present time.[1] If this does not meet approbation, I will add another conjecture. As the circle of stones called the Hurlers, are at a short distance from this monument and the cross before-mentioned, might not the monument and the cross be called the 'one heave stone,' and the other, 'the other or outer heave stone,' places from, whence the ball during the game of hurling was thrown. The traditionary story of the stones called the hurlers, being once men turned into stone for profaning the Sabbath, will give some slight sanction to this conjecture; and in addition, even at this time the high-cross is vulgarly believed to have been the man who ran off with the ball.
"With respect to the stones called the Hurlers being once men, I will say with Hals, 'Did but the ball which these Hurlers used when flesh and blood, appear directly over them immoveably pendant in the air, one might be apt to credit some little of the tale;' but as this is not the case, I must add my belief of their being erected by the Druids for some purpose or other, probably a court of justice; long subsequent to which erection, however, they may have served as the goal for hurl players. And indeed a finer spot for such a game could not be fixed on perhaps any where. But I believe the Hurlers took their names from some other source than that of the game of hurling the ball being used there.
- ↑ I take some credit to myself for this conjecture as to the original meaning of "the other half stone." And I have, long since writing this, accidentally discovered what strongly confirms my opinion. The authors of the Beauties of England and Wales, speaking of inscribed stones at Ebchester, in Durham, say, there is one having the single word "Have" for Ave on it. This stone is supposed by Horsley to be sepulchral. Have Melitina Sanctissima. The custom of thus saluting, as it were, the dead, or taking their last farewell of them, is very well known, and it may seem almost needless to produce any instances of it. Thus Æneas bids eternal adieu to Pallas:
Salve æternum mihi, maxime Palla,
Æternumque vale.—Æneid, XI. 97.Thus also a passage in Catullus, Ave atque vale.
