Coty House, either in Britain or elsewhere, so far as I can learn. In Camden's "Brittania," however, there occurs a notice of a similar remain HAROLD'S STONES OF MEMORIAL. with a sword upon the breast in the part near the diaphragm, and on his falling who has been thus smitten, both from the manner of his falling and from the convulsions of his limbs, and still more from the manner of the flowing of his blood, they presage what will come to pass." King, accommodating this description to the form of the structure, argues that the top of the flat stone was a fitting place for these terrible ceremonies. But it is just here his notion seems untenable both the size and the the shelving position of this top stone seem unsuited to the supposed purpose. King appears to see a difficulty, when he says: "And yet the declivity is not such as to occasion the least danger of any slipping or sliding off;" the declivity is two feet in a surface of eleven feet, and one would suspect some such danger; but, if the victim did not "slip or slide off," or fall off in falling, he must certainly have been liable to fall in but one direction, and thus weaken one ground of "presage," while the blood could flow but in one way, and the extent of the top surface would not afford much space for the contortions of the fallen victim. But, though there are strong evidences that the offering of human victims in sacrifice did prevail among the Druids, I am not disposed to accept the highly colored accounts of Latin writers, which bear internal tokens of exag-foot and a half in length, and about three foot geration, and I am strongly of opinion that Diodorus's imagination contributed largely to his descriptions of Druidic manners and customs. There is a third theory, which makes Kit's Coty House but a larger "Kist-vaen" or "stone-chest," of which I shall speak directly. Possibly, Lambarde, and those who follow him, may be right in so far as they pronounce Kit's Coty House a tomb, but wrong in connecting it with Catigern; it might well have been the monumental tomb of some chieftain, or other great personage; but, if so, the hero must have lived and died ages before Catigern fell on Aylesford's battle-field. There is no stone memorial of its earliest antiquity in Britain in an equally perfect state of preservation, nor is there one precisely like Kit's found by him in the parish of Trelock ar-Bettws, Caermarthenshire, So.th Wales. He says: "We find a vast rude chech, or flat stone, somewhat of an oval form, about three yards in length, five foot over where broadest, and about ten or twelve inches thick. A gentleman, to satisfy my curiosity, having employed some labourers to search under it, found it, after removing much stone, to be the covering of such a barbarous monument as we call Kist-vaen or Stone-chest; which was about four broad, but somewhat narrower at the east than west end. It is made up of seven stones, viz., the covering stone already mentioned, and two side stones, one at each end, and one behind each of these, for the better securing or bolstering of them; all equally rude, and about the same thickness, the two last excepted, which are considerably thicker." It will be seen that this is materially different from Kit's Coty House. The "Kists-vaen," are numerous in Wales, and are found in all Druidic regions; the name is from the Welsh, the plural being kistieu-vaen, and means literally a stone-chest. The design of these is inextricably involved in doubt and mystery; it is not easy to accept the explanation of King and others that makes of them altars, while it is as dif ficult to affirm the notion that they are tombs; their usually limited size seems to militate against both these assigned purposes. I cannot feel very confident of his correctness, but I confess myself better satisfied with Dr. Kitto's position, which may best be given in his own words: "There are many, however, who . . . contend that the cromlech and kist-vaen are merely different kinds of altars, greater and lesser-the one, perhaps, for sacrifice, the other for oblations. We were for a time inclined to this opinion; but on careful deliberation, and considering that the first tabernacles and constructed temples are to be taken as commentaries on the stone monuments of more ancient date, we felt more disposed to find an analogy between the kist-vaen, or stone-chest, and the ark, or sacred thist, which we find as the most holy object in the tabernacle and temple of the Hebrews, as well as in the Egyptian aud other heathen temples. In this case it would be the adytum, the most holy point... the true centre to which the local worship tended." Then Dr. Kitto considers the question as to why the "chest" form was preferred to all others, and quotes favorably Bryant, Davies and G. S. Faber, who held that the form was adopted as commemorative of Noah's ark, "the womb or cradle of the postdiluvian races,' which, as such, "was exceedingly liable to become an object of symbolization and of type and figure." | And he farther favors the opinion that these kistsvaen served a useful purpose, too-that they were the arks or chests in which those to be initiated in the closer mysteries of Druidism underwent a confinement and severe probationary penance; in this sense they were a sort of sepulchre in which the novitiate was inhumed and from which he was born again, a new and holier being. We know from Taliesin, and other old Bardic writers, that there were such "arks, chests or wombs," performing an important part in the Druidic system, and nothing else has been discovered so likely to have served such purposes. But I must reluctantly turn from this most interesting theme, or I may weary my readers long before I shall have exhausted its many, to me, attractive features; besides, there are other Druidic and supposedly Druidic remains which demand a portion of my space, and I must not let Kit's Coty House and the kists-vaen unduly circumscribe these. There are a number of "abiding memorials" of the earliest period of Britain, whose antiquity may not be questioned, while it is questionable whether we may classify them as Druidic; though