Dutt, Markstones of East Anglis, Web section 2

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Christianity versus Paganism.

That many early British churches were erected on the sites previously occupied by pagan temples and idols is a well established fact. We have conclusive evidence that this was one of the proselytising methods of the early Christian missionaries. {10} Pope Gregory, in writing to the Abbot Mellitus in A.D. 601, commands him to tell Bishop Augustine that “I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined … that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed. … For if these temples be well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the worship of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God may the more faithfully resort to the places to which they have been accustomed.”

In Britain, however, pagan temples were probably very far less numerous than sacred sites on which stones or wooden idols were worshipped … indeed, some writers have held that the stones themselves were the temples often referred to. In spite of Gregory’s instructions regarding the destruction of the idols, the Council of Tours, fifty-six years later, ordered priests to refuse admission to the churches of all “worshippers of upright stones,” and a year later the Council of Nantes exhorted them to “dig up and hide those stones which were worshipped” ; while nearly four hundred years later Canute found it necessary to forbid the “barbarous worship of stones, trees, fountains, and of the heavenly bodies.” Moreover, historical and archæological evidence goes to prove that in many instances the early Christian priests not only consecrated pagan temples to the worship of the true God, but also permitted the “stones which were worshipped” to remain on the sites, be embedded in the walls or placed on the altars of churches, or made symbolic of the new faith by carving or otherwise marking on them the sacred Cross. A like course was adopted in Egypt by the priests of Heliopolis, who permitted the archaic worship of stones so long as the over-lordship of the great Ra was recognized.

Preservation of Pagan Stones.

Evidence of the preservation of pagan stones in their original positions subsequent to the introduction of Christianity and the erection of churches {11} on sites of pagan worship is forthcoming from all parts of the country. The rained tower of Constantine Church, Cornwall, is built on a large rounded boulder weighing nearly quarter of a ton, and this boulder, Mr. R. Ashington Bullen suggests, “marked probably the meeting-place for whatever religious or ceremonial rites were practised.” Professor R. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., considers the so-called Chair of Bede, at Jarrow, to have been a sacred stone of early date, and it is known to have been chiselled by modern masons into its present rectangular shape. At the north-east corner of Maplescombe Church, Kent, there is a large mass of tertiary conglomerate which probably is a like significant relic, while during excavations at the ancient church of St. Brelade, Jersey, a large granite block was discovered in a precisely similar position at the angle of the north and east walls. This last-named boulder was considered by the rector to be the foundation stone of the church—an assumption to be considered in relation with the remark of Mr. A. Watkins in The Old Straight Track, that the foundation stone is “a symbol of the ancient mark-stone which ‘founded’ the site.” It seems not unlikely that some of these stones were associated with the pagan foundation sacrifices, of which much evidence has been brought to light, and that search beneath them might lead to the discovery of traces of such sacrifices.

Among the instructive facts mentioned in The Old-Straight Track is the custom of funeral processions passing three times round the Funeral Stone outside Brilley Church, Herefordshire, and the finding of a huge boulder embedded beneath the churchyard cross at Bosbury, in the same county, and now placed under the church tower. In several instances a pagan sacred stone has actually served as the base of a churchyard cross, while others have been roughly shaped into such crosses. The Rev. Baring Gould, in his Book of Dartmoor, has made clear that the design of the ordinary churchyard gravestone has evolved from that of the prehistoric menhir. The carving of the Cross, and in one instance of the Instruments of the Passion, on prehistoric standing stones indicates how such objects of pagan worship became symbols of the Christian Faith.

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Some East Anglian Boulders.

Druid's Stone, Bungay
Bungay
Some of the noteworthy boulders in East Anglia are preserved in or closely adjoin churchyards. That in St. Mary’s Churchyard, Bungay, is known as the Giant’s Grave, also as the Druid’s Stone, and there is a tradition that girls, after dancing round it twelve times, placed their ears against it to receive answers to their wishes. The preservation of this stone—which has lately been set up on end in probably its original position—is the more interesting in view of the fact that Outney Common, Bungay, was the site of a late Neolithic settlement which was safeguarded from attack on all sides save one by a horseshoe bend of the Waveney, while on the side without natural defence a deep ditch was dug reaching at each end marsh levels that must have been under water in prehistoric times. On the site of this settlement the writer was fortunate enough to discover a fine polished flint axe, a beautifully chipped triangular flint, knife, a leaf-shaped flint arrow or javelin head, and some bones of a girl or small woman, including one of the back vertebræ and a phalange of a toe. On Broome Heath, about a mile away on the Norfolk side of the Waveney, there is another prehistoric site with earthworks and barrows, and there, too, the characteristic types of flint implements suggest a settlement of late Neolithic or Bronze Age date. As there is general agreement that the worship of standing stones was introduced into Britain during the Neolithic period, the preservation of the large unhewn stone in St. Mary’s Churchyard is the more significant for this unmistakable evidence of extended prehistoric occupation of the immediate neighbourood. Just outside the churchyard wall at Beccles, on the steep slope down to the marshlands of the Waveney Valley, a glacial boulder is deeply embedded,* and {13} another, discovered about seventy years ago, during the digging up of the foundations of the south aisle of the church at Holme-next-the-Sea, is preserved in the churchyard there. Yet another boulder lies in Thwaite Churchyard; but Wortham’s Sacred Stone, which formerly lay just south-west of the tower of Wortham Church, has now been removed into the church itself. In Bramford Church, at the west end of the north aisle (according to a writer in the East Anglian Daily Times) “a huge mass of stone juts out into the church from the foundations at the corner of the north-east angle of the tower.” In Church Lane, Gorleston, near by the church, there is a large granite boulder.

