Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/56

CHAPTER III.

CORNISH CROSSES

Abundance of crosses—The menhir—Crosses marked the limits of a Llan—Crosses marked places for public prayer—Instance of a Cornish Dissenter—Churches anciently few and far between—The cross erected where was no church—Which therefore precedes the village church—Crosses as waymarks—The Abbot's Way—Interlaced work—The plat a subject for study.

THERE is no county in England where crosses abound as they do in Cornwall. Second to it comes Devonshire. Indeed, on Dartmoor and in the west of the latter county they are as numerous as in Cornwall.

Their origin is various.

In the first place, where the pagans worshipped a menhir or standing stone, there it was Christianised by being turned into a cross. In the second place, crosses marked the bounds of a minihi or llan, the sanctuary of the saint.

Then, again, the Celtic churches were very small, mere oratories, that could not possibly contain a moderate congregation. The saints took their station at a cross, and preached thence. With the Saxons there was a rooted dread of entering an enclosed place for anything like worship, fearing, as they did, the exercise of magical rites; and they