Over Strand and Field | Page 9

those arranged in squares are consecrated to heroes that
perished in battle; that those disposed in a circle are family graves,
while those that form corners or angular figures are the tombs of
horsemen or foot-soldiers, and more especially of those fighters whose
party had triumphed. All this is quite clear, but Olaüs Magnus has
forgotten to tell us how two cousins who killed each other in a duel on
horseback could have been buried. The fact of the duel required that the
stones be straight; the relationship required that they be circular; but as
the men were horsemen, it seems as if the stones ought to have been
arranged squarely, though this rule, it is true, was not formal, as it was
applied only to those whose party had triumphed. O good Olaüs
Magnus! You must have liked Monte-Pulciano exceeding well! And
how many draughts of it did it take for you to acquire all this wonderful
knowledge?
According to a certain English doctor named Borlase, who had
observed similar stones in Cornouailles, "they buried soldiers there, in
the very place where they died." As if, usually, they were carted to the
cemetery! And he builds his hypothesis on the following comparison:
their graves are on a straight line, like the front of an army on plains
that were the scene of some great action.
Then they tried to bring in the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Cochin
Chinese! There is a Karnac in Egypt, they said, and one on the coast of
Brittany. Now, it is probable that this Karnac descends from the
Egyptian one; it is quite certain! In Egypt they are sphinxes; here they

are rocks; but in both instances they are of stone. So it would seem that
the Egyptians (who never travelled), came to this coast (of the
existence of which they were ignorant), founded a colony (they never
founded any), and left these crude statues (they produced such beautiful
ones), as a positive proof of their sojourn in this country (which nobody
mentions).
People fond of mythology thought them the columns of Hercules;
people fond of natural history thought them a representation of the
python, because, according to Pausanias, a similar heap of stones, on
the road from Thebes to Elissonte, was called "the serpent's head," and
especially because the rows of stones at Carnac present the sinuosities
of a serpent. People fond of cosmography discovered a zodiac, like M.
de Cambry, who recognised in those eleven rows of stones the twelve
signs of the zodiac, "for it must be stated," he adds, "that the ancient
Gauls had only eleven signs to the zodiac."
Subsequently, a member of the Institute conjectured that it might
perhaps be the cemetery of the Venetians, who inhabited Vannes,
situated six miles from Carnac, and who founded Venice, as everybody
knows. Another man wrote that these Venetians, conquered by Cæsar,
erected all those rocks solely in a spirit of humility and in order to
honour their victor. But people were getting tired of the cemetery
theory, the serpent and the zodiac; they set out again and this time
found a Druidic temple.
The few documents that we possess, scattered through Pliny and
Dionysius Cassius, agree in stating that the Druids chose dark places
for their ceremonies, like the depths of the woods with "their vast
silence." And as Carnac is situated on the coast, and surrounded by a
barren country, where nothing but these gentlemen's fancies has ever
grown, the first grenadier of France, but not, in my estimation, the
cleverest man, followed by Pelloutier and by M. Mahé, (canon of the
cathedral of Vannes), concluded that it was "a Druidic temple in which
political meetings must also have been held."
But all had not been said, and it still remained to be discovered of what
use the empty spaces in the rows could have been. "Let us look for the

reason, a thing nobody has ever thought of before," cried M. Mahé, and,
quoting a sentence from Pomponius Mela: "The Druids teach the
nobility many things and instruct them secretly in caves and forests;"
and this one from Tucain: "You dwell in tall forests," he reached the
conclusion that the Druids not only officiated at the sanctuaries, but
that they also lived and taught in them. "So the monument of Carnac
being a sanctuary, like the Gallic forests," (O power of induction!
where are you leading Father Mahé, canon of Vannes and
correspondent of the Academy of Agriculture at Poitiers?), there is
reason to believe that the intervals, which break up the rows of stones,
held rows of houses where the Druids lived with their families and
numerous pupils, and where the heads of the nation, who, on state days,
betook themselves to the sanctuary, found comfortable lodgings. Good