Nooks and Corners of Cornwall

From Hayle to Marazion on the south coast is four miles—the narrowest part of the peninsula—and a railway runs from sea to sea. With a deep curve, however, the road goes on to low-lying Lelant (the valley church), which is traditionally said to have once been a large village and port, but to have been reduced to its present inconspicuousness by the drifting of sand into the haven. Parts of the church are Norman, and over the south porch stands an eighteenth-century copper sundial, on the pierced gnomon bracket of which is a quaint representation of Time and Death, a skeleton bearing an hour glass and a dart.

Among other antiquities discovered here was a large colt having in it some small bars of gold the size of a straw. A farmer found it embedded in ashes, and lying about 2 ft. below the surface. Gold has often been found in Cornwall, but always in small quantities—usually in grains from the size of sand to that of a pea! The largest piece ever found was said to have weighed down eight guineas in the scale.

Knill's Monument

Not far from Lelant is Worwas Hill, on which a certain John Knill erected a mausoleum. By some mischance the gentleman was buried in London, but by his will he directed that every five years £5 was to be equally divided among ten girls, natives of the borough and daughters of seamen, fishermen, or tinners, each of them not exceeding ten years of age, who should between ten and twelve o'clock of the forenoon of a certain day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least on the ground adjoining his mausoleum and, after the dance, sing the 100th Psalm. Alas, for the vanity of human hopes! Every five years the little girls, gaily be-ribboned, dance in the presence of the local notabilities, while the one thing that was to have given the ceremony weight and interest—the body of John Knill—is elsewhere.

The Antiquities of the Extreme West: Cliff Castles: Fogous: Menhirs

This narrow neck of land shuts off the small rounded end of the peninsula, a part that is peculiarly rich in prehistoric remains. It is as if the old forgotten peoples had been driven back and back, race after race pushing the one before it into the sea, but each, before it passed, leaving its footprint on the granite. On every headland are cliff castles—Cape Cornwall, Ballowal, Chûn—the most remarkable being that of Treryn Dinas, a stronghold with a triple vallum and fosse which can only be approached by a narrow ridge and which consists of a huge pile of rocks jutting from a turf-clad neck of land. In contrast with these are the subterranean passages and chambers (fogous) at Bolleit, Trewoofe, and Pendeen, the last-named said to be haunted on Christmas morning by a white-robed lady with the stem of a red rose between her lips. Above ground are a number of stone circles and solitary monoliths, from which, or from the cairns, comes the phrase "to raise a stone to his memory." The monoliths are known as the Pipers and the Blind Fiddler, the circles, as at Dawns Maen and Boscawen Un, as the Merry Maidens; and the legend with regard to them is always the same—that the Pipers played on a Sunday, and that the Maidens danced, their punishment approximating, in a more lasting form, to that of Lot's wife! Here, too, are the remains of ancient villages and beehive huts, and at one place—Chapel Euny—is a subterranean structure consisting of three long passages and a beehive hut, while at Bosporthennis is a specimen of the beehive hut so good that it is said to be the best in England. This district of heath and lonely moorland is so sparsely inhabited that the little old ruins have been left as they were until the antiquarian came and dug, unearthing the poor treasures of a simple state of civilisation, the spindle-whorls, the bone needles, the flint spear and arrow heads, and the coarse black pottery. The coast scenery of this part is the finest to be seen for miles, and that not so much on account of the grandeur of the cliffs as of the tumbling seas, that roll in from the Atlantic; and days might be spent wandering over these high lands from castle to castle and from stone to stone, trying to discover the reason, whether sepulchral or religious, that the monoliths were set erect; to guess why those strange underground passages were dug and walled, and what practical need they served; and what was the meaning of the various earthworks and entrenchments. The people to whom they needed no explanation have vanished, leaving only riddles behind, riddles that not the wisest among us, not the most enlightened, not the youngest, is able to solve.

Dolmen: Oratories: Superstition

We do at least know that the dolmen was raised above a burial, in the one instance of Zennor above two. In the dolmen proper, the supporters of the great capstone are columns and not merely slabs enclosing the space. Dolmens are found not only in Cornwall, but along the west coast of Europe and the northern coast of Africa, also in Palestine, India, and Japan, and appear to be the work of a seafaring people. Their date is said to be 2000 b.c., the age when bronze was beginning to replace stone and when the Swiss lake villages were being built. Three of the early Christian Councils regarded them with suspicion and ordered their destruction on the ground that they were objects of reverence to the Celtic Christians. At Lanyon, on Boswavas Moor, not far from the Mulfra Quoit, is a fine specimen. Unfortunately the great capstone, which was 18 ft. long and under which a man on horseback could ride, slipped from its supports in 1815. Lieutenant Goldsmith presently dislodged the Logan stone at Treryn, a mass of granite weighing sixty-five tons; and being obliged to replace it, the tackle he used was further utilised to replace the Lanyon capstone. To make this easier, however, the three uprights were cut down, and the cromlech now to be seen is by no means so imposing as in its prehistoric state. This seafaring folk, who left their tiny mark on the surface of the earth and then faded into obscurity, builded better than we with all our modern appliances!

It was unusual for the early Christians to order the destruction of monuments of this kind. As a rule they accepted and turned them to account. We have examples of this in the chapel at Porthcurnow, one of those very early buildings, formed of a double square, such as lie hidden among the shifting sands of Perran and Gwithian, and which was built on a spot already sacred as a place of burial; while on Chapel Carn Brea, which rises to a height of 660 ft., with Bartine at its shoulder still higher, is a cairn which held the bones of a Stone Age chieftain. Above them was a dolmen, and above that relics of British and Roman times, the whole being crowned by a Christian oratory!

