Merry Maidens
The Merry Maidens ( German the funny virgins ) - also known as the Rosemodress Circle, Boleigh Circle or Danse Maen - are a 4000 to 3000 year old stone circle from the Early to Middle Bronze Age . The stone is set in the county of Cornwall in England . The stone circle is also known as Dance Maine or Dawn's Men (people at dawn), a corruption of the Cornish Danse Maen (dance of stones).
location
The Merry Maidens are located south of Penzance between St Buryan and Lamorna . Passage Tomb Tregiffian is 100 m to the southwest . There are other megalithic sites in the area :
- Pipers of Boleigh
- Boskednan stone circle
- Boscawen-ûn
- Chûn Quoit
- Lanyon Quoit
- Mên-an-Tol
- Mulfra Quoit
- Tregeseal stone circle
- Tregiffian
- Zennor Quoit
construction
The Merry Maidens consist of 19 megaliths that form an almost exact circle with a diameter of about 24.0 m. The stones are about 1.2 m high and are three to four meters apart. On the east side, i.e. looking west, there is a larger gap between the stones. Another stone protrudes from the ground in an exactly south-facing direction, giving the facility a north-south orientation. There used to be another stone circle 200 m away, but it was destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century. 300 m to the northeast are the Pipers , two menhirs about 3.0 m high .
Origin of name
The name of the stone setting as Merry Maidens (funny virgins) is based on the following legend: 19 girls were turned into stones because they had fun dancing here on the holy Sunday. The associated pipers (bagpipers) were also petrified and form the two more distant megaliths. The legend originated in the course of the Christianization of Cornwall in the 6th or 7th century.
Research history
The Merry Maidens were first archaeologically examined in 1769 by William Borlase (1695–1772), who also reported a second stone circle of the same size. In 1804 W. & G. Cooke made an etching, whereby the stone setting is referred to as Dance-Maine . In 1861 John Thomas Blight (1835–1911) mentioned the stone circle in his work A Week at the Land's End and referred to it as Dawns Myin . In 1872, William Copeland Borlase (1848–1899), a great-grandson of the elder Borlase, provided a more detailed description of the entire district and made the overview shown here. At that time there were still seven stones from the second stone circle before it disappeared at the end of the 19th century. In 1932 Hugh O'Neill Hencken (1902–1981) wrote the first modern scientific presentation of the archaeological site.
In 1982 John Barnatt published an extensive paper containing the latest research. Accordingly, today it is assumed that there were originally 18 menhirs. In the middle of the 19th century, when trying to reconstruct the stone circle, new stones were added, but not in the correct position and number. In addition, the location of old stones was changed so that the setting of the stones to be found today resulted.
literature
- John Barnatt: Prehistoric Cornwall: The Ceremonial Monuments . Turnstone Press Limited 1982, ISBN 0855001291 .
- Robin Payne: The Romance of the Stones . Alexander Associates 1999, ISBN 1899526218 .
- Ian McNeil Cooke: Standing Stones of the Land's End . Cornwall: Men-an-Tol Studio 1998, ISBN 0951237195 .
- Aubrey Burl: The stone circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany . Yale University Press 2000, ISBN 0300083475 .
Individual evidence
- ^ William Borlase: Antiquities Historical and Monumental of the County of Cornwall. Bowyer and Nichols, London 1769.
- ^ William Copeland Borlase: Naenia Cornubiae. Longmans 1872
- ^ Hugh O'Neill Hencken: The Archeology of Cornwall and Scilly. Metheun 1932.
- ^ John Barnatt: Prehistoric Cornwall: The Ceremonial Monuments. Turnstone Press Limited 1982.
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 55 ″ N , 5 ° 35 ′ 20 ″ W.