32 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
with menhirs and lines, we date the one by the other, and carry- 
both back to the Bronze Age. If then the hut rings merge into 
the rude moorland dwellings of our own day in one direction, in 
the other they are linked with relics of which no tradition 
preserves the purpose ; for the menhirs and the lines cannot be 
dissociated from the so-called sacred circles and the cromlechs. 
One of the strongest arguments against Mr. Fergusson's recent 
dating of the rude stone memorials is indeed supplied by the 
peculiar mythical character of the legends concerning them, which 
show how entirely their origin has passed into oblivion. The 
most frequent suggestion is that the circles and menhirs are 
men and women turned by enchantment into rocks. The Hurlers, 
near Liskeard, are men who would play hurling on Sunday ; the 
Merry Maidens at Bolleit are the petrified remains of girls who 
persisted in dancing on the same sacred day, and hard by are the 
culpable pipers who played to them. The Rollright stones at 
Long Compton are a king and his knights who sought to make 
war upon the King of England. Even in India we are told that 
certain stones represent a marriage party transformed by a 
malignant magician. Stonehenge is the " Giants' Dance." And 
so we might go on multiplying similar instances. 1 
The whole tendency of recent research has been to connect the 
most characteristic rude stone monuments with sepulchral purposes. 
The cromlech is no longer a stone of sacrifice, or Druidical altar, but 
a gigantic kist ; and menhirs and circles have alike been found to 
mark interments. I believe the much-debated lines, avenues, cursi, 
or parallelitha, have precisely the same origin. Not one of the 
current theories seems satisfactory ; the hypothesis of Mr. Ferguson 
1 The Druidical theory is not a whit better founded, and has not even 
the merit of antiquity. Vide "Were there Druids in Devon?" (Trans. 
Devon. Assoc. vol. xii. pp. 228-242) ; and Mr. W. C. Borlase ( Trans. Penz. Nat. 
Hist. Soc. 1880-1, p. 27), describing the really historic Druids as "magicians 
or white witches," remarks: "These persons might have chosen for the 
scenes of their incantations the circles, or the rude pillar stones, or the 
cairns and cromlechs. The civil authorities certainly used these spots as 
places of meeting, and it is very probable that the Druids did the same. 
What, however, is rightly maintained with regard to their connection with 
them is that, until some direct evidence is forthcoming to associate the two, 
it is incorrect, and may prove misleading, to call them ' Druidical Remains. ' 
Not one scrap of such evidence has as yet been forthcoming either in 
Cornwall or elsewhere." 
