Menhir

“ Regarding the nomenclature of the several species of megalithic monuments met with in Brittany some 38 definitions are necessary. A menhir is a rude monolith set up on end, a great single stone, the base of which is buried deep in the soil. A dolmen is a large, table-shaped stone, supported by three, four, or even five other stones, the bases of which are sunk in the earth. ”

“ But I suppose that the terror of that strange place will still lie on all the countryside, and I hold that since the day when the wizards of old time reared the menhir on that which it covered, with cruel rites and terrible words that have bided in the minds of men as a terror will bide, no man but such as Morfed has dared to pry into that valley lest the ancient curse should fall on them--the curse of the Druid who would hide his secrets. It may be, therefore, that it will not be known by the folk that the menhir has fallen, even yet, for we who did know it told them nought thereof. ”

“ The conclusions at which we may proximately arrive with reference to these interesting monuments are—according to Captain Conder, to whose researches I am indebted for many of the foregoing remarks—that the menhir is the emblem of the earliest religious idea suggested by the creative potency; that the circle may either have a sacred significance connected therewith, or be a sepulchral enclosure; that the dolmen, when free standing, is more likely to have been an altar than a tomb, but when buried beneath a cairn it may have been sepulchral ”

“ There were no rows in connection with the menhir at Devil's Tor and the Whitmoor Stone.
That the upright stone is a memorial to the dead can hardly be doubted; it was continued to be erected, with an inscription, in Brito-Roman days, and its modern representative is in every church-yard. The menhirs, locally termed longstones, or langstones, must at one time have been numerous. Those round the moor have been carried away to serve as window-sills, door-jambs, even church pillars. Several places and moors, by their names, assure us that at one time these monuments were there. ”

“ Beyond the little church the ground rises to St. Breock Downs, which are 700 ft. above sea level and strewn with prehistoric remains. Nine big stones in a straight line are followed by a menhir, a disposition often seen on Dartmoor; and at Pawton is a dolmen called the Giant's Quoit, an exceptionally fine example. The menhir is known as the Old Man, probably from houl mæn, a sun stone. The word "man" or "men" or "maiden" when met with in the west invariably means a stone, but those responsible for our latter-day legends were often unaware of this. ”

“ Men had begun to raise huge dolmens which are found in various parts of the Old World from England to India. They also erected enormous stone pillars, known as menhirs. Carved in the semblance of a human face and figure, the menhir became a statue, perhaps the first ever made.
As we approach historic times, we note a steady improvement in the various forms of art. Recent discoveries in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and other lands indicate that their early inhabitants were able architects, often building on a colossal scale. ”

“ Such are the menhir, the kistvaen, the so-called "sacred" circle, the stone rows, the hut circles, barrows, and cairns. All these abound on Dartmoor. Nowhere else in England can be seen such an extent of land undisturbed by cultivation, and carrying on its surface so many hoary monuments of a prehistoric population. ”

“ Thirdly, the dolmen, which is a single slab of stone supported by several others arranged in such a way as to enclose a space or chamber beneath it. Some English writers apply the term cromlech to such a structure, quite incorrectly. Both menhir and dolmen are Breton words, these two types of megalithic monument being particularly frequent in Brittany. Menhir is derived from the Breton men, a stone, and hir, long; similarly dolmen is from dol, a table, and men, a stone. Some archæologists also apply the word dolmen to rectangular chambers roofed with more than one slab. ”

“ From Sheeps Tor the Drizzlecombe remains are reached with great ease. Here, near a tributary of the Plym, are three stone rows and two fine menhirs, a kistvaen, a large tumulus, and beside the stream a blowing-house with its mould-stones. Two of the rows are single, but one is double for a portion of its length only. There are blocking-stones and menhirs to each. The row connected with the great menhir is 260 feet long.
Sheeps Tor has been brought into the world by the construction of the reservoir. ”

