"Memory Stones" of Brittany

There are found in Brittany large numbers of unhewn monumental stones of great size, belonging to prehistoric times.

Archaeologists are seeking to determine their date and purpose, and the degrees of civilization which they represent among primeval men. They have traced these rude stone monuments, called Megalithic (great stone), from Northern Africa through France and Great Britain to Scandinavia and Northern Germany. They classified them into Menhirs, Dolmens and Cromlechs. Menhirs from "maen" (stone) and hir (high) are single unhewn, unlettered, upright stones, which have been used in all ages for purposes religious and commemorative. Sixteen hundred of these are standing in France, more than half are in Brittany, and the finest examples are in the Department of Morbihan; they range from 16 to 67 feet in height. When Christianity was striving to supersede heathenism in Gaul some brave priests surmounted the Menhir with a cross. They are objects of superstitious reverence to the peasants, who never pass one without making the sign of the cross or raising the hat. If they are asked the reason they say, "Our fathers and grandfathers reverenced these stones;" and so tenacious are they of the custom of their forefathers, that it is uncertain how much of their reverence is due to the emblem of the cross, or how far back into the myths of ages their minds revert. Wars and tumults have swept with destructive force over the fair land of France, destroying boasted memorials of modern civilization; but these calm, majestic monuments still command respect and admiration, as witnesses of the power and might of the first intelligent possessors of the soil for that unknown race of men who reared them. When these Menhirs, instead of remaining separate, are joined together by a cap-stone, it is called a Dolmen (from "daul," a table, and "maen," a stone). When they form an enclosure, either circular or oval, it is called a Cromlech (as Stonehenge, England). If arranged in long rows, as at Carnac, not far from Vannes, it is called an Alignement. The Alignements at Carnac are the most remarkable in the world. There are several sections of them--one, consisting of eleven lines, numbering 942 Menhirs; another, in ten lines of 4000 feet, has 994 Menhirs of great size. These alleys, or avenues, end in a semicircle of Menhirs, the extremities of which touch the outer horizontal lines. But their origin and their object remain a mystery. In the absence of historical knowledge, all of these megalithic structures have been regarded as of Celtic origin, and have been called, from their priests, "Druidical Remains." But this theory has been disproved, since the ethnographical range of the Celts does not correspond to the geographical distribution of the monuments; and so, while there is every proof that the Druids used the Dolmens and enclosures for their Druidic rites, yet their builders and the purpose for which they were built must ever remain one of the many mysteries which the past holds so rigidly in its keeping. It would be well, then, to adopt the Breton name for them; it is not classic, compounded of two words; but it is expressive, and it needs no dictionary; the Breton peasants call them "Memory Stones."