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Updated: June 18, 2025
First, because I see no parallelism whatever between the contrasted objects from the Portuguese dolmens and the Clyde ancient sites, beyond the fact that they are both 'queer things. And, secondly, because some of the most eminent European scholars regard the objects described and illustrated in Portugalia as forgeries. The learned Director of the Musee de St.
The dolmens of Morbihan, it is true, nearly all face the east, doubtless in homage to the sun rising in its splendor; but this is not the case in Finistere, and the dolmens of Kervinion and Kervardel, for instance, are set due north and south. Leaving Brittany, we are told by the Rev.
Captain Congreve, after describing the cairns with their rows of stones ranged in circles, the kistvaens or dolmens, the huge rocks placed erect as at Stonehenge, the barrows hollowed out of the cliffs, declares with undisguised astonishment that there is not a Druidical monument of which he had not seen the counterpart in the Neilgherry Mountains.
The dolmens of Aveyron yielded some flint-flakes and arrow-heads, pieces of pottery, pendants, and bone, stone, shell, and slate-colored schist beads. Beneath one of these dolmens was found one small bronze object, quite an exceptional instance of the occurrence of that metal. The skeletons rested against the walls.
At Carrowmore, Sligo, there seems to have been a veritable cemetery of dolmen-tombs, each of which has one or more circles around it, the outermost being 120 feet in diameter. The tombs in these Carrowmore circles were not always simple dolmens, but often corridor-tombs of more or less complicated types. Their excavation has not given very definite results.
It is hardly credible that these are the only two dolmens which ever existed in Malta. More will no doubt yet be found, especially in the wild north-west corner of the isle. The megalithic builders of Malta did not confine their achievements to structures above ground, they could also work with equal facility below.
Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an old temple halfway up the hill, buried in a wood of century plants with gigantic branches; it is reached by granite steps, through strange gateways, as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens.
A stone placed on another one is called a "dolmen," whether it be horizontal or perpendicular. A group of upright stones covered by succeeding flat stones, and forming a series of dolmens, is a "fairy grotto," a "fairy rock," a "devil's stable," or a "giant's palace"; for, like the people who serve the same wine under different labels, the Celto-maniacs, who had almost nothing to offer, decorated the same things with various names. When these stones form an ellipse, and have no head-covering, one must say: There is a "cromlech"; when one perceives a stone laid horizontally upon two upright stones, one is confronted by a "lichaven" or a "trilithe." Often two enormous rocks are put one on top of the other, and touch only at one point, and we read that "they are balanced in such a way that the wind alone is sufficient to make the upper rock sway perceptibly," an assertion which I do not dispute, although I am rather suspicious of the Celtic wind, and although these swaying rocks have always remained unshaken in spite of the fierce kicks I was artless enough to give them; they are called "rolling or rolled stones," "turned or transported stones," "stones that dance or dancing stones," "stones that twist or twisting stones." You must still learn what a pierre fichade, a pierre fiche, a pierre fixée are, and what is meant by a haute borne, a pierre latte and a pierre lait; in what a pierre fonte differs from a pierre fiette, and what connection there is between a chaire
Thus it is almost incredible that the people, for instance, of Spain, because they were told by traders that the people of North Africa buried in dolmens, gave up, even in isolated instances, their habit of interment in trench graves in favour of burial in dolmens. It is still more impossible to believe that this unnatural event happened in one country after another.
Not to speak of the cromlechs and dolmens, which are found there as in all parts of Asia and Europe, and the meaning of which is so little understood, stones were preserved as sacred objects in various places, even to late times, and had no doubt originally been worshipped.
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