History Of The Scottish Nation
Vol 1, Chapter 10 - The Temples or Stone Circles of the Druid

We have three examples of these, the earliest of British fanes, in a state of tolerable preservation: Stennes, Stonehenge, and Avebury. All these are partially in ruins, but enough remains to show us the mode of their construction and to give us an idea of their magnitude and grandeur when they were entire, while the fact that they have survived, through only in fragmentary condition, to our day, sufficiently attests their amazing and unsurpassed strength. Nothing could be simpler than the plan of their construction. They consisted of single stones, rough and shaggy, as when dug out of the earth, or when taken from the quarry, set on end, and ranged in a circle, each stone a little way apart from the other. The area which they enclosed was consecrated ground, and in the centre of it was the altar, an enormous block of stone.² The chisel had not approached those great blocks; ornament and grace their builders knew not and indeed cared not to give them. We look in vain for carvings or inscription upon them. They were the work of an illiterate age. They possess but on quality, but that is the quality which of all others the barbarian most appreciates—size, colossal size.

The description of these structures belongs to the archaeologist, and hardly falls within the province of the historian. The latter has to do with them only as they shed light on the social and religious condition of the people, among whom and by whom they were reared. At Stennes, in Orkney there are two circles, the larger, called Brogar, consisting originally, it is believed, of sixty stones, of which only thirteen remain erect, and ten lie overturned; the smaller being a half circle. The greater circle was a temple to Baal, or the sun-god, while the smaller was dedicated to the moon. Others see in the smaller a court of judicature. The Druids, adding the office of judges to their functions as priests, generally set up their courts hard by their temples. The Norse rovers of the ninth century found these circles standing when they took possession of the island, for the spot is referred to under the name of Steinsness by Olaf Trygresson, when recording the slaughter of Earl Harvard (970). Designating the spot by its most remarkable feature, the Norsemen called it, in their own language, the Steinsness—that is, the Ness of the Stones—the Stones' ness.

Stonehenge ² is the second greatest stone circle that remains to us. It stands on the open plain of Salisbury, with no bulky object near it to mar its effect by dwarfing its apparent size. It must be visited before its weird splendour can be truly judged. The length of the tallest stone is 21 feet; the number of stones still erect is 140; and the diameter of the circles which they form is 106 feet. The circle appears to have had a coping, or corona, of headstones, but nearly all of these are now displaced. Henry of Huntingdon, writes in the twelfth century, calls Stonehenge one of the four wonders of England. It was old even in his day, for he confesses that he knew nothing of its origin, or of the means by which such stupendous columns had been set up.

Diordorus Siculus quotes a passage from Hecataeus says, "The men of the island are, as it were, priests of Apollo, daily singing his hymns and praises, and highly honouring him. They say, moreover, that in it there is a great forest, and a goodly temple of Apollo, which is round and beautified with many rich gifts and ornaments."³ Mr. Davies, author of the "Celtic Researches," reasonably concludes that the island here spoken of is Britain, and the temple in which harpers sang daily the praises of Apollo is Stonehenge and the Druids. If so, Stonehenge was in existence B.C. 300. And supposition is strengthened by Pindar, the Greek lyric poet, who speaks of "the Assembly met to view public games of the Hyperboreans." ⁴ It was the custom of the ancient to celebrate games and races on the high festivals of their gods; and that they did so at Stonehenge when the people assembled for sacrifice is rendering almost certain by the discovery of Dr. Stukeley (1723) of a "cursus," or hippodrome, half a mile north of Stonehenge, about 10,000 feet in length, and 350 feet in width. It runs east and west, and is lined by two parallel ditches. At the west end is a curve for the chariots to turn, and on the east a mound where the principal men might view the contest, and the judge award the prizes to the victors.

These stones have a weird spell to which the imagination not unwillingly surrenders itself. Standing on the bare, solitary plain, they suggest the idea of a Parliament of Cyclops met to discuss some knotty point of the stone age; for with that age, doubtless, are they coeval. As the centuries flow past, new races and new arts spring up at their feet, still they keep their place and for part of the British world of to-day. They saw the Celtae arrive and bring with them the bronze age. They were standing here when Caesar and his legions stepped upon our shore. Their tall forms were seen on that plain when One greater than Caesar walked our earth. They saw the Romans depart, and the Angles and Saxons rush in and redden the land with cruel slaughter. They heard the great shout of the Gothic nations when Rome was overturned. They saws the sceptre of England handed over from the Saxon to the Norman. They have waited here, fixed and changeless while a long line of great kings—the Johns, the Edwards, the Henrys, of our history—have been mounting the throne in succession and guiding the destinies of Britain. And now they behold the little isle in which they first lifted up their heads become the centre of a world-wide empire, and the sceptre of its August ruler—the daughter of a hundred monarchs—stretched over realms which extend from the rising to the setting sun, and far to the south under skies which are nightly lighted up with the glories of the Southern Cross. Such are some of the mighty memories which cluster round these old stones. To see them morning by morning, freshening their rugged forms in the radiance of the opening day, and to watch them at eve solemnly and majestically with-drawing themselves into the dusk and cloud of night, is to feel something of the awe with which they inspired our forefathers of three thousand years go.⁵

