[25] See “Thomas of the Thumb, or Tómas na h’ordaig,” Tale lxix. “Popular Tales of the West Highlands,” by J. F. Campbell.
[26] “Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales,” by James O. Halliwell.
[27] Camden’s “Britannica,” by Gough, vol. i., p. 139. From this author we do not learn much. Indeed he says—“As to that Constantine, whom Gildas calls ‘that tyrannical whelp of the impure Danmonian lioness,’ and of the disforesting of the whole country under King John, before whose time it was all forest, let historians tell—it is not to my purpose.” vol. i. p. 8.
[28] Milton’s “History of Britain,” edit. 1678, p. 155.
[29] Vellan (mill), druchar (wheel.)
[30] Carew says, “a promontory, (by Pomp. Mela, called Bolerium; by Diodorus, Velerium; by Volaterane, Helenium; by the Cornish, Pedn an laaz; and by the English, the Land’s-End.)”—Survey of Cornwall.
[31] Penꞃiðꞅꞇeoꞃꞇ.—The name of the Land’s-End in the Saxon map; in the text, Camden prints Penꞃihꞇꞅꞇeoꞃꞇ.
[32] “Castell-an-Dinas.—In the parish of St Colomb Major stands a castle of this name. Near this castle, by the highway, stands the Coyt, a stony tumulus so called, of which sort there are many in Wales and Wiltshire, as is mentioned in the ‘Additions to Camden’s Britannia’ in these places, commonly called the Devil’s Coyts. It consists of four long stones of great bigness, perpendicularly pitched in the earth contiguous with each other, leaving only a small vacancy downwards, but meeting together at the top; over all which is laid a flat stone of prodigious bulk and magnitude, bending towards the east in way of adoration, (as Mr Lhuyd concludes of all those Coyts elsewhere,) as the person therein under it interred did when in the land of the living; but how or by what art this prodigious flat stone should be placed on the top of the others, amazeth the wisest mathematicians, engineers, or architects to tell or conjecture. Colt, in Belgic-British, is a cave, vault, or cott-house, of which coyt might possibly be a corruption.”—Gilbert’s Parochial History.
[33] In the Manor of Lambourn is an ancient barrow, called Creeg Mear, the Great Barrow, which was cut open by a labourer in search of stones to build a hedge. He came upon a small hollow, in which he found nine urns filled with ashes; the man broke them, supposing they were only old pitchers, good for nothing; but Tonkin, who saw them, believes them to have been Danish, containing the ashes of some chief commanders slain in battle; and, says he, on a small hill just under this barrow is a Danish encampment, called Castle Caer Dane, vulgo Castle Caer Don,—i.e., the Danes’ Camp,—consisting of three entrenchments finished, and another begun, with an intent to surround the inner three, but not completed; and opposite to this, about a bowshot, the river only running between, on another hill is another camp or castle, called Castle Kaerkief, castrum simile, from Kyfel similis, alike alluding to Castle Caer Dane. But this is but just begun, and not finished in any part, from which I guess there were two different parties, the one attacking the other before the entrenchments were finished.
[34] C. S. Gilbert’s Historical Survey.