It is hardly a matter for surprise if the people who dwell among these relics of the immemorial past still retain some of the superstitions of their forefathers, if their wells still have miraculous qualities and the crickstone a strange virtue. To them witches are as real as wreckers, and they cannot believe that the "little people"—once perhaps inhabiting those subterranean passages and huts—are gone for certain, and for ever. Get on the right side of an old miner and he will tell you of the "nuggies," of their silver anvils and their parlours, of how he has heard their little picks at work, and of how he has hoped all his life to one day catch sight of a nuggy slipping into its parlour, when he will, of course, follow and "strike it rich."

The housewife, on persuasion, may be got to tell how when she (or her mother) went in the morning to fill the kibble at the well she saw the pisky stealing away over the dewy fields by the first grey glimmer of light. Possibly he had taken eggs from her hen-roost, or if she were a wise woman and had baked him a hearth cake and left with it a sup of milk, he had perhaps "redded up" the place for her. It would be a matter of give-and-take, but the people in the low grey houses, with their thick walls and stone-held thatch, would be able to more than guess which mound it was into which the piskies vanished and which were the fairy rings about which they danced at dusk or in the moonlight. So wild was the country and so much does one piece of granite look like another that there were hiding-places in plenty, nooks that at a later date would be used by the smugglers and other law-breaking gentry, corners behind which the small race could lurk when the larger, more dangerous humans came striding by. Over against these tales of the "little people" must be set the stories told by those little people themselves, the stories of the giants, of the bigger folk whose terrors they magnified a hundredfold that their babies might be thus persuaded to keep out of danger. And because after all there must have been intermarriage, the occasional courting of pisky and giant, both sets of stories have been handed down from one generation to another. The Cornish are not a booky folk, they have not produced a great literature, and even nowadays they read little but their Bibles. Such a people would be likely to remember and treasure up the stories handed down from mother to child. They are, moreover, very social. In the loneliest parts there is seldom an evening when the labourers do not drop in at each other's cottages for a "crack," and every now and then the soft deep voices utter a word that has dropped out of the common talk, but which for them still has its right meaning, and the fathers tell over again the stories their fathers told to them. Some of the stories have come to the surface and are known to the "foreigner" (as every one born east of the Tamar is called). We have, for instance, that of the Zennor mermaid, which has taken such hold on local thought that it is even carved upon a bench-end in the little grey church. It was the story of a squire's son who sang in the choir and sang so beautifully that Sunday by Sunday a mermaid (Cornish—merrymaid) crept up from the sea to hear him. Like Hans Andersen's story she had found her prince, but unlike that story she in the end persuaded him to go away with her; and as he never returned, the wiseacres shook their heads and thought of him as lying drowned under the blue waters.

The antiquities of this, the extreme west, and the resulting strange traditions and beliefs are not the only matter of interest in this part of the world. Superimposed upon the survivals of a far-off time are those of the last thousand and odd years when Cornwall was struggling with the disabilities of its exposed position, when the Danes fell on the coasts burning and harrying, and corsairs carried off the poor fishermen and sold them as slaves. In 1635 a Turkish pirate ship was brought nolens volens into St. Ives Bay, and the peaceful folk, not immediately recognising her build, were surprised to hear sounds as of guns and firing. The firing was not at those on shore, it was in fact entirely confined to those on board, and it was as if the ship were divided against herself. In the end the truth appeared. The pirate had captured three small vessels of Looe and Fowey and seized their crews. These men, however, were not of a slavish kind. Rising in a body, they knocked the captain overboard, drove the Turks below and set sail for St. Ives. Having a fair wind they made it safely; though the pirates, also a hearty folk, spent their time firing at them through the timbers of the deck.

Wesley

We warrant those pirates had much the same reception at the hands of the St. Ives men as was dealt out to John Wesley when, in course of time, that small neat gentleman made his way into the district. The Cornish seem to have been—let us use the past tense—own brother to the Irishman in their love of a riot, any sort of a riot, for any reason or none; and Wesley got more than a taste of mob violence. Yet in the end he could say: "Here God has made all our enemies to be at peace with us, so that I might have preached in any part of the town. But I rather chose a meadow, that such as would might sit down, either on the grass or on the hedges—so the Cornish term their broad stone walls. Well-nigh all the town attended and with all possible seriousness. Surely forty years' labour has not been in vain."

So at last the little man was made welcome and could feel that he had roused the fishing-town from its long religious lethargy. I wonder whether in his strenuous life, and he came twenty-seven times to St. Ives, he ever found time to wander into the old church, study the wonderful carving of its bench-ends, and take pleasure in its ancient communion plate "and its pair of collecting basins with handles," or whether he was only occupied with things of the spirit?

Irving

Inland from St. Ives lies the ugly mining village of Halsetown, where Sir Henry Irving spent the years of his childhood. His mother was a Cornish woman of the Behenna family, and to Halsetown she brought him to stay with an aunt. The uncle was captain of a local mine—"captain" meaning any sort of an overseer from the manager to a man with only a boy under him! Here the lad ran wild with his cousins. "At any rate," said he in after years, "Halsetown gave me a good physical start in life. I attribute much of my endurance of fatigue—which is a necessary part of an actor's life—to the free and open and healthy years I spent there." Nor are these many hours of sunshine and the salubrious air only good for youth; life lengthens here unnoticeably until it has reached three figures, and even then shows a strength that is amazing. Mrs. Zenobia Stevens, who was buried at Zennor in 1763, aged 102, was tenant for ninety-nine years of the Duke of Bolton. On the expiration of her lease, being then in her hundredth year, she went on this matter of business to the Duke's Court at St. Ives; and it is said that she excused herself from accepting a second glass of wine on the plea that it was growing late and she had not only some way to go, but had to ride home on a young unbroken horse.

