The country round Carnac is solemn and mysterious, full of strange Druidical monuments, menhirs and dolmens of fabulous antiquity, ancient stone crosses, calvaires, and carvings. Everything is grand, solemn, and gigantic. One finds intimate traces of the Middle Ages. The land is still half-cultivated and divided into small holdings; the fields are strewn with ancient stones.

The Lines of Carnac are impressive. You visit them in the first place purely as a duty, as something which has to be seen; but you are amply repaid. On a flat plain of heather or gorse they lie, small and gray and ghost-like in the distance, but looming larger as you draw near. You come across several in a farmyard; but on scaling a small loosely-built stone wall you find yourself in the midst of them—lines of colossal stones planted point-downwards, some as high as twenty feet, and stretching away to the horizon, on a space of several miles, like a gigantic army of phantoms. Originally the Lines of Carnac were composed of six thousand stones; but to-day there remain only several hundreds. They have been destroyed bit by bit, and used by the peasants as fences along the fields and in the construction of houses.

We sat on a rock and gazed at these strange things, longing to know their origin. What enigmas they were, wrapped in mournful silence, solemn and still, sphinx-like! I endeavoured to become an amateur Sherlock Holmes. I examined the stones all over. I noticed that at the extremity of one line they were placed in a semicircle. This did not seem to lead me on the road to discovery. Of what avail is it to attempt to read the mystery of these silent Celtic giants? Historians and archÆologists have sought in vain to find a solution to the problem. Some say that the stones planted in the fields are temples dedicated to the cult of the serpent; others maintain that this is a sort of cemetery, where the dead of Carnac and of Erderen were interred after a terrible battle. They are variously taken to be sacred monuments, symbols of divinity, funeral piles, trophies of victory, testimonies to the passing of a race, the remains of a Roman encampment. Innumerable are the surmises.

The country people have their own versions of the origin of these stones. The peasants round about Carnac firmly believe that these menhirs are inhabited by a terrible race of little black men who, if they can but catch you alone at midnight, will make you dance, leaping round you in circles by the light of the moon with great shouts of laughter and piercing cries, until you die of fatigue, making the neighbouring villagers shiver in their beds. Some say that these stones have been brought here by the Virgin Mary in her apron; others that they are Roman soldiers, petrified as was the wife of Lot, and changed into rocks by some good apostle; others, again, that they were thrown from the moon by Beelzebub to kill some amiable fairy.

A boy was sitting on a stone near us. He had followed us, and had sat leaning his head on his hand and gazing backwards and forwards from us to the stones. Out of curiosity to hear what his ideas might be, I asked the child what he imagined the menhirs were. Without a moment's hesitation he said, 'Soldats de St. Cornely!'

Afterwards I discovered that St. Cornely is in this country one of the most honoured saints. It is he that protects the beasts of the field. His pardon used to be much attended by peasants, who took with them their flocks of sheep and cows. St. Cornely had occasion to fly before a regiment of soldiers sent in pursuit by an idolatrous king. In the moment of his fear—for even saints experience fear—he went towards the sea, and soon saw that all retreat was cut off thereby. The oxen fell on their knees, their eyes full of dread. The situation was terrible. The saint appealed to Heaven, where lay his only hope, and, stretching his arm towards the soldiers, changed them suddenly into stone. Here, it is said, the soldiers of St. Cornely have remained ever since, fixed and rigid.