“ Thousands of years before, the ancient and forgotten race, drowned now in the mists of time, which had set up in those parts the long ranks of menhirs on the lande, had raised in the forest, over the remains of some dead chieftain, a great dolmen of granite. The death-chamber had long ago been rifled of bones and treasure, but it still stood, no different from what it had been for the last few hundred years, with ferns growing out of the cracks, and one of its supports prone, and an aged oak, immeasurably younger than itself, watching over it. ”

“ In sober truth, they are a more shapely form of the standing stone, or menhir, which is raised by semi- civilised peoples in commemoration of their gods or their dead. Small obelisks, about three feet in height, are found in tombs as early as the Fourth Dynasty. ”

“ As a phallic symbol, the menhir must have been inseparably related to a Celtic sun-cult; because among all ancient peoples where phallic worship has prevailed, the sun has been venerated as the supreme masculine force in external nature from which all life proceeds, while the phallus has been venerated as the corresponding force in human nature. ”

“ They are held in the greatest veneration by the Arabs, who can give no rational explanation of the sacred character they possess, except that they have been sacred from immemorial time. Here, again, these may either have originally had a sepulchral character, or they may have had reference to that peculiar and most ancient worship of which the menhir or monolith was the emblem, for in some instances menhirs are placed in certain fixed positions in regard to the circles, or they may have had an astronomical significance. ”

“ These crosses are of stone or wood; a large wooden cross with a Christ on the Pierre de Champs Dolent—a regularly shaped stone more than twenty feet high—has been renewed several times. A number of menhirs dedicated to the Virgin or to saints have been adorned with statues. A menhir in the Isle of Hoëdic, Morbihan, thirteen feet high, which has become an object of pilgrimage, has a niche hollowed in one of its faces to accommodate a statue of the Virgin. ”

“ When it is opened, one finds within a chamber of rock, sometimes paved with flag-stones. The monuments whose stone is above ground are of various sorts. The Dolmen, or table of rock, is formed of a long stone laid flat over other stones set in the ground. The Cromlech, or stone-circle, consists of massive rocks arranged in a circle. The Menhir is a block of stone standing on its end. Frequently several menhirs are ranged in line. ”

“ The largest menhir, which has fallen, is 21 feet in total length, while the smallest stands but a foot and a half above the ground. In Kerlescan the cromlech of 39 stones is quadrangular in outline with rounded corners, while the alignment proper consists of 540 menhirs in thirteen rows in an area 2,700 feet long with an interruption of 600 feet where the little village of Kerlescan is situated. The largest of the stones is thirteen feet in height, the smallest only two feet above the surface of the ground.
While dolmens and isolated menhirs occur all around Carnac ”

“ There are menhirs (Keltic, long stones) which stand upright in the soil, usually upon the smaller end. Menhirs may be isolated, scattered here and there through the region, or they may be arranged in lines or rows (alignments) stretching across the fields. In certain places the menhirs form square or semicircular enclosures called cromlechs (Keltic, curved stones) . Again, the megaliths have been built into chambers, the walls composed of upright stones placed close together, and roofed in by one or more large blocks of stone. ”

“ Through this field, from the slight elevation at the west, down through the hollow of the road, and disappearing over the rise at the east, stretch eleven rows of menhirs, the rows being approximately parallel and about thirty feet apart, and the whole a little over three hundred feet wide while in length they extend 3,800 feet, or over two thirds of a mile. Some of the menhirs have tumbled down; here and there we note one built into the walls separating the fields but still occupying its original position. In all there are 1,099 stones still standing in Ménec. ”

“ Stone cists, composed of flat stones forming small closed chambers in the nature of stone coffins.
8. Tumuli, artificial mounds of earth called in England 'barrows' either oblong or round.
9. Galgals, artificial mounds formed of small stones.
The single standing stone or menhir is probably the oldest form
Menhir, Avebury Circle, Wiltshire. of all these monuments. Very rude peoples would soon naturally employ it for purposes of designation—to mark the grave of a chief or a spot become in some way sacred or important. ”

