Note 72 — Chapter X · NORTHWARDS HO! TO STYKKISHÓLM AND GRAFARÓS.

Waring and many others suggest that the “Prostrate Stone” lying north-east of the horse-shoe or elliptical opening of the Stonehenge trilithons, and the three—formerly five—fallen stones inside the vallum, represent the first or outer circle, like that of Avebury. It is usually assumed that the “Friar’s Heel,” the single “block lying farther to the north-east of the “Prostrate Stone,” served for astronomical purposes, the sun rising over it on the summer solstice, and striking the sacrificial Thorsteinn or Blótsteinn (4 by 16 feet). The same arrangement is remarked at Stennis. There seems, however, no reason why both should not have been members of an outermost circle.

Martin (Description of Western Islands, London, 1716) has preserved the popular tradition that the sun was worshipped in the larger, and the moon in the lesser, ring of the Orkney ruins. Later writers deny the honour of erecting the circles of Stennis and Borgar (anciently Broisgar = Brúar-garðr) to the “Northmen,” because such circles are found only in localities where a Keltic race has ruled, and because “such names as Stennis and Stonehenge prove that they had existence before the people who so designated them arrived in the country.” The causa appears to me a non causa, especially if they were Thingsteads and Doom-rings, which in later days would take modern and trivial names from their sites or peculiarities of structure. On the other hand, the absence of tradition concerning the popular use of the buildings, which we might expect to linger in the minds of men, is a serious objection.