Beccles Stone
Beccles
*There may be some indication of the prehistoric importance of Beccles in the name itself. This is usually stated to be derived from Beata Ecclesia, significant of the early attachment of the manor to the monastery at Bury; but the element eccles, occurring alone or in composition, is the old Welsh eglwys, British ecles, found twice in Norfolk in the place-name Eccles, and supposed to have denoted a place of some importance, or structure “of a more lasting kind than the ordinary British village.” Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names, pp. 22, 23, Latinized the word is ecclesia, so the “structure of a more lasting kind” here may have been the sacred stone itself.

Sacrificial Stones.

Some of the pagan stones were originally sacrificial, and in this connection it is interesting to learn that a granite menhir at Holney on Dartmoor was, until recently, the scene of a May festival known as the Ram Feast.* A ram was caught on the moor, slain on the stone, roasted there, and then divided into portions which were kept throughout the year as mascots. Dancing, wrestling and drinking were kept up until midnight. The saying about a “long stone” near Staunton, in the Forest of Dean, that “if you prick it with a pin at midnight it bleeds,” may be a faint survival in folk memory of sacrifices on the site. Mr. Watkins is inclined to believe that the so-called Sacrificial Stone near the Giant’s Cave, on the Malvern Hills, has been artificially smoothed on one side so that—as a photograph in his book makes clear—it so exactly fits “a human back that almost every inch from neck to heel touched the stone when limply reclining at an angle of 45 degrees.” A prostrate sarsen stone within the earthwork circle at Stonehenge is popularly known as the Slaughtering Stone; but, in the opinion of Mr. F. Stevens, the curator of Salisbury Museum and the author of Stonehenge To-day {14} and Yesterday, this name is “probably a picturesque piece of nomenclature devised by certain bygone antiquaries.” Pope Gregory, however, in the letter already quoted, suggests that “because they (the Britons) have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils,” they should henceforth “kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their sustenance;” and the evidence that the sacrificing of oxen was preceded by, if not contemporary with, human sacrifice, is too strong to be discredited.

*The sacrifice of the ram was associated with the worship of Hammon, a nature-god of North Africa, who, like Baal, was worshipped in “high places,” with horrible rites, and in connection with sacred stones. Children were sacrificed to this African Moloch, Diodorus writing of one occasion when 200 children and 300 voluntary victims were offered up to it. Sacrifices of cows still take place in Algiers, and the flesh is divided up among and eaten by the worshippers.

An ancient Gaelic poem refers to the “king idol” of Erin, called Cromm Cruaich, to whom human sacrifices were made and around whom were “twelve idols made of stones” (probably a stone circle), the poem adding that

“There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha.”

The worship of this pagan deity, with its attendant savage rites, is considered by some authorities on Celtic Britain to be one of several local cults of pre-Celtic origin which persisted after the Celts arrived in our islands. Caesar’s reference to the wicker-work images filled with living men and set on fire, and the assertion in the Celtic poem that the worshippers of Cromm Cruaich poured out the blood of one-third of their offspring to obtain the boon of milk and corn, indicates that the human sacrifices were often on a large scale. The Dartmoor Ram Feast was probably a “practice of symbolic human sacrifice by those who had forgotten its meaning,” in this case apparently associated with the original sacrificial stone. In comparatively recent years there have been well authenticated instances of the sacrifice of animals in England to avert cattle diseases and ensure good luck on farms, and among the Samoyades of Novaya Zemblia the sacrifice of a young girl to a stone image is known to have taken place only a few years ago.*

*F. G. Jackson, The Great Frozen Land, 1895, pp. 88–89.

Boundary Stones.

