We have already remarked on the connection of the monuments with dwarfs, giants, and mythical personages. There is an excellent example in our own country in Berkshire. Here when a horse has cast a shoe the rider must leave it in front of the dolmen called "The Cave of Wayland the Smith," placing at the same time a coin on the cover-stone. He must then retire for a suitable period, after which he returns to find the horse shod and the money gone. CHAPTER II STONEHENGE AND OTHER GREAT STONE MONUMENTS IN ENGLAND AND WALES Stonehenge, the most famous of our English megalithic monuments, has excited the attention of the historian and the legend-lover since early times. According to some of the medieval historians it was erected by Aurelius Ambrosius to the memory of a number of British chiefs whom Hengist and his Saxons treacherously murdered in A.D. 462. Others add that Ambrosius himself was buried there. Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote in the twelfth century, mingles these accounts with myth. He says, "There was in Ireland, in ancient times, a pile of stones worthy of admiration called the Giants' Dance, because giants from the remotest part of Africa brought them to Ireland, and in the plains of Kildare, not far from the castle of Naas, miraculously set them up.... These stones (according to the British history) Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons, procured Merlin by supernatural means to bring from Ireland to Britain." From the present ruined state of Stonehenge it is not possible to state with certainty what was the original arrangement, but it is probable that it was approximately as follows (see frontispiece): [Illustration: FIG. 1. Plan of Stonehenge in 1901. (After _Archaeologia_.) The dotted stones are of porphyritic diabase.] There was an outer circle of about thirty worked upright stones of square section (Fig. I). On each pair of these rested a horizontal block, but only five now remain in position. These 'lintels' probably formed a continuous architrave (Pl. I). The diameter of this outer circle is about 97-1/2 feet, inner measurement. The stones used are sarsens or blocks of sandstone, such as are to be found lying about in many parts of the district round Stonehenge. [Illustration: Plate I. STONEHENGE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST Photo Graphotone Co. To face p. 17]