overlapping the other at both extremities.


With what purpose were these great circles erected? We have already
mentioned the curious belief of Geoffrey of Monmouth with regard to
Stonehenge, and we may pass on to more modern theories. James I was
once taken to see Stonehenge when on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke at
Wilton. He was so interested that he ordered his architect Inigo Jones
to enquire into its date and purpose. The architect's conclusion was
that it was a Roman temple "dedicated to the god Caelus and built after
the Tuscan order."

Many years later Dr. Stukeley started a theory which has not entirely
been abandoned at the present day. For him Stonehenge and other stone
circles were temples of the druids. This was in itself by no means a
ridiculous theory, but Stukeley went further than this. Relying on a
quaint story in Pliny wherein the druids of Gaul are said to use as a
charm a certain magic egg manufactured by snakes, he imagined that the
druids were serpent-worshippers, and essayed to see serpents even in the
forms of their temples. Thus in the Avebury group the circle on Hakpen
Hill was for him the head of a snake and its avenue part of the body.
The Avebury circles were coils in the body, which was completed by the
addition of imaginary stones and avenues. He also attempted with even
less success to see the form of a serpent in other British circle
groups.

The druids, as we gather from the rather scanty references in Cæsar and
other Roman authors, were priests of the Celts in Gaul. Suetonius
further speaks of druids in Anglesey, and tradition has it that in Wales
and Ireland there were druids in pre-Christian times. But that druids