Ten or
twelve years ago, as many as one or two thousand persons would
assemble during the night to wait the great event, but the
watchers have now diminished to a few hundreds, and on some
years to a few scores.
The fashion, no doubt, had its origin
when Sir Norman Lockyer's theories, about Stonehenge as a Sun
Temple placed so that the first rays of sun on the longest day
of the year should fall on the centre of the so-called altar
or sacrificial stone placed in the middle of the circle, began
to be noised about the country, and accepted by every one as
the true reading of an ancient riddle. But I gather from
natives in the district that it is an old custom for people to
go and watch for sunrise on the morning of June 21. A dozen
or a score of natives, mostly old shepherds and labourers who
lived near, would go and sit there for a few hours and after
sunrise would trudge home, but whether or not there is any
tradition or belief associated with the custom I have not
ascertained. "How long has the custom existed?" I asked a
field labourer. "From the time of the old people - the
Druids," he answered, and I gave it up.
To be near the spot I went to stay at Shrewton, a downland
village four miles from "The Stones"; or rather a group of
five pretty little villages, almost touching but distinct,
like five flowers or five berries on a single stem, each with
its own old church and individual or parish life. It is a
pretty tree-shaded place, full of the crooning sound of
turtle-doves, hidden among the wide silent open downs and
watered by a clear swift stream, or winter bourne, which dries
up during the heats of late summer, and flows again after the
autumn rains, "when the springs rise" in the chalk hills.
While here, I rambled on the downs and haunted "The Stones."
The road from Shrewton to Amesbury, a straight white band
lying across a green country, passes within a few yards of
Stonehenge: on the right side of this narrow line the land is
all private property, but on the left side and as far as one
can see it mostly belongs to the War Office and is dotted over
with camps. I roamed about freely enough on both sides,
sometimes spending hours at a stretch, not only on Government
land but "within bounds," for the pleasure of spying on the
military from a hiding-place in some pine grove or furze
patch. I was seldom challenged, and the sentinels I came
across were very mild-mannered men; they never ordered me
away; they only said, or hinted, that the place I was in was
not supposed to be free to the public.
I come across many persons who lament the recent great change
on Salisbury Plain.
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