Page:A Book of Dartmoor.djvu/100

 Dartmoor! Some certainly are waymarks, others as surely indicate graves. Would that we knew the tales connected with them! Then go into any churchyard and observe the tombstones. We are children of the men who set up menhirs, and we do the same thing to this day, though the stones we erect are mean and small compared with the great standing monoliths they set up to their dead. In many of the churches around the moor are monuments that derive from the cromlech and kistvaens as certainly as does the modern tombstone from the menhir. The graveyard of Sourton was rich in these great slabs standing on four supporters. A late rector who "restored" Sourton church, and supposed he did God service by so doing, threw all these down and employed the slabs as pavement to the church paths; he placed the supporters outside in the village for anyone to carry off as he listed. The finest menhirs on Dartmoor are—one at Drizzlecombe, the Langstone near Caistor Rock, the Whitmoor Stone, the Bairdown Man, the Langstone at Merrivale, and that on Langstone Moor, Peter Tavy. There must have been numbers more, for their former presence is testified to by many place names. They have been carried off, and it is matter of wonder that any remain. 6. Hut circles. The cairn and kistvaen were the places of burial of the dead, but the hut circles were the habitations of the living. So many of them have been dug out during the last six years, that we may safely draw conclusions as to the period to