Celtic Lore & Legend

by Bob Curran

  The celebrated circle of nineteen stones—which is seen on the road to Lands End—known as the “Boscawen-un circle” is another example. “The Nine Maids” or “The Virgin Sisters” in Stitithens and other “Nine Maids” or as called in Cornish Naw-Whoors in Colomb-Major parish should also be seen in the hope of impressing the moral lesson they convey yet more strongly on the mind.

  The three circles which are seen on the moors, not far from Cheesewring, in the parish of St. Cleer, are also notable examples of the punishment of Sabbath-breaking. These are called the “Hurlers” and they preserve the position in which the several parties stood around in the full excitement of the game of hurling, when, for the crime of profaning the Sabbath, they were changed to stone.

  The Nine Maids or Virgin Sisters

  Nine “Moor Stones” are set up near the road in the parish of Gwendron or Wendron, to which the above name is given. The perpendicular blocks have obviously been placed with much labour in their present position. Tradition says they indicate the graves of nine sisters. Hals appears to think some nuns are buried there. From one person only I heard the old story of the stones having been matamorphosed maidens. Other groups of stone might be named, as Rosemedery, Tregaseal, Boskednan, Botalleck, Tredinek, and Crowlas, in the west, to which the same story extends, and many others in the eastern parts of the country; but it cannot be necessary.

  The Twelve o’ Clock Stone

  Numbers of people would formerly visit a remarkable Logan stone, near Nancledrea, which had been, by supernatural power, impressed with some peculiar sense at midnight. Although it was quite impossible to move this stone during daylight, or induced by human power at any other time, it would rock like a cradle exactly at midnight. Many a child has been cured of rickets by being placed naked at this hour on the twelve o’ clock stone. If, however, the child was “misbegotten”, or if it was the offspring of dissolute parents, the stone would not move and consequently no cure could be effected. On the Cuckoo Hill, eastward of Nancledrea, there stood, but a few years since, two piles of rock about eight feet apart, and these were united by a large flat-stone carefully placed upon them—thus forming a doorway which was, my informant told me, “large and high enough to drive a horse and cart through”. It was formerly the custom to march in procession through this “doorway” in going to the twelve-o’-clock stone.

  The stone-mason has, however, been busy hereabout; and every mass of granite, whether rendered notorious by the Giants or holy by the Druids, if found to be of the size required, has been removed.

  Table-Men

  The Saxon Kings’ Visit to the Land’s End

  At a short distance from Sennan church, and near the end of a cottage is a block of granite nearly eight feet long and about three feet high. This rock is known as the Table-men or the Table-main which appears to signify the stone table. At Bosavern in St. Just, is a somewhat similar stone; and the same story attaches to each.

  It is to the effect that some Saxon kings used the stone as a dining table. The number has been variously stated; some traditions fixing on three kings; others on seven. Hals is far more explicit; for, as he says, on the authority of the chronicle of Samuel Daniell, they were:

  Ethelbert, 5th king of Kent

  Cissa 2nd king of the South Saxons

  Kingilis 6th king of the West Saxons

  Sebert 3rd king of the East Saxons

  Ethelfred 7th king of Northumberers

  Penda 5th king of the Mercians

  Sigebert 5th king of the East Angles—who all flourished about the year 600.

  At a point where the four parishes of Zennor, Morvah, Gulval and Madron meet, is a flat stone with a cross cut in it. The Saxon kings were also said to have dined on this.

  The only tradition which is known among the peasantry of Sennan is that Prince Arthur and the kings who aided him against the Danes, in the great battle fought near Vellan-Drucher, dined on the Table-men, after which they defeated the Danes.

  The Armed Knight

  At low water is to be seen, off the Land’s End towards the Scilly Island (probably so called from the abundance of eel or conger fishes caught there, which are called sillys or lillis) for a mile or more, a dangerous strag of ragged rocks, amongst which the Atlantic Sea and the waves of St. George’s and the British Channel meeting, make a dreadful bellowing and rumbling noise at half-ebb and half-flood, which let seamen take notice of and avoid them.

