246 Bradford-upon-Avon. [Parish Church. 
circle in Cornwall is termed ‘Dance Maine;’—dance stones. The 
Rev. W. Bathurst Deane! relates that at Carnac in Brittany, 
where there are remains of an immense stone avenue and cir- 
cle, the villagers are accustomed, at an annual festival held on 
the day of the Carnival, to unite in a general dance. The dancers 
commence in a circle, and, having performed a few revolutions, 
wheel off to the right and left. They call this, par excellence,—‘ Le 
Bal.’ This, he suggests, may mean nothing more than the ordinary 
French word ‘bal,’—or public dancing, Mr. Scarth,? however, 
intimates an opinion, that perhaps it may be after all the vestige of 
the sacred dance of Baal, though its original meaning may be 
forgotten. A tradition of this circular dancing appears in many 
fables respecting Druidical temples in England. The stones are 
said to have been human beings petrified in the midst of a dance, 
and all the temples to which such superstitions are attached are 
circular. At Stanton Drew the stones are called ‘The Wedding,’ 
and one of them is specially designated ‘The Bride;’ and here, 
tradition says, that they were all men and women turned into stone 
at their wedding-dance. At the St. John’s Eve fires, moreover,— 
called in Ireland to this day, ‘Bel-tan’ fires,—they danced by night 
round them, carrying torches in their hands. A similar custom 
was observed in Cornwall.’ 
Though, as we have already intimated, such facts, as we have 
detailed, cannot be taken as any positive explanation of the ‘Boys 
Dance’ round the Church on Shrove-Tuesday, yet thus much we 
may,perhaps infer from them; viz.—that our Bradford custom no 
doubt is very old, and that it may have arisen from some ancient 
usage of the kind. : 
It will be no inappropriate addition to the foregoing section on 
our ‘Parish Church,’ to give an account of two old buildings 
erected originally for the purpose of religious worship, one of 
which has long altogether ceased, and the other almost entirely, 
1 Archeologia, xxv. 217. 
2 Journal of British Archeological Association, June 1857, p. 110. 
5 Brand’s Popular Antiquities, i. 337, 
