fhouts of barbarous triumph, and the air was rent with the wild diffonance of martial mufic. However incredible the imputation, it is not without reafon fufpected that they fometimes proceeded to even more criminal lengths, and finished their horrid facrifice with a still more horrid banquet. Religion fhudders at fuch a perverfion of its name and rites; and humanity turns with horror from the guilty scene! Let us advert to less difgufting traits of ancient Druid superstition; and, having theologically confidered their profound reverence for rocks and ftones, let us endeavour, if we can, philofophically to account for that curious worship, as I am of opinion a great portion of astronomy was blended with and concealed under it.

THE DRUIDS, LIKE THE ANCIENT INDIAN RACE, WORSHIPPED THE SUN, UNDER THE FORM OF ERECT, CONICAL, AND PYRAMIDAL STONES; THE SYMBOLS OF THE SOLAR BEAM,

THE worship of the Druids was not confined within the gloomy verge of confecrated groves,

The

The HIGH PLACES, alfo, or excelfa, anathematized in Scripture, dedicated to Baal and to Aftarte the queen of heaven, were greatly in vogue among the ancient priests of Britain, On its loftieft eminences it was their custom to pile up rude irregular heaps of ftones, fuch poffibly as those which, in purer devotion, Jacob anointed, and fet up for his pillar, calling the place BETHEL, or the house of God. Many of these facred Mercurial heaps still remain on the fummits of the mountains of Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Some of them are of immenfe magnitude, containing, according to Stukely, at least a hundred cart-loads of ftones of all fizes. They were called in the ancient Celtic language CARNS, being for the most part of a conical and pyramidal form, with a large flat stone invariably placed on the apex, on which the facred fires, on the great festivals, were kindled. The Welch ftill call them Carnedde, which my author, Rowland, I have already observed, derives from the Hebrew KERENNEDH, a coped heap, alluding to the shape and figure of these cumuli, which were doubtless intended, like the pyramids of Egypt, and many of the cone-formed pagodas of India, to be fymbolical of the ray of the Sun, the

god

1

god they adored, and the fires occafionally lighted upon their fummits indifputably demonftrate this fact. The worship of the Sun in reality was the bafis both of the Eaftern and Western superstition; and therefore, if we find obelisks and other erected pillars in Egypt and Afia, fo may we naturally expect to difcover them in the Britifh ifles; and here they are found difperfed over the country in the greatest abundance. In the very word obelifk we may trace the Oriental name of the folar deity BAL; known to the Druids by the resembling title of Belenus, their god of fire, and apparent in the term BEALTINE, or the fires that flamed to Baal, all over the country on May-eve.

These obelisks were of various magnitude, height, and difpofition. They fometimes confifted of a fingle ftone, one of which in particularis mentioned by Dr. Borlafe,* as ftanding, a fhort time before he wrote his book, twenty feet in height above the ground, and four feet buried in it. When clove up by the farmer, the owner of the land on which it ftood, it made above twenty ftone pofts for gates. He thinks these rude monuments were the ancient

Analyfis, vol. i. p. 162.

idols of the country. They certainly were facred, and had a mystical allufion. They were intended to be fymbolical of their great deity, the SUN, and worshipped as fuch; they were also probably used as gnomons, to mark the length of the meridian fhadow. Sometimes they were combined, as thofe dedicated to Baal and Aftarte, the fun and moon, and thofe to Jupiter and Juno, Pluto and Proferpine, alluding to the junction of the heavenly bodies, or the marriage of thofe mythologic deities. Sometimes two ftone columns were fet up as fepulchral monuments at the head and feet of the perfon interred; a practice ftill generally followed in English burying-grounds; and fometimes they were ufed as termini, as the pillars of Sefoftris in Afia, and of Hercules at the ancient Gades; being the limits of his travels weftward. Other erections of this kind were ternary, which are the true Equia of antiquity, or fymbols of the god Mercury, confifting of two large ftones, placed erect, with one laid across their fummits. Thofe huge coloffal ftones near Kennet in Oxfordshire, called from their magnitude, the Devil's Quoits, are three in number; and, moft likely, have reference to the folar worfhip. The celebrated pyramidal pillars, be

fore

fore-mentioned, as standing at Burrowbridge, in Yorkshire, are four in number, and are juftly referred by Mr. Knight to the fame

fource.

These grotefque and ponderous maffes of unhewn ftone, which, among a barbarous people, were reverenced as the fymbols of deity, were not always pyramidal nor placed in an erect pofture. Sometimes they were recumbent, and poised on their own base, as in the case of those immense ovals, which, in Cornwall, are called LOGAN, rocking or bow

ing ftones. These prodigious ftones the

Druids had the art to persuade their infatuated disciples were inspired with the spirit of the indwelling deity, and to this awful teft they brought the fuppofed criminal, over whofe head the fword of juftice was fufpended, and the descent of which was alone delayed, till the animated mafs, as he approached to touch it, by its tremulous motion declared him guilty. On this fubject of the loganftones, I am happy in being able to quote the high authority of Mr. Bryant, whose sentiments fo remarkably confirm the hypothefis on which these pages proceed, of the wonderful antiquities, difcuffed in it, being the work of the firft colonies that emigrated from Afia.

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