“ As implied above, the isolated menhirs, usually placed on some spot a little above the surrounding country, have, in many cases, been found to stand near some burial, and hence it is probable that they are funeral monuments. Some may also have been boundary stones. The dolmens are also mortuary in character. Apparently every dolmen and allée couverte was formerly buried with earth or rocks, the whole forming a large mound—a tumulus or galgal. With the ages the earth in many cases has been removed, either by man or by the elements, leaving the strange "tables" as we see them. ”

“ The menhirs, sometimes isolated and independent of other ancient remains and sometimes as, for example, at St. Buryan and Drycarn, sufficiently near to circles to suggest association with them, are even less easy to explain. Some of them are of enormous dimensions, like the Men-er-Hroeck at Locmariaquer in Brittany; some are so small as to be liable to be mistaken for the rubbing stones of cattle. ”

“ There are several hundred of them in the Quercy; and the peasants, who call them pierros levados (raised stones) , also 'tombs of the giants' and caïrous, in which last name the Celtic word cairn has been almost preserved, treat them now with indifference, although it is recorded of one of the early bishops of Cahors that he caused a menhir to be broken to pieces because it was an object of idolatrous worship. Those who have been to the trouble of excavating have almost invariably found in each dolmen a cella containing human bones. ”

“ Peter's, which took 800 to 900 men and 70 horses nearly a year to raise,—a work which was the great triumph of Fontana the engineer. The menhir is estimated to be one-third the height of Notre Dame at Paris.
Lying also prostrate on the ground, by the side of it, is a smaller menhir, which is, however, above 30 feet long.
36. Hatchet-shaped
Sculpture. Dol des
Marchands. Locmariaker. Close to these gigantic menhirs is the large dolmen (Breton, daul, table, and mœn, stone) , known as the "Table de César," or the "Dol des Marchands." ”

“ These three systems seem once to have formed a continuous series; the menhirs, many of which have been broken up for road-mending and other purposes, have diminished in number by some thousands in modern times. The alignment of Kermario points to the dolmen of Kercado (Place of St Cado) , where there is also a barrow, explored in 1863; and to the south-east of Menec stands the great tumulus of Mont St Michel, which measures 377 ft. in length, and has a height of 65 ft. ”

“ Passing now to more definite beliefs connected with megalithic monuments, we may notice that from quite early times they have been—as indeed they often are still—regarded with fear and respect, and even worshipped. In certain parts of France peasants are afraid to shelter under the dolmens, and never think of approaching them by night. In early Christian days there must have been a cult of the menhir, for the councils of Arles (A.D. 452) , of Tours (A.D. 567) , and of Nantes (A.D. 658) all condemn the cult of trees, springs, and stones. ”

“ Menhirs are still erected by the dolmen builders on the Brama-pootra, the Khassias, and always in commemoration of the dead. The Chinese hold that the spirits of the deceased inhabit the memorials set up in their honour; and the carved monoliths in Abyssinia, erected by the same race when it passed from Arabia to Africa, have carved in their faces little doors for the ingress and egress of the spirits. Holed menhirs are found in many places.
There are several menhirs on Dartmoor, as the Beardown Man (Maen, stone) , near Devil Tor, in a wild and desolate spot far from the haunts [172] of man ”

“ Many of the stones have tumbled down and some have been utilized in building walls and houses. Thus the little church of St. Cornély at Carnac is built entirely of menhirs, broken up into blocks of convenient size, while the curious crown that surmounts its west portal was carved out of a single menhir. Le Rouzic, whom I shall often quote, says that the series of alignments once extended from a point to the west of the village of Carnac, five miles east to the Crac'h River, while other series occur further west, near Erdeven. ”

“ The most remarkable consist of long avenues of menhirs or standing stones; but there is also a profusion of other erections, such as dolmens and barrows, throughout the whole district. About half a mile to the north-west of the village is the Menec system, which consists of eleven lines, numbers 874 menhirs, and extends a distance of 3376 ft. The terminal circle, whose longest diameter is 300 ft., is somewhat difficult to make out, as it is broken by the houses and gardens of a little hamlet. ”