At a very early date boundary stones were looked upon as sacred, and curses invoked on anyone who {15} removed them. In the old Norse mythology the goddess Frigga was said to apportion fields and consecrate landmarks, while the god Thor was supposed to fix up the stones with his hammer.* The Swedish legend of Jack-o’-Lantern is, Mr. Watkins tells us, that he was “a mover of landmarks” and therefore doomed to be out at night for ever and ever; the same writer quotes a folk tale about a man’s ghost that used to “walk” and could get no rest because he had moved a landmark; and of another man who could not rest in his grave until the landmark he had removed was replaced in its original position.

*Wagner, Asgard and the Gods, Eighth English Edition, pp. 6, 9.

That some of the standing stones erected by the early inhabitants of Scandinavia were objects of worship seems clear from certain passages in the Sagas, and as, in East Anglia, some of the ancient boulders are preserved in parishes having Scandinavian names, they may have served this purpose here even if not originally placed in their present positions by Norse or Danish settlers. Some likelihood is lent to this idea by evidence that the Scandinavian pagans treated such stones as family gods. The Kristni Saga relates that “at Gilja (in the north of Iceland) stood the stone that the family had worshipped, and alleged that their ar-man lived in it. Codron declared that he would not be baptised until he knew which was the more powerful, the bishop or the ar-man in the stone. The bishop then went to the stone, and chanted over it till it broke asunder. Then Codron considered that the ar-man was vanquished.” A similar family ‘ stone appears to be referred to in the following passage from the Story of Howard the Halt: “So when the boards were set, Herstein, the bridegroom, leapt up and over the board to where was a certain stone: then he set one foot upon the stone and spake: ‘This oath I swear hereby.’”

In England the application of the Old English adjective har (grey, hoar) to such stones would seem to indicate that even in Saxon times some of them were looked upon as objects of antiquity and, as such, may have been chosen as boundary marks. The {16} view has also been advanced that “from its use in har-stan the element har may be descriptive of a boundary in other compounds also.”* Mr. Watkins quotes from Heming’s Cattulary an Anglo-Saxon boundary as running on to the haran stone from the haran stone along the green way.” Among well-known stones there are two Hoarstones in Oxfordshire, one in Gloucestershire and one in Warwickshire. The Domesday Heroluestuna seems to be against any suggestion that the Norfolk town of Harleston may owe its name to the stone preserved there; but it, is at least noteworthy that in the Suffolk parish of Harleston (often spelt Harlestone), near Haughley, there is also, on Rush Green, a well-known boulder traditionally said to mark the site of the burning of martyrs in Queen Mary’s reign, and which the writer of the “Here and There” column in the East Anglian Daily Times† suggests may have been chosen as being the traditional site of human sacrifices in the days of paganism. As there appears to be no record of any martyrdom having taken place in this parish, the local tradition would seam to be due to vague folk-memory of earlier burnings.

*Mawer, Chief Elements in English Place Names, p. 33.

†30th January, 1926.

A convincing Norfolk example of an ancient stone is the Cowell Stone at Beechamwell. It is embedded in the ground beside an ancient road which thereabouts seems to have been known as Peddars Road and Salters Road, at the point where another ancient trackway, Pincham Drove, runs east from it in a straight line over three miles towards Southacre. This stone, Mr. W. G. Clarke tells us,‡ is the Hundred boundary and also the meeting-place of the boundaries of Narborough, Marham and Swaffham, and, according to a Beechamwell estate map of 1766, was then also the boundary of Beechamwell.” It is “a glacial boulder with 10 inches showing above ground, an east and west axis of 3 feet 4 inches, and north and south of 2 feet 11 inches.”

‡In Breckland Wilds, p. 121.

Many writers on place names have drawn attention to the likelihood of the common termination ton when {17} immediately preceded by an “s,” being sometimes a corruption of the Old English stan, meaning “stone.” This difficulty renders the more valuable every instance where early spellings of a place name make the subsequent corruption obvious, and the preservation of the original stone enables us to see for ourselves the ancient object or veneration after which the place is named. We have this at Chediston, near Halesworth, which appears in the Domesday record as “Cidestan,” and where the large stone (now broken into two pieces, but said to have been from 6 feet to 8 feet high) from which the name is derived, can still be seen.

Stockton Stone
Stockton
That other parishes and places in Norfolk and Suffolk owe their names to ancient mark stones there can be no doubt; but until the English Place Name Society is able to deal with these counties and give us, as in its other volumes, full lists of early spellings of their place names, it is hazardous to profess sureness about the many “ston” and “stone” names. Munford, in his Local Names of Norfolk, suggests that Geldeston is a parish which may derive its name from some remarkable memorial stone which once existed there. He notes that the place is not mentioned in Domesday Book, “being included and accounted for under the lordship of Stockton”; but apparently he was not aware that Stockton Stone—from which Geldeston may be derived—is one of the best known mark stones in the county. In several counties Hundred Courts assembled at ancient stones. In Norfolk the Court for Gallow met in 1561 and 1568 at Longfield Stone.