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.

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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! Tempora 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."

AN ANCIENT HOUSE

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But still another explanation of these circular arrangements of large oblong monoliths placed in an upright position has been seriously advanced, namely, that they were so planted to make a public arena for dancing, a form of amusement very prevalent among the ancient Cornish, as indeed it was among the Irish branch of the Celtic family as well. From this wealth of obviously fairy, and also some sensible, theories the reader may pick out for reliance that which most pleases him.

Two facts, I think, are obvious in connection with these circles. Their existence necessarily implies a certain amount of public spirit in the days of their construction, and they show that the advantage of working together for some common object, were that object religious or secular, was in those days understood. For I think all critics are agreed that these circles, as well as the cromlechs, pillars, and holed stones, are public monuments, and if so they are messages to posterity and ought to be carefully preserved.

By the roadside between the Merry Maidens and the Fiddlers, about two hundred yards from the former on the south side of the road, on a piece of roadside waste, is another Celtic cross well worth notice. In order to photograph this we had to slaughter a heap of obtruding bracken and bramble which nearly totally hid it.

Soon after leaving the Fiddlers the road descends to a woody valley, and there, after going up a grass-grown byroad overshadowed by trees decked with ferns on the banks, an old farm is reached. This is Trewoofe, pronounced Trove. It is the " Trewoof" referred to on the monument in Buryan Church recording the passing away of the last of his race in the person of Arthur Levelis. All that now remains of the ancient house is an old doorway, a low arch, above which are two square pieces of granite rather richly carved. The situation of these remains of an ancient mansion is pretty trees and foliage all around, and a pond in front of it within ten feet. The old farmer here informed me that he was seventy years of age, that his father and grandfather had lived and died there before him, and that old arched doorway had been there in just the same state all the time.

Trewoofe means the place of blackbirds, many of which