Tacitus said they held it right to
stain their altars with the blood of prisoners taken in war, and to seek
to know the mind of the gods from the fibres of human victims. One very
large stone outside the circles was called the "Friar's Heel," the
legend stating that when the devil was busy erecting Stonehenge he made
the observation to himself that no one would ever know how it had been
done. This remark was overheard by a friar who was hiding amongst the
stones, and he replied in the Wiltshire dialect, "That's more than thee
can tell," at which the devil took up a big stone to throw at him, but
he ran away as fast as he could, so that the stone only just grazed his
heel, at the place where it now stands.
[Illustration: DRUIDICAL REMAINS, STONEHENGE.]
We walked about these great stones wondering how they could have been
raised upright in those remote times, and how the large stones could
have been got into position, laid flat on the tops of the others. Many
of the stones had fallen down, and others were leaning over, but when
complete they must have looked like a circle of open doorways. The
larger stones, we afterwards learned, were Sarsen Stones or Grey
Wethers, of a siliceous sandstone, and were natural to the district, but
the smaller ones, which were named the blue stones, were quite of a
different character, and must have been brought from a considerable
distance.
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