The Sources of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The Stonehenge Story

Abstract

In a previous paper in ANTIQUITY (September 1941) I indicated briefly the complexity of the interpretation of the jumbled myth, legend and fantasy contained in the Historia Regum Britanniae, and discussed the sources which seem likely to have been used by its unscrupulous author for those parts of the work which purport to deal with the pre-Roman ages of Britain. These sources appear in the main to have been a version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius and a collection of pedigrees of ruling houses of the Welsh Dark Ages; a variety of other classical and Celtic material was laid under contribution for embellishments, but there was certainly nothing that could be connected, even indirectly, with any source earlier than that of the classical writers' accounts of the Roman conquest and occupation of Britain. Geoffrey's prehistory is in fact completely bogus, and while it may sometimes incorporate interesting fragments of early medieval history or legend, it bears no relation whatsoever to the period it professes to chronicle.