The Merry Maidens and Pipers is a late neolithic (2500-1500 BC) stone circle located in Southern Cornwall near St. Buryan. It consists of 19 4-5ft tall stones placed in an ellipse.
Unfortunately, because of a hedge, the Pipers can barely be seen from the circle.
Local legend says that the Maidens suggests that nineteen maidens were turned into stone as punishment for dancing on the Sabbath. The Pipers, are said to be the petrified remains of the musicians who played for the dancers.
It is thought that stone circles (of which there are more than 1000 all over Britain and Ireland) were places for ceremony and ritual. There are local variations in the style and construction of stone circles in different places, as though each local tribe or group of people adapted the basic formula for their own use. In West Penwith there are 5 stone circles including this one [Boscaswen-ûn & Tregeseal are also available as downloadable leaflets] and all have or had nineteen stones. This may relate to the 18.64 year cycle of the moon, or the 19 year metonic cycle of the moon and the sun. For ancient peoples, observation of the passage of the sun and moon, and celebration of the Earth Mother may have been linked together in ceremony and ritual at places such as this site.
Didn't know this!
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