reluctantly conceded that : " While we have been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us ; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the

1 " Topographical comment — I will not say criticism — has been equally inefficient. A theory is not refuted by saying ' all the great antiquarians are against you,' ' the Psalter of Tara refutes that,' or ' O'Donovan has set the question past all doubt '. These remarks only prove that we have hardly commenced scientific archaeology in this country." — Westropp, Thos. J., Proc. of Boyal Irish Acad., vol. xxxiv., C, No. 8, p. 129.

2 We found precisely the same things as were found by our predecessors, remains of extinct animals in the cave earth, and with them flint implements in considerable numbers. You want, of course, to know how the scientific world received these latter discoveries. They simply scouted them. They told us that our statements were impossible, and we simply responded with the remark that we had not said that they were possible, only that they were true.— Pengally, W., Kent's Cavern. Its Testimony to the Antiquity of Man, p. 12.

I.] INTBODtrcTIOK 5

Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of England and France, along the banks of the Seine and the Soname, the Thames and the Waveney." ^

The fact is now generally accepted as proven by both anthropologists and archaeologists, that the most ancient records of the human race exist not in Asia, but in Europe. The oldest documents are not the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the hunting-scenes scratched on bone and ivory by the European cave-dwelling contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Human implements found on the chalk plateaus of Kent have been assigned to a period prior to the glacial epoch, which is surmised to have endured for 160,000 years, from, roughly speaking, 240,000 to 80,000 years ago.

It is now also an axiom that the races of Europe are not colonists from somewhere in Asia, but that, speaking generally, they have inhabited their present districts more or less continuously from the time when they crept back gradually in the wake of the retreating ice.

" Written history and popular tradition," says Sir E. Kay Lankester, " tell us something in regard to the derivation and history of existing 'peoples,' but we soon come to a period — a few thousand years back — concerning which both written statement and tradition are dumb. And yet we know that this part of the world — Europe — was inhabited by an abundant population in those remote times. We know that for at least 500,000 years human populations occupied portions of this territory, and that various races with distinguishing peculiarities of feature and frame, and each possessed of arts and crafts distinct from those characteristic of others, came and went in succession in

* Lubbock, J., Prehistoric Times, those incredibly remote days in Europe. We know this from the implements, carvings, and paintings left by these successive populations, and we know it also by the discovery of their bones."

Anthropology, however, while admitting this unmeasurable antiquity for mankind, takes no count of the possibihty of an amiable or cultured race in these islands prior to the coming of the Koman legions. It traces with equanimity the modern Briton evolving in unbroken sequence from the primitive cave-dweller, and it points with self-complacency to the fact that even as late as the Battle of Hastings some of Harold's followers were armed with stone axes. There has, however, recently been unearthed near Maidstone the skull of a late palaeolithic or early neolithic man, whose brain capacity was rather above the average of the modern Londoner. The forehead of this 15,000 year-old skull is well formed, there are no traces of a simian or overhanging brow, and the individual himself might well, in view of all physical evidence, have been a primeval sage rather than a primeval savage.

The high estimation in which the philosophy of pre*- historic Briton was regarded abroad may be estimated from the testimony of Caesar who states: *' It is believed that this institution (Druidism) was founded in Britannia, and thence transplanted into Gaul. Even nowadays those who wish to become more intimately acquainted with the institution generally go to Britannia for instruction's sake."