  Of old there was one of these rocks more notable than the rest, which tradition saith was ninety feet above the flux and reflux of the sea, with an iron spire at the top thereof which was over-turned or thrown down in a violent storm, 1647, and the rock was broken in three pieces. This iron spire, as the additions to Camden’s Britannia inform us was thought to have been erected by the Romans, or set up as a trophy there by King Athelstan, when he first conquered the Scilley Islands (which was in those parts); but it is not very probable such a piece of iron, in this salt sea and air, without being consumed by rust, would endure so long a time. However, it is or was, certain I am it was commonly called in Cornish An Marogeth Arvowed i.e. the Armed Knight; for what reason I know not, except erected by or in memory of some armed knight; as also Carne-an-peal i.e. the spike, spire or javelin rock. Again, remember silly, lilly is in Cornish and Arrmoric language a conger fish or fishes from whence Scilley Islands is probably denominated. Mr. Blight says this rock is also called Guela or Guelas—the “rock easily seen”.

  The Devil’s Doorway

  In the slate formations behind Polperro is a good example of a fauit. The geologist, in the pride of his knowledge, refers to some movement of the solid mass—a rending of the rocks, produced either by the action of some subterranean force lifting the earth-crust, or by a depression of one division of the rocks. The grey-bearded wisdom of our grandfathers led them to a conclusion widely different from this.

  The mighty ruler of the realms of darkness who is known to have a special fondness for rides at midnight, “to see how his little ones thrive”, ascending from his subterranean country, chose this spot as his point of egress.

  As he rose from below in his fiery car, drawn by gigantic jet-black steed, the rocks gave way before him and the rent at Polporro remains this day to convince all unbelievers. Not only this, as his Satanic majesty burst through the slate rocks his horse, delighted with the airs of this upper world, reared in wild triumph, and planting again his hoof upon the ground, made these islands shake as with an earthquake; and he left the deep impression of his burning foot behind. There, any unbeliever may see the hoof-shaped pool, unmistakable evidence of the days gone by.

  King Arthur’s Stone

  In the western part of Cornwall, all the marks of any peculiar kind found on rocks are referred either to the giants or the devil. In the eastern part of the county such markings are almost always attributed to King Arthur. Not far from the Devil’s Coit in St. Columb, on the edge of Gossmoor, there is a large stone, upon which are deeply impressed marks, which a little fancy may convert into the marks of four horse-shoes. This is “King Arthur’s Stone”, and these marks were made by the horse upon which the British king rode when he resided as Castle Denis, and hunted on these moors. King Arthur’s beds, and chairs, and caves are frequently to be met with. The Giant’s Coits are probably remnants of the earliest types of rock mythology Those of Arthur belong to the period when the Britons were so advanced in civilisation as to war under experienced rulers; and those which are appropriated by the devil are evidently instances of priestcraft on the minds of an impressible people.

  The Battle Against Gigmagog

  Giants exercised a fascination for the Celtic mind. The lands of the West in which the Celtic peoples had settled had been formed by volcanoes and ice, and great reminders of this turbulent past were to be seen everywhere. Odd rock formations formed by volcanic activity together with huge boulders carried and deposited by glaciers dotted the landscape, and on these the early Celts gazed with awe. Who had created these
? Who had hurled such massive megaliths to the places where they lay? For the Celts there was only one answer. This was the work of giants—monstrous, warlike creatures that had ruled these lands in some previous time. So fundamental was this belief that gradually, legends concerning these beings and their constructions began to appear in both Celtic myth and folktale. The Celts gazed in wonder at geological phenomena such as the Giants Causeway in County Antrim in the north of Ireland, and created wonderful stories of how it had been built by the Irish giant Fion McCumhaill (Finn McCool) as a highway to the West of Scotland that he could cross in order to attack his Scottish counterpart Benandoner.