The Mines

Among these rough cliffs are sudden smiling valleys, but the moors are disfigured by a number of mine workings that have ceased to pay, and the ruins of which add to the desolation of the scene. A little above St. Just are three celebrated mines: Wheal Owles, into which the sea broke and which is now only the tomb of the eighteen men who were then working in her; Botallack, visited by King Edward and Queen Alexandra in 1865, while Prince and Princess of Wales, but no longer working; and Levant, exploited for tin, copper, and arsenic, and still employing several hundred men. The workings of this mine run for nearly a mile under the sea, and the men say that on stormy days the noise over their heads is terrific. These men live at St. Just, a mining town in the old church of which are some frescoes—St. George about to slay the dragon before Cleodolinda and her comrades, and Christ surrounded by the symbols of various trades. Of greater interest perhaps is the Plan-an-Guare, 126 ft. in diameter and with the remains of six tiers of seats. This rural amphitheatre is still sometimes used as a place of assembly and was once no doubt utilised for miracle plays, but who constructed it and for what purpose is lost in the mists of antiquity. Not far from the Plan-an-Guare is Kenidjack Cliff (the howling wind), a "hooting cairn" regarded by the superstitious country side as haunted by more than natural sounds. During the construction on it of butts for rifle practice, some twenty to thirty pieces of pure copper were found under stones which were probably the remains of an old building. The purity of the copper points to this hoard having been the property of a founder of tools or weapons belonging to the Bronze Age, and no doubt this founder was a workman of some importance in the district. The story connected with him has been forgotten, the fact that he ever existed has passed, but about the place still clings that old fear of the weapon-maker, whose every-day task it was to forge the mysterious givers of death.

Sancreed

It is a far journey from a "hooting cairn" to the pettiness of the social struggle, even though the struggle was for a precedence which has passed out of fashion. In Bishop Sparrow's report of July 1671, on Sancreed Church, a curious state of affairs came to light, for the parish was quarrelling over precedence in church sittings! "One John Adams of mean estate and fortune" had actually seated himself higher up than "those who are of the Twelve of the parish and their wives," and great had been the scandal. Also one Francis Lanyon, who had married "into a very worthy family," his wife, if you please, being niece to Colonel Godolphin, was without "a convenient seat." Sancreed has an old rood screen (or rather part of one), of which Sedding says: "I know of no finer specimen elsewhere in the county. Like so much old Cornish work it is more than local; it is purely parochial."

Its neighbour, St. Buryan, is also celebrated for its screen, which was, however, seriously injured by the vicar in 1814. From what remains, it would appear to have been exceptionally beautiful, carved, coloured, gilt, and of opulent and bold workmanship. This church stands high, 400 ft. above the sea; and about a mile distant are the remains of what is believed to be the oratory of St. Buryan. The story goes that first Egbert in 813 fought a battle here at Bolleit (place of blood) and later Athelstane in 926. There is no historical evidence for either battle, but tradition is a smoke under which a little flame may generally be found. At any rate, a battle was fought and the conqueror, standing on this high land, saw afar off the Scillies, and realised that there were yet worlds to conquer. So pleased was he, that he vowed, if successful, to found a college for priests on this high land, and so the church of St. Buryan came into being.

Lighthouses and Whitesand Bay

A mile and a half off the Land's End is the Longships Lighthouse. Built on a rock 70 ft. above low water and itself 55 ft. high, its top is yet often buried in the spray and the lanthorn broken. Further out, on the Wolf Rock, is another lighthouse; while off the Seven Stones, dangerous rocks between the mainland and the Scillies, is a lightship moored in forty fathoms of water, but in such an exposed position that it has before now been driven from its moorings.

But there were neither lighthouses nor lightships on these rocks when Athelstane landed at Whitesand Bay on his return from the conquered Scillies. Even now it is an ugly bit of water to traverse, and it must have been worse then. He was probably glad enough to see the great stretch of white sand with Sennen Cove lying in the midst thereof like an emerald set in silver. Later the bay acquired a bad reputation. So far from the madding crowd, so secret and so storm-beaten, it gave evil-doers a sense of security. Who would dare to venture after them among these rocks and clefts? Corsairs, pirates, smugglers, each in turn made use of the white beach. Thither came Perkin Warbeck in 1497 with his four little barques and six score men; thither John Lackland when seeking to dispossess his trusting brother of the realm; thither Stephen, the oath-breaker, who was, however, none so bad a king. Rough are the winds and rougher still the seas that beat upon this lovely bay, and it is a little puzzling why these and other personages should have chosen it as a landing-place.

The Land's End

Alas for romance, this same Land's End is but a low and unimpressive rock which, like the blunt head of some titanic animal, thrusts a grey muzzle into the water. It is only 60 ft. high, yet this is the last stone, the last bit of land, the ultimate west, this west that appeals so strongly to the Cornishman abroad:

"There's never a wave upon western beaches
Falls and fades to a wreath of foam
But takes at the last a voice that reaches
Over the distance and calls me home."

Lowry.

