Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/211

Rh been Britain. The inhabitants, we are told, were much devoted to the worship of Apollo, whence it was inferred that his mother Latona was a native of the island: it contained a magnificent temple for her son, and a circular shrine whose walls were adorned with votive offerings. Further, the kings of the city containing the temple and the overseers of the latter were the Boreads, who took up the government in succession, according to their tribes. The citizens gave themselves up to music, harping and chanting in honour of the Sun-god, who was every nineteenth year wont himself to appear about the time of the vernal equinox, and to go on harping and dancing in the sky until the rising of the Pleiades. To interpret this in connection with Stonehenge, we are not obliged to lay any stress on the guess which recognized in the Boreadae the Celtic bards; and we have only to substitute for Apollo a native divinity of light. No one would fit better than the Celtic Zeus; nor is it likely to have been an accident that his temple should be without a roof: it had probably been thought appropriate that it should receive unrestrained the rays of the god's presence, and stand, as a Roman might literally say, sub Jove.

After all, it is a matter of no great importance whether Stonehenge was or was not the Hyperborean temple about which the Greek writers of antiquity romanced; for there were in the British Islands other stone circles which would suit the story nearly as well. I need not mention instances still in existence; but I wish to call your attention for a moment to a temple elsewhere, which is only known to us from the pages of antiquity. Allusion has been made to the Breton isle of Sein (p. 158) as one of the scenes of Merlin's birth and of his imprisonment at