It has been claimed for the Welsh that they possess the oldest literature in the oldest language in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis, speaking of the Welsh Bards, mentions their possession of certain ancient and authentic books, but whether or not the traditionary poems which were first

I-] INTEODUCTION 7

committed to writing in the twelfth century retain any traces of the prehistoric Faith is a matter of divided opinion. To those who are not experts in archaisms and are not enamoured of ink-spilhng, the sanest position would appear to he that of Matthew Arnold, who observes in Celtie Literature : ** There is evidently mixed here, with the newer legend, a detritus, as the geologists would say, of something far older ; and the secret of Wales and its genius is not truly reached until this detritus, instead of being called recent because it is found in contact with what is recent, is disengaged, and is made to tell its own story." ^ The word '' founded," as used by Caesar, implies an antiquity for British institutions which is materially confirmed by the existence of such monuments as Stonehenge, and the more ancient Avebury. Whether these supposed ''appendages to Bronze age burials" were merely

^ In the course of his criticism the same writer pertinently observes : — " Why, what a wonderful thing is this ! We have, in the first place, the most weighty and explicit testimony — Strabo's, Caesar's, Lucan's — that this race once possessed a special, profound, spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash's words, ' Wiser than their neighbours '. Lucan's words are singularly clear and strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they say, how much or how little. Lucan, addressing those hitherto under the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman Civil War to their own devices, says : —

" ♦ Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye, ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given the knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven ; your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn that the bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives still.' "

sepulchral monuments, or whether they ever possessed any intellectual significance, does not affect the fact that Great Britain, and notably England, is richer in this class of monument than any other part of the world.*

Circles being essentially and pre-eminently Enghsh it is disappointing to find the most modern handbook on Stonehenge stating: "In all matters of archaeology it is constantly found that certain questions are better left in abeyance or bequeathed to a coming generation for solution "} Every one sympathises with that weary feeling, but nevertheless the present generation now possesses quite sufficient data to enable it to shoulder its own responsibilities and to pass beyond the stereotyped and hackneyed formula " sepulchral monument ". I hold no brief on behalf of the Druids — indeed one must agree that the Celtic Druids were much more modern than the monuments associated with their name — nevertheless the theory that these far-famed philosophers were mere wise men or witch doctors, with perhaps a spice of the conjuror, is a modern misapprehension with which I am nowise in sympathy. Valerius Maximus (c. a.d. 20) was much better informed and therefore more cautious in his testimony : "I should be tempted to call these breeches-

1 " Circles form another group of the monuments we are ahout to treat of . . . . In France they are hardly known, though in Algeria they are frequent. In Denmark and Sweden they are both numerous and important, but it is in the British Islands that circles attained their greatest development."— Fergusson, J., Rude Stone Mo?iuments, p. 47. Referring to Stanton Drew the same authority observes : " Meanwhile it may be well to point out that this class of circles is peculiar to England. They do not exist in France or Algeria. The Scandinavian circles are all very different, so too are the Irish." — Ibid., p. 153.

2 Stevens, F., Stoiiehenge To-day and Yesterday, 1916, p. 14.

I.] INTEODUCTION 9

wearing gentry fools, were not their doctrine the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras ".

Druids or no Druids there must at some period in our past have been interesting and enterprising people in these islands. At Avebury, near Marlborough, is Silbury Hill, an earth mound, which is admittedly the vastest artificial hill in Europe. Avebury itself is said to constitute the greatest megalithic monument in Europe, and nowhere in the world are tumuli more plentiful than in Great Britain. On the banks of the Boyne is a pyramid of stones which, had it been situated on the banks of the, Nile, would probably have been pronounced the oldest and most venerable of the pyramids. In the Orkneys at Hoy is almost the counterpart to an Egyptiaja marvel which, according to Herodotus, was an edifice 21 cubits in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height, the whole consisting only of one single stone, brought thither by sea from a place about 20 days' saihng from Sais. The Hoy relic is an obelisk 36 feet long by 18 feet broad, by 9 feet deep. " No other stones are near it. *Tis all hollowed within or scooped by human art and industry, having a door at the east end 2 feet square with a stone of the same dimension lying about 2 feet from it, which was intended no doubt to close the entrance. Within, there is at the south end of it, cut out, the form of a bed and pillow capable to hold two persons." ^

Sir John Morris- Jones has noted remarkable identities between the syntax of Welsh and that of early Egyptian : Gerald Massey, in his Book of the Beginnings, gives a list of 3000 close similarities between English and Egyptian words; and the astronomical inquiries of Sir Norman Lockyer have driven him to conclude: ''The people who

* Toland, History of the Druids, p. 163.

honoured us with their presence here in Britain some 4000 years ago, had evidently, some way or other, had communicated to them a very complete Egyptian culture, and they determined their time of night just in the same way that the Egyptians did ".

