Many of the monuments are endowed by the credulous with life. The menhir
du Champ Dolent sinks an inch every hundred years. Others say that a
piece of it is eaten by the moon each night, and that when it is
completely devoured the Last Judgment will take place. The stones of
Carnac bathe in the sea once a year, and many of those of the Perigord
leap three times each day at noon.

We have already remarked on the connection of the monuments with dwarfs,
giants, and mythical personages. There is an excellent example in our
own country in Berkshire. Here when a horse has cast a shoe the rider
must leave it in front of the dolmen called "The Cave of Wayland the
Smith," placing at the same time a coin on the cover-stone. He must then
retire for a suitable period, after which he returns to find the horse
shod and the money gone.

CHAPTER II

STONEHENGE AND OTHER GREAT STONE
MONUMENTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Stonehenge, the most famous of our English megalithic monuments, has
excited the attention of the historian and the legend-lover since early
times. According to some of the medieval historians it was erected by
Aurelius Ambrosius to the memory of a number of British chiefs whom
Hengist and his Saxons treacherously murdered in A.D. 462. Others add
that Ambrosius himself was buried there. Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote
in the twelfth century, mingles these accounts with myth. He says,
"There was in Ireland, in ancient times, a pile of stones worthy of
admiration called the Giants' Dance, because giants from the remotest
part of Africa brought them to Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare,
not far from the castle of Naas, miraculously set them up.... These
stones (according to the British history) Aurelius Ambrosius, King of
the Britons, procured Merlin by supernatural means to bring from Ireland
to Britain."

From the present ruined state of Stonehenge it is not possible to state
with certainty what was the original arrangement, but it is probable
that it was approximately as follows (see frontispiece):

[Illustration: FIG. 1. Plan of Stonehenge in 1901. (After
_Archaeologia_.) The dotted stones are of porphyritic diabase.]

There was an outer circle of about thirty worked upright stones of
square section (Fig. I). On each pair of these rested a horizontal
block, but only five now remain in position. These 'lintels' probably
formed a cont