While it lasted, the sun, like an immense ball,
appeared actually to rest on the isolated stone of which mention has
been made. Now, in this," says a writer in the _New Quarterly Magazine_
for January, 1876, commenting upon the statement of the _Scotsman's_
correspondent, "we find strong proof that Stonehenge was really a mighty
almanack in stone; doubtless also a temple of the sun, erected by a race
which has long perished without intelligible record."
I think it is not a very fanciful supposition to suppose, from the still
existing names of places in this country bearing reference to
sun-worship, that there were other places than Stonehenge which were
used as stone almanacks "for signs and for seasons," and also for
temples. _Grenach_ in Perthshire, meaning _Field of the Sun_, where
there is a large stone circle, may have been such a place; and
_Grian-chnox_, now Greenock, meaning _Knoll of the Sun_, may have
originally marked the place where the sun's rising became visible at a
certain period of the year, from a stone circle in the neighbourhood.
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