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their desecrating their ancient monuments. It is doubtful if this retarding influence will continue, and therefore it becomes more than ever imperative that each and all of these priceless memorials of the past should be conserved by the State. Still the following story related in the Quarterly Review (July, 1867, p. 63) shows that at that period, at any rate, some of the good old leaven of superstition still existed in the Cornish mind. "Near Carleen, in Breage," says the writer, an old cross has been removed from its place, and now does duty as a gate-post. The farmer occupying the farm where the cross stood set his labourer to sink a pit in the required spot for the gate-post, but when it was intimated that the cross standing a little distance off was to be erected therein, the man absolutely refused to have any hand in the matter, not on account of the beautiful or the antique, but for fear of the old people. Another farmer related that he had a neighbour who' haeled down a lot of stoans called the Roundags, and sold 'em for building the dock at Penzance. But not a penny of the money he got for them ever prospered, and there wasn't Iwan of the hosses that haeld 'em that lived out the twelvemonth; and they do say that some of the stoans do weep blood, but I don't belive that."

The Cornish are partly descendants from the ancient Damnonii, "the old men," or "old people," as miners call them, of the western peninsula of Britain, whose memory still lingers amongst the inhabitants, hence the prevalence of this belief.

Leaving this interesting relic at the cross-roads, and taking the main track to Paul, on the right-hand side in the upper part of a pasturage meadow we come to the

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Merry Maidens." They are often spoken of as the "Nine Maidens," a loose way of speaking, and a shortened form of "Nineteen Maidens," for these Cornish circles all had originally, I believe, nineteen standing stones. Circles elsewhere consist of the same number of erect monoliths. At Stonehenge the inner oval consists of precisely nineteen stones; so too the temple of Classerniss, in the island of Lewis, consists of an avenue of nineteen stones on each side, leading into a circle of twelve others. This number, nineteen, seems to have had some ancient value, or was associated with

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THE MERRY MAIDENS

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early superstitions. Diodorus writes: "They say moreover that Apollo once in nineteen years comes into the island, in which space of time the stars perform their courses and return to the same point, and therefore the Greeks call the revolution of nineteen years the Great Year." These Merry Maidens are weather-beaten, lichen - clad, roughly hewn blocks of granite, nineteen in number, set upright in a circle whose diameter is twenty-four yards. They are evenly paced out and vary in height above the level of the ground from 4 feet 4 inches to 3 feet 2 inches. How much of each monolith is beneath the ground I know not, but each has probably below the surface two or three feet of foundation at least.

A little further along, on the left side of the road, and at a distance between them of fifty yards, are the "Two Fiddlers," or "Pipers," as they are sometimes called. These are two rude pillars of granite which stand erect 317 feet apart and about 400 yards to the north-east of the circle of Dawns Maen. At the present day each is in a different field. The longer and thinner one is fifteen or sixteen feet from surface of the ground to top, measuring at its base 4 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 9 inches, so that it is more or less rectangular. The legend associated with the Fiddlers is delightfully quaint. Nineteen maidens danced on a Sunday to music supplied by two fiddlers, and all were turned into stone, and granite stone too, in consequence of the enormity. How religious people must have been in those days! Tem pora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.

The Maidens are visible from the Fiddlers, and are situated on ground which belonged to the Boleit family. In Cornish they are known as Dans maen, or Dawns mên, or the "Stone Dancers."

This part of Cornwall is remarkably rich in stone circles. Many-perhaps all, but I am not sure-originally consisted of nineteen stones, a number frequently abbreviated by the inhabitants into nine, as we have seen. Another theory of the origin of these circles is that they were dedicated to Apollo, who is supposed to have visited Britain once every nineteen years-in other words, that they were temples to the god of light, the purest and highest representation of this mighty power in nature. Boleit

pronounced Boleigh-means the place of slaughter, and so it has been said that the Celts made here their last stand against the Saxons.

A more plausible explanation is that they are associated with the worship of the sun and constellations. I think it is clear that they are not the remains of human dwellingplaces, for they are mostly at spots where the rude southwest gale blowing upon them from the stormy Atlantic would make life unendurable. Then too, a few hundred yards lower down, in most instances, a comparatively sheltered situation would have offered itself.

Sir Norman Lockyer thinks these stone circles were observation places for studying the movements of the sun and stars in prehistoric times. He points out the similarity between Egyptian temples and these early British stone circles. In Britain when the population was scarce the circle built chiefly of monoliths represented a sanctuary, and from its centre were imitated the various temple axes by sight lines marked out by a stone or barrow. The story is that astronomer-priests familiar with Egyptian methods began work in Cornwall about 2300 B.C.

The stars they used as clock-stars were the equivalents of the stars in Ursa Major and Draco used by the ancient Egyptians, when we take the difference of latitude between Egypt and Britain into account. The same may be said of the "morning stars" they employed, and further, they brought the May year with them. If this be correct this conclusion follows. These British circles were in full work more than a thousand years before the Aryans or Celts came upon the scene. And then, as the sacred fire had to be kept alight, it is a question whether these dolmens, chamber barrows, and such-like places were not places for the living and not for the dead, and therefore whether the burials found in some of them do not belong to a later date.

Sir Norman Lockyer gives the morning star, that is, the star rising or setting "heliacally," or an hour before sunrise, associated with the Merry Maidens as the Pleiades, and the date therefore about 1930 B.C. The Pleiades were observed rising and the Antares setting, 1310 B.C. He says that the May sunrise is provided for in all the stone circles he has surveyed except one, the "Hurlers."

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