The Land's End, strange low headland, has seen plenty of stirring days, from the time when the Danish long-ships came creeping round to harry Cornwall and Devon, to that later date when the great storm and the descendants—probably—of those very Danes sent the great Armada fleeing up the narrow seas. Turner came here for the colour and the wild blue seas, and Tennyson to wonder whether his Arthur had ever been so far south. The rock is of split and tumbled granite, one of the few instances in the duchy where that stone comes into contact with the sea; and if Penwith, as all that part is called, really means the "wooded headland," that barren rock and rough water must once have been far enough apart. A little south of the Land's End is the finer rock of Pordenack, and all round this southern point the bays and coves are charming, the cliffs fine and the caverns and rocks numerous and fantastic. Tol-Pedn (the holed headland—so called from a huge blow-hole) has its Witches' (or Maggy Figgy's) Chair and shelters the pretty hamlet of Porthgwarra, the inhabitants of which are darker than the majority of Cornishmen. Tradition is in favour of a wrecked Spanish galleon. Not, we suppose, the spectre ship of Porthcurnow, a neighbouring cove. There a black square-rigged vessel sails up the beach and up the combe, making no difference between land and water, and presently vanishes like mist—and that in the valley the Eastern Telegraph Company has made its own! The hamlet is interesting on account of its name. That distinguished scholar, Canon Isaac Taylor, says: "Cornwall, or Cornwales, is the kingdom of the Welsh of the Horn," but others think the name is from the Kernyw, the tribe who lived in these parts, they being called the Kernyw Gaels, to distinguish them from the Gaels of Wales and those of Brittany. Be it as it may, in Porthcurnow we have an interesting survival of the old tribal name.

The church of St. Levan is on the hillside in a deep valley and beyond its admirable carving, its screen with a geometrical pattern of leaves, its font of a stone not found in the neighbourhood, and its unusual holy water stoup—at the north and east entrances to the church are the old lych stones used as resting-places for funerals! There is also a cleft boulder of granite about which it was prophesied that when a pack-horse should ride through "St. Levan's stone" the world would come to an end, and the fact that such handy material for building has been left unused shows that for some reason it must have been held in veneration.

Mousehole and Dolly Pentreath

Mousehole is said to have been the last place at which Cornish was spoken, and this has resulted in the legend of Dolly Pentreath. She was a fishwife who, in course of time, came on the parish; and it was believed, not only that she lived to a great age, but that she was the last person to speak the ancient language. Against this, the facts must be set forth. Dorothy Pentreath is given in the parish register as born 1714 and died 1777; while Wm. Matthews, who also spoke Cornish—speaking it with his cronies—and lived at Newlyn, did not die till 1800. In spite of this, however, two credulous persons—Prince Lucien Buonaparte and the Vicar of Paul—raised a stone to her memory in 1860, and referred in particular to the old age which was not hers and the language which she certainly spoke, but was not the last to speak.

"Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died 1778, said to have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish.

"Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land."

But if Mousehole has no right to its legend, its own age cannot be called into question. In 1347 it was recognised as a Cornish port, while in the time of Henry VII. a lay subsidy roll shows its inhabitants to have been nearly equal in number to those of Penzance.

Moreover, it has had its vicissitudes. An ancient prophecy had declared:

"They shall land on the rock of Merlin
Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn."

and, as a matter of fact, one July morning in 1595 four Spanish galleys carrying two hundred men crept up under cover of a fog and, landing them on a rock that bore the name of Merlin, proceeded to verify the prediction. The Spaniards must have been surprised at the lack of opposition with which they met, for though Sir Francis Godolphin—called "the great housekeeper" from his hospitality—did his utmost to rouse the people, the fact that the ancient prophecy was being fulfilled before their eyes had a paralysing effect. So much so that the towns mentioned in the prediction were duly and effectually burnt before a sufficient posse could be raised to drive the Spaniards back to their galleys. Yet we have it on Bacon's authority that the Cornish were no cowards: "These Cornish are a race of men stout of stomach, mighty of body and limb, and that live hardily in a barren country; and many of them of a need could live underground, which were tinners." Nevertheless the Spaniards did their work so thoroughly that the Keigwin Arms, at that date a manor-house, was the only building left standing. This house is interesting as a specimen of Tudor architecture, the walls being several feet thick, while the timbers were said to have been grown in the forest, now submerged, that gave St. Michael's Mount its old name of "the hoar rock in the wood." This tradition suggests a greater antiquity for the house than that of Elizabeth's reign, or that it was built on the site of some older building.

Newlyn

Mousehole, like Newlyn, has a fine fishing-fleet, but even when these picturesque boats are out of sight, there is a flavour in the air, a soupçon, a je ne sais quoi! A blind man indeed might be expected to know how the little ancient town contrives to pay its way! The artists of Newlyn seem to have risen superior to such a trifle. To the painter, of course, beauty is only of the eye and, after all, the smell of oil paints——

It is wonderful how attractive Cornwall seems to artists of both pen and brush. No village so poor, none so utterly desolate, but it can point to its artist and its cross. Not, of course, that there is any connection between artists and crosses. The broad outlook of the former may have been something of a trial, but it has come to be looked on as of no importance, just a bit of harmless eccentricity.

Penzance

Not far from Newlyn is a place that was once a chapel-of-ease to Madron and had no church of its own. It was represented to the authorities, however, that if the people went daily to their parish church at Madron—daily, mark you—the town would be in peril of burning "by the French and other enemies in time of war." Naturally the church was built. That good, that punctilious, that saintly town where all the inhabitants went every day to church is none other than—Penzance. And except that it is a good centre, there is very little else to say about it.

CHAPTER VI

The Land of Lyonesse

If you ask the people they will tell you that without doubt the piece of water between the south of Cornwall and the Scillies was once dry land. If you ask the educated stranger he will hum and haw, and say it is probable, perhaps even likely, and will quote the Saxon Chronicle to the effect that "the sea broke in upon the land and swallowed up many towns and a countless multitude of people." As the old record gives no hint as to where this catastrophe happened, more than one writer has taken it to justify a belief in the Land of Lyonesse. Oh for a Passmore Edwards embued with curiosity rather than philanthropy, who should by dredging operations settle the vexed question for good and all!

