It is a very common notion amongst the peasantry, that a just retribution overtakes those who wilfully destroy monuments, such as stone circles, crosses, wells, and the like. Mr Blight writes me – “While at Boscaswell, in St Just, a few weeks since, an old man told me that a person who altered an old Holy Well there, was drowned the next day in sight of his house, and that a person who carried away the stones of an ancient chapel, had his house burned down that very night.” We hope that the certainty of punishment will prevent any further spoilation.
From Popular Romances of the West of England, second series, collected and edited by Robert Hunt.