ON THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM *' SARSEN STONES." 277 



their " Cromlech and Druid Stones."^ Also that while peculiar 

 markings on rocks are in western Cornwall referred either to the 

 giants or the devil, in the eastern part of the county they are 

 almost always attributed to King Arthur. With regard to 

 mining traditions, Mr. Hunt notes the way in which " the Jew 

 and the Saracen and the Phoenician are regarded as terms 

 •applied to the same people." Waste heaps in ancient tin mines 

 are termed " atall Sarazin." And in a Cornish- English Vocabu- 

 lary given in Polwliele's History of Cornwall (1808) is Sarsyn, a 

 Saracen. Cornwall probably was largely protected from piratical 

 raids by the extremely rugged nature of its coast. 



In the Journal of the Ethnological Society (N.S.), Vol. H., there 

 is a paper by Lieut. Oliver, read in 1869, 0^^ " The Prehistoric 

 Remains of the Channel Islands." The author laments their 

 wholesale destruction in the half-century ending with the date of 

 his paper. He notes the existence, however, at the northern end 

 of Guernsey, not far from Bourdeaux Harbour, of a magnificent 

 Cromlech, known by the name of " L'Autel du Dehus," or 

 ^' L'Autel du Grand Sarazin." In the same locality is " Le 

 Tombeau du Grand Sarazin," which was partly destroyed in 

 1810. And Lieut. Oliver remarks that of a stone circle, which 

 once surrounded the first-named monument, only four or five 

 stones remain. 



A most important paper, of much later date, is that by Mr. 

 Arthur J. Evans on '' The RoUright Stones and their Folk- Lore," 

 which appears in Folk-Love : The Journal of the Folk-Lore Society^ 

 Vol. VI,, 1895, pp. 6-51. Mr. Evans remarks that the name 

 Rollright takes us back to the time when Roland the Brave 

 stood forth as the legendary champion of Christendom against 

 the Paynim. He notes the general tendency to apply the names 

 of the legendary heroes of the early struggle between Christen- 

 dom and Islam to ancient monuments at the cost of earlier 

 associations. Then the influence of locality is such that at 

 Stanton Harcourt " the Devil is given the Quoits that west of 

 Offa's Dyke are Arthur's. Considering that the name of Roland 

 could hardly have been attached to the Rowldrich stones before the 

 loth or nth century, there seems at least a possibility that he 

 may have here actually displaced the British hero." 



Mr. Evans remarks that there can be little doubt that the 



2 Popular Romances oj the West of England, etc. 2nd Ed., 1871. Hotten. 