The fishermen, looking down through the clear waters on a still day, declare they can make out the ruins of old churches and houses, and that their nets have brought them time and again articles of household economy, pieces of broken doors and roofs and windows. Moreover, when the great wave broke hungrily over the low-lying land a Trevelyan saw the curling breakers and setting spurs to his swift white horse was carried at a mad gallop to Perranuthno. The people show you the cave in which he and the trembling horse took refuge till the wild turmoil should have died down. With what a horrified curiosity the man who lived must have looked out of his cave, watching till the great wave should subside, watching for the reappearance of all those farms and villages that only that morning had been sunning themselves in the warm light. The forest, too, those acres of beech trees stretching out from Marazion and surrounding St. Michael's Mount, that "hoar rock in a wood," what had become of them? The stormy autumn day must have closed down upon him, still looking, wondering, and hoping; but when once more the sun rose it was upon a wide stretch of waters, with the Scillies sparkling in the distance. Between them and the land was only sea—and a people overwhelmed and lost and soon to be forgotten, a people who but yesterday had gone about their daily tasks as unsuspecting as the rest! There was only Trevelyan left to say it was the "Judgment of Heaven," and he, poor soul, appears to have been too shaken, or too little of a priest, to do so.

The Scillies

It used to be said that when the Almighty made Ireland he had left a few handfuls of mud. He threw them into the sea and the result was the Scillies. The proof thereof is that, like Ireland, the Scillies have no snakes!

They may be only a few handfuls of stony mud, but they are lovely islands, though for those whom salt water makes queasy, a little difficult to reach. There is, in fact, a most depressing story told of a lady who was so ill during the four hours' passage from Penzance that when within sight of the islands but before she could be landed she actually died of heart failure.

The Scillies number about 145, twenty-four of which are cultivated, but only five inhabited—St. Mary's, Tresco, St. Martin's, St. Agnes, and Bryher; while Scilly, the islet which has given its name to the group, is an unimportant rock near Bryher.

On St. Agnes is the Well of St. Warna, a saint who protected her protégés from being wrecked and drowned. She has fallen into disrepute, however, owing to the whole population of her island having been wrecked and drowned on their way home from the neighbouring island, whither they had been to church! What a shock to believers in St. Warna. If only it had been a case of bad boys bird's-nesting on the Sabbath or of merry maidens dancing to the music of the blind fiddler, or east coast men fishing on Sunday, but—respectable citizens on their way home from church!

The Law of Wrecks

Ocean currents run strong here. It has long been mistakenly supposed that the Gulf Stream affects the climate of Western Cornwall. Needless to say, the true Gulf Stream does not come within many miles of the duchy; instead, a surface current of warm water is carried north-eastward from hot latitudes, and the ameliorating effects on flowers and plants and vegetables are the same. This warm current does not, however, ameliorate the storms, and in spite of four lighthouses the wrecks are numerous. In 1707 four ships of the Navy were lost here and 2000 men. The islands once had a reputation not only for smuggling, but for wrecking, and for the kind of wrecking that gives no help "to those in peril on the sea," but rather the other way about. Not that the people were altogether to blame. The law of wrecks was largely responsible for the brutalities undoubtedly indulged in towards shipwrecked crews, for it stated definitely that wrecks should be the property of the governor of the isles only "if none of the crew remained alive."

In our gentle days it is hardly believable that the whole populace should have seen to it that a wreck had no survivors. Themselves at the mercy of the waters, one might have thought such constant peril would have bred a fellow-feeling, but the contrary seems to have been the case. In the Tresco Gardens is a terrace devoted entirely to the figure-heads of vessels that have been cast on these shores. Each sorry relic represents its quota of human lives, and, remembering this, it is as if you were in some sort of concentrated graveyard where the bones of the poor dead are not even decently covered and concealed from sight.

Mr. Smith

But laws were presently amended, and then both wrecking and smuggling failed to yield a livelihood. When Mr. Augustus Smith leased the islands from the Duke of Leeds, the present representative of the Godolphins (Dolphin Town is named after them), the people were in a parlous condition. With no industries beyond fishing and kelp-gathering, their poverty had grown with their families. Mr. Smith, however, was a kindly autocrat. He settled among his people at Tresco Abbey, insisted on education, sent the girls to service on the mainland and the lads to sea, built new roads, and improved the quay. One further step was needed, and this was presently taken by Mr. Trevellick, of Rocky Hill, St. Mary's. Collecting a few bundles of the narcissi that bloomed abundantly about the cottages, he sent them to Covent Garden Market. Amazing to the man who had spent his days amid a profusion of such flowers was the return they brought. The news spread, and so did the cultivation of the blooms. From January to May every steamer now carries tons—as much sometimes as thirty—of flowers on their way to be sold, and that although many of the islands are treeless sandhills! As Mr. Salmon says, however: "The distance, the cost of carriage, and the competition of the untaxed foreigner are the difficulty. The trade has been hit very hard by foreign imports and by the crushing cost of freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the shores of the Mediterranean than they do from Scilly; the foreigner is given every advantage in his efforts to undersell the Briton, and the Briton, though fighting at home, fights with one hand tied behind!"

The Admiral's Honour

The history of the Scillies is much what its exposed position would lead you to suppose. Olaf of Norway came marauding here, was converted, and is said to have founded Tresco Abbey—the authentic history of which, however, does not begin till later. Athelstane for the love of fighting presently descended on them; and when the fortunes of royalty were at a low ebb Charles, afterwards Charles II., sought refuge there, and lay in great straits not only for the comforts but even for the necessities of life. The Parliament, unable to let well alone, sent a fleet to surround the island where he lay, but a storm—"Judgment of Heaven," cried the Royalists with one voice—dispersed the ships. Thinking the islands an insecure as well as an uncomfortable refuge, however, the Prince left them at the first opportunity, setting sail for Jersey on his way to the greater hospitality of France. After that they became the prey of every strong man who fancied them; and so dangerous a nest of privateers did they become, that Dutch commerce suffered, and Admiral Van Tromp offered to help in their reduction. His offer, however, was not accepted, the English having learnt the danger of calling in foreign assistance. Admiral Blake was sent to teach the Scillies their duty towards Parliament, and in May 1651, Sir John Grenville—whom we last saw as Sir Beville's stripling son—obtaining freedom and retreat for himself and garrison, surrendered the islands. At first Parliament refused to recognise these favourable terms, but Blake was as fine a gentleman as Grenville himself, which is saying a great deal, and he declared that if not allowed to keep his word he would not keep his office. So Grenville was free to depart, and went over seas to join his Prince and share in his poverty and wanderings.

