Sir,—A reviewer is entitled to his own attitude towards a book. I therefore say little with regard to Mr H. J. Randall’s review of my book of the above name, except that the relation between what I actually wrote and his interpretation of it is in several cases strained almost to breaking point. For example, I wrote “I cannot say that passengers walked through the bottom of these ponds,” and Mr Randall proceeds to ridicule the supposed idea that early man would walk through ponds. Horsemen habitually ride through water, and prehistoric man had horses.
But the subject is of such wide interest that I feel justified in giving a few later confirmations of the straight track. The book went to press five months after I had found the first clue; it naturally has many crudities. Since then I have given nearly two years to field and map work on the ley, and a huge mass of observations confirm the main conclusions.
Not in one case, but in many, after I have found in the field a mark-stone or mound, or a friend has reported one to me, I have found on marking it on the map, that I had previously drawn a ley (from other evidence), through the exact site.
Not once, but in several cases, I have marked a ley or track on a map sheet from evidence within the area of that sheet; then perhaps weeks after, doing similar work on an adjoining map sheet, I have marked a ley entirely from evidence on this second map. But on linking the two maps I have found the two leys to be one and the same.
Observers in all parts of England have sent me confirmation of the ley system from their own district. To name one, Mr W. A. Dutt, the well-known author of “Highways and By-ways in East Anglia.”
I quite see that a system of straight-sighted pre-historic tracks appears to clash with the conclusions of other observers. But such writers have chiefly worked on existing tracks and faint traces of what remain of the older ones. My two years field work convinces me that evidence and conclusions on such a basis alone cannot possibly go back to pre-historic times, and that the surmises of Mr Belloc and others that early man selected the ridge-top, the dry side of a valley, and so on, for ease and convenience is correct as applying to mediæval man, who, having settled in towns or villages, required modified communication, but it is incorrect as regards pre-historic man, thousands of years earlier, whose life and wants were totally different. Roads and tracks continually change and disappear, but as regards a straight-sighted track, although it usually alters in course and direction, and disappears in whole or part, its marking points of stone, mound, or tree grove never alter in site, and can still be found. I work on these.
As I start investigations from the beginning and work forward, it is natural that I do not get to the same point as those who start from present tracks and work backwards.
Round Cardiff can be found many alignments. One (roughly N.W.) passes through Dinas Powis Castle, and three other
ancient
“castles.” Local research might find fragments of ancient track between, for a pre-historic sighting mound
decided the site of such “castles,” just as a menhir or mark-stone decided the site of a church.—I am,
etc.
ALFRED WATKINS.
Hereford.