The Menhir at St. Peter’s-in-the-Wood stands in a field at Les Paysans, so called from the name of the extinct family who once possessed it. It is over ten feet in height, and about three feet wide, and the people’s name for it, “Palette ès faïes”--the fairies’ battledore,--describes it exactly. Tradition says that in former days a man who was returning homewards at a very late hour of the night, or who had risen before the lark to visit his nets in Rocquaine Bay, was astonished at meeting a woman of very diminutive stature coming up the hill from the sea-shore. She was knitting, while carrying in her apron something with as much care and tenderness as if it had been a clutch of eggs, or a newly-born babe. The man’s curiosity was excited, and he determined to watch the little woman. He therefore concealed himself behind a hedge and followed her movements. At last the woman stopped, and great was the astonishment of the countryman when he saw her produce a mass of stone of at least fifteen feet in length, and stick it upright in the midst of the field, with as much ease as if she were merely sticking a pin into a pincushion. He then comprehended that the unknown female could be no other than a denizen of fairy-land, but what could be her object in erecting such a monument? The people are at a loss in finding an answer to this question. Some say the stone was placed there by the fairies to serve them as a mark when they played at ball.[60] There is another story told to account for “La Palette ès Faïes.” It is well known that Rocquaine and its environs was the abode _par excellence_ of the fairy folk, and in the valley of St. Brioc two of these fairies once lived. Whether they were father and son, or what other relationship existed between them, is not known, but among the human inhabitants of the valley they went by the names of Le Grand Colin and Le Petit Colin. They were fond of sports, and occasionally amused themselves with a game of ball on the open and tolerably level fields of Les Paysans. On one occasion they had placed their boundary marks, and had played some rounds, when Le Grand Colin struck the ball with such force that it bounded off quite out of sight. Le Petit Colin, whose turn it was to play, called out to his companion, with some degree of ill-humour, that the ball had disappeared beyond the bounds, on which Le Grand Colin struck his bat with force into the ground, and said he would play no more. The bat still remains in the centre of the field, and the ball--an enormous spherical boulder--is pointed out on the sea-shore near Les Pezeries, fully a mile and a half off.[61] [60] From Miss Lane, afterwards Mrs. Lane-Clarke.