The Scilly Isles are very lovely, perhaps the loveliest part of this lovely county. The climate is mild and equable, the constant breeze prevents too great a heat, while the rigours of winter, thanks to the warm sea-water, are unknown. Seabirds breed on the great rocks, the earth is of a marvellous fertility, and beyond, far below the horizon, the next land is that of another island—Newfoundland!

Mount's Bay

The sea has encroached within late years on the eastern shores of Mount's Bay, but the harbourage is good, and a fine fleet of fishing-vessels sails from here. There are echoes of unpleasantness with regard to Sunday fishing on the part of strangers. As the Newlyn man put it: "Sunday fishing is wicked, and what's more it spoils our market."

Ding Dong Mine

At the head of the bay is Gulval, near which lies the Ding Dong Mine, famous as the oldest in Cornwall, so old indeed that it has long since (1880) retired into private life. About seventy years since, a number of Roman and Alexandrian coins of the third and fourth centuries were found near this mine. It is quite possible that the Romans themselves worked Ding Dong and Ting Tang, and other of the old mines. A stone inscribed with the names of Constantine and his son is still preserved at St. Hilary: "Imperatore Cæsare Flavio Valerio Constantino Pio Cæsare nobilissimo divi Constantii Pii Augusti Filio." As Constantine the Great was Cæsar in 306 and became Augustus in 307, this inscription fixes the date of the stone as belonging to the first of those years. When draining a piece of land between Penzance and Marazion, the workmen came upon about a thousand Roman coins of that date; indeed, under stones or buried in urns various large hoards of brass, copper, and lead money have been discovered by old tinworks, and every now and then fine gold and silver coins of Trajan, Nero, and the later emperors.

St. Michael's Mount (Cornish Dinsul)[3]

St. Michael's Mount, which is principally composed of granite, is 190 ft. high and about a mile round. It is said that the members of the St. Aubyn family, to whom it now belongs—having been sold to them by the Bassets—are not considered able to look after themselves in the water until they have swum completely round the Mount.[4]

However imposing the great rock looked when the waves from which it emerged wore the summer green of beech-leaves, it could not have had so great a dignity as now. Fortified from an early date, it soon fell into the hands of the Church, and was presently garrisoned by monks. But so fine a stronghold could not be held sacred to spiritual warfare, and in 1191 a party of soldiers disguised themselves as pilgrims and, so obtaining admission to the fortress, turned on their unarmed hosts and expelled them. From that date the place took part in any little war that might be convulsing the rest of the country, and even started—as in 1548—little wars and rebellions of its own. Henry VIII., who had a most fatherly care for his coast defences, erected batteries here; and during the Civil Wars it belonged in turn to whichever party had the upper hand. Its history, indeed, is a continual change of owners, of fierce sieges, stratagems, plunderings, and hairbreadth escapes. Now it is an old grey rock, which after many vicissitudes has fallen asleep in the sun. The only very ancient part still in existence is the piece of Saxon walling pierced by the principal doorway, and the wonder is, not that there is so little, but that one stone should have been left upon another.

An Old Ceremony

In this part of the country the name Godolphin occurs over and over again. Tresco Abbey was granted to them at the Dissolution, but they lived principally at Godolphin House in Breage, and the old saying ran: "A Trelawny was never known to want courage, a Grenville loyalty, or a Godolphin wit."

The Tudor house to the north of Godolphin Hill (500 ft.) is now a farm. The panelled rooms, a hall, and some great windows are all that remain of the former mansion, but a ceremony, which originated in 1330, is still observed on Candlemas day. "Once a year for ever the reeve of the manor of Lamburn shall come to Godolphin, and there boldly enter the hall, jump upon the table, and stamp or bounce with his feet or club to alarm and give notice to the people of his approach, and then and there make proclamation aloud three times, 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! I am the reeve of the manor of Lamburn, in Perransand, come here to demand the old rent duties and customs, due to the lords from the said manor of Godolphin," upon which notice there was forthwith to be brought him 2s. 8d. in rent, a quart of beer, a loaf of wheaten bread, and a cheese worth 6d., "which the reeve having received he shall drink of the beer, taste the bread and cheese in the place, and then depart, carrying with him the said rent and the remainder of the viands."

One of the two oldest crosses in Cornwall is in the churchyard at Godolphin. In the opinion of stone-masons it has been "bruised out," probably with wood, and not cut with a metal tool. It may indeed have come into existence before metal was used.

China Clay

Tregoning Hill, a little south of Godolphin, was the place where Wm. Cookworthy, a druggist, discovered in 1745 a clay from which porcelain could be made, and from which Plymouth china resulted. This first discovery of china clay has led to that great development of the industry, of which St. Austell is the centre.

Wrecks: Germoe and Breage

Before the lighthouse on the Wolf Rock was built (1871) this rocky coast was the scene of many a wreck. In 1873 the Vicar of Mullion wrote: "In six years and a quarter there have been nine wrecks, with a loss of sixty-nine lives, under Mullion Cliffs, on a bit of coast line not more than a mile and a half in length." It must be confessed that the inhabitants of Germoe and Breage had an unenviable reputation as wreckers:

"God keep us from rocks and shelving sands
And save us from Breage and Germoe men's hands."

