on a barrow in a field near the high road, on the tenement called
Trethevye. A friend who was with me took a rough measurement of the
upper or covering stone, and calculated it to be about five tons
weight. The stones which form this Cromlech are supposed to have been
brought some miles from where they stand, as there are none of the
same kind near it. That this is a work of art there cannot be a doubt.
One can hardly, however, suppose it possible that such immense stones
could have been brought from a distance, and erected in the manner
they are. What machinery was used baffles all conjecture. The upper or
covering stone has a hole in it; for what purpose I have no idea,
unless to support a flag-pole. One of the party remarked it might have
been made for a chain to drag it by; but I rather thought it too near
the edge for that purpose. Mr. Britton, in his “Beauties of England
and Wales,” has given a vignette of this Cromlech, which is well
executed, and like the original. Speaking of this Cromlech, Mr. B.
says, he believes it has not been described by any writer,[30] though
it is more curious and of greater magnitude than that of Mona, or any
other he was acquainted with. He says “it standeth about one mile and
a half east of St. Cleer, on an eminence commanding an extensive tract
of country, particularly to the east, south, and south-west; and is
provincially denominated Trevethey Stone. On the north the high ground
of the Moors exalts its swelling outline above it. It is all of
granite, and consists of six upright stones, and one large slab
covering them in an inclined position. This impost measures sixteen
feet in Length and ten broad, and is at a medium about fourteen inches
thick. It rests on five of the uprights only; and at its other end is
perforated by a small circular hole. No tradition exists as to the
time of its erection; but its name at once designates it being a work
of the Britons, and sepulchral; the term Trevedi (Trevethi)
signifying, in the British language, the place of the Graves.”
King Doniert is said to have been the father of St. Ursula, rendered
famous by her unfortunate expedition from Cornwall to the coast of
Flanders, but still more famous by the beautiful picture of her
embarkation, painted by Claude de Lorraine, where the Saint,
accompanied by her eleven thousand virgins, are descending to their
ships in a port, decorated with buildings the most superb, and
surrounded by a distant landscape, imagined and arranged in the
highest style of that celebrated master.
Those ladies, although an exaggeration from eleven to eleven thousand
is suspected by some writers, were to have married a Roman emperor and
his principal officers; but being attacked on their landing by Pagan
Saxons, they defended themselves with a courage worthy of Cornwall,
until all were slain with arms in their hands. Yet one hardly sees why
these heroic females were honoured among the saints. Their deaths as
martyrs are referred to the 20th of October 383, and their tomb is
still shown at Cologne, where a monastery has been built to their
memory.