But wonderful as Stonehenge is, it is eclipsed by the grandeur of Avebury. According to the remark of Aubrey two hundred years ago, and quoted by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "Avebury does as much exceed in greatness the so-renowned Stonehenge as cathedral does a parish church."

A vast earthen rampart or mound sweeps round the site of the rude but majestic fane. Inside this mound is a fosse or ditch, and the perpendicular height in some places from the bottom of the fosse to the top of the mound is 80 feet. Half-way up the mound, on its inner side, is a broad ledge, running round the entire circle, on which the spectators could seat themselves by hundreds of thousands and witness the rites which were celebrated on the level floor, 28 acres in extent, which the vallum and rampart enclosed and over looked. Just within the fosse was a second rampart of great stones, set on end, and sweeping round the entire area, stone parted from stone by an average interval of 27 feet. The row consisted of an hundred stones from 17 to 20 feet in height, not one of which had known chisel or hammer. To give them firm hold of the earth they were sunk to a depth of 10 feet, making the actual length of the stone about 30 feet. There are remains of an inner row, showing that this encompassing circle of grand monoliths was double. The diameter of the area enclosed by the fosse is 1200 feet and of that enclosed by the great outer mound 1400 feet.⁶

In the centre of the area rises a beautiful little artificial hill of which we shall presently speak. On each side of the mount, and equally distant from it, stood a double concentric stone circle, formed of the same columnar masses as the great outer ring, presenting us with two small fanes enclosed within the great fane. The outer ring of these two little fanes contains thirty, and the inner twelve pillars, and the diameters of the rings were respectively 270 feet and 166 feet.

The conical mount in the centre is 125 feet high. Seldom disturbed by foot it has a covering of the freshest and loveliest verdure. It is wholly composed of earth, with an area at the top of 100 feet, and 500 at the base. Dr. Stukeley says that in his time ((1740) its height was 170 feet. It was ringed with stone pillars at the base. What its use was, whether an altar or a judgment-seat, it is now impossible to say.

This grand temple, with its fourfold circumvolution and it’s inner sanctuaries, is approached by two grand pathways which sweep on with a slight curve (the one from the north-east and the other from the north-west) for upwards of a mile. These approaches are spacious, thousands might journey along them without jostling, their breadth being not less than 45 feet, and they are lined throughout with a grand balustrade of pillars. They remind one of those grand avenues of sphinxes that lead up to the great temples of ancient Egypt; and doubtless the impression they made on the Druidic worshipper as he drew nigh the grand shrine, was not less solemn than that which the marvels of Edfou made on the mind of the Coptic devotee; for what impresses the barbarian most is not artistic grace, but colossal size. It was when the Romans had passed the climax of their civilisation, and begun to decline once more towards barbarism, that, despising the Athenian models, they began to rear piles remarkable mainly for their stupendous magnitude.

All round the level plain on which these monuments occur swell up the ridges or low height of Avebury. These little hills are dotted thickly over with sepulchral tumuli. If the great temple which enclosed by this zone of graves be one of our earliest cathedrals, as in a sort it no doubt is, many we not, in the well-nigh obliterated sepulchres around it, see one of the earliest graveyards of our country? Here king and priest, warrior and bard mingle their dust, and sleep together. They have gone down into a land of "deep forgetfulness," for even Tradition has grown weary of her task, and has long since ceased to repeat their names and tell the story of the exploits which doubtless made these names, however forgotten now, famous in their day.

In comparison with these cyclopean structures, which it required only strength, not art, to rear, the grandest temples of Greece and Italy, on which science had lavished her skill, and wealth her treasures, were but as toys. The special charm of the Greek temple was beauty: majesty was the more commanding attribute of the Druidic fane. The snow-white marble, the fluted column, with its graceful volutes and sculptured pediment, the airy grace which clothed it like sun-light, was a thing to fascinate and delight, but in proportion as it did so it conflicted with the spirit of devotion, and lessened the reverence of the worshipper. The stone circle of the Druid, severe, sombre, vast, its roof the open heavens, was a thing to engender awe, and concentrate, not distract the mind. In our judgment our barbarian forefathers had a truer apprehension of the sort of structure in which to worship the Maker of the earth and heavens than the Greeks and Romans had.

