[Footnote 165: First described in the 'Archæologia,' vol. viii. p. 131 _et seq._, by the Rev. S. Pegge, in 1783.] [Footnote 166: These dimensions, as well as the plan, are taken from Sir Gardner Wilkinson's paper in the 'Journal of the Archæological Association,' xvi. p. 116, and may consequently be thoroughly depended upon.] [Footnote 167: Bateman, 'Vestiges,' p. 65.] [Footnote 168: These dimensions are taken from Sir Gardner Wilkinson's plan. The Batemans, with all their merits, are singularly careless in quoting dimensions.] [Footnote 169: _Ante_, p. 11.] [Footnote 170: Douglas, 'Nenia Brittanica,' p. 168, pl. xxxv.] [Footnote 171: If we knew its height we might guess its age. If it was 65 feet high, its angle must be 30 degrees, and its age probably the same as that of Silbury Hill. If 100 feet, and its angle above 40 degrees, it must have been older.] [Footnote 172: 'Ten Years' Diggings,' p. 82.] [Footnote 173: 'Petrie's Life,' by Stokes, p. 234.] [Footnote 174: The complete disappearance of the body of this undoubted Saxon chief ought to make us cautious in ascribing remote antiquity to many comparatively fresh bodies we find elsewhere.] [Footnote 175: Bateman, 'Ten Years' Diggings,' p. 21.] [Footnote 176: "In 1723 the workmen dug up the body of a great king buried there in the centre, a very little below the surface. The bones were extremely rotten, and, six weeks after, I came luckily to rescue a great curiosity which they took out there--an iron chain, as they called it. It was the bridle buried along with the monarch. There were deer horns and an iron knife, with a bone handle, too, all excessively rotten, taken up along with it."--Stukeley's 'Stonehenge and Avebury,' pp. 41-12. The bridle is figured, pl. xxxvi.] [Footnote 177: Douglas, 'Nenia Brit.' p. 168.] [Footnote 178: Nothing can exceed the effrontery with which Stukeley inserted curved avenues between these circles, so as to make the whole into a serpent form. Nothing of the kind exists, nor existed in 1826, when Mr. Croker made, for Sir R. C. Hoare, the survey from which the woodcut is copied, with Sir Gardner Wilkinson's corrections.] [Footnote 179: 'Archæologia,' xxv. p. 189.] [Footnote 180: What is the meaning of the word "Maes"? It is singular that the Maes How, in Orkney, should bear the same relative position to the Standing Stones of Stennis, in Orkney, that Maes Knoll does to the group of circles. I do not know of the name occurring anywhere else. According to the dictionaries, it merely means "plain" or "field." In Irish "Magh" pronounced "Moy;" but that can hardly be the meaning here.] [Footnote 181: 'Archæologia,' x. pl. xi. p. 106.] [Footnote 182: It probably may have been a piece of iron pyrites, and may have been used for striking a light.]