A HISTORY OF CORNWALL NINE MAIDENS, ST. COLUMB MAJOR It seems as though the Tamar were an insurmountable barrier to certain habits and ceremonies of the primitive inhabitants, for ' stone rows,' so plentiful on Dartmoor, are almost absent from Cornwall. As they are often associated with stone circles and barrows and apparently played an important part in ceremonial observances, their absence suggests a difference in cult across the border. Reasons have been given for the suggestion that the boundary line at Nine Stones, Altarnun, may have been a stone row originally, and another and less doubtful Cornish example may well be included in an article on stone circles. In the parish of St. Columb Major, nearly 4 miles on the road to Wadebridge, is a line of stones known as the Nine Maidens. There are, as the name implies, nine stones, eight erect and standing in line in the plane of their US.. Sw faces and one fallen ; the line is north-east (N. 35E.) and south-west ; all the stones are of quartz. The north-eastern stone (i) is prostrate and broken, it measures 1 5 feet in length ; the tallest of those still standing (7) is 6 feet 7 inches high ; another (4) is broken off ; No. 3 leans out- wards and is almost down. The accompanying sketch will give an idea of the appearance of the stones. These nine monoliths cover a distance of about 345 feet, with rather irregular intervals, and in line with them, 800 yards up the hill, there once stood a menhir of quartz, 7 ft. 6 in. high, known as the ' Old Man ' or ' Grey Man.' This menhir was some years ago thrown down by two men charged with the repair of the road, and it was broken up for road metal, but its shape and size can be seen from Lukis and Borlase's drawing. The earliest historical reference is by Richard Carew, who thus describes the stones : Wade bridge deliuereth you into a waste ground, where 9 long and great stones, called The sisters, stand in a ranke together, and seeme to have been so pitched, for continuing the memory of somewhat, whose notice is yet enuied vs by time. 1 1 Survey of Cornwall (1605), p. 144. 402
