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supposed to be the Gorsedd of Damnonium of ancient Welsh triads. This walk is due south of Sancreed Church.

Passing by the one or two houses forming the village of Tregonebris, I noticed cemented into a wall outside a farmhouse two circular granite stones. One had a groove cut round the margin with a lip on the circle, and the other had two depressions cut in it for a clamp or attachment. These singular-looking objects are evidently the remains of an old cider-mill-singular I say, for now all the apple orchards in the neighbourhood have disappeared.

The Giant's Stone is a huge granite natural rock outcrop, on which are those basin-like depressions, so common in granite, and which the country people have fancifully imagined are due to demon agency. On this block of stone they certainly bear the resemblance to a huge boot-print, heel and sole, on the rock. Standing on the top, just below, about 200 yards in the furze-covered common and surrounded by a wall, one gets a capital bird's-eye view of the most perfect stone circle I have seen in Cornwall. At a first glance it looks like a walled-in churchyard. Away down south the elegant tower of Buryan Church breaks the sky-line, and beyond, to the east, the rounded gap in the land shows where lies Lamorna Cove with sea beyond.

Boscawen-Un, as this circle of monoliths is called, is composed of nineteen standing stones, and is of slightly oval form, the longer diameter being 80 feet, and the shorter 71 feet 6 inches. One of the stones is a block of quartz 4 feet high, and the others are of granite varying from 2 feet 9 inches to 4 feet 7 inches in height. On the west side there is a gap which may have been the entrance to the circle, but some think it probable that a stone there has been removed. Within the area, 9 feet to the south-west from the centre, is a tall monolith, 8 feet out of the ground, which has a marked inclination to the north-east, being 3 feet 3 inches out of the perpendicular.

In 1594 Camden described this ancient monument as consisting of nineteen stones, 12 feet from each other, with one much larger than the rest in the centre. He does not say that the centre monolith was inclined, so it is possible that it was then upright and has since been disturbed, possibly by treasure-seekers. Forty-five years ago a

hedge ran across and bisected the circle, but of this I saw no traces, I am glad to say.

The word Sancreed may puzzle some readers. The name implies some ecclesiastical import, and means simply the holy creed or holy belief. St. Sancredus is simply a reduplication of the word Sanctus in the case of the holy creed. An equivalent would probably be St. Faith. Obviously the name of this parish is (comparatively, when viewing the prehistoric remains around) modern-subsequent to the introduction of Christianity.

These fictitious saints, like St. Botolph and others, have become quite materialised in the course of time; and so I find that, according to Tonkin, St. Sancreed was chiefly famous "for curing all distempers in pigs, which used to be brought from all round the country "!

I came across one reference to this ancient Cornish parish which brings to memory a very unpleasant time in this merry England of ours. Leprosy was very prevalent in Cornwall. It is singular how all countries where fish is the chief diet, such as Norway, are liable to this fell disease. Bishop Bytton, of Exeter (1291 to 1307), left, at his death, legacies to no less than twenty-three leper hospitals of refuge in Cornwall, which shows the widespread nature of the scourge in his day. The sums of money he left were in varying amounts of shillings up to about 280 (equivalent to £300 or £400 or even more purchasing power in these days), and amongst these legacies I find one of sixpence to the Leper Hospital of Sancto Sancredo or Sancreed. No remains of this hospital are now known, and, thank Heaven! one is not now needed.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SANCREED AS A CENTRE FOR SEEING ANTIQUITIES, LOWER DRIFT CROSS, DING DONG DISTRICT, MÊN-AN-TOL, MÊN

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SCRYFA, NINE MAIDENS, FOUR PARISHES BOUNDARYSTONE, MULFRA QUOIT, PENDOUR COVE, HORSE'S BACK, KENIDJACK, THE NINETEEN MAIDENS

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HERE is ample evidence that once Sancreed had a much larger number of inhabitants and was more important. Adjoining the glebe farm-house is a shed now used for stabling Mr. Stevens's trap, which was formerly the market-house wherein beef and mutton were dispensed to the country buyers. On the glebe farm are two fields, known to this day as the Bowling Green Fields, where once upon a time that old-fashioned English game was played. Then there is also the Wrestling Field, formerly the site of many a trial of strength in that ancient Cornish pastime. Alas! now there are none in the neighbourhood to play bowls, and the young, sturdy Cornishmen who should be now indulging in occasional bowls or trials of strength have gone to other lands in search of fortune.

