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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(AUGUST, 1886.
stones are described in the first part of a workfeet in length. It consists of & vaulted cell 94 which has very recently appeared" embracing feet high, 7 feet 9 inches wide, and 11 feet the monuments of Cornwall only. One of these, long. An opening in the north side of the cell called the Tolven, sitasted near St. Buryan, 13 inches by 18 is called "The Needle." The has been used superstitiously within living original use for which this crypt and the singumemory for curing infirm children of their lar opening were intended cannot now be diseases by passing them through it; the ascertained with certainty, but there is a popuother near Madron is called the Men-an-tol. lar tradition that the Needle was in former Both are figured in Plate XII. (see p. 123 times used 'a test.' "They pricked their credits above) by the kind permission of Mr. Lukis. who could not thread the Needle," is the quaint The Tolven, a slab of large dimensions, has & remark of old Fuller in reference to the supbole 16 inches in diameter bored through its posed use of the opening. The idea of the centre, which was made by picking away the necessity for a spiritual or bodily new birth opposite sides equally. This stone has been controls probably the modern customs as to shifted from its original site by the tenant of certain pillars in the courtyard of the Mosque the house behind which it stands, in order to of 'Umar at Cairo, two of which are much make room for & pathway to his back door. closer together than any of the rest. Tho The Men-an-tol is on the moors, a short distance natives say of these that only an honest or a to the right of Lanyon Farm House, in the good man (one new born P) can pass between direction of Kara Galva. The hole in this them. latter stone is not a perfect circle, being 21 In Europe the purposely distorted branch of inches in diameter in one direction, and 18 in & tree, as well as the naturally or artificially the other. It stands exactly midway between perforated stone, seems to have been used" for two high stones which are in the same line with the purpose of curing diseases and thereby proit in the direction N. E. and S. W. The hole ducing as it were a "New Birth of the Body." ; has been made in the same manner as that in In 1883, when staying at the country. the Tolven, with this difference :-the counter- house of some Danish friends, whose estate is sinking is not equal. "This, it is obvious, was situated about 10 or 12 miles from Roeskilde, intentional--the deeper sinking is on the I one day, during a drive, passed through some eastern side of the stone." One of the most large woods, and at one point an old beech interesting features of these monuments is tree was pointed out of which one branch, the names by which they are known. Men at a height of about a foot from the ground, or maen is the word for stone both in Brittany formed a perfect bow, and was higher up again and in Wales to this day, and in the word united to the trank. This tree had most Tolven we find both the Welsh and the Nor- probably been operated upon when young, by a wegian word for a hole.
portion of the trunk being split, and held open Many curious superstitions still exist on the by wedges. My hosts informed me, that to their island of Tiru in Scotland, the property of certain knowledge up to within eight years the Duke of Argyll, and on the west side of previously, parents who had sick children, were it is a rock with a hole in it, through which in the habit of coming there from considerable children are passed when suffering from distances in order to pass their little ones whooping-cough and other complaints. Ripon through this hole, believing that thereby their Minster has beneath its central tower a crypt maladies would be cured. The ceremony was which goes by the name of St. Wilfred's Needle, not complete, however, till they had torna entered from the nave by a narrow passage 45 strip of cloth from the child's dress and tied
13 Prehistoric Stone Monuments of the British Isles, by Rev. W. C. Lukis, published for the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1885.
1. There is a mountain in Norway called Tolhattan which has an enormous natural hole in it, about 200 to 300 feet above the sea level. When viewed from a ship, as I saw it, the sky is seen through a vast square opening far above the spectator. A Norwegian gentleman told me that he had once walked throngh this hole, and it took him a quarter of an hour, which will give one some
idea of ita length. Possibly it was clambering rather than walking, for my informant remarked that the hole is gradually increasing in size owing to stones and rocks falling from its upper part.
Other explanations regarding this vault, make it confessional, or a place of penance, or #sepulohre for the host on Good Friday.
* It is said they are so still in some parts of England and in Scandinavia.
