317. Sometimes they were
erected as trophies, as the one set up by Samuel between Mizpeh and
Shen, in commemoration of the defeat of the Philistines; one was also
erected at Murray, in Scotland, as a monument of the fight between
Malcolm, son of Keneth, and Sueno the Dane. We also find them as
witnesses to covenants, like that of Jacob and Laban, which, though
originally an emblem of a civil pact, became afterwards the place of
worship of the whole twelve tribes of Israel. All these relics, to say
nothing of the cromlechs in Malabar, bear a silent and solemn testimony
of some by-gone people, whose religious and civil customs had extended
wide over the earth. Their monuments remain, but their history has
perished, and the dust of their bodies has been scattered in the wind.
The Druids availed themselves of those places most likely to give an
effect to their vaticinations; and not only obtained, but supported by
terror the influence they held over the superstitious feelings of our
earliest forefathers. Where nature presented a _bizarre_ mass of rocks,
the Druid worked, and peopled it with his gods, the most remarkable of
which is the subject of our engraving, called the Wring Cheese, or
Cheese Wring, in the parish of St.
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