Wendish allies among the Norse settlers. (4) The existence of fair people at the present time among those descended from old Cornish families.
The ancient circles of stone in Cornwall have no counterpart in the purely Celtic districts of Wales, but very much resemble those in Scandinavia and the parts of Britain occupied by the Northern race. The remains of numerous small camps or earthworks for defensive purposes along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, close to those rivers which might afford protection to the ships of an invader,[1] point to enemies by sea, as do similar earth-works on the coasts further eastward. The most remarkable of these in Devon is Grimspound, in the parish of Manaton, which is a curious amphitheatre having within it no fewer than twenty circles, none of them more than 5½ yards in diameter. At the present time two of these circles have stones set up as pillars on their circumferences—thirty-five in one and twenty-seven in the other.[2] All the circles appear to have originally had similar erect stones. The area of the whole enclosure is only 4 acres. This remarkable monument may mark the site of a Scandinavian battlefield. A battle is commemorated by a number of similar stone circles on Bravella Heath in Östergothland in Sweden.[3] At Mortura in Ireland, also, two battles in which Northmen, called in the Irish records Tuatha de Dananns, are said to have been engaged, are similarly commemorated by stones arranged in circles spread over a large area.[4]
There is evidence of early Scandinavians in Devon and Cornwall in the stones which have been discovered marked with ogham characters.[5] There is further evidence of these settlements in Cornwall in inscriptions in the Northern language which have been found. The discovery of a block known as a pig of tin, now in the
