becomes _pedn_, and _gwyn_, _gwydn_, etc., and that the
Saxons mistook Cornish _medn_ for their own _maiden_. But even without
this, legends of a similar character would spring up wherever the popular
mind is startled by strange monuments, the history and purpose of which
has been forgotten. Thus Captain Meadows Taylor tells us that at
Vibat-Hullie the people told him "that the stones were men who, as they
stood marking out the places for the elephants of the king of the dwarfs,
were turned into stone by him, because they would not keep quiet." And M.
de Cambry, as quoted by him, says in regard to Carnac, "that the rocks
were believed to be an army turned into stone, or the work of the
Croins,--men or demons, two or three feet high, who carried these rocks in
their hands, and placed them there."

A second class of Cornish antiquities comprises private buildings, whether
castles or huts or caves. What are called castles in Cornwall are simple
intrenchments, consisting of large and small stones piled up about ten or
twelve feet high, and held together by their own weight, without any
cement. There are everywhere traces of a ditch, then of a wall; sometimes,
as at Chun Castle, of another ditch and another wall; and there is
generally some contrivance for protecting the principal entrance by walls
overlapping the ditches. Near these castles barrows are found, and in
several cases there are clear traces of a communication between them and
some ancient Celtic villages and caves, which seem to have been placed
under the protection of these primitive strongholds. Many of the cliffs in
Cornwall are fortified towards the land by walls and ditches, thus cutting
off these extreme promontories from communication with the land, as they
are by nature inaccessible from the sea. Some antiquarians ascribed these
castles to the Danes, the very last people, one would think, to shut
themselves up in such hopeless retreats. Here, too, as in other cases, a
popular etymology may have taken the place of an historical authority, and
the Cornish word for castle being _Dinas_ as in _Castle-an-Dinas_,
_Pendennis_, etc., the later Saxon-speaking population may have been
reminded by _Dinas_ of the Danes, and on the strength of this vague
similarity have ascribed to these pirates the erection of the Cornish
castles.

It is indeed difficult, with regard to these castles, to be positive as to
the people by whom they were constructed. Tradition and histo