Childe's Tomb

'There are some points of peculiar interest connected with the Dartmoor traditions, indicating, as I conceive, a purely Saxon origin, deserving an attention which they have not yet received.

Childe's Tomb, in one of the dreariest portions of the moor, is a large cross of granite. This Childe, lord of the manor of Plymstock, was benighted on the moor in a snowstorm; he killed his horse, and got within its body for warmth, having first written in blood on a granite slab, near which he was found dead,--

"The first that finds and brings me to my grave,
The lands of Plymstock he shall have.'

The Benedictine monks of Tavistock are said to have found the body, and thus secured their right to the lands. This is without doubt an old Saxon legend, modified, as it has been handed down from age to age.'

Hunt 1903