  In most of the tales, the giants are both ferocious and brutish. They were believed to have hurled rocks about and scooped out great clods of earth with abandon, thus creating the standing stones, loughs, and deep hollows that littered the countryside. Apart from one or two who were crafty and artful, most of the titans were dull and stupid and were easily outwitted.

  What had become of these monstrous titans? The Celts believed that they had been defeated and exterminated by their forefathers in a series of violent battles. Gradually, stories began to emerge of wars against the giant-kind conducted by ancient kings in the days before history.

  Nowhere throughout the Celtic lands were the giants so numerous, so huge, or so fierce than in Cornwall. Celtic legends tell of the confrontation between a wily king (some say it was King Arthur, others say it was another king known as Brute or Brutus who was said to have come from Troy after the siege there) and Cormoran, king of the Cornish giants, at St. Michael’s Mount on the southern tip of England. The result of this clash was the defeat of the monster humankind emerging triumphant. With the defeat of Cormoran, the Cornish giants were said to have died out, although there are legends of some living on in later years. The following account concerns the leader of the giant brood here called Gigmagog. The account of the battle against this monster is taken from Robert Hunt’s collection “Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall” (1881), a veritable storehouse of ancient lore. This is yet another version of the traditional tale of King Brute, the Trojan exile, and Cormoran, which is here presented as fact and in the style of ancient history.

  The Battle Against Gigmagog

  Excerpt From “Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall”

  by Robert Hunt

  Who can dare question such an authority as John Milton? In his “History of Britain, that part especially which is now called England. From the first Traditional beginning continued to the Norman Conquest. Collected out of the ancientest and best authors thereof” he gives us the story of Brutus and Corineus, “who with the battele Ax which he was wont to manage against the Tyrrhen Giants is said to have done marvells. With the adventures of these heroes in Africa and in Aquitania we have little concern. They suffer severe defeats; and then Brutus, finding his powers much lessn’d and this not the place foretold him, leaves Aquitain, and with an easy course, arriving at Totness in Dev’nshire quickly perceives heer to be the pomis’d end of his labours” The following matters interest us more closely:

  “The Iland (Island), not yet Britain but Albion was in a manner, desert and inhospitable, kept only by a remnant of Giants, whose excessive Force and Tyrannie had consumed the rest. Them Brutus destroies, and to his people divides the land, which, with some reference to his own name, he thenceforth calls Britain. To Corineus, Cornwall, as we now call it, fell by lot; the rather by him lik’t for that the hugest Giants in the Rocks and Caves were said to lurk there, which kind of Monsters to deal with, was his old exercise.

  And heer, with leave bespok’n to recite a grand fable, though dignify’d by our best Poets: While Brutus, on a certain Festival day, solemnly kept on that shoar (shore) where he first landed (Totness) was with the People in great jollity and mirth, a crew of these savages breaking in upon them, began on the sudden, another sort of Game than at such a meeting was expected. But at last, by many hands overcome, Godmegog (Gigmagog), the hugest, in hight twelve cubits, is reserved alive; and with him Corineus who desired nothing more, might try his strength, whom in a Wrestle, the Giant, catching aloft, with a terrible Hugg, broke three of his Rib. Nevertheless. Corineus, enraged, heaving him up by main force, and on his shoulders bearing him to the next high rock, threw him headlong, all shattered into the sea, and left his name on the cliff, called ever since Longodmagog, which is to say, the Giant’s Leap.”

  The same story has been somewhat differently told, although there is but little variation in the main incidents. When Brutus and Corineus, with their Trojan hosts, landed at Plymouth, three chiefs wisely sent parties into the interior to explore the country and to learn something of the people. At the end of the first day, the soldiers who had been sent out as exploring parties, returned in great terror, pursued by several terrific giants. Brutus and Corineus were not, however, to be terrified by the immense size of their enemies, nor by the horrid noises which they made, hoping to strike terror into the armed hosts. These chieftain rallied their hosts, and marched to meet the giants, hurling their spears and flinging their darts against their huge bodies. The assault was so unexpected that the giants gave way; and eventually fled into the hills of Dartmoor. Gigmagog (Gogmagog), the captain of the giants, who was sadly wounded in the leg, and unable to proceed, hid himself in a bog, but there by the light of the moon, he was found by the Trojan soldiers, bound with strong cords, and carried back to the Hoe of Plymouth where the camp was. His victors treated Gigmagog nobly, and his wounds were speedily healed. Brutus desired to make terms with the giants; and it was at length proposed by Gigmagog to try a fall with the strongest in the host, and that whoever came off the conqueror should be proclaimed the king of Cornwall, and hold possession of all the western lands. Corineus at once accepted the challenge of the monster. Notwithstanding, the giant:

