It was a felicitous idea of Mr. J. H. Parker, F.A.S., of Oxford, in a paper read to the Architectural Society of that city in 1852, that Gilgal, Bethel, and Mizpeh were circles of stones for assembling the people at the regular circuits of the judges, similar to our assize-towns. He says the Hebrew word Gilgal (גִּלְגָּל) signifies literally a round stone, but in the opinion of Hebrew scholars may very well signify a circle of stones, and consequently be but the prototypes of Stonehenge, and the circle near Keswick, &c. The late periods to which assemblages were made within them in Britain and Brittany is also alluded to by Mr. Parker, referring to what Mr. Logan says of Crookem Tor, alias Parliament Arch, on Dartmoor, which has been used from time immemorial as a court of justice until quite recently; and seats are cut in the rock of the Tor for the judge and jury. At Pue Tor, near the village of Stamford Spunney, is a large square apartment hewn out of the rock, which seems to have been used for a similar purpose. Cambden, in mentioning the Swedish Morastone, says there is one at St. Buriens, in Cornwall, exactly similar.
In Ireland, stone-pillar worship was widely extended, and continued to a very recent date, on which Sir J. Emmerson Tennent has an express treatise; this I lament has not come under my notice. A very fine one, eight feet high, is called Olan's tomb, at Aghabullogue near Cork, and depicted in the "Dublin Penny Magazine" (vol. iii. p. 384), much venerated by the peasantry, but principally remarkable for an Ogham inscription at the junction of two sides, the angle serving as the branch line. This, if decipherable, might lead to important results. Others are mentioned in "Notes and Queries" (vol. viii. p. 413).—For England, the Devil's Arrows, at Boroughbridge, are well known; less is one in Holderness, nearly over-topping the church close to which it stands: it has given its name of Rudstone to a village in Holderness. One of the most curious will figure as a headpiece to a chapter of Mr. Hillier's valuable History of the Isle of Wight now in progress;—it is called the Long Stone Chest. The village of Mottistone, close to which it stands, proves its purposes and the antiquity of our ancient moot-halls, and of our language; evidently the centre of a præ-Romanic Wittenagemote.
5 Ting-wald.—The most circumstantial account of this place, and the ceremonies connected with its judicature, is found in the Appendix to Douglas, Nenia Britannica, p. 172.
6 Scottish stone at Scone.—The legends connected with this famous stone are too numerous and contradictory to be either related or reconciled. It is certainly known to have been the stone on which the Scottish kings were inaugurated at Scone, near Perth,
