But at last came a man imbued with the genius of ancient things and disdainful of trodden paths.  He was able to recognize the rests of a Roman camp, and, strangely enough, the rests of one of the camps of Caesar, who had had these stones upreared only to serve as support for the tents of his soldiers and prevent them from being blown away by the wind.  What gales there must have been in those days, on the coasts of Armorica!

The honest writer who, to the glory of the great Julius, discovered this sublime precaution, (thus returning to Caesar that which never belonged to Caesar), was a former pupil of l’Ecole Polytechnique, an engineer, a M. de la Sauvagere.  The collection of all these data constitutes what is called Celtic Archaeology, the mysteries of which we shall presently disclose.

A stone placed on another one is called a “dolmen,” whether it be horizontal or perpendicular.  A group of upright stones covered by succeeding flat stones, and forming a series of dolmens, is a “fairy grotto,” a “fairy rock,” a “devil’s stable,” or a “giant’s palace”; for, like the people who serve the same wine under different labels, the Celto-maniacs, who had almost nothing to offer, decorated the same things with various names.  When these stones form an ellipse, and have no head-covering, one must say:  There is a “cromlech”; when one perceives a stone laid horizontally upon two upright stones, one is confronted by a “lichaven” or a “trilithe.”  Often two enormous rocks are put one on top of the other, and touch only at one point, and we read that “they are balanced in such a way that the wind alone is sufficient to make the upper rock sway perceptibly,” an assertion which I do not dispute, although I am rather suspicious of the Celtic wind, and although these swaying rocks have always remained unshaken in spite of the fierce kicks I was artless enough to give them; they are called “rolling or rolled stones,” “turned or transported stones,” “stones that dance or dancing stones,” “stones that twist or twisting stones.”  You must still learn what a pierre fichade, a pierre fiche, a pierre fixee are, and what is meant by a haute borne, a pierre latte and a pierre lait; in what a pierre fonte differs from a pierre fiette, and what connection there is between a chaire a diable and a pierre droite; then you will be as wise as ever were Pelloutier, Deric, Latour d’Auvergne, Penhoet and others, not forgetting Mahe and Freminville.  Now, all this means a pulvan, also called a men-hir, and designates nothing more than a stone of greater or lesser size, placed by itself in an open field.

I was about to forget the tumuli!  Those that are composed of silica and soil are called “barrows” in high-flown language, while the simple heaps of stones are “gals-gals.”