Explore "A Book of Dartmoor" by Sabine Baring-Gould on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lucubrations of antiquaries in past times -- How their imagination / led them astray -- Rock idols -- Logan stones -- Who originated / the idea that they were oracular -- Rock basins -- Tolmens -- The / difference between the modern system of archeological research / and that which it has supplanted.
It would be amusing were it not melancholy to read the lucubrations of antiquaries of the early part of the nineteenth century on the relics of the past found in such abundance on the moor. Their imagination played a large part in their researches, and references to curious customs in the Bible or in classic writings were drawn in to explain these relics. The antiquaries lacked the faculty of observing accurately, and instead of labouring to accumulate facts, and recording them with precision, employed them as pegs on which to hang their theories, and they whittled at what they did observe, so as to fit what they saw to elucidate these theories.