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Updated: June 18, 2025
Old as the granite of Brittany, the Guaisnics are neither Frenchmen nor Gauls, they are Bretons; or, to be more exact, they are Celts. Formerly, they must have been Druids, gathering mistletoe in the sacred forests and sacrificing men upon their dolmens. Useless to say what they were!
West of Karleby in Sweden, is a sepulchral chamber about twenty-nine feet long, made of slabs set upright, all those facing south being pierced with a nearly circular opening; and on the shores of the Black Sea dolmens made of four upright stones surmounted by a slab, have, in every case, one of the uprights pierced with an artificial opening about six inches in diameter.
He was a remarkable man in many ways. He was the first to map his native Perigord, and the first to write a chronicle of the diocese of Sarlat, a valuable work for any who would compile a history of the Hundred Years' War, the first also to repudiate the accepted attribution of the dolmens as altars of sacrifice, and to indicate their true character as sepulchres.
At one end of the finer of the two was a small opening or window cut in the upright slab. This same grave contained a skeleton lying on the right side with the legs slightly contracted. These two tombs can hardly be described as dolmens; they seem to have had no cover-slabs, and the blocks, which were small, were let into the earth, scarcely appearing above the surface.
The repeated disturbances of the remains in the graves have unfortunately often entirely dispersed all the human bones. It was in Brittany that the art of erecting dolmens reached its fullest development, and it is there that the relics found in the tombs are of the most important character.
One of the dolmens of Finistère is said to cure rheumatism in anyone who rubs against the loftiest of its stones, and another heals fever patients who sleep under it. Stones with holes pierced in them are believed to be peculiarly effective, and it suffices to pass the diseased limb or, when possible, the invalid himself through the hole.
In Brittany and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous; and Dr. Prunieres tells us that similar discoveries were made under the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded limestone districts of Lozere, known locally as LES CAUSSES, nor under the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of rock not native to the country.
These wedge-shaped structures are of remarkable interest, for exactly the same broadening of the west end is found in Scandinavia, in the Hünenbetter of Holland, in the corridor-tombs of Portugal, and in the dolmens of the Deccan in India. In some Irish tombs the corridor leads to a well-defined chamber.
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.
At this time the dolmens of North Africa were still unstudied. In 1867 followed an important paper by Bertrand. In 1872 two events of importance to the subject occurred, the publication of Fergusson's Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries, and the discussion raised at the Brussels Congress by General Faidherbe's paper on the dolmens of Algeria.
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