It used to be customary to attribute all the mysterious edifices of these islands, including stones inscribed with lettering in an unknown script, to hypothetical wanderers from the East. Nothing could have been more peremptory than the manner in which this theory was enunciated by its supporters, among whom were included all or nearly all the great names of the period. To-day there is a complete volte face upon this subject, and the latest opinion is that " not a particle of evidence, has been adduced in favour of any migration from the East ".^ When one remembers that only a year or two ago practically the whole of the academic world gave an exuberant and unqualified adherence to the theory of Asiatic immigration it is difficult to conceive a more chastening commentary upon the value of ex cathedra teaching.

Happily it was an Englishman ^ who, seeing through the futility of the Asiatic theory, first pointed out the now generally accepted fact that the cradle of Aryan civilisation, if anywhere at all, was inferentially in Europe. The assumption of an Asiatic origin was, however, so firmly established and upheld by the dignity of such imposing names that the arguments of Dr. Latham were not thought worthy of reply, and for sixteen years his work lay unheeded before the world. Even twenty years after publication, when the new view was winning many adherents,

^ Schrader, 0., cf. Taylor, Isaac, The Origin of the Aryans^ p. 48. 2 Latham, Dr. E. G.

I-] INTEODUCTION ll

it was alluded to by one of the most learned Germans as follows : " And so it came to pass that in England, the native land of fads, there chanced to enter into the head of an eccentric individual the notion of placing the cradle of the Aryan race in Europe ".

The whirligig of Time has now once again shifted the focus of archaeological interest at the moment from Scandinavia to Crete, where recent excavations have revealed an Eldorado of prehistoric art. . It is now considered that the civilisation of Hellas was a mere offshoot from that of Crete, and that Crete was veritably the fabulous Island of Atlantis, a culture-centre which leavened all the shores of the Mediterranean.

According to Sir Arthur Evans : " The high early culture, the equal rival of that of Egypt and Babylon, which began to take its rise in Crete in the fourth millennium before our era, flourished for some 2000 years, eventually dominating the MgesbH and a large part of the Mediterranean basin. The many-storeyed palaces of the Minoan Priest-Kings in their great days, by their ingenious planning, their successful combination of the useful with the beautiful and stately, and last but not least, by their scientific sanitary arrangements, far outdid the similar works, on however vast a scale, of Egyptian or Babylonian builders." ^

The sensational discoveries at Crete provide a wholly new .standpoint whence to survey prehistoric civilisation, and they place the evolution of human art and appliances in the last Quaternary Period on a higher level than had ever previously been suspected.

. Not only have the findings in Crete revolutionised all previously current ideas upon Art, but they have also

12 ABCHAIG ENGLAND [cHAP.

condemned to the melting-pot the cardinal article of behef that the alphabet reached us from Phoenicia. Prof. Flinders Petrie has now clearly demonstrated that even in this respect, " Beside the great historic perspective of the long use of signs in Egypt, other discoveries in Europe have opened entirely new ground. These signs are largely found used for writing in Crete, as a geometrical signary ; and the discovery of the Karian alphabet, and. its striking relation to the Spanish alphabet, has likewise compelled an entire reconsideration of the subject. Thus on all sides — Egyptian, Greek, and Barbarian — material appears which is far older and far more widespread than the Grseco- Phoenician world ; a fresh study of the whole material is imperatively needed, now that the old conclusions are seen to be quite inadequate."

