Not far from the Giant's Grave, as this site is locally called, is
another relic of hoary antiquity, in the shape of a tumulus, which,
when opened, laid bare a kistvaen, or sepulchral chamber, formed of a
great block of granite, weighing nearly five tons, resting on two
upright granite slabs, and enclosing a space about six feet square.
This method of burial is well known throughout the old world; such
burial chambers have been found in Greece, and in considerable numbers
in Ireland, where they are primitive Celtic. In the Lundy kistvaen no
skeleton was found, nor anything, indeed, save a small fragment of
pottery, though "there was a rank odour in the cavity, very different
from that of newly turned earth."
There is a logan-stone on the eastern side of the island, which, within
the memory of Mr. Heaven, the last owner of the island, was a true
logan-stone, and could be rocked with the hands, but has now slipped
from its socket. But the whole question of these logan-stones is
controversial, some claiming them as relics of antiquity of whose use
and meaning we are ignorant, and others as the chance product of the
natural forces of rain and weather.
The same also may be said of the "rock-basins," of which a very perfect
example may be found in the Punchbowl Valley, being a granite basin of
four feet in diameter, with a uniform thickness of six inches, with
both the concave and convex surfaces segments of a perfect sphere.
Later opinion inclines to a human, and not a chance, origin for these
interesting phenomena.
But, leaving the dim and still conjectural paths of archaeology, let us
turn to the history of Lundy. Here again we are confronted with facts
which a conscientious historian would hesitate to assert, save as
legend. For this singular land, where the King's writ does not run,
which is not assimilated even yet to municipal government, was for
centuries, even down to the eighteenth century, a robber stronghold,
from which, as from those castles on the Rhine, and still earlier and
more powerful castles of the Aegean lords, built athwart the peninsulas
of the trade-routes, the garrison swooped maraudering upon the peaceful
occupations of unprotected folk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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