Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/89

 Legends of Parishes, etc. 77 Unless some earthquake splits it further the world will last thousands of years longer. On an almost inaccessible granite peak seaward of the pile of rocks known as Castle Treryn (pronounced Treen), once the haunt and meeting-place of witches, on the summit of which is perched the far-famed Cornish logan-rock, is a sharp peak with a hole in it, large enough to insert a hand. At the bottom lay an egg-shaped stone, traditionally called the key of the castle, which, although easily shifted, had for ages defied all attempts at removal. It was said that should any one ever succeed in getting it out, Castle Treryn — in fact the whole cairn — would immediately disappear. It was unfortunately knocked out by the men who replaced the logan-rock, thrown down by Lieutenant Goldsmith. Its position was often altered by heavy seas, and from it the old folk formerly foretold the weather. In Buryan parish, named after an Irish saint, a king's daughter, who came into Cornwall with some of her companions in the fifth century, is the famous circle of Dawns Myin, or the Merry Maidens, originally consisting of nineteen upright stones. They are nineteen maidens, who for their sin of dancing on a Sunday were all turned into stone. Two menhirs in a neighbouring field are the pipers, who at the same time suffered the same fate. Of these and other stone circles an old writer says, " No man when counting them can bring the stones twice the same number." Not far from Burj^an, between Sennen and Penzance, is a very solitary weird s_pot — a disused Quakers' burial-ground. In its lonely neighbourhood is sometimes seen by a privileged few, " high by day," the spirit of a huntsman, followed by .his dogs. He is dressed in the hunting costume of bygone ages ; he suddenly appears (for neither his horse's hoofs nor his dogs' feet make any sound), jumps over an adjacent hedge, and is as suddenly lost to view. I do not know if tradition has ever connected this huntsman with Wild Harris of Kenegie,* who was killed when hunting by a fall from his horse — it was frightened by a white hare, the spirit of a deserted maiden, which crossed its path. His ghost, in his hunting-dress, appeared
 * A gentleman's seat in the parish of Gulval, near Penzance,