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ON THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM "SARSEN
STONES."
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., Vice-President.
[Read April 16th, 1904.]
IN my remarks on the Greywethers of Grays Thurrock
(Essex Nat. Vol. XIII., pp. 197-202) I expressed an
opinion that the derivation of the word Sarsen from Saracen is the
correct one. But as the question is one of folk-lore, and as the
derivation of sarsen is usually ignored in our dictionaries, I am
not surprised to find my view considered somewhat doubtful.
We may find the word sarsen used many times in dissertations on
Stonehenge, Avebury, and other primitive stone monuments, by
antiquaries of more or less eminence in their day, without a line
on the origin of the term. Dr. J. A. H. Murray, in the greatest
of dictionaries, is still far from the letter S. And though the
Rev. W. W. Skeat, in his Concise Etymological Dictionary of the
English Language (Oxford, 1882), gives Sarcenet or Sarsnet," a thin
silk, O. F. Sarcenet, a stuff made by the Saracens," the word
Sarsen does not appear there.
On searching the volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine
Library likely to contain any reference to Sarsen-stones, I can
find but one short passage bearing on the origin of the name,
though many pages are devoted to descriptions of ancient stone
monuments and speculations about them. In "Archaeology
Part II.," p. 93, there is an article, dated 1829, on "The present
state of Abury, Wilts," by Joseph Hunter, which contains the
following remarks :—
" The common people of Abury uniformly call these stones sazzen-stones.
This orthography more correctly represents the sound than Sarsen-stones, which
occurs in the 'Ancient Wiltshire,' but whether the term is applied exclusively
to these, or is common to blocks of stone like these but in their native beds, I
cannot say."
The important point is, of course, the fact that sazzen or
sarsen was the term used by "the common people" of Abury in
1829. Those were days in which the village folk of Salisbury
Plain and Marlborough Downs may fairly be presumed to have
given simply the traditional name, and not one suggested by
anything they had read themselves, or by the speculations of
more learned persons. And it is obvious that the author of
Ancient Wiltshire (Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 1758-1838) and Joseph