connected a row 260 feet long, with an upright stone 17 feet 9 inches high at the end of the row.
All sorts of random guesses have been made about these rows. Some have made them out to be sacred cursi, where races were run, but then some lines are single, some are eightfold. Others have supposed that these were the supporting stones to cattle sheds, but these stones are often not more than 2 feet 6 inches high, and the rows often run for over 600 feet.
We must, as already said, look to present usage for their interpretation, and that afforded by the practice of the Khassias of the Brahmapootra, and by the Bedouin, seems the simplest stones set up as memorials or tributes of respect to the dead man who is buried at the head of the row.
There would seem to have been no feeling attached to the direction in which these lines run.
One singular feature is that in several cases a second row starts off from a small cairn in or close to the main row, and runs away in quite a different direction.[1]
5. The menhir, or tall stone, is a rude, unwrought obelisk. In some cases it is nothing other than the starting or the blocking stone of a row which has been destroyed. This is the case with that at Merrivale Bridge. But such is not always the case. There were no rows in connection with the menhirs on Devil Tor and the Whitmoor Stone.
That the upright block is a memorial to the dead
- ↑ Merrivale Bridge, Har Tor, and Longstone, near Caistor Rock.
