allow him to melt the golden viper into a sacramental chalice.
One of the most interesting of the supposed Serpent-temples, or dracontia, is
that of Karnak. It is situated half a mile from the village of that name, in the
department of the Morbihan in Brittany, and about nine miles from the
picturesque town of Auray. It is also within a mile of the Bay of Quiberon.
The whole length of “the Stones of Karnak,” as the temple is called, measures, if
we include its sinuosities, eight miles. The width varies from 250 to 350 feet.
The highest stones are as much as seventeen feet high, and from thirty to forty
feet in circumference. Vacant spaces have unfortunately been cleared by ruthless
spoliators for the erection of the adjacent villages of Ploermel and Karnak, and
the boundary walls of the neighbouring fields. But what toil and time must have
been originally expended on its construction, we may infer from the fact that it
consisted of eleven rows of stones, about ten thousand in number, of which
upwards of three hundred averaged from fifteen to seventeen feet in height, and
from sixteen to twenty or thirty feet in girth; one stone even measuring the huge
circumference of forty-two feet.
A glance at any engraving of this famous antiquity will show that the course of
the avenues is distinctly sinuous, and that it defines the figure of an enormous
serpent undulating over the ground. Necessarily, however, the resemblance is
more striking to one who views the original in situ. To such, the alternations of
the high and low stones, regularly disposed, may seem to mark with sufficient
accuracy “the swelling of the serpent’s muscles as he moves along,” though this
seems rather a flight of imagination. But at all events the spectator will
acknowledge the evidence of design which clearly appears in the construction of
the avenues.
The Dracontium contains ten regularly defined areas; one near the village of
Karnak, which is shaped like a bell or horse-shoe; the other, towards the eastern
extremity, which approaches the figure of a rude circle, and is in reality a
parallelogram with rounded corners.
The circle and the horse-shoe were both sacred figures in the Druidical religion,
as may be seen in Stonehenge, where they are united, the outer circles enclosing
inner horse-shoes. The connection between the latter symbol and the Celtic faith
is not very clear, unless it be intended as a representation of the moon. It has
been conjectured that from this symbol, whatever may have been its
signification, arose the superstition—even not now wholly defunct—of nailing a