Pierre Tournante (Bosgouet)
The Pierre Tournante ( German "the rotating stone" ; also called Demoiselle de Malemain) is probably a dolmen in the forest of La Londe-Rouvray near the old road from Lisieux to Rouen , south of the hamlet of Bosgouet in the north of the Eure department in the Normandy in France .
The rotating stone is a legends-laden stone that, according to some historians, could be a dolmen. A block of pudding stone about 2.0 × 2.0 m and 0.65 m thick can be seen. It lies in the middle of a slight depression on a low hill in a part of the forest in which numerous ditches can be seen.
Auguste Le Prévost (1787–1859) is the first to describe the monument in his 1832 “Notice historique et archéologique sur le département de l'Eure”. Louis-Léon Gadged describes it in 1840 in his topographical, statistical and historical dictionary of the Eure department. The writer Amélie Bosquet (1815–1904) takes up the description of the stone by Le Prévost in her book “La Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse; traditions, legends et superstitions populaires de cette province ”. Félix Leclerc Viscount von Pulligny (1821-1893) mentions the stone and the legends in 1879. It is also listed by Léon Coutil (1856–1943), President of the French Prehistoric Society, in his inventory of menhirs and dolmens in France.
Legends
Legends enriched by authors have grown up around this monument. Its supposed ability to make a full turn on itself on Christmas night is the origin of the name. Other Norman megaliths , such as the Pierre Tournante by Livarot or the Pierre Tournante by Fresney-le-Puceux, the Dolmen La Pierre Tournante (Tavers) and the Dolmen La Pierre Tournante by Nogent also have this surprising feature. Another story claims that it marks the site of an ancient battle that killed 100,000 people. There is also talk of a gamekeeper who got rich from treasure found in the neighborhood of the. A rooster is said to sing on this rock during midnight mass every year. The abundance of fantastic stories attracted the interest of historians in the 19th century.
literature
- Vincent Carpentier, Emmanuel Ghesquiére, Cyril Marcigny: Archéologie en Normandie (= Collection Histoire ). Edition Quest-France, Rennes 2007, ISBN 978-2-7373-4164-9 .
- Volker Pingel : Megalithic groups and their archaeological differentiation. A review. In: Karl W. Beinhauer, Gabriel Cooney, Christian E. Guksch, Susan Kus (eds.): Studies on megalithics. (State of research and ethnoarchaeological perspectives). = The megalithic phenomenon. (International Symposium, October 1–4, 1992, Reiss Museum Mannheim) (= contributions to prehistory and early history of Central Europe. 21). Beier and Beran, Weissbach 1999, ISBN 3-930036-36-3 , pp. 37-50.
Web links
- Entry no. In the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 57.8 " N , 0 ° 50 ′ 58.4" E