We next went to see the “Merry Maidens” and the “Pipers.”  They were only pillars of stone, but our friend assured us they were lively enough once upon a time, and represented seven young but thoughtless ladies who lived in that neighbourhood.  They were on their way to Buryan church one Sabbath day when they saw two pipers playing music in a field, who as they went near them began to play dance tunes.  The maidens forgot the sacred character of the day, and, yielding to temptation, began to dance.  By and by the music became extremely wild and the dancing proportionately furious.  The day was beautifully fine and the sun shone through a clear blue sky, but the pipers were two evil spirits, and suddenly a flash of lightning came from the cloudless sky and turned them all, tempters and tempted, into stone, so there they stand, the girls in a circle and the pipers a little distance away, until the Day of Judgment.

By this time we were all getting hungry, as the clear air of Cornwall is conducive to good appetites; but our friend had thoughtfully arranged for this already, and we found when we entered the inn at Buryan that our conveyance had arrived there, and that the driver had already regaled himself, and told the mistress that she might expect three other visitors.

The old church of St. Buryan was said to be named after Buriena, the beautiful daughter of a Munster chieftain, supposed to be the Bruinsech of the Donegal martyrology, who came to Cornwall in the days of St. Piran.  There were two ancient crosses at Buryan, one in the village and the other in the churchyard, while in the church was the thirteenth-century, coffin-shaped tomb of “Clarice La Femme Cheffroi De Bolleit,” bearing an offer of ten days’ pardon to whoever should pray for her soul.  But just then we were more interested in worldly matters; and when, after we had refreshed ourselves in a fairly substantial way, our friend told us he would take us to see a “Giant’s Castle,” we went on our way rejoicing, to regain the sea-coast where the castle was to be seen, but not before the driver had made another frantic effort to induce us to ride in his trap.

[Illustration:  THE “KEIGWIN ARMS,” MOUSEHOLE.  “They (the Spaniards) also burnt Mousehole, with the exception of one public house, a house still standing, with walls four feet thick and known as the ‘Keigwin Arms.’”]

The castle of Treryn, which our friend pronounced Treen, was situated on a small headland jutting out into the sea, but only the triple vallum and fosse of the castle remained.  The walls had been built of huge boulders, and had once formed the cyclopian castle of Treryn.  Cyclops, our friend explained, was one of a number of giants who had each only one eye, and that in the centre of the forehead.  Their business was to forge the iron for Vulcan, the god of fire.  They could see to work in mines or dark places, for their one eye was as big as a moon.  Sometimes they were workers in stone, who erected