Cornish myth, magic and mayhem

10.06.2025

I walked a short distance up a road from my campsite near Lamorna and took a footpath through a potato field being careful to keep to the furrows. Up over a wall with stone steps and I was into a large field of low meadow grass and buttercups. Unlike at Boscawen Un earlier today, the Merry Maidens circle had plenty of space around it and the path to it disected the centre and continued on to the road beyond. It felt a very different atmosphere here, with the low lying stones open to the skies that were easy to see as I approached them.

I delayed my entry into the circle and sat on an outlying stone whilst a group of people came up from the gate to have a look. This was a cornish tourist attraction and I was happy to wait for some solitary time with it. When sharing space with others at circles I am always facinated in people’s behaviour and their interaction with the stones. As at the Hurlers circle on Bodmin Moor, people can sit in the centre for a long passage of time to await inspiration or to simply empty their minds. I have also seen someone walk through a circle and not look up from their phone.

The circle fell quiet again and I walked my usual way around it. The stones were of equal size and most of them cube like aside from one that looked more trapezoid or triangular. I began to think the Tri stones were not just the preserve of Bodmin circles. Once again there were nineteen all evenly spaced, aside from a gap on the eastern side. Like at Boscawen Un, there were outlying stones in the fields around but they were nolonger visible except one in the hedgerow.

And so we come to the folklore of the nineteen dancers, who for defying the solemnity of the Sabbath, along with the merry musicans in attendance were turned to stone. Scattered around the fields nearby two petrified pipers and two fiddlers (see previous post) can be seen peeping over the hedgerows to the east.

I moved down the slope to a gate by the road and walked three hundred yards along the B3315 to the bizzare spectacle of Tregiffian Burial Chamber. It had a familiar look to it as I climbed up onto the mound. I had seen this before at Gwernvale in the Brecons, a burial chamber half oblitterated by a road. The road was not as busy as the A40 in Wales but it had it’s fair share of heavy traffic, including the Penzance to Lands End bus. Amongst the foxgloves adorning the portal stones was a replica stone with twenty five very distinct cup marks. The original stone resides in the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro. William Copeland Borlase had been the first archeologist to delve into the chamber, finding bone fragments and cremation remains beneath the five capstones. This was another case where conservation had come too late and Tregiffian now looked somewhat absurd and undignified. 

From here I attempted to get to Gun Rith over the road, one of the fiddlers, but a field of cows protecting their calves put pay to it. I walked back towards the campsite to where I knew the Pipers standing stones were. It wasn’t long before one of them came into view at the far edge of a field. This Piper was enormas and with it’s partner stone in the next field they had the distinction of being Cornwall’s tallest standing stones. The first one looked very worn with deep cracks running down it’s thinner edge. Part of it had broken free at the base which had possibly contributed to it’s slight lean. One hundred metres away the second megalith also stood near a hedgerow and leaned more acutely forward as if in motion. From a certain angle the stone ressembled a finger pointing to the sky. I placed my hand on it and felt it’s strength and resiliance. There was a coating of fruticose lichen on it’s upper half which could have been offering some protection to the surface. Two other fallen stones lay nearby that looked comparable in height to the 4 metre granite spire still upright. One of them was split in two, but I imagined them at there inception forming a glorious trio in this once complex landscape of ancient structures.