stone, we find it is still a practice among the peasantry at Colombiers, in France, for young girls who want husbands, to climb upon the cromlech called the Pierre-levee, place there a piece of money, and then jump down. At Guerande, with the same object, they deposit in the crevices of a Celtic monument bits of rose-coloured wool tied with tinsel.[1]
'Cromlech,' however, really means Druid's altar. The Celtic mythology, amongst others, had Esus or Crom, who was the creator of the world, and was represented by a circle of stones, an emblem of the infinite. From this name was derived 'Cromlech' or Crom-lekh.[2] Mr Davies thinks that the spaces under the cromlechs were used as the places where aspirants to the office of Druid were imprisoned during, or previous to, their initiation into the mysteries of this religion. 'This opinion,' says Mr Roberts,[3] 'seems to be confirmed by the name of a cell near the Ridgeway and the White Horse, in Uffington parish. It is called Wayland Smith, a corruption, I presume, of a Welsh name "Gwely," or Wely-anesmwyth," that is, the uneasy bed. I know of no more probable origin of the name, and this explanation bears with it a signification of no small moment, as to the use to which it was probably applied. In Cardiganshire (Wales) there is a kind of cist-vaen called "Gwely Taliesin," which no doubt was intended for a similar purpose.'
Mallet,[4] we know, asserts that the tradition relating to