We have already stated our deliberate and settled conviction that these monuments were reared for a religious purpose, in short are the earliest fanes ever set up on Scottish or British soil. But the recent discovery of a grand dolmen-centre in the land of Moab offers new and, we thin, conclusive proof in support of our opinions. This discovery, moreover, sheds a new and most interesting light on the early history of Scotland, and corroborates the account we have given touching its first settlers, as coming from Eastern lands, and bringing with them this earliest of the forms of worship, while yet in a state of comparative purity.

No reader of the Old Testament needs to be told of the interest that invests Mount Nebo, or to have recalled to his mind the memorable occasion on which that hill was engirdled with altars and seen to blaze with sacrificial fires. Recent discoveries in that locality vividly recall the whole scene as depicted on the sacred page. The scholars of the "Palestine Exploration," enjoying a leisure for investigation which ordinary travellers cannot command, have discovered not fewer than 700 dolmens, standing or overturned, in the territory east of the Jordan. With these were mingled the remains of stone circles. This multitude of ruined shrines in one territory may well astonish us, and yet it is probable that these are only a few out of that great host of similar monuments with which that whole region bristled in former days. One shudders when he thinks of the abyss in which the inhabitants were sunk, as attested by these relics of a worship at once lewd and bloody. These monuments appear to have been equally numerous of the west of the Jordan before the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine, and if their ruins are there more rarely met with it is owing to the Divine injunction laid on Joshua to utterly destroy these erections and cleanse the land from the fearfully demoralising and debasing practices to which they gave birth.

Mount Nebo, in the land of Moab, was an object of special interest for examination on the part of the members of the "Palestine Exploration" expedition. "Close beside the knob of the mountain they saw," says Captain Conder, "a dolmen standing perfect and unshaken." They found other dolmens on the southern slope of the mountain; and on the west side of Nebo, yet another a little way below the "field of Zophim." This latter lies overturned. There, is, moreover, a rude stone circle on the southern slope of the mountain.⁷ Around this very hill-top did Balak rear seven altars, thrice told; may not these be their remains? Here stood "Balaam with the king and princes of Moab beside him," and while the smoke of the sacrifices ascended into heaven, and the dolmen tables ran red with the blood of the slain bullocks, the "son of Beor" looked down on the city of black tents in the gorge at his feet, and obeying an impulse by which his own inclination and wishes were overborne, he broke out into a lofty strain of prophetic blessing where he had hoped to pour forth a torrent of scathing maledictions.

This is the holy place of Moab, and these are the altars of Baal. But in shape, in size, in the method of their construction, in short, in every particular, they are the exact resemblances of the Druidic remains of Scotland. There are races which even at this day raise such structures in connection with religious uses. The tribes of the Khassia hills, the remains of the pre-Aryan inhabitants of India, still continue to erect menhirs.⁸ The Arabs worshipped stones before the days of Mohammed: and no traveller can pass through Palestine without having his attention arrested by fields dotted all over with little pyramids of stones, the humble imitations of those statelier monuments which former ages reared for a sacred purpose. The Khonds of Eastern India, the remains of the Dravidians, still employ circles in connection with their worship of the rising sun. They offer at times human sacrifices. This was a common thought horrible practice of the Baal worshipper of ancient days. He deemed his altar specially honoured when he laid upon it a human victim. Above the blood of bullock his deity delighted, he believed in the blood of man,

The Druids were of opinion that the higher the victim the greater its power to make expiation. On this theory the sacrifice of a human victim was of all others the most efficacious and the most acceptable to the deity. They therefore on occasion offered such, as Caesar and others assure us. It is easy to see what a fearful effect this would have in hardening the heart, and leading to waste and destruction of human life. Lucan tells us that in the forests the stone altars of the Druids were so thick, and the sacrifices so numerous, that the oaks were crimson with the blood. When a great man made atonement it was often with a human victim. Such, however, was generally selected from condemned criminals: but when these were not to be had, a victim was procured for the altar by purchase, or other means. Moloch turned the hearts of his worshippers to stone. In Caledonia, as in Judea, the mother shed no tear when she threw her babe upon the burning pile, nor did the father utter groan when he offered his son to the knife of the Druid. Sigh or tear would have tarnished the glory of the sacrifice.⁹

