268 GEOLOGY AND ARCHEOLOGY OF CORNWALL AND DEVON. 



and in Geology, to Convulsions. That, however, to which I wish 

 to call attention at present, is their pojmlar names, which appear 

 to be very full of meaning and worth much more than the 

 Druidical hypothesis. For example : It is well known that 

 remnants of megalithie circles exist near Liskeard and Penzance ; 

 the former are known as The Hurlers, the latter as The Merry 

 Maidens; — the former, because they were men, who, playing 

 at Hurling on Sunday, were transformed into stones as a punish- 

 ment for their crime, and to deter Sabbath breakers ; the latter, 

 because they were young women, who, dancing on the sacred day, 

 were petrified for the same reasons. Now, it may be assumed 

 that whenever these structures were reared they were for some 

 well-defined purpose, and that they represented a wide-spread 

 feeling and, at least, a national usage ; yet their present popular 

 names must have been given them since the introduction of 

 Christianity into the same districts, since they are obviously 

 intended to check the desecration of the Christian Sabbath. 



The acceptance of the names, however, proves either that the 

 populace had utterly lost sight of, or their fathers had never 

 known, the real history of the monuments. In other words, in a 

 district in which the Baal fires are still lighted, and the rites of 

 Flora, though perhaps maimed, are still observed, the purpose of 

 the great stone monuments was long ago utterly unknown ; — a fact 

 implying either a great number of intermediate generations, or 

 that the race who raised the stones had been supplanted by men 

 of a different language and religion ; and forming a strong 

 argument, in either case, in favour of the great antiquity of the 

 remains. The more we familiarize ourselves with the full meaning 

 and chronological value of the monuments of the Bronze and 

 Neolithic Ages, the further, without doubt, Avill the Palaeolithic 

 men, whose handiwork we find in our ossiferous caverns, retire 

 into the remote past. 



The task of collecting the popular names of the great archse- 

 ological remains of this county, together with the legends connected 

 with them and the beliefs and usages which they betoken, would 

 probably not be very onerous ; but it seems calculated to aid 

 greatly in certain lines of enquiry which at present occupy a large 

 share of attention. 