But those days have passed away, though Germoe still has a reputation of a kind. It is said that once the men had good singing voices, but were so proud of them that the voices failed; while another distich shows the estimation in which they held themselves:

"Camborne men are bulldogs,
Breage men are brags,
Three or four Germoe men
'Ull scat'um all to rags."

Local jealousies between neighbouring towns are by no means rare in Cornwall. For instance, there is the old enmity between Zennor and St. Ives. It is said that the fishermen belonging to the latter were greatly annoyed one season by the ravages of the hake among the mackerel. They therefore caught the largest they could, whipped him soundly, and restored him to the water—pour encourager les autres.

When a Zennor man wishes to be disagreeable to a native of St. Ives, therefore, he says: "Who whipped the hake?"

But Zennor, one might think, would have hesitated to throw stones, for it is locally known as the place where the cow ate the bellrope, the neighbourhood being so barren and rocky that the straw bellrope was the only provender the poor animal could find—which is suggestive of the Cornish vet. who sent in his bill "to curing your old cow till she died."

Pengersick

One more local story before we go on to Helston, and that because the retort is so neat and the lady, as usual, had the last word. Pengersick Castle is a ruin which, when habitable, was occupied by a man and his wife whose early regard had changed to hatred. Their children were grown up and married, and they had nothing to do but brood upon their mutual dislike, until one day it occurred to both that the world would be a brighter and better place if the other were out of it. No sooner said than done. That day at dinner the good man poured his wife a glass of a rare vintage, and after she had drunken told her with satisfaction that he would now see the last of her—as the wine had been poisoned.

"The wine? Ah, yes, and the soup, too," quoth she, "and as you drank first, my love, the pleasure of seeing the last of you will be mine."

Flora Day

Helston, the little bright town built crossways on the side of a hill, is near the spring of the Kelford River and at the head of the Loe Pool. It had an exciting time in 1548, when the Cornish feeling against the new doctrine of the sacrament found vent in the murder, which took place inside the church, of Wm. Bray, the royal commissioner. In pursuance of his duty he was pulling down images and possibly treating what was sacred in the eyes of the people with only scant reverence. Be that as it may, Wm. Kiltor, a priest of St. Keverne, attacked and slew him, to the secret—not too secret either—joy of the people and the scandal of authority.

The eighth of May in Helston is Flora or Furry Day, and is possibly a relic of the old May Day saturnalia. The young people go (fadgy) into the country singing:

"Robin Hood and Little John,
They both are gone to the fair, O!
And we will away to the merry greenwood
And see what they do there, O!"

They return garlanded with flowers and dance through the houses and gardens of the town, singing the Furry Song. The dance follows a set formula, the procession going in at the front door and out at the back, and being supposed to bestow some sort of benefit upon the houses thus visited. The refrain of the song, to the numerous verses of which topical allusions are often added, is as follows:

"God bless Aunt Mary Moses[5]
With all her power and might, O,
And send us peace in Merry England
Both by day and night, O."

Charles Kingsley was at the Helston Grammar School when the headmaster was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the second master was the Johns who wrote "A Week at the Lizard." It is unlikely the scholars were allowed to take part in the Furry Dance, but he may have watched it time and again, and given his schoolboy contribution.

The Loe Pool

This is a beautiful stretch of fresh water that winds like a river through the forked and wooded valley and widens as it comes within sight of the sea, from which, like the Swan Pool—a smaller lake on the other side of the promontory—it is separated by a bar of sand and shingle. Until recently the Mayor of Helston was wont to present two leathern purses containing three half-pence each to the lord of Penrose and ask leave to cut through the bar and release the surplus waters. The old cutting of the Loe Bar used to tinge the sea with yellow as far as the Scilly Isles. Now, however, the quantity of the water is regulated by sluices and the ceremony has fallen into disuse.

Serpentine

After the more exposed northern and western shores of Cornwall, the airs of the south are balmy. There is no fear, as the farmer put it, that "the bullocks will be blown off the cliff pasture into the sea, the wheat off the land, and the turnips out of their sockets." In the Morrab Gardens at Penzance palms grow in the open, while in Falmouth strange spiky, spiney plants, whose home is in desert sands far south of Britain, are to be seen. But the Meneage (stone), as the Lizard district is called, though mild, is exhilarating, and on Goonhilly Downs the wind can be sufficiently keen. This district is of a peculiar geological structure, consisting of a moderately elevated tableland, deeply carved at the edges by valleys and richly wooded except at the southern extremity. The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine, and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. It causes a sensation of vast wealth to go on to the beaches and from the scattered millions select your own pebbles for the polisher. The more red in your chosen fragments, the more iron, and the harder they will be to polish; while a handsome piece of entirely red ore may be altogether beyond their powers, for serpentine is a rock not a pebble, and the local appliances are crude. The Lizard is also the paradise of the botanist, for the Cornish heath (erica vagans), the sea asparagus, the henbane, and many other plants grow abundantly in this district. From Helston to the Lizard is a pleasant scrambling walk along the fine black cliffs. At Gunwalloe the church rises from the edge of the cliff, its belfry being built into the solid rock about 14 ft. away. In Mullion Church is some admirable wood-carving, and on the west face of the tower a well-cut crucifixion, and at Kynance are some curious rocks known as "The Bellows" and "The Post Office," which are as interesting to the geologist as they are wonderful to the ordinary visitor.

