SUN THAT WOULD NOT RISE

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3418, 23 August 1913, Page 8

SUN THAT WOULD NOT RISE

A GOLD VIG4L AT STONEHENGE

To-day was the longest day, wrote a correspondent of the London Express, turned sun-worshipper on June 21, and I was one of a crowd of people who jxaid a shilling to see the midsummer sunrise this morning at Stonehenge. Considering all things, sunrises at 12s the dozen are cheap enough for any one, especially in.such a deserted place, where there does not seem to be a regular supply, but after this morning’s lamentable failure to supply goods as per contract you shall hear no protest from me if Stonehenge is torn to pieces by wild souvenir hunters from Cincinnati.

To sit through the cold higlit in tho mist of a sort of overgrown graveyard and wait for a sun that does not keep its appointment is to understand why the early faded from the face of the land.

They must have all perished from double pneumonia. Shivering in an overcoat this morning, my heart went out in pity to think of those poor heathen sitting on the cold stones in their light summer suitings of blue woad. It was a Druid- who took me to Stonehenge last night—nob one of your friendly society nine-for-foui-penoo Druids, but a real knife and mistletoe Druids of tho old school.

He is the high chief of the Druids in Europe, and his name is Doctor Reid, but if you know anything about these mysteries you address him as the Dastur. He did not wear any of the conventional white whisker fittings, and he had only one disciple—a sort of apprentice Druid in a tweed suit.

It seems it was really not- tlie Druids’ busy night last night. In fact, the Dastur confided to me that to be astronomically correct Monday was the correct day for the ceremony. Anyhow, there were two or three hundred sun-worshippers, enthusiasts from Salisbury, Bath, and Bristol, who occupied the night with' the mystic rites of banker and halfpenny nap, the ancient ritual of passing round the bottle, and singing the sun-worshippers’ hymn,-“Waiting for Robert E. Lee.” These were the outer circle of sunwatchers. Not having paid their shillings they were debarred from entering within the barbed-wire fence which rings the stones. The chief Druid made a.solemn protest against paying this shilling. “On behalf of the universal brotherhood of the Sacred Bond,” he said to the man at the turnstile, “1 protest against the payment of this shilling, believing it to be an imposition.” “Hear, hear,” said the disciple, as his chief paid for the two. Then we entered into the clumsiest attempt at building a house I ever saw. Those Druids could not have built a third-rate cinema palace. Everyone but the two Druids sat about on stones, and I hereby give my testimony that these stones at Stonehenge are the coldest in England. The Dastur admitted that they came from the glacial period, but they really must have come straight off the ice. and there vv© waited in a vast grey smear of sky are.i landscape, bona-fide travellers everywhere, and not a cheery tavern within four long miles.

The sun was about half an hour late for its appointment when a youthful member of the Wiltshire county police decided to give the laggard a sporting chance by clearing the course where the sun, according to the legend, should clear the solitary sentinel stone, and dash up the straight to the altar-stone.

Just- when we had taken the chill off our stone he said, “Orders are orders,” and made us come off them. There never was a sun had such a luss made about it. We did everything we could for it, .sent search-parties down tlie hill to see if it were coming, and after all this it decided to have breakfast in bed.

One apologist suggested that maybe a suffragette had stopped it, but we snubbed him into silence, and, learning that- we could not got our shillings back, we trailed out into the dawn.