Nor do these Northern cases lack counterparts elsewhere. The church at Arrichinaga, in the province of Biscay, in Spain, was so built as to enclose the huge stones of a great dolmen; between the stones is placed the shrine of the patron saint[97]. The rugged land of Brittany is well-known to all travellers for its illustrations of lingering paganism; to some of these we shall again refer. But if we desire to learn how imperative, how inescapable, was the spirit of compromise, we should turn to the works of old writers, such as that curious old volume which relates Jean Scheffer’s travels in Lapland in the latter part of the seventeenth century[98]. There, we shall discover a strange alloy of heathenism and Christianity, visible to all, seemingly condemned by none. Even in our own day, so recently as the year 1895, we hear of curious practices among the Samoyads. These folk, though nominally Christians, within modern times still sacrificed human beings clandestinely, and conducted heathen services within the ancient stone-circles, carefully screening the images of their gods from the public gaze.
Returning to the high road of our inquiry, we ask whether these examples can be paralleled in Britain. Consider for a moment the great wealth of our folk-lore, our superstitions, our almost incredible heathen practices. Grease from the church-bell to cure rheumatism; pellitory from the church-wall for whooping-cough; teeth from the graveyard to serve as charms; the midnight watchings on St Mark’s Eve; the folk-tales about evergreens; the superstitions connected with baptisms, marriages, and deaths; the hundred and one little beliefs which run in an undercurrent beneath the apparently smooth surface of religious thought--do not these suggest that we may expect to find parallels to the continental examples of church-building on heathen soil? How strange if our islands had escaped the influences which are seen in almost every other European country! Yet, to speak plainly, our direct testimony is very scanty.