Childe the Hunter

The popular version has it that a young man called Childe, hunting on the moor, got caught in fog or a snowstorm on Fox Tor Mires, lost his way, and died of exposure. His body was found and buried where the cross now stands. Some tellings say he was a nobleman's son; others call him a knight; the details shift depending on who is telling it. The cross itself is real and more elaborate than most Dartmoor crosses, built on a constructed base with a kistvaen (stone burial chamber) underneath.

The written trail begins with Tristram Risdon's Survey of Devon around 1632, which records the cross and some version of the death tale. Since then the legend has accumulated detail, though the sources do not always agree on the specifics (was he lost? was he fleeing something? was he hunting?). Legendary Dartmoor offers a modern account, but like most Dartmoor legends, this one has mutated so many times that pinning down an original story is probably impossible. We know the cross is old and that someone died there, but everything else is reasonably hazy.