Celtic Mythology and Religion. By Alexander Macbain. (Stirling Eneas Mackay.
7s. Gd. not.)—The late Dr. Macbain is justly described in the introduction by Professor Watson as " the greatest of our Scottish Celtic scholars," but his work is too little known because it was mainly printed in the Transactions of the Inverness Gaelic Society and in periodicals of limited circulation. Three of his earlier essays are now reprinted, and others will doubtless follow. The second essay, on " The Druid Circles," is a vigorous and sensible exposure of the theory that Stonehenge and similar stone circles were Druidical and Celtic ; Macbain hold, with reason, that they were pre-Celtic, possibly Pictish, that they were burial-places and connected with ancestor-worship, but that they had nothing to do with the worship of the sun, as so many good people, including astronomers, have believed.
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