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CHAPTER VI.

SEASONAL ALINEMENTS.

Primitive man, after he began to cultivate the land, had need for marking the year’s progress to aid him in deciding when to prepare the land, and when to sow.

So a division into four quarters was evolved by the wise-men, and fire and other festivals organised, which still survive in folk-lore, dates of fairs and feasts, saints’ days and religious festivals.

The first system in Britain, although observation of sun-rise was obviously required, was based on the crop needs.

THE CELTIC VEGETATION YEAR.
First Quarter-day (Brid—St. Bridget—Candlemas), Feb. 1—4.
Second Quarter-day (Beltaine—May Day), May 1—6.
Third Quarter-day (Lugh or Lug—Lammas), Aug. 1—8.
Fourth Quarter-day (Samhain—Martinmas—Mayor chosen), Nov. 1—8.

The second date is that given by Lockyer, but it varied between that and the first of the month at different times.

As the sun really decided these dates, the wise-men, as their knowledge advanced, soon brought in another yearly division, openly based on sun observations, also divided into quarters.

THE SUN OR JUNE YEAR.
First Quarter-day (Shortest day—Mid-Winter—Christmas), Dec. 25—23.
Second Quarter-day (Equal day and night—Lady Day), Mar. 25—21.
Third Quarter-day (Longest day—Midsummer—St. John’s), June 24—21.
Fourth Quarter-day (Equal day and night—Michaelmas), Sept. 24—23.

But the provision of this more correct astronomical year division did not supersede the older cultivation-year, the use of which still lingers, as in the perplexity of one tenancy commencing on Candlemas day (Feb. 2) and another on Lady Day (Mar. 25). The second figure in above table is the correct astronomical division as given by Lockyer. The first the modern deviation.

{28} These two tables together divide the sun-year (based on the solstices and equinoxes) into eight fairly accurate divisions.

Skilled observers, as Mr. A. L. Lewis, Sir Norman Lockyer, and Admiral Boyle Somerville, have demonstrated the fact that in our British megalithic monuments (stone circles and dolmens), there is strong evidence of alinements to sunrise and sunset on these seasonal periods. This evidently for calendar fixing.

I have found, and demonstrated in my books, that many similar alinements are not merely within sight of the stones of a monument, but extend over mark-points for miles across country. Place-names, legends, and church-orientation also confirm this.

Alinement No. 7 in Chapter 3 seems to be to Midsummer sunrise, and this is not only confirmed by its passing through Midsummer Common, but by the church of St. Clement’s through which it passes being oriented the same.

I have no doubt that other alinements in my plans are seasonal, but as the aim of this book is not a full exposition, but data for local observation and enquiry, I do not dwell on the facts of sun observations, customs and practices, nor on the use of beacon-fires in connection. In addition to No. 7, Nos. 9, 29, and 38 may possibly be to Midsummer sunrise.

A study of Frazer’s Golden Bough, of Lockyer’s Stonehenge, and of Admiral Boyle’s Somerville’s papers in Archæologia, Vol. XXIII., will give the basis. As it is not well to encumber this chapter with the rather profuse tables of figures which will aid working students, they will be found as Appendices A. and B.

Because the glib phrase “Sun Worship” is constantly used by most writers, including experts, I must protest that students should not assume any such fact in Britain, where I have seen no sound evidence for it. Even if sun observation became a ritual performed at stated seasons, there is strong evidence that the purport was utilitarian.

The early Christian missionaries no doubt condemned all ritual practices which preceded their own purer religion, in the same way as King Canute did later in a law against “The barbarious worship of stones, trees, fountains, and of the heavenly bodies.” This however was probably the ignorant prejudice of non-British men brought up in old traditions of races who really did worship many gods. If they had seen the captain of a ship using his sextant, or the yearly ceremony at the Cenotaph, it would have been to them “sun-worship” and “stone-worship.”

ORIENTATION.
In other districts it is a frequent experience to find churches oriented to the same angle as the trackway which is alined through them.

To follow up this aspect, either all the six-inch Ordnance maps must be consulted, or original observations made at the churches. I am unable {29} to take either of these courses before publishing this book. I have only seen the two six-inch sheets for most of Cambridge Borough.

In these I note that both Great St. Mary’s and St. Clement’s churches are oriented to the tracks (for sunrise at the Equinoxes and at Midsummer respectively) coming through them.

It is most probable that there are other instances to be found in the larger district I cover.

The popular idea that churches are oriented to sunrise on the festival day of the saints to which they are dedicated is not confirmed by evidence. See again Byways in British Archæology.

I see much general evidence that the custom or practice of orientation to sunrise commenced in pagan times, and that when a pagan site had a Christian edifice built on it the tradition of the old orientation continued.

To some readers the connection between old tracks and sun-observation may seem a fantasy. Note, therefore, the following definitions from Pughe’s Welsh Dictionary:—

SEASONAL PLACE-NAMES.
It is easy for bookish wisdom to pour scorn on surface meanings or surmises regarding place-names. Nevertheless a neglect of the obvious sometimes leads to true ignorance of facts. For example, I know one Gloucestershire man, who having found traces of one Huguenot glass-furnace, proceeded to identify and find actual remains of early glass-making on about four unsuspected sites, by the simple expedient of hunting up farms on the map named Glasshouse.

Only last December the owner of a farm near Ledbury brought to me samples of pottery-shards found in digging a culvert. They had obviously a classic outline—Romano-British—this afterwards confirmed.

I asked him if the fields had any place-names. He replied that it had only been enclosed early in the 19th century, but that the site was on a bit of common land which gave name to the adjoining farm—JUGS GREEN.

Here the fact of a pottery had been preserved in a name all down the centuries (for no pottery later than say the fifth century was found), but no antiquary had woke up to the meaning of the name.

{30} It was the name “Noon’s Folly”—in two places—that revealed to me first the mid-day sighting lines detailed in the next chapter.

There is another Folly Hill, evidently a sighting point, above Newmarket, whether with its associated tree-clump, I know not.

Helion Moat embodies the Greek word for sun. The same root comes through Celtic tongues, in many place-names, for heul is ancient Welsh and also Cornish for sun, which is haul in modern Welsh.

So we get Hellesbury Beacon in Cornwall, Hellstone (a cromlech in Dorset), Helman Tor (E. Cornwall), and helen in other names. I shall mention how this Helion moat with its northern alinement caused me to look up the Herefordshire place with name alike, and sure enough an unmistakable northern line came through this.

Hunting out the “North” and “South” places in the Cambridge map gave me alinements 26 and 31, not depending solely on the “North” names on each, but on other sighting points and fragments of track.

The Herefordshire eastern alinement I have given goes over the apex of Eastnor Hill, in which parish the map also reveals other names denoting seasonal sighting, namely:—May Hill, New Year’s Wood, Midsummer Hill, Evendine, Winter Coomb, Beacon Farm, and Gold Hill. The last, dropping the intrusive “d,” reveals the Celtic “gole” for light, the same element occurring in the Cambridge Goldstones, a spot which two tracks are sighted through. It may turn out that the Cambridge 6-inch maps will prove to be a happy hunting ground for such seasonal names.