The Merry Maidens

The Merry Maidens

The Merry Maidens, also known as Dawn's Men is a late Neolithic stone circle which may be found two miles south of the village of St Buryan, in Cornwall. A pair of standing stones, The Pipers, is associated both geographically and in legend.

The name 'Merry Maidens' is reflected in the local legend of how the circle was formed, while 'Dawn's Men' may be a corruption of the Cornish Dans Maen, meaning 'Stone Dance'.

Description

The circle, which is thought to be complete, comprises nineteen granite megaliths standing in a field alongside the B3315 between Newlyn and Land's End. The stones are approximately four feet high, with the tallest standing four and a half feet tall. They are spaced three to four yards apart with a larger gap between the stones on the east side. The circle is approximately eighty feet in diameter. To the south is another stone which suggests a possible north-south orientation. In earlier times there was another stone circle located 200 yards away, but this had been destroyed by the end of the 19th century. Three hundred yards to the northeast are The Pipers – two ten-foot standing stones. These have been described as "largest surviving standing stones in Cornwall and probably the best known". The Tregiffian Burial Chamber is nearby.

Myth and legend

The Merry Maidens

The local myth about the creation of the stones suggests that nineteen maidens were turned into stone as punishment for dancing on a Sunday. (Dans Maen translates as Stone Dance.) The Pipers, two megaliths some distance north-east of the circle, are said to be the petrified remains of the musicians who played for the dancers. A more detailed story explains why the Pipers are so far from the Maidens – apparently the two pipers heard the church clock in St Buryan strike midnight, realised they were breaking the Sabbath, and started to run up the hill away from the maidens who carried on dancing without accompaniment. These petrification legends are often associated with stone circles, as is reflected in the folk names of some of the nearby sites, for example, the Tregeseal Dancing Stones, the Nine Maidens of Boskednan, as well as the more distant Hurlers and Pipers on Bodmin Moor.

Research

The Merry Maidens engraved by W. & G. Cooke 1804

The Merry Maidens were first examined in detail by antiquarian William Borlase in 1769, who also reported a second equally large circle of stones. In 1872 William Copeland Borlase, a descendant of the elder Borlase, produced a more detailed description of the area. At that time seven stones were still present from the second stone circle, before it disappeared by the end of the 19th century. Hugh O’Neill Hencken wrote a first modern scientific view of the archaeological site in 1932.

A more recent study was produced by John Barnatt in 1982. Today it is thought that there were originally 18 standing stones. In the mid-19th century new stones were added in an attempt at reconstruction, but not in the correct position or number. In addition, some of the old stones were moved, giving the appearance that the stone circle has today.

See also

Other prehistoric stone circles locally include:

• Boscawen-Un
• Boskednan, also known as the Nine Maidens of Boskednan
• Tregeseal East, known as the Tregeseal Dancing Stones

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about The Merry Maidens)

• Location map: 50°3’54"N, 5°35’23"W
• Streetmap: SW432245)
• The Merry Maidens stone circle site page on The Megalithic Portal
• The Merry Maidens stone circle – The Modern Antiquarian

References

• Burl, Aubrey (2000). The stone circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany. Yale University Press. Chapter 9. ISBN 0-300-08347-5. 
• Cope, Julian (1998). The Modern Antiquarian: A Pre-Millennial Odyssey Through Megalithic Britain. HarperCollins. p. 164. ISBN 0-7225-3599-6.