(click on the photos for an enlarged view)

In this last part of the series, we will visit a site of a petroglyph in the form of Ogham in Concord, Stone Turtle effigies in Acton and Lincoln, and the Sacred Spring with Two Cups in Littleton.

Petroglyph in Concord in the Form of Ogham
After reading that there were traces of Ogham writing in New England I started keeping an eye out for scratched rocks. Ogham was a writing system used in Bronze age Europe and Britain, based on groups of vertical lines crossing a long horizontal base line. Different numbers of verticals in a group or whether the group was above, below or across the baseline, determines which letter is represented by the group. Ogham came in many forms and appears to have been used by such people as the Celts in Western Europe and Britain, the people of Troy, and by other seagoing people whose God was "Bel" or "Baal". Examples of Ogham also have been found in Japan and in Africa, and very clear examples have been found on the east coast of America and along its larger river systems. For the most part, the languages written in Ogham and the variants of the alphabet are known and it is sometimes possible to read Ogham inscriptions. A search on the Web for "Ogham" turns up plenty of sites on the subject.

Sure enough, there is a Petroglyph in Concord in the form of Ogham (top right). This example comes from the woods around Hanscom field. The grooves are uniform in depth and width, with a shallow "U" cross section, but I had to put water on them to make them visible, a somewhat suspect procedure. Normally, engraving like this can only be seen when the light comes in just right from the side.

Here is a closer view (second photo, right) -- and you can see that the added water started to drip. Following a version of the alphabet given in The White Goddess by Robert Graves, I came up with 'C', 'H', 'B', 'N' for the first four main strokes, but could not make anything of the way the message is divided along the ridge of the rock into a separate line of strokes. In one reference book, the small cross below the left end of the horizontal is identified as a symbol for "moon".

Someday perhaps an expert in deciphering Ogham can make something out of this. The presence of Ogham in America is highly controversial so let us leave it at this: there are petroglyphs here in Concord that could be Ogham.



Stone Turtle Effigies, Acton and Lincoln
Some rocks in the woods remind you of an animal or a face. Here is a Stone Turtle on Acton Conservation land (top right). Rocks with a prominent head like this are called "Turtles" because of the importance of the turtle in Native American creation myths. This figure looks more like a ram. It is four feet long and faces north. There is every reason to believe Native Americans would have been sensitive to unusual rocks like this. Many of them may be natural, but the ones pictured here have some breakage around the "head" suggesting that nature was enhanced deliberately (second from top, right).

Here is another Stone Turtle from Lincoln (third and fourth from top, right). To get there, walk in along the fire road across Rt. 2 from Orchard Road, take the first left: it is within 100 yards. Although these figures stretch credibility, the purpose is not to convince but to suggest that such figures may have had a ceremonial meaning in the past.

At Great Brook Farm in Carlisle, there are supposed to be several large stone turtles and here is a link to a Website with an interesting tobacco offering stone in Connecticut under the topic "Connecticut Bear Stone" in the table of contents.

A Sacred Spring with Two Cups
The less I say about this location the better. It is in Littleton, deep in the woods at the end of a path. As you walk you follow the edge of a swamp, and the verge of the water is continuously outlined by a stone wall. In the woods behind and to the side are other walls (first right).

Finally, the walls all converge at the head of the swamp where a lovely spring of water goes over a six inch waterfall. The water is cool and astringent. This site is still in use as a sacred location, because someone left two green plastic cups, suspended in the tree above the spring, and the trail ends here (the lower cup is slightly right and above center in the picture). If you magnify the picture you can see a bald spot in the moss of one of the rocks left of center. This is where you must step. As you stand over the spring to drink, other foot positions are outlined in the moss. If the persons using the spring read this, I hope they will forgive the intrusion.

Now, as you head back along the trail you notice a stone embrasure, isolated from other walls (bottom photo). Is this something for practical use: marking a corner where all other boundaries (we assume) are already marked with full stone walls? Or is this something else? We do not seek the answer very strenuously, but return to the car. Another mystery to explore on another day.

To find out more about sacred sites in New England, visit www.neara.org, or read Manitou - The Sacred Landscape of New England's Native Civilization by James Mavor and Byron Dix.

(part 3 of 3....see part 1 and Part 2.)