The striking connection between the Karian and the Spanish alphabet may be ,connoted with the fact that Strabo, mentioning the Turdetani whom he describes as the most learned tribe of all Spain, says they had reduced their language to grammatical rules, and that for 6000 years they had possessed metrical poems and even laws. Commenting upon this piece of precious information, Lardner ironically observed that although the Spaniards eagerly seized it as a proof of their ancient civilisation, they are sadly puzzled how to reconcile these 6000 years with the Mosaic chronology. He adds that discarding fable, we find nothing in their habits and manners to distinguish them from other branches of that great race, except, perhaps, a superior number of Druidical remains.^

This *' except "is noteworthy in view of the fact that the Celtiberian alphabet of Spain is extremely similar to the

^ Spain and Portiigal, vol. i., p. 16.

I.] INTRODUCTION 13

Bardic or Druidic alphabet of Britain, and also to the hitherto illegible alphabet of Ancient Crete.

Caesar has recorded that the Druids thought it an unhallowed thing to commit their lore to writing, though in the other public and private affairs of life they frequently made use of the Greek alphabet. That the Celts of Gaul possessed the art of writing cannot be questioned, and that Britain also practised some method of communication seems a probability. There are still extant in Scotland inscriptions on stones which are in characters now totally unknown. In Ireland, letters were cut on the bark of trees prepared for that purpose and called poet's tables. The letters of the most ancient Irish alphabet are named after individual trees, and there are numerous references in Welsh poetry to a certain secret of the twigs which lead to the strong inference that *' written" communication was first accomplished by the transmission of treesprigs.

The alphabets illustrated on pages 14 and 15 have every appearance of being representations of sprigs, and it is a curious fact that not only in Ireland, but also in Arabia, alphabets of which every letter was named after trees ^ were once current.

In The Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe, Dr. Mackenzie inquires : '* By whom were Egyptian beads carried to Britain, between 1500 B.C. and 1400 B.C. ? Certainly not the Phoenicians. The sea traders of the Mediterranean were at the time the Cretans. Whether

^ Mr. Hammer, a German who has travelled lately in Egypt and Syria, has brought, it seems, to England a manuscript written in Arabic. It contains a number of alphabets. Two of these consist entirely of trees. The book is of authority. — Davies, !B., Celtic Researclies, 1804, p. 305.

BRITISH ALPHABET.

on

AAvf^mYOWV

/ z s / yo ttl lt>t>l^MkKirt/Kh<X

Fig. 1.— From Celtic Eesearclies (Davies, E.).

CELTIBERIAN ALPHABET,

SHEWING THE DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS FOUND ON THE COINS OF TARRACONENSIS AND B^TICA.

TARRACONENSIS.

BATICA

A often approach-

A ArAA^.^> A?

ing 0

(pAAftAAAA?

B and P

rM\Trs R

IPI^D

C hard, and K

KHK<J

C and S strong

A\

D, resembling T

A AAA

E

111 iM qjHJ^HJNfi ]t* Y.-E 1

E sharp

(fife El

1 1^-^

1. like Hra

NIX?. II? k

i

>t

G hard and aspirated

X

t^

land Y

fU|*l|sV|V^?

L

AAr.Al

M

M

N

h

O

a oo

9 o

O open

AAA AA >c A

R

S

T

1 H u Y?

0) <^ (|> 0 <^ ^ ^

U, like Yxl^iXov

M ^

K aspirated, like the

x*x

Spanish X

t.iCATunCS

AK

*

SAK

IBO or EBO

^XA/^ A^M A\

PE

N<

\AV\

Fig, 2.-^Froia Ancient Coins (Akerman, J. Y.).

or not their merchants visited England we have no means of knowing." ^

The material which I shall produce establishes a probability that the Cretans systematically visited Britain, and further that the tradition of the peopling of this island by men of Trojan race are well founded.

