Review of EBT

Early British Trackways by Alfred Watkins. (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 4s. 6d.)

WHAT is a “ley”? What relation has it to a countryman’s direction to “keep straight on”? Why did witches ride on broomsticks? If you were told that Mr. Watkins’ little book connected all these things, like the Hostess, you might be tempted to exclaim, “ ’a babbled o’ green fields!” But Mr. Watkins is not babbling. In his modest volume he gives us what he calls “patch work pages,” the results of his last six month’s eager examination, and proof, of an elaborate system of communications that was old when the Romans landed. Briefly, the primitive inhabitants of England did not wander aimlessly in trackless forests. They had a network of tracks, or leys, running dead straight between well defined landmarks—generally hill tops. Connecting these extreme sighting points are still to be found a series of tumps or barrows, moats, ponds, lone trees and great stones. Also churches and crosses. These, however, are Christian erections, but built upon heathen sites—namely sacred tumps, stones and wells. These intermediate marks were so arranged that, when the terminal points were lost to view, the next mark was in sight, and then the next and so on. Camps, homesteads and Roman roads grew on the lines of the ancient leys. The gradual elaboration of this system produced a sect of “surveyors,” with their sighting rods, who, in time, became the wise men and bards, credited with supernatural powers, and able, on a broomstick, to travel very quickly from place to place. Mr. Watkins’ book is penned with the enthusiasm of red hot, and therefore not quite cooled, discovery. Towards the end he gets rather carried away by his ideas and derives too many place names from his discoveries. But we owe him a great debt for his work, which has strung together a number of previously disconnected facts—for instance, the recurring presence of churches actually on prehistoric roads. His statements, however, must be qualified with one great exception; namely the chalk country. There we get into quite a different system. The soil, the densely wooded primitive state of the valleys, the great number of tumuli consequent to the difficulty of unobtrusive burial, the openness of the country and the consistency of the Downs in one direction, all are evidence of a different system to the one Mr. Watkins has examined—namely Herefordshire, his book, by the way, having originally been a lecture to the Woolhope Club. But he has given us the sighting points, and it is for all of us (for it is quite easy) to follow up the ley—to keep straight on.