Celtic Mythology and Religion

THE " DRUID " CIRCLES. 193
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presents a good example of stone circles
evidently
not completed by cairn of any kind, and yet having
traces of avenue, which so few of them have.
It also
shows the state of preservation in which the ravages
of time and the last century or two of stone-building
have left these monuments of a remote antiquity.
In regard to the purpose of building these
structures, the answer which the interrogation of
them gives to the inquirer depends mainly on his
individual theories. The construction of the central
and middle circle, I believe, is developed from the
chambered cairn, but it is in regard to the outer
circle that the real difficulty exists. What is the
purpose of it ? The chambered cairns are, by most
antiquarians, connected with burial, though other
theories, as we shall see, are held. In any case, burial
deposits and urns were found in the Clava chambered
cairns,
with burial.
a fact which connects them somehow
It does not appear that the other circles
have been yet scientifically explored ; at any rate
burial deposits have not been found, except in the
doubtful instances of Druid Temple and Gask.
An
urn was found in a gravel cutting near the former,
and bits of bone have been found in the debris which
lies in the interior of the latter.
In Ireland, besides the famous mound of New
Grange, with its surrounding circle of monoliths,
and the several other mounds on the Boyne, where,
according to old Irish history, repose the fairy heroes
of Ireland's golden age—the Dagda and his compeers,