the district as the “Giant’s Step”; another of the same kind, it is said, being over in Unst.  It is undoubtedly the stone on which, in Celtic times, the native kings of this part were crowned.  About a mile from Keill, near Campbeltown, a very old site, closely connected with the early ecclesiastical history of Scotland, may be seen on a rock what is locally called the “Footprint of St. Columba,” which he made when he landed on this shore on one occasion from Iona.  It is very rude and much effaced; but it carries the imagination much farther back than the days of St. Columba,—­when a pagan chief or king was inaugurated here to rule over the district.

In England and Wales there are several interesting examples of footprints on boulders and rocks.  A remarkable Tanist stone—­which, however, has no carving upon it, I believe—­stands, among a number of other and smaller boulders, on the top of a hill near the village of Long Compton, in Cumberland.  It is called “The King”; and the popular rhyme of the country people—­

    “If Long Compton thou canst see,
    Then king of England thou shalt be”—­

points to the fact that the stone must have been once used as a coronation-stone.  Not far from the top of a hill near Barmouth in Wales, in the middle of a rough path, may be seen a flat stone, in which there is a footmark about the natural size, locally known as “Llan Maria,” or Mary’s step, because the Virgin Mary once, it is supposed, put her foot on this rock, and then walked down the hill to a lower height covered with roots of oak-trees.  This impression on the stone is associated with several stone circles and cromlechs—­one of which bears upon it the reputed marks of Arthur’s fingers, and is called Arthur’s Quoit—­and with a spring of water and a grove, as the path leading to the hill is still known by a Welsh name which means Grove Lane; and these associations undoubtedly indicate that the spot was once a moot-hill or prehistoric sanctuary, where religious and inauguration rites were performed.  At Smithhill’s Hall, near Bolton-le-Moors, there is still to be seen an object of curiosity to a large number of visitors—­the print of a man’s foot in the flagstone.  It is said to have been produced by George Marsh, who suffered martyrdom during the persecutions of Queen Mary in 1555.  When on one occasion the truth of his words was called in question by his enemies, he stamped his foot upon the stone on which he stood, which ever after bore the ineffaceable impression as a miraculous testimony to his veracity.  This story must have been an after-thought, to account for what we may suppose to have been a prehistoric Tanist stone.