According to the immemorial records of the Welsh Bards : " There were three names imposed on the Isle of Britain from the beginning. Before it was inhabited its denomination was Sea-Girt Green-space ; after being inhabited it was called the Honey Island, and after it was formed into a Commonwealth by Prydain, the Son of Aedd Mawr, it was called the Isle of Prydain. And none have any title therein but the nation of the Kymry. For they first settled upon it, and before that time no men lived therein, but it was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and bisons.^

In the course of these essays I shall discuss the Kymry, and venture a few suggestions as to their cradle and community of memories and hopes. But behind the Kymry, as likewise admittedly behind the Cretans, are the traces of an even more primitive and archaic race. The earliest folk which reached Crete are described as having come with a form of culture which had been developed elsewhere, and among these neolithic settlers have been found traces of a race 6 feet in height and with skulls massive and shapely. Moreover Cretan beliefs and the

^ The Cretans were rulers of the sea, and according to Thucydides King Minos of Crete was " the first person known to us in history as having established a navy. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic Sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent his first colonists, expelling the Carians and appointing his own sons governors ; and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters."

2 Jones, J. J., Britannia Antiquissima, 1866.

I-j INTRODUCTION 17

myths which are based upon them are admittedly older than even the civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates valley : and they belong, it would appear, to a stock of common inheritance from an uncertain culture centre of immense antiquity.^

The problem of Crete is indissolubly connected with that of Etruria, which was flourishing in Art and civilisation at a period when Kome was but a coterie of shepherds' huts. Here again are found Cyclopean walls and the traces of some most ancient people who had sway in Italy at a period even more remote than the national existence of Etruria.^

We are told that the first-comers in Crete ground their meal in stone mortars, and that one of the peculiarities of the island was the herring-bone design of their wall buildings. In West Cornwall the stone walls or Giants' Hedges are Cyclopean ; farther north, in the Boscastle district, herring-bone walls are common, and in the neighbourhood of St. Just there are numerous British villages wherein the stone mortars are still standing.

The formula of independent evolution, which has recently been much over-worked, is now waning into disfavour, and it is difficult to believe- otherwise than that identity of names, customs, and characteristics imply either borrowing or descent from some common, unknown source.

That the builders of our European tumuli and cromlechs were maritime arrivals is a reasonable inference from the fact that dolmens and cromlechs were built almost invariably near the sea.^ These peculiar and distinctive

^ Mackenzie, D. A., Myths of Crete, p. xxix.

^ Gray, Mrs. Hamilton, The Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 223.

3 This might be due to the coasts being less liable to the plough. See,

however, the map of distribution, published by Fergusson, in Rude

Stone Monuments. 2 l8 AECHAIC ENGLAND [cHAP.

monuments are found chiefly along the Western coasts of Britain, the Northern coast of Africa, in the isles of the Mediterranean, in the isolated, storm-beaten Hebrides, and in the remote islands of Asia and Polynesia.

By whom was the Titanic art of cromlech-building brought alike to the British Isles and to the distant islands of the Pacific ? By what guidance did frail barques compass such terrifying sea space ? How were these adequately victualled for such voyages, and why were the mainlands ever quitted ? How and why were the colossal stones of Stonehenge brought by ship from afar, floated down the broad waters of the prehistoric Avon, and dragged laboriously over the heights of Oare Hill ? Who were the engineers who constructed artificial rocking stones and skilfully poised them where they stand to-day ? " To suspend a stupendous mass of abnormous shape in such an equilibrium that it shall oscillate with the most trivial force and not fall without the greatest, is a problem unsolved so far as I know by modern engineers ".^

Who were the indefatigable people who, prior to all record, reclaimed the marshes of the Thames-mouth by an embankment which is intact to-day all round the river coast of Kent and Essex ? W^ho were the horticulturists who evolved wheat and other cereals from unknown grasses and certain hhes from their unknown wild? And who were the philosophers who spun a delicate gossamer of fairy-tales over the world, and formulated the cosmic ideas which are in many extraordinary respects common ahke to primitive and more advanced peoples ? And why is the symbol generally entitled the Swastika cross found not only under the ruins of the most ancient Troy but also in

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