Modern traditions have everywhere clustered round these curious stone circles. Being placed in a circular order, so as to make an area for dancing, they were naturally called _Dawns-mên_, _i.e._ dancing stones. This name was soon corrupted into dancemen, and a legend sprang up at once to account for the name, namely, that these men had danced on a Sunday and been changed into stones. Another corruption of the same name into _Danis-mên_ led to the tradition that these circles were built by the Danes. A still more curious name for these circles is that of “_Nine Maidens_,” which occurs at Boscawen-ûn, and in several other places in Cornwall. Now the Boscawen-ûn circle consists of nineteen stones, and there are very few “Nine Maidens” that consist of nine stones only. Yet the name prevails, and is likewise supported by local legends of nine maidens having been changed into stones for dancing on a Sunday, or some other misdeed. One part of the legend may perhaps be explained by the fact that _mêdn_ would be a common corruption in modern Cornish for _mên_, stone, as _pen_ becomes _pedn_, and _gwyn_, _gwydn_, etc., and that the Saxons mistook Cornish _mêdn_ for their own _maiden_. But even without this, legends of a similar character would spring up wherever the popular mind is startled by strange monuments, the history and purpose of which has been forgotten. Thus Captain Meadows Taylor tells us that at Vibat-Hullie the people told him “that the stones were men who, as they stood marking out the places for the elephants of the king of the dwarfs, were turned into stone by him, because they would not keep quiet.” And M. de Cambry, as quoted by him, says in regard to Carnac, “that the rocks were believed to be an army turned into stone, or the work of the Croins,—men or demons, two or three feet high, who carried these rocks in their hands, and placed them there.”