CHRONICLES OF CORNISH SAINTS. III. — S. CONSTANTINE. 87 



Doubts have been thrown upon the identity of the Cornish 

 Constantine with the Saint of that name who toiled and died in 

 Scotland at the close of the 6th century.* But all the best 

 authorities concur in designating the Scottish Constantine as the 

 son of Cador, Duke of Cornwall; and the identity receives 

 further confirmation from the fact that the Festival of the Saint 

 in the Calendars both of Scotland and Ireland is March 1 1 th ; 

 and in the Cornish parishes abovementioned his feast is still kept 

 on the Sunday nearest to that day. 



Fuller's quaint remarks on the constant migrations of the 

 early saints may be fitly appended to this imperfect narrative of 

 Constantine's wanderings : — "Most of these men," he says, "seem 

 " born under a Travelling Planet ; seldom having their education 

 " in the place of their nativity, ofttimes composed of Irish infancy, 

 " British breeding, and French preferment ; taking a coule in one 

 " country, a crozier in another, and a grave in a third ; neither 



to have been the site of walls or houses. Perhaps this stone also has before 

 now been utilized for gate posts ! 



But the most remarkable monument in this Parish is the gigantic 

 Tolmen known as the " Men Eock." " It is one vast oval Peble, plac'd on 

 " the points of two natural Eocks, so that a Man may creep under the great 

 " one, and between it's supporters, thro' a passage, about three feet wide, 

 " and as much high. The longest diameter of this Stone is 33 foot, pointing 

 " due North and South ; 14 feet 6 deep ; and the breadth in the middle 

 " of the surface where widest, was 18 feet 6 wide from East to West. I 

 " measur'd one half of the circumference, and found it, according to my 

 " computation, 48 feet and half, so that this Stone is 97 feet in circumference, 

 " about 60 feet cross the middle, and, by the best informations I can get, 

 " contains at least 750 ton of Stone. Getting up by a ladder to view the 

 "top of it, we found the whole surface work'd, like an imperfect, or 

 " mutilated Hony-comb, into Basons." — Antiquities, p. 166. Ed. 1754. 



This venerable monument is now, alas ! overthrown, and lies at the 

 bottom of a quarry which had been suffered to encroach upon its very 

 foundations. In the spring of this year one of the granite rocks upon which 

 it rested was blown up with gunpowder, and the majestic old Tolmen, which 

 had been an object of wonder and curiosity for two thousand years, fell 

 before the cupidity of the nineteenth century. 



' ' Qmd non mortalia pectora cogis, 

 Atiri sacra fames ! " 



* Haigh conjectures that the Constantine who abdicated his throne, 

 whose conversion is recorded in the Annals of Cambria, Ulster, and 

 Tighearnach, who sojourned in St. David's monastery, and subsequently 

 evangelized the Picts of Cantyre, was a son of Muircheatach, an Irish King 

 who was banished from his own country and reigned for seven years in 

 Britain ; but his conjecture is supported by no historical evidence whatever. 

 The Conquest of Britain by the Saxons, page 359. 



