Of Darimoor and its Bordsrland, 115 very frequently. It is also related that the edifice owes its existence to the fulfilment of a vow made by a merchant, who in a dreadful storm at sea, promised St. Michael that if his vessel should reach port in safety he would erect a church, and dedicate it to him, on the first point of land he sighted, and this chanced to be Brent Tor. It would seem that a cross formerly stood near this hill, for the Rev. £. A. Bray speaks of a stone, which he considered to be the base of one, that lay by the roadside at Brent Tor, when he wrote, in 1802. At an earlier date than that a Michaelmas fair was wont to be held there, he states, and on this stone it was usual during its continuance to erect a pole with a glove, an old custom to which we have already alluded.* In Mr. Bray's time the fair had been removed to Tavistock. The stone has now disappeared, and I can learn nothing whatever of it. We leave Black Down close to the Lydford railway station, whence a lane will lead us to the village, before reach- ing which, we pass the celebrated Lydford Gorge, spanned by a single arch, and considered to be one of the curiosities of the county. It is about seventy feet in depth, and very narrow, the sides being of solid rock, and through this dark channel rushes the river Lyd, as it leaves the wild moor country for the wooded valleys of the lowlands. Lydford, though now but a small village, was in ancient times a borough of importance, and derives a peculiar interest from its long connection with Dartmoor. In its castle, the ruined keep of which is still standing, all such as offended against the forest laws, and the laws of the Stannaries enacted at the Tinners' Parliament held in the centre of the moor, were imprisoned, and judging from the accounts we possess, were very rigorously treated. There is a stone five feet high, now being used as a gate- post, quite close to the entrance to the churchyard, and this has sometimes been regarded as the shaft of a cross. I am, however, unable to agree with this opinion. The stone shows no sign of having been worked except on one of its faces, and I should be inclined to consider that it had originally formed a sill in some building. Close to it is an old stone bearing
- p. 10, ante.