On the other side of the glebe farm-house is an old barn, where an ancient game called-so far as I could make out -"Kails" was played. This, I take it, is the local name for skittles.1

Most Cornish villages have their Cross Parks. Sancreed has no less than two, neither of which possesses a cross at the present time. Most of the crosses which once stood in these Cross Parks have been removed and placed in, or adjacent to, the parish churches to preserve them from what history seems to say is inevitable destruction or misuse, and sometimes abuse. Sancreed also had its Plan-an-guâre, now a field overlooking the vicarage grounds. In old days every parish had one.

1 "Kails, ninepins."-Skeat.

Another item of evidence pointing to the former greater importance of Sancreed is afforded by the fact that a blacksmith's forge once stood near the church, a little farther up the hill. The massive granite monolith square trough (54 inches by 42 inches and 22 inches deep) in which the irons were cooled is now in the glebe farm-yard and is used as a watering-trough for cattle. A deep pool by the roadside just below the church has from time immemorial been known by the name of the "Devil's Hole," but why I could not ascertain. Before the time of roads a bridle-path ran across here by the side of it.

Sancreed is a wonderfully good centre for seeing antiquities. They are chiefly in the centre of the county in this part of Cornwall, and Sancreed is the only parish which has not a sea border. The antiquities and curiosities lie around in considerable number within a radius of a few miles, and most of them can only be seen by walking. One morning I started out to try to find some old stones, which in Edmonds's Land's End District (1862, p. 17) are simply dismissed with: "These three pillars are all invisible from the temple and one another." What that means I know not, but I went on the road from Sancreed till I nearly reached Lower Drift. This place is a mere handful of cottages, on the main road from Penzance to Land's End, at the top of a steep hill. Before reaching Lower Drift I climbed over the hedge, and went through a wilderness of bramble and high bracken, tumbling and almost rolling down the steep descent to the bottom of the valley, or croft. Here a little stream, much attenuated in the hot summer weather when I visited it, wanders along the bottom to an old mill where two large wheels are picturesque objects. I noticed an abundance of the royal flowering fern (Osmunda regalis) and butcher's broom growing beside one another on the banks of the stream. I utterly failed, however, to find anything in the way of monolith to which the epithet ancient could be applied. Not daunted, I returned to the spot on another day, and consulted the blacksmith at Lower Drift, one Charles Clements. He is a middle-aged man, and said he remembered when he was a "nipper" seeing a stone in the valley with a cross upon it. He thought he might perhaps be able

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to find it. So with him I started. We went over the hedge again about four hundred yards from the main road, on the right going towards Sancreed. The valley-side was densely covered with bracken four feet and more high. We searched it thoroughly, tumbling rather badly several times, as we could not see the ground at all on which we walked. At last we came to an upright monolith, and I at once cut away the ivy which quite covered its surface, and made a halo round it by trampling down the bracken and furze which many years of undisturbed growth had rendered almost impenetrable. The stone stands on the right side of the steep valley about one hundred yards from the bottom. It is roughly wedge-shaped. I found it was 49 inches in height above the ground and 28 inches wide. Its position is at right angles to the side of the valley, or north-east by south-west. It is 12 inches wide on the south-west, and it tapers to 3 inches on the north-east at the top, being 12 inches at the bottom on that side. It has a cross on either side, both Latin. That on the north-east side is 26 inches long by 14 inches across the arms, and it is not placed symmetrically in the centre of the monolith. Both crosses are in relief. On the south-east side the cross is 11 inches across the arms and 23 inches long, and like that on the reverse is not cut symmetrically. The whole monolith looks elementarily rude and primitive, and the two crosses the simplest, and probably the most ancient, Latin ones I have come across in this part of Cornwall. The blacksmith said no one before in his time had ever been to see it, so that the photographs I took are the first which have ever been taken of this quite forgotten monument of the past. Poking about amid the great ferns, I came across a number (twelve at least) of large hewn stones lying scattered on the hill-side close around.

These are clearly remains of a chapelry or some ancient structure, and it seems a great pity this spot sholud not be cleared and scientifically investigated. I sent off a small boy for a crowbar, and with the aid of that and the blacksmith's brawny arms we turned two of the huge prone monster monoliths, but could find no indications of crosses upon them. We essayed to turn one or two more, but failed in our endeavours.

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