Resuming the coast from Falmouth and leaving that town by Swanpool, an easy woodland road leads past the little sandy bay of Maen Porth and, avoiding Rosemullion Head, comes to the hamlet of Mawnan Smith, whence most travellers go direct down to the crossing of the Helford River at Durgan. But the church and the original village of Mawnan, such as it is, lie straight ahead.
The church of Mawnan is far remote from the ordinary tourist track. Very few are those who, exploring the rugged and greatly indented coasts of Cornwall, endure to the end and do not presently take some of the distant headlands and the obscure nooks and corners on trust; and Mawnan stands above a remote little Land's End of its own that overlooks the otherwise solitary mouth of the salt estuary called the Helford River. You come past a few houses and then, through a farmyard, to the church.
The inquisitive tourist may be recommended to visit that church, not that it possesses anything above the average of architectural interest in Cornwall, but because it is a prime example of what is done in the High Church way in the nooks and corners. Obviously it is ardently desired to put back the clock of progress at Mawnan, for the interior of the church is lavishly decorated with texts and admonitions in the old Cornish language, which became extinct so long ago that nobody outside the ranks of scholars has the least recollection of it; and it is quite certain that the villagers of Mawnan do not understand it, any more than they would Coptic or Chaldee. So when they read on these walls, among other things, "Da thym ythgu nesse the Thu," they are obliged to take on trust the translations of this phrase and others, that are thoughtfully provided on cards. This particular example means, it would appear, "Good it is to me to draw near to God"; to which one might offer the criticism, that the way would probably be rendered easier by the adoption of a language more readily understanded of the people. No one, however, would be in the least likely to criticise these things if they were done only out of archæological zeal; but they are evidences of obscurantism, and, taken with other things, eloquent of an attempt to recover a lost priestly domination. The other evidences are not lacking; notably among them the notices displayed of some precious "Society of King Charles the Martyr," among which it is sought to restore the old "Office for January 30th," introduced by Bishop Duppa of Winchester at the Restoration in 1661; an Office long ago removed from the Prayer Book, which is so much the better by the loss of it. There is not so much to complain of in the passage that runs, "Preserve from sacrilegious invasions those temporal blessings which Thy Providence hath bestowed on Thy Church"; for, put in other words, this is nowadays a prayer against Disestablishment and Disendowment; and we have all of us the right of praying for our continued existence. But few will be found to defend the supplication, "Give us grace by a careful and studious imitation of this Thy blessed Saint and Martyr," meaning thereby Charles the First. There are few who are not sentimentally sorry for that unhappy King, born to trouble, and earning more by his own actions; and we hate Cromwell and his men. But those must be very few indeed who are prepared to regard Charles as a Saint and a Martyr, and when any attempt is made to make him one we forget our sympathies for a cultured and good-living King, unfortunate enough to be born into distracted times and to be born without tact, and unequipped with the sense of keeping faith with his opponents; and we say that Charles was absolutely untrustworthy and a danger to the nation, and that he deserved his fate.
The Helford River is a miniature Falmouth Harbour, with subsidiary creeks. It is about six miles long and from half a mile to a quarter of a mile wide, and is frequented only by a few small yachts and sailing-boats. Above the passage-house at Durgan comes the singularly retired hamlet of Port Navas, in a small creek, with a few thatched cottages smothered in roses and jessamines. Yet the place is not so retired and remote from the sophisticated world but that one of the cottages boldly displays the notice "Afternoon Teas"; not merely "teas" that are meals, but "afternoon teas" that are, in London at any rate, understood to be, not so much teas taken in the afternoon (and when else should they be taken?), as a sparing cup and an insufficient cake, in conjunction with a great deal of more or less scandalous small-talk:
Polwheverill Creek runs up on the right to the granite-quarrying village of Constantine, but the main Helford River continues past the oyster-beds of Merthen to the hamlet of Gweek, where its farthest point is reached.
Returning round its southern shores, Mawgan-in-Meneage stands amid great swelling green hills, wooded in rich parklike manner, at the head of a tiny inlet. The St. Mawgan who has given his name to this place, and to Mawgan-in-Pydar, on the north coast of Cornwall, was the sixth-century Welshman, Maucan (the name means "master"), who was head of a religious collegiate establishment in Pembrokeshire, and there instructed many of the missionaries to Ireland and Cornwall, who afterwards became sainted, in the copious hagiology of the West.
Ecclesiastically, this village of Mawgan is "in Kerrier," but it is generally styled "in Meneage": the second syllable pronounced as in the word "vague."
