Page 129 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

On midsummer’s eve no one slept. Though the traders and
other noninitiates are not allowed near the enclosure, they lie
out on the hillsides in the moonlight and look down upon the
ceremonies taking place below. They can see the dark mass of

worshippers crowding the ring-mound, and the ritual fires and
the dim shapes of the dancers within the circle. The chanting,
and the drums, continue all night, and the watchers shiver as they

imagine the unknown sacrifices taking place below them. As
the short night draws to a close and the light grows stronger, the
chanting increases. It rises to a mighty hymn of praise at the mo­

ment when the sun breaks clear of the horizon and casts the
shadow of the Hele stone exactly to the feet of the chief priest
standing in the center of the circle of pits. The Sun-God is risen

again upon His land, and His worshippers within the henge bow
down before His glory.
This is the story that the young men in the service of the
ax traders bring back to their families in the north. They have

grown tall, these youths, in the years they have trodden the
earth roads of England (though, if we may venture to give to

the radio-carbon date of 1848 b.c.—plus or minus 275 years!—
for the first construction of Stonehenge a hypothetical accuracy
which it almost certainly does not in fact possess, the boys who
were born at the beginning of this chapter’s lifetime would still

only be in their teens on their return).
In the years that follow their return, most settle down to the

hunting and herding and quarrying routine of their fathers, the
marrying and begetting of children and the struggle for sub­
sistence and position which is the common lot of man. Some
become priests, and some become carpenters or fishermen, and

many die, of sickness and of accident, for nowhere in the
world is the average length of life even half of what it will be in
future centuries.

Some go permanently into trade, and continue to follow the
seasonal routes that they trod in their early years. Or they try
other routes to gain fresh experience, trading their axes to the

deer hunters of the Scottish hills as far as the underground vil­
lages of the Orkneys where wood is unknown and furniture made
of stone, or sailing over to Ireland in the skin boats that put in