GUNWALLOE AND MULLION

A curious story is told of a wreck at Gunwalloe, where the St. Andrew, a treasure-ship belonging to the King of Portugal, was driven ashore. The Portuguese had entered into an agreement with the local notabilities for the disposal of their goods, when down rode three Cornish gentlemen at the head of their retainers and carried off the spoil. Unfortunately for them the Portuguese had an Englishman on board, and he promptly brought the matter before the courts and caused an inquiry to be made. But the treasure, as then enumerated, must have been enough to make the mouths water not only of the local authorities, but of any starveling gentleman to whom news of its arrival had come; for it consisted of 8000 cakes of copper, eighteen blocks of silver, and a chest containing £6000, besides pearls, precious stones, chains, brooches, jewels, tapestry, rich hangings, satins, velvets, and four sets of armour.

Just below Gunwalloe are the fine Halzaphron Cliffs. A ship was wrecked here about a hundred years ago, and the bodies from it were said to have been the last which were refused sepulchre in consecrated ground. It makes one's blood boil to think of the barbarities that from the beginning have been perpetrated in the name of religion. There was actually a law on the Statute Book which refused such burial to strangers, on the score that they might not have been Christians. Christians forsooth—pretty Christians they who framed that law!

Another lingering superstition is connected with the Rev. Thomas Flavel, who was buried at Mullion 1682. The man was a noted ghost-layer, and was said to charge five guineas every time he officiated in this way. He was also an enthusiastic Royalist, and Walker thus describes him: "A venerable old gentleman; and lookt the more so in those Times for that he had vowed never to cut off his Beard till the Return of his Majesty to his Kingdom, by which time he had gotten a very long one." His epitaph is curious:

"Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet,
The World my goods; my Soul, my God who gavet;
For from these four—Earth, Satan, World, and God,
My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul I had."

On the cliffs by Mullion and above Poldhu (black pool) is the earliest of the permanent wireless stations in England. It forms a prominent, strange but not altogether ugly feature of the landscape—the people think it brings bad weather—and is at any rate in strong contrast to the deep and glorious coves by which in switchback fashion, now cliff, now coombe, the barren dusty headland of the Lizard (chief's high dwelling) is reached.

The Lizard

This is the southernmost point of England, a blunt rounded headland, lying crouched over the deep water, eternally—by day and by night—on the look-out. When the first lighthouse was built here, at the charges of Sir John Killigrew in 1619—note that Godolphin land has given place to the country of the Killigrews—it was disapproved of by the Trinity House. They thought it would serve to light pirates and foreign enemies to a safe landing-place!

To the east of Penolver Point the coast curves sharply in towards the north and is honeycombed with curious caves and blow-holes, Dolor Hugo (from fogou—a subterranean passage), the Devil's Frying Pan by Cadgwith, Raven's Hugo, and others. Here are bays, picturesque with rocks and far from the madding crowd, far also from a railway station, Helston being the nearest; but that is no matter, the ten-mile drive over Goonhilly Downs being well worth the extra weariness and cost.

Mediæval Bells

Cornwall has about fifty bells, dating from before the Reformation. As they had been used to summon the people to rebellion, orders came from London that all bells except "the least of the ring" were to be removed from the churches. This, however, was a command that the recipients thought would be more honoured in the breach than the observance; which is why there are so many good examples, as for instance, at Landewednack, of mediæval bells. This the most southern parish in England has a curious church tower, the admixture of light granite and dark serpentine giving it a chequer-board appearance. It was visited by the plague in 1645, and a hundred years later the burials were disturbed in order to make room for some shipwrecked sailors—whose Christianity one supposes to be vouched for—when to the horror of the inhabitants the plague at once reappeared. Since then they have let sleeping dogs lie.

Landewednack claims to be the last place at which a sermon was preached in Cornish (1678), the incumbent being the Rev. Thos. Cole, who lived to the great age of 120. This fine old gentleman is said to have not long before his death walked to Penryn and back, a distance of thirty miles!

Past Cadgwith, Kennack, Coverack, Porthoustock, and Porthalla, well-known fishing villages, and all romantically situated, but not otherwise interesting, the wanderer comes by way of St. Keverne, a big church with a fresco unique in Cornwall as giving the Greek form of the St. Christopher legend, to Nare Point and the mouth of the Helford River. It is a question which is the more beautiful, this ten-mile long creek with its bold scenery or the softer, more feminine Fal. It rises a little above Helston, at Buttris, flows down to Gweek, where it broadens into an estuary and applies its waters to the nourishing of many oysters—which oysters were unkindly described by Lord Byron, when he stayed at Falmouth, as tasting of copper!

About a mile from Gweek is the "Tolvan," a large irregular slab of granite, near the centre of which is a hole. Weakly children were formerly brought to the "crickstone" and passed at sunrise, nine times, through this hole. The custom having fallen into disrepute, however, the Tolvan now forms part of a cottage fence.

Mawgan

Mawgan Church, which lies between Gweek and Trelowarren, the seat of the Vyvyans, has a brass to one of the Bassets inscribed:

"Shall we all die,
We shall die all,
All die shall we,
Die all we shall."

which quaint lines are also found on a tombstone at Gunwalloe and elsewhere. Trelowarren itself has some interesting pictures, in particular the Vandyke of Charles I. presented by Charles II. in acknowledgment of Sir Rd. Vyvyan's services to his father. This family also possesses the pearl necklace of Queen Henrietta Maria, in which she sat for the painting now at Hampden Court.

But of all the charming spots up these rocky and wooded creeks commend me to Condora, for there in 1735 were found twenty-four gallons of Roman brass coin. Think of it, dream of it, penniless man. Not a few coppers, but twenty-four gallons!

What a beautiful sound have some of these Cornish names! Rosemullion Head juts out over the Helford River on the north, and above it we have Rosemerrin and the Swan Pool, and not far off St. Anthony in Roseland. It is true that Rhos only means a heath, and that we are on the borders of the gorse-grown districts, known as Roseland; but the word has different associations for the "foreigner," and whatever the true meaning, the lovely name brings to memory the thought and the scent and the colour of the lovelier flowers.

CHAPTER VII