Nor was a single victim enough for the Druid’s altar. He constructed, on occasion, castles of wicker-work, and filling their niches with young children, whose shrieks he drowned in the noise of his musical instruments, he kindled the pile, and offered up all in one mournful and dreadful hetacomb. But human sacrifices are not the reproach of the barbarous races to the exclusion of civilized peoples. It was not the Moabite and Druidic altar only that flowed with the blood of man. These ghastly holocausts were seen among the Greeks and Romans, and that, too, in their most enlightened age. The same city that was the centre of ancient commerce was also the theatre of human sacrifices. The altars of Phoenicia--whence Greece borrowed her letters and arts—smoked with the bodies of infants immolated to Moloch. At Carthage a child was yearly offered in sacrifice, and the custom was continued down to the days of the pro-consul Tiberias, who hanged the priests on the trees of their own sacred grove. The rite of human sacrifice was not abolished at Rome, according to Pliny, till B.C. 897. Idolatry at the core is the same in all ages and among every people. It is a thing of untameable malignity, and unsatiable bloodthirstiness. Despite of arts and letters, and conquest, and all counteracting influences, it hardens the heart, that fountain of life and death, and slowly but inevitably barbarises society. What a difference betwixt the circle of unhewn stones on the Caledonian moor and the marble temples of Greece! What a difference betwixt the unadorned ritual performed in the one, and the graceful and gorgeous ceremonial exhibited in the other! But whatever the people, whether painted barbarians or lettered Greeks, and whatever the shrine, whether a fane of unchiselled blocks, or a temple of snow-white marble idolatry, refusing to be modified, was the same malignant, cruel, and murderous thing in the one as in the other. It was invincibly and eternally at war with the pure affections and the upward aspirations of man. It converted its priests into man slayers, and made the mother the murderess of her own offspring.

Of the old pre-historic stones that linger on moor or in forest of our country, we do not affirm that all are remains of religious or Druidic structures. Some may have been set up to commemorate some important event in the history of a clan or of a family. These are like the memorial-stones of the Patriarchal and Jewish history. But whatever the original use and purpose of these venerable monuments, they have now become, all of them, in very deed, "stones of remembrance," and the sight of them may well move us to thankfulness that the "day-spring" has risen on the night of our country, and that the advent of Christianity, by revealing the "one great sacrifice," has abolished for ever the sacrifice of the Druid.

FOOTNOTES

1. In Craigmaddie, Stirlingshire, is an enormous Druidical altar or dolman; the top-stone is eighteen feet in length, and three or four feet in thickness. It rests on two perpendicular stones placed triangularly to one another. It is believed to be the largest in Scotland.

2. An Anglo-Saxon name, borrowed from one of the features of the monument, the imposts, or "hanging stones" which are denoted by henge. "The ancient or Cymric name," says Gidley, "appears to have been Gwaith Emrys, divine, or immortal." And ancient coin of Tyre has on it two stone pillars with the inscription, "Ambrosiae petrae," ambrosial stones. Stukeley quotes Camden as speaking of a remarkable stone near Penzance, Cornwall, called Main Ambre, or the Ambrosial stone. It was destroyed by Cromwell’s soldiers. The ancient name of Stonehenge is preserved probably in the neighbouring town of Amesbury.

3. Diod. Sic., lib. iii. c. 13.

4. Pind. Pyth. x. 30.

5 "Stonehinge itself is enclosed by a double mound or ditch, circular in form; and there is an avenue or approach leading from the north-east; and bounded on each side by a similar mound or ditch. The outer mound is 15 feet high, the ditch nearly 30 feet broad, the whole 1009 feet in circumference, and the avenue 594 yards long. The whole fabric consists of 2 circles and 2 ovals. The outer circle is about 108 feet in diameter, consisting, when entire, of 60 stones, 30 uprights, and 30 imposts, of which remain only 24 uprights, 17 standing and 7 down 3 ½ feet asunder, and 8 imposts. The smaller circle is somewhat more than 8 feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of about 30 smaller stones, of which only 19 remain, and 11 standing. The walk between these two circles is 300 feet in circumference. At the upper end of the atrium is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, 20 inches thick, 16 feet long, and 4 broad: pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones when the structure was complete is calculated to have been about 140. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts have been found on digging in and about Stonehenge, and human bodies have also been discovered in the circumjacent barrows."—Encyclopoedia Britannica, vol. xx. P. 709, eighth edition, Edin., 1860. "At the summer solstice the sun would be seen by one standing on the altar stone to rise over the summit of the bowing stone."—Stonehenge, Rev. L. Gidley, p. 49, Lond., 1873.

6. Rust., p. 116.

7. Conder, Heth and Moab, pp. 147. 149.

8. Conder,Heth and Moab, p. 200.

9. Speaking of the sacrifices of the Druids, Caesar says, "Quod pro vita hominis nisi vita hominis reddatur." And Tacitus says that the first care of the Romans in Britain was "to destroy those groves and woods which the Druids had polluted with so many human victims."