But "village" is only a conventional term, as applied here. There are but half a dozen scattered cottages to keep company with the large and beautiful church.
I sketched this view of Mawgan church in "soft weather," with rain oozing down—not falling—a way it has in Cornwall. And a rustic came to the stable opposite and opened the door, and said, "Come forth, my son." I expected a boy to come out in reply to that somewhat Biblical and patriarchal invitation, but it was a horse! So, just as in Brittany, where you only get the "vraie Breton bretonnante" far away from the towns, you find your characteristic expressions in the remote nooks and corners of Cornwall.
The greater part of Mawgan church is of the late Perpendicular period. A curiously constructed hagioscope, at the angle of the south transept, is equally remarkable for the large blocks of granite used in it, and for a low side window, now blocked up by the addition of a vestry. There is a somewhat similar, but not so good, hagioscope at Cury.
A long way down Helford River from Mawgan comes Helford, a hamlet in the parish of Manaccan. Helford is at the opposite side of the ferry to Durgan, and lies down in a deep hollow of the hills. Many charmingly rustic cottages and a delightful old farmhouse face an inner creek. It is hot and steamy at Helford, and great pink ivy-geraniums ramble over the house-fronts, sprawl over the thatch, and peep inquiringly into bedroom windows.
Manaccan sits upon the hill-top. The great uncertainty often existing as to the origin and meaning of place-names is well illustrated here. Manaccan is well within the district of Meneage, which, by fairly general consent, is taken to mean the "stony district," but there are those who declare it to be in its origin "mynachau," that is to say, "monkland." "Manaccan" has also generally been considered to mean "the monks," but as the church is dedicated to Saints Menaacus and Dunstan, it seems more likely that the place takes its name from the first of these. Menaacus, Mancus, or Marnach, an early bishop, is buried, according to William of Worcester, in the church of Lanreath, near Fowey, and Lanlivery church is also dedicated to him.
The church is partly Early English, and has a very good Norman south door. A curious feature is the very flourishing fig-tree that grows out of the wall at the junction of the tower and nave, on the south side.
Manaccan stands on a lofty hill, softly clothed in rich fields and luxuriant trees, not in the least characteristic of the stony Meneage district in which it is situated.
From the heights of Manaccan a steep road, heavily shaded by tall elms, leads to a parting of the ways, whence you may go direct to St. Keverne, or turn aside to the left for the Durra Creek of Helford River, which is some two miles in length, ending in what map-makers style "Dennis Point," a corruption of "Dinas," an ancient British word signifying a fortress of the earthwork and wooden palisade type, constructed at the extremity of a headland, with the approach across the neck of it cut off by a ditch. There is one of these strongholds on either side of the entrance to the creek from the sea. Rabbits hold the fort to-day, but should there come a time when invasions threaten these parts, there can be little doubt of the eternal and unchanging requirements of strategy bringing these salient points again into use, just as, when the last conflicts in the great civil war were disturbing the nation, the Royalists established themselves here, only to be turned out by Fairfax.
The Durra Creek is generally passed by. Tourists hasten on to St. Keverne, and know nothing of the lovely rugged woodland road that runs beside the water to the church—one can scarce say the village for there are but two or three houses, including the vicarage—of St. Anthony-in-Meneage. St. Anthony stands at the very verge of high water, where a little beach ends, on the landward side, in grassy banks and blackberry tangles, from which spring great elms. Trees close in everywhere, with the grey granite tower of the church in their midst and a lovely old vicarage adjoining, wrapped, as it were, in flowers. There is not, nor ever could have been, any need for a church at this spot, and thus the legend accounting for its origin may very well be true. According to this story, some notables voyaging from Normandy in mediæval times were in great peril of shipwreck, and vowed St. Anthony a church if he would only bring them in safety to shore. They made land here, in the Durra Creek, and accordingly the church was built at the place where they set foot. There are numerous legends of this kind in Cornwall, and all around our coasts; and there is, in general, no occasion to doubt their truth, the absolute uselessness, as a rule, of these votive churches being presumptive evidence of the genuine character of their story. At the same time, it is impossible to believe that St. Anthony, or the saints to whom those other churches are dedicated, personally intervened because they were promised churches in places where they could not possibly advance the cause of religion. Surely we ought to have a better opinion of the saints than to believe them animated by such appeals to personal vanity.
