Instead, using his stick as a teacher's pointer, he began very briskly to lecture on the plan of the area. I listened with only half my attention. For one thing, I was watching Marvan and Ianthe. Far from showing any reverence they seemed to have gone mad as soon as we got inside the Stone Circle, and while I followed Dr Ravelin sedately on his tour of the ancient monument they were capering about, dancing on the fallen stones, calling and shrieking to each other and generally behaving like chimpanzees in church. For the rest, I don't think I had any real interest in Dr Ravelin's information about dimensions, dates, orientations and comparisons with this and the other stone circle in places I had never heard of. I was content to saunter along with him over that deep, soft turf and drink in the still, brooding beauty of the place, its drowsy warmth of sunlit but soft greens and browns, the ancient stones, their hardness mantled with moss and a gold lace of lichen, dreaming there as though to idle through eternity in the sunlight; the rich blue sky above us, the scent of wild thyme and sun−warmed peat, and the faint summer song of insects.
But Katia was a practical girl. She began spreading out the tea, and chose for a table the very stone, a smaller, horizontal one at the bottom of the horseshoe formed by the standing monoliths, about which Dr Ravelin was just then discoursing.
“Not here, please,” he said, smiling and removing the basket to the ground. “Archaeologists have been accused by sentimental persons of having no reverence for the bones of the heathen. Let us at least redeem our reputation by sparing the Altar Stone the desecration of our bakelite and buns.”
Katia's eyes were just blue blanks of incomprehension, but after an appealing look at me in vain, she hitched up her dress and squatted cross−legged on the turf, inviting us with a sweep of her hand to range ourselves within reach of the eatables.
Dr Ravelin talked as we ate. “You see,” he remarked when we had settled ourselves with our backs to the Altar Stone, “that the next horizontal stone before us—that one beyond the gap in the circle—the Sun Stone as it is called—is exactly in line with the lowest point in the Eastern ridge there. On June twenty−first the sun is first seen exactly in the centre of that dip in the hill. We have no true horizon here, so the altar is oriented on the apparent point of sunrise on Midsummer day. That is the argument for the heliacal character of the rites for which the circle was set up. So, it is supposed, some comparative limits in time for the construction of the circle can be inferred. The sun does not begin to reign over mythology until a fairly late stage in human history: until kings and warrior castes are firmly established in the direction of affairs. If that argument is sound surely the children of the sun never carried their golden legend into a stranger place than this. Except in such a rare summer as this, all about here is a cloudy wilderness of shadows: you would say the edge of the dark underworld of Hades rather than a bright arena of the sun.”
I lay leaning on my elbow, enjoying the blaze of the sun on my body and looking through half−closed lids at the golden−skinned girls to whom, in the bright simplicity of their white dresses, that phrase 'children of the sun' seemed so appropriately to apply.
“Perhaps,” I said, “they brought the sun with them, like Nuaman. He says the sun shines for him. Perhaps it really would shine for people who worshipped it. I feel I could worship it myself on such a day.”
“Undoubtedly they brought him,” said Dr Ravelin. “That is to say, they brought his worship. But why should the importers or inheritors of an elaborate solar cult pitch on such an unlikely place for their temple? Why should they go to the labour and expense of raising a stone circle here where it must be oriented on a sunrise which they knew was not the true sunrise? The answer must be a guess. Analogy helps. In Mecca that stone cube sacred to the heathen idols of Arabia became the holy house of Allah; in Cordova the moslem mosque became the Christian cathedral; in Lebanon I have seen in a niche in the foundations of a Greek temple a modern print of the Virgin; and I have seen a French−minted piastre−piece hung as a votive offering on a branch of a fig−tree by that fountain of Adonis which the people now call the River of Abraham. As new religion ousts the old it tenants the latter's temples. It is good strategy. A god turned out of doors commands little respect. But also, the conqueror sits on the vanquished's throne because it is a throne. The Lebanese peasant who climbs the rugged valley to make his offering to the Virgin at Artemis's shrine knows nothing about Artemis and not much about the Virgin; what he does know is that the place is holy. We cannot even guess much about who came here before these stones were raised but one thing we can guess: that it was a holy place before they planted these stones.”
I listened lazily. “Somebody must have made it holy, I suppose,” I said, “if they didn't.” I wasn't at all clear who “they” were. “Hasn't anyone ever suggested that it was the fairies who made these places? This is exactly what I should imagine a fairies' dancing−floor to be like.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the Doctor with a note of approval. “You favour the older school of thought, do you? Elves, fairies, giants, magicians—certainly not just ordinary human beings must have raised these circles. That was the old belief. In Welsh legend there is an account of the origin of Stonehenge which attributes it to Aurelius Ambrosius, who may or may not be a legendary figure himself. Though there is evidence to suggest that Stonehenge was built at least two thousand years before Aurelius Ambrosius, yet the legend is interesting because it hints, in a poetical way, at something towards which archaeological discovery seems also to point. According to the legend, Aurelius Ambrosius ordered the magician Merlin to build him a stone circle on Salisbury Plain. Merlin, with a regard for economy which is entirely convincing, produced one out of stock. That is, by the power of incantation he removed one which already existed in Ireland and planted it down on Salisbury Plain. Now the interesting thing is that the legend also says that that same circle had been brought to Ireland by giants who carried it there out of Africa. Well, what is that but a way of saying that sun−worship and sun−temples were dimly remembered as an importation?”
“Still,” I felt able to point out, “even though Merlin or some other magician had dumped this one down here, it doesn't explain why he chose this particular spot, which, you say, isn't lie right sort of place.”
“No,” said Dr Ravelin, “it doesn't. And there my theory seems to offer the only possible explanation. A church chooses to sit upon a heathen temple. Perhaps these ancient stones hold down something far more ancient, something far stranger than the men who placed them understood. Some queer feet have danced here, I feel.”
“Queer?” I said, but I was not allowed to lie peacefully chatting with Dr Ravelin any longer. Marvan and Ianthe swooped down on me and hauled me off to play a game with them. I had brought a tennis ball along and, after considering the possibilities of the place, the four of us developed a kind of cross between rounders and tag: three of us scooting from base to base, for which the standing stones were very convenient, while the fourth tried to hit us with the ball. It was simple and satisfying. Marvan, Ianthe and Katia tore about like wild things and filled the place with such whooping and shrieking as, I'm sure, no convocation of Druids at a human sacrifice could have bettered. Dr Ravelin strolled away; the children's squeals must have been a little hard on his eardrums. We played until they looked exhausted and still I could not get them to stop and be quiet for a bit. Rut the game ended quite suddenly.