dating at least to the most remote Druidic times, and doubtless used by the Druids, they are generally supposed to have been Nature's handiwork, Art only supplementing Nature by clearing away surrounding stones and earth. Of these, two notable specimens are shown in the engravings on page 57. A writer says of one of these; "In the neighbourhood of Lambourn, in Berkshire, are many barrows, and amongst them is found the cromlech called Wayland Smith." That it is not a cromlech, however, I think its extent and situation, and in a measure its form, clearly show. I have not a memorandum of the dimensions of the superincumbent stone, but it is vastly larger than the top stone of any cromlech that I know of, even exceeding the huge Tolman of Constantine, and I cannot conceive how so vast a stone could have been made available as an altar; the supports are not stones "erected on edge," but appear to occupy the positions assigned them by nature; the "structure," if I may use the term, does not stand in a position favorable to purposes of sacrifice or other worship, but on the side of a natural hill, which closes one end; and, lastly, the stones at its entrance appear, like the supports, to have been placed as they are found by nature. I can only view the group as a natural stone cave in the side of the hill; the stone resting upon two other stones does not militate against this view, as equally remarkable curiosities abound in the rocky districts of Druid lands, which are universally regarded as natural in their formation. Indeed, Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit," which the writer quoted above himself pronounces "a freke of nature, is more remarkable than "Wayland Smith.' Walter Scott, in "Kenilworth," admirably adapts a curious old tradition of this cave: that "there long dwelt therein a supernatural smith, who would at call shoe a traveller's horse" for a "consideration." 66 "Hugh Lloyd's Pulpit" stands at Festiniog, in Merionethshire, North Wales. It is one of the most marvelous curiosities in the way of the natural grouping of stones to be found in Britain, or anywhere; the tradition which gives it name, tells how one Hugh Lloyd was wont to hold forth the truth, standing in the stony "pulpit," but fails to inform us where the auditors stood or sat; the present surroundings are not favorable to dry feet or the general comfort of a congregation. Tradition does not claim that the bold preacher had any hand in the erection of the "pulpit," which had stood as it stands for ages before the truth he roclaimed was given to the world. I must defer notice of some other "Druidic" natural monuments for another paper, and touch upon some ancient monuments of an entirely different character from any I have hitherto noticed. I refer to single stones and groups which antiquarians agree in regarding as purely stones of memorial, placed in position to commemorate great events or to celebrate the fame of famous men. Coits," suitable playthings for a superhuman idler alone, though a like stone that once stood near Stanton Drew, and is stated to have weighed thirty tons, was called "Hackell's Coit" by the neighborhood peasantry, who averred that it had been thrown by a mortal athlete, Sir John Hautville, from a hill near by to the spot where it stood. I must close this paper with a word about the Rock of Carnbré, or Karn-bré, near Truro, of which the eminent divine, naturalist and antiquary, William Borlase, olim vicar of St. Just, in Such are "Harold's Stones of Memorial," at Tre- | Cornwall, in his "Antiquities, Historical and lock, in Monmouthshire; there are three stones Monumental, of the County of Cornwall," affirms set on end and firmly fixed in the ground, the tallest that "it is strewed all over with Druidical rebeing fourteen feet high. As seen in the engraving, mains." He says: "In this hill of Kam-bré we they are different in form as in size; the name, find rock-basins, circles, stones erect, remains of "Harold's Stones," is given them by the people cromlechs, cairns, a grove of oaks, a cave, and an of the vicinity, for what reason I know not, as inclosure, not of military, but religious structure; they certainly were not erected to commem- and these are evidences sufficient of its having orate any of Harold's achievements, having stood been a place of Druid worship; of which it may be there long before he came upon the field of achieve- some confirmation that the town, about half a mile ments. There were formerly, near Kennet, not far across the brook which runs at the bottom of this from Abury, three similar but larger stones, which hill, was anciently called Red-Drew, or, more Dr. Robert Plot pronounced "Druid deities;" rightly, Ryd-Drew, i. e., the Druid's Ford, or but they were no doubt simply stones of memo- crossing of the brook." The little castle seen at riial; the country people called them "the Devil's the apex of the hill, he claims was a British fortress. Wolf-Monat.-Such was the designation applied by the Anglo-Saxons, according to Verstegan (in his "Restitution of Decayed Intelligence concerning the Most Noble and Renowned English Nation," 1605), to "the month which we now call January . . . because people are wont always in that month to be in more danger to be devoured of wolves than in any season else of the year; for that, through the extremity of cold and snow, these ravenous beasts could not find other beasts sufficient to feed upon." In the Cotton Library, British Museum, there are preserved many curious manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Period, among which there is a Saxon Calendar, embellished with pictures, highly ornamented, and not devoid of beauty and artistic merit, but especially valuable as illustrations of the manners and customs of the people and the times. There is also a volume of quaint dialogues, composed by Alfric Grammaticus, the learned Anglo-Saxon writer of the tenth centary, some of the best passages of which have been given to the world by Sharon Turner, in his "History of the AngloSazons;" the original is in Anglo-Saxon and Latin, interlinear, and beautiful in its neat execution. The dialogue is between a youth and a ploughman, and is designed to instruct the former in duties he must soon assume; for instance, the ploughman says: "I labour much; I go out at day-break, VOL. VI.