  “Though bent with woes;

  Full eighteen feet in height, he rose;

  His hair exposed to sun and wind,

  Like wither’d heath, his head entwined”

  and that Corineus was but little above the ordinary size of man, the Trojan chief felt sure of a victory. The day for the wrestling was fixed. The huge Gigmagog was allowed to send for the giants, and they assembled on one side of a cleared space on Plymouth Hoe, while the Trojan soldiers occupied the other. All arms were thrown aside; and fronting each other, naked to the waist, stood the most lordly of giants and the most noble of men. The conflict was long, and it appeared for some time doubtful. Brute strength was exerted on one side, and trained skill on the other. At length, Corineus succeeded in grabbing Gigmagog by the girdle, and by regularly repeated impulses, he made the monster undulate, like a tree shaken by a winter storm, until at length, gathering all his strength, the giant was forced to his back on the ground, the earth shaking with his weight, and the air echoing with the thunder of his mighty groan, as the breath was forced from his body by the terrible momentum of his fall. There lay the giant, and there were all the other giants, appalled at the power which they could not understand, but which convinced them that there was something superior to animal strength. Corineus breathed for a minute, then he rushed upon his prostrate foe, and seizing him by the legs, dragged him to the edge of the cliff and precipitated him into the sea. The giant fell on the rocks below, and his body was broken into fragments by the fall; while the

  “Fretted flood,

  Rolled frothy waves of purple blood”

  “Gigmagog’s (Gogmagog’s) Leap” has been preserved near the spot which now presents a fortress to the foes of Britain; and there are those “who say that, at the last digging on the Haw (Hoe), for the foundation of the citadel of Plymouth, the great jaws and teeth therein found were those of Gigmagog.”

  The Coming of Fionn and the War Against the Norsemen

  From roughly the sixth to the 11th centuries, the Celtic peoples of the British Isles were frequently harassed and attacked by warriors from the North. Saxons, Angles, and Ju
tes formed the first wave, attacking the southern part of England almost as soon as the Roman legions had left, but it was the second wave, whom the Celts called either Fine Gall (white foreigners) and Dubh Gall (black foreigners)—a description that probably referred to their hair coloring, who were most feared. These were the Vikings: fierce raiders and settlers who began their attacks on the Celtic coastline around the eighth century and perhaps even earlier They were sea-borne raiders (the name “Viking” comes from the West Norwegian “vikingr,” which later meant “sea warrior”), sweeping down from the countries that now form Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) and from some of the Baltic and Russian countries. Strong, ferocious, and merciless, they sacked Celtic settlements, carrying away booty and slaves and sometimes even seizing lands for themselves. As their attacks increased throughout the ninth and 10th centuries, these hardened warriors often entered the mythology of the Celtic people as fearsome giants and monsters who were thwarted and defeated by the skill and guile of the early Celtic kings.

  Two parts of the Celtic world suffered greatly from the Viking raids: Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. In Ireland, the Vikings had established great bases, such as the area that constitutes the present-day city of Dublin, from which they raided deep into surrounding kingdoms. Scotland too, experienced their hostile intentions. Viking kingdoms were established in Argyll (the place of the Eastern Gael) and in the Western Isles, and it is here that some of the ancient mythological tales about them are to be found. Tales of battles against the Norsemen by Scottish rulers sometimes find parallels in later Irish mythology and serve as a connection between the two bodies of legend—both Irish and Scottish.