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The Three Leaps

Stone Row / Alignment

<b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by hamishImage © Mike Murray
This site is of disputed antiquity. If you have any information that could help clarify this site's authenticity, please post below or leave a post in the forum.
Nearest Town:Menai Bridge (6km SSE)
OS Ref (GB):   SH529784 / Sheets: 114, 115
Latitude:53° 16' 54.39" N
Longitude:   4° 12' 24.02" W

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<b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by hamish <b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by hamish <b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by hamish <b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by hamish <b>The Three Leaps</b>Posted by Moth

Fieldnotes

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I agree with Stubob and Hamish. These 'standing stones' are about the size of a housebrick. Interesting perhaps, but not at all spectacular. Took me ages to find them too. Dunstan Posted by Dunstan
16th March 2008ce

As Stubob says, a bit of a disappointment. I'm not sure what I was expecting but maybe they've sunk or shrunk. hamish Posted by hamish
26th September 2005ce
Edited 26th September 2005ce

Standing stumps would be a more appropriate description of this site, I must admit I was a bit let down. For some reason the name had got me going.....
3 barely visible stumps, one less so than the others.
I don't know if the old O.S map I have has them in the wrong place, it just didn't seem to fit..... A guy who lived in a house at the top of the drive had seen me hanging around, became suspicious and asked me what I was up to. He showed me the stumps, and assured me they were what I was looking for after seeing the look on my face.
Disappointed I left with....with not even a photo.
stubob Posted by stubob
22nd April 2003ce
Edited 8th August 2003ce

Folklore

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According to Coflein the 1st edition OS map had four stones! and the fourth has been found in woodland on the far side of the farm drive. They do suggest it could be a Bronze Age stone row, but also that it could be (shock) an C18th boundary feature. But then why would the fourth be across the drive? Mysterious.

And how strange that such little stones get such a big story (including verse). There are only two in this version!
In a field near the porter's lodge of Plas Gwynn, there are two stones, at a considerable distance from each other, which mark the place where tradition says Einion ap Gwalchmai, some centuries ago, obtained his wife by an uncommon exhibition of activity in leaping fifty feet!

There were two competitors, and the female decided their claims by taking the man who could leap farthest. Einion, it is said, some time afterwards, went to a distant part of the country, where he had occasion to reside several years, and he found on his return that his wife had, on that very morning, been married to another person. He took his harp and sitting down at the door, explained in Welsh metre who he was, and where he had been resident. His wife narrowly scrutinised his person, unwilling to give up her new spouse, when he exclaimed--

"Look not, Angharad, on my silver hair, Which once shone bright of golden lively hue:
Man doth not last like gold, - he that was fair will soon decay, though gold continue new.

[I will spare you the rest until the last verse]

Full fifty feet, as still the truth is known, And many witnesses can still attest,
How there the prize I won, thyself must own, This action stamp'd my worth within thy breast."
From 'Excursions in North Wales' by William Bingley (1839 ed. p78).
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
8th October 2007ce
Edited 8th October 2007ce

The 3 leaps are three stones in a field next to the georgian mansion called Plas Gwyn. They were placed there in remembrance of a competition between two men for the hand in marriage of St Geraint's grand=daughter, supposedly in the 6th century. By adopting a triple-jump style approach, Hywel ap Gwalchmai was able to beat his opponent and get his girl.

(can't remember where I read this - possibly in LV Grinsell's collection, 'Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain' 1976.)
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
2nd December 2002ce
Edited 26th September 2005ce