-5 | urging the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the plough. It is not yet so stark winter that I dare keep close at home." The youth replies, and the ploughman resumes: "The oxen being yoked, and the shear and coulter fastened on, I ought to plough every day one entire field or more. I have a boy to threaten the oxen with a goad, who is now hoarse through cold and bawling. I ought also to fill the bins of the oxen with hay, and water them, and carry out their soil." Mr. Turner tells us: "When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, they came into a country which had been under the Roman power for about four hundred years, and where agriculture, after its more complete subjection by Agricola, had been so much encouraged that it had become one of the Western granaries of the empire. The Britons, therefore, of the fifth century may be considered to have pursued the best system of husbandry then in use, and their lands to have been extensively cultivated with all those exterior circumstances which mark established proprietorship and improvement; as small farms; enclosed fields; regular divisions into meadow, arable, pasture, and wood; fixed boundaries; planted hedges; artificial dykes and ditches; selected spots for vineyards, gardens, and orchards; connecting roads and paths; scattered villages, and larger towns; with appropriated names for every spot and object that marked the limits of each property, or the course of each way. All these appear in the earliest Saxon charters, and before the combating invaders had time or ability to make them, if they had not found them in the island. Into such a country the AngloSaxon adventurers came, and by these facilities to rural civilization soon became an agricultural people. The natives, whom they despised, conquered, and enslaved, became their educators and servants in the new arts which they had to learn, of grazing and tillage." Our engraving is a fac-simile from the Saxon Calendar above referred to, the central portion showing the ploughman with his four fat oxen, testifying that he had not forgotten the "filling of the bin;" the boy, with the long staff and "goad" on its end, precedes, and the sower follows, the ploughman. The side pictures show the fuel-gatherer and two-faced Janus. The Fifty-eighth "Signer."-In reading the November MONTHLY, page 870, I was surprised to learn, on the authority of Mayor Stokley, that General Peter Muhlenberg was a Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Upon equally reliable authority we are now favored with the information that David Rittenhouse, the celebrated astronomer, also attached his name to that immortal document. In Syckelmoore's" Hand-Book of Philadelphia," in a notice of "The Old Pine Street or Third Presbyterian Church," page 59, is this statement: "Among the graves of distinguished men filling the churchyard is that of David Rittenhouse, astronomer and Signer of the Declaration of Independence." Next! J. B. M. League Island-Why so Named ?-Who its Owner? -Can any of the readers of the MONTHLY inform me who was the first owner or proprietor of League Island, tracing its successive ownership until it passed into the possession of the United States Government for a Navy Yard? How did it obtain its name, League Island? What was its aboriginal name? Now that League Island has become the Navy Yard of Philadelphia, and is destined to take an important position as a first-class naval establishment, any and all facts and traditions of its early history will be, I think, interesting and worthy of preservation in the pages of the MONTHLY. P. Corps Badges in the Late War.-In the MONTHLY of November, page 868, there appears an autograph letter of the gallant General Phil. Kearney on the above subject; and Captain A. W. Corliss, Eighth Infantry, United States Army, sends us the following list, which we doubt not will prove of no little interest to some of our readers: Corps Badges, United States Army, War of 1861-65. First Corps, a disk; Second Corps, a trefoil; Third Corps, a lozenge; Fourth Corps, a triangle; Fifth Corps, a Maltese cross; Sixth Corps, St. Andrew's cross; Seventh Corps, a crescent; Eighth Corps, a star; Ninth Corps, a shield, crossed by an anchor and cannon; Tenth Corps, a square bastion; Eleventh Corps, a crescent; Twelfth Corps, a star; Thirteenth Corps, none, Fourteenth Corps, an acorn; Fifteenth Corps, a cartridge-box ("forty rounds"); Sixteenth Corps, crossed cannon; Seventeenth Corps, an arrow; Eighteenth Corps, trefoil cross; Nineteenth Corps, a square, with a tri angle at the apex of each of the angles (very similar to a Maltese cross); Twentieth Corps, a star; Twenty-first Corps, none; Twenty second Corps, a pentagon crossed; Twenty. third Corps, a shield; Twenty-fourth Corps, a heart; Twentyfifth Corps, a lozenge on a square. The first division of each corps wore the corps badge, made of red material; the second division, the same in white; the third division, blue; "the Red, White and Blue." Stow's Monument.-On page 60, in a footnote, Mr. Morden refers to the monument erected, in St. Andrews undershaft, London, to John Stow, and subsequently appropriated, according to Maitland, to another, the great antiquary's remains being removed therefrom. The engraving herewith shows the monument, the face and figure therein being duly certified to as an accurate representation of Stow. Hume styled him "the honest historian, Stow," and we believe such is the estimation in which he is universally held; his writings are regarded with peculiar veneration by all English antiquarians; his chief works are, 1. "A Summarie of Englysh Chronicles," original edition, 1561; it went through eleven editions as he wrote it, and as many more with "Continuations" after the author's death; 2. "Annales; or a Generall Chronicle of England from Brute unto this Present Yeare of Christ, 1580;" also frequently republished; 3. "A Survay of London, 1598." |