outh Sea Islands department of the
British Museum is an impression of a gigantic footstep five feet in
length.

The connection of prehistoric footprints with sacred sites and places
of sepulture would indicate that they had a religious significance--an
idea still further strengthened by the fact of their being frequently
associated with holy wells and groves, and with cup-shaped marks on
cromlechs or sacrificial altars, which are supposed to have been used
for the purpose of receiving libations; while their universal
distribution points to a hoary antiquity, when a primitive natural
cultus spread over the whole earth, traces of which are found in every
land, behind the more elaborate and systematic faith which afterwards
took its place. They are probably among the oldest stone-carvings that
have been left to us, and were executed by rude races with rude
implements either in the later stone or early bronze age. Their
subsequent dedication to holy persons in Christian times was in all
likelihood only a survival of their original sacred use long ages
after the memory of the particular rites and ceremonies connected with
them passed away. A considerable proportion of the sacred marks are
said to be impressions of the female foot, attributed to the Virgin
Mary; and in this circumstance we may perhaps trace a connection with
the worship of the receptive element in nature, which was also a
distinctive feature of primitive religion.

It is strange how traces of this primitive worship of footprints
survive, not merely in the mythical stories and superstitious
practices connected with the objects themselves, but also in curious
rites and customs that at first sight might seem to have had no
connection with them. The throwing of the shoe after a newly-married
couple is said to refer to the primitive mode of marriage by capture;
but there is equal plausibility in referring it to the prehistoric
worship of the footprint as a symbol of the powers of nature. To the
same original source we may perhaps attribute the custom connected
with the Levirate law in the Bible, when the woman took off the shoe
of the kinsman who refused to marry her, whose name should be
afterwards called in Israel "the house of him that hath his shoe
loosed."

In regard to the general subject, it may be said that we can discern
in the primitive adoration of footprints a somewhat advanced stage in
the religious thoughts of man. He has got beyond total unconsc