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Updated: June 22, 2025
A fairy discovered asleep beside one of the ancient menhirs of Brittany. His only fear would be that you might want to take her away before he had written a paper about her. He would be down from Oxford at his cottage. Commander Raffleton could not for the moment remember the name of the village. It would come to him. It was northwest of Newbury.
That donjon, whose dark form seems to stand amidst the stars, only serves to mark one of the many tombs of feudalism which rise above the smiling but capricious Dordogne like menhirs monuments of older illusions along the ocean-scalloped coast of Brittany.
The so-called "Canaanite High Place" recently found at Gezer consists of a line of ten menhirs running north and south, together with a large block in which was a socket for an idol or other object of worship. Several bodies of children found near it have suggested that the monument was a place of sacrifice.
Menhirs, too, are not wanting in Syria. Perrot and Chipiez figure an example from Gebel-Mousa in Moab which is quite unworked, except for a shallow furrow across the centre of the face. In many cases the menhir is surrounded by one or more rows of stones. Thus at Der Ghuzaleh a menhir about 3 feet in height is set in the centre of what when complete must have been a rectangle.
The prospect of a change of place annoyed him, and when they talked about menhirs and barrows which they calculated on seeing: "I know better ones," said he to them; "in Algeria, in the South, near the sources of Bou-Mursoug, you meet quantities of them."
Here, again, no excavations have been carried out, and we do not even know what was the purpose of these structures. It is, however, probable that these trilithons were not, like the dolmens, tombs, but served some religious purpose, possibly connected with the worship of the menhirs. In the Jaulân, where the rock consists of a slabby type of basalt, there are many dolmens of fine appearance.
It seems clear from the excavations that the menhirs do not mark the place of burials, though they may in some cases have been raised in honour of the dead. The question of the purpose of stone circles has already been dealt with in connection with those of Great Britain.
These menhirs are erected all in one line which nearly always consists of an uneven number of stones. Three is the commonest number of menhirs, but five together are frequently to be found, and there are some instances of seven stones; at Laitkor nine stones are standing, an illustration of which will be found in this book.
Here and there a solitary round-headed allium nods from the top of its long leafless stem. I walk over the shining dark leaves and the scarlet beads of the bearberry, and am presently roaming in the fantastic streets of the dolomitic city. To say streets is scarcely an exaggeration, for these jutting rocks have in places almost the regularity of the menhirs of Carnac.
Those who have been to the trouble of excavating have almost invariably found in each dolmen a cella containing human bones. In some of them flint implements have been discovered; in others iron implements and turquoise ornaments, showing that the tombs, although all alike, belong to different periods. Tumuli are also numerous, but only a few menhirs and traces of cromlechs are to be seen.
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