192 BTJDE STONE MONUMENTS OF CORNWALL. 



Other menhirs may very well commemorate important events 

 or special sites, and there is absolutely no evidence on which we 

 can decide, — so-called tradition being practically worthless. 



But with regard to the possibility of religious uses we may 

 assuredly go a step further. A sacred character would, as a 

 matter of course, attach more or less to the memorials of the 

 dead, audit so happens that while Cornwall, as far as I am aware, 

 is silent in the absence of any distinctive feature on its menhirs, 

 Devon has something to say. As in the case of the circles we 

 pray either county in aid of the other. 



There was found in 1879, at Lew Trenchard, by the 'Rev. 

 8. Baring-Grould, a menhir which had long lain buried, by 

 the side of an old mill leat, on the worked top of which a little 

 hollow had been sunk. Such hollows had been observed on the 

 tops of menhirs in Brittany, but until this discovery at Lew 

 Trenchard, it had been thought they were simply holes made to 

 receive the shafts of the small crosses so frequently planted, to 

 Christianise them, as already noted on these stones in that 

 country. No such use, however, could be ascribed to this hole in 

 the Lew Trenchard stone, and the reasonable supposition now 

 is that these holes were in existence before the Christian era, in 

 which case they must have had some connection with the practice 

 of anointing and lustration. Hence some at least of the 

 western menhirs belonged to our second class, and were connected 

 with religious observances. These may very well have included 

 such fine examples as the one in Constantino, which stood 20 

 feet above ground and was set four feet below ; possibly also The 

 " Pipers," — the finest Cornish pair, — 15 feet and 13 feet 6 inches 

 respectively. It may also apply to the "Old Man" on St. 

 Breock Down. Mr. Borlase thought this stone had been enclosed 

 by a circle. Still so far as Dartmoor is concerned, the menhir is 

 only connected with a circle when the general inferences are 

 sepulchral, and a sepulchral stone might as well be honoured 

 out of respect to the one whom it commemorated, as worshipped 

 as the representative of deity. There was never any very sharp 

 or certain line between the manes of the dead and the spirits of 

 the gods, and the reverence due to either would be rather in 

 degree than in kind. There is absolutely no evidence of the 



