Hath by his Vertues Eternized the same,
Much more than Children could, or Bookes, for Loue
Recordes it Here in Heartes, in Life Aboue."
Half a mile from Trewoofe, crossing the Lamorna Brook and proceeding along the Trereen road, is the very small hamlet of Boleit, the "place of slaughter"; traditionally the place where Athelstan finally overthrew the Cornish, A.D. 936, in a great battle. Certainly the mounds and the standing-stones here and in the immediate vicinity make it quite evident that some great event has happened here. The nearest rude stone pillar bears the name "Goon Rith," which means the "Red Downs," and is really the name belonging to the surrounding hill-sides. A "fogou," or underground passage, a hiding-hole for prehistoric people, exists near at hand, in a very wilderness of undergrowth and brambles, and still justifies the forgotten builders of it by being extremely difficult to find. It is about thirty-five feet long, with another passage leading at right angles out of it. This retreat is formed of granite slabs inclining inward, and roofed by other slabs, covered with turf.
Two tall granite pillars stand to the right of the road at Boleit. They are known as "the Pipers," and are connected in legend with the prehistoric stone circle three hundred feet distant at Rosemoddress, known as the "Merry Maidens," or formerly the "Dawnz Maen," the "dancing stones." Another circle of "Merry Maidens" stands at Boscawen-Ûn, two miles distant, on the other side of St. Buryan. The legend attached to them says they were a party of girls turned to stone as a punishment for dancing on Sunday, together with the two pipers who played to them.
I well remember, a good many years ago, seeking this circle of nineteen stones, at the conclusion of a day spent at Land's End, and on the return to Penzance. I floundered into a boggy bottom at eventide, on the way to it, and emerged from the sloughs only by the directions of a farmer who happened to be working in his fields not far away. It was an eerie place to stumble into at the sunset hour, and it was a still more eerie experience amid these stones to meet a woman who might have been, from appearance and manner, one of the weird sisters in Macbeth. She mumbled incomprehensible things, and stared wildly, and seemed in every way a fitting inhabitant of that place at that hour. I found afterwards she was really a harmless madwoman of that neighbourhood, who wandered aimlessly about.
"Skeers some folk, she does," said a neighbouring farmer, "starring at 'n like a conger, and sayin' things nobody can't make out nohow."
The coast-path leads past Boscawen Point and then trends slightly inland, and descends to the charming little St. Loy's Cove, through some woods. In another mile the track opens out a view of the wooded valley ending in Penberth Cove, furnished with its stream as usual, and with two or three primitive cottages of picturesque build, occupied by fishermen. The shore at Penberth is paved with great blocks of granite; not naturally paved, but laid there at some period by human hands, with considerable pains, and for no apparent advantage.
COTTAGES AT PENBERTH COVE.