The church of St. Anthony-in-Meneage fell gradually into decay. It was "awl davered," as they say in these parts, i.e. mildewed, and was not restored until recent years, when its mouldy interior was cleaned and the rotting woodwork removed. The usual cheap and nasty fittings of pitch-pine have been installed in their place. It was impossible to spare the decayed woodwork, of which two fragments remain in the tower. The vicar, at the time when the present writer was here, brought them forth to show a boating-party who had landed on the beach, and the party gushed plentifully over them. "How beautiful! how interesting!" they exclaimed; insincerely, because any beauty or interest they may once have had has utterly vanished, and left merely two almost formless logs, not good enough for firewood. The really interesting object no one understood or appreciated. This was the beautiful granite font of the thirteenth century, an exceptionally interesting example, one of the somewhat rare inscribed fonts. It is adorned with shield-bearing angels and has the inscription, "Ecce Karissimi de Deo vero baptizabuntur spiritu sancto," with the initials, Q.P., B.M., B.V., P.R., repeated. No one appears ever to have explained the significance of those initials, but it may perhaps be considered that they are not only those of the donors, which seems obvious enough, but that they are also those of the storm-tossed voyagers who gave the church.
Inside the protecting shoulder of Nare Point lies Porthallow, a fishing cove, and beyond it, in the next bight, is Porthoustock, whose fishing is now mixed with the exportation of granite. Up out of Porthoustock, over the hill and on to the next point, and you have come to the most recently tragical outlook upon the Cornish seas, for there, offshore, lie the Manacles rocks. No one but a seaman would take particular note of them, for they do but rise unobtrusively from the water.
Their odd name, forbidding and ominous though it be, and apparently allusive to the fast hold they often keep upon vessels unlucky enough to go out of their course among them, is only accidental; their original title having been, in the Cornish language, "maen eglos," the "church stone." Why they were so called does not appear. A bell-buoy, floating out there, giving out a harsh knell, might seem to justify the name, but the rocks were so called long centuries before the Trinity House placed their buoy here. There is no sadder sound than that of a bell-buoy, tolling on the brightest day with the note of a funeral knell; a likeness well justified here, for many have been cast away on the Manacles, notably in the wreck of the Dispatch transport, January 25th, 1809, when sixty-four were lost; and in that of the John emigrant ship, May 1855, with the loss of nearly two hundred.
The terrible wreck of the American steamship Mohegan, on Friday, October 14th, 1898, is the latest tragedy associated with the fatal Manacles. The vessel was on its way to New York, and had left London the day before, carrying fifty-three saloon passengers, a crew of one hundred and seven, and a stowaway. Between half-past six and seven o'clock, when the saloon passengers were at dinner, every one on board was suddenly terrified by a violent crashing and grinding and a succession of shocks, indicating only too surely that the vessel had run upon a reef. All the ship's lights went out, and the horror of darkness was added to the peril of the occasion.
The sun sets at nine minutes past five in the evening on October 14th, and it is normally quite light for an hour later. It is therefore incapable of explanation how, in something like another half-hour, the Mohegan should have been as much as ten miles out of her course, especially as the south-westerly trend of the land towards the Lizard must have been very noticeable. Nor are these coasts ill-lighted. The Eddystone and Falmouth harbour lights, which the Mohegan had already passed, and the Lizard light ahead, form a remarkable triangular display for the guidance of the mariner. But it should be noted, perhaps, that the last half-hour of daylight may be especially dangerous. The lighthouses have already lit their warning beams, but they are only faintly to be seen in the still radiant western sky, and only gather strength when the afterglow has died away and darkness falls upon the restless sea and the sombre coast. Another explanation of the captain being so far out of his reckoning was sought in the Mohegan being a new ship, and her compasses possibly not true; but nothing can actually be known, for all the officers of the ship were drowned. A strong south-easterly wind was blowing at the time, and the bell-buoy on the southern ledge of the Manacles at such times rings loudly; but no one on board appears to have heard its warning. Only two boats could be launched, so swiftly did the Mohegan sink, and one of them was capsized. The Porthoustock lifeboat saved many, but one hundred and six were drowned.
A landsman, looking out on some calm day from the low headland that stretches insignificantly out to sea south of St. Keverne cannot easily comprehend the dangers of the scatter of rocks extending seaward for nearly a mile and a half. The spot is by no means dramatic. It is even commonplace, and has no hint of the scenes of terror and despair that have been enacted out yonder. And the photographs of the wreck that were afterwards plentifully taken are probably the tamest among such things, showing merely the funnel and the four masts standing upright from the waves and disclosing that the Mohegan sank on an even keel in comparatively shallow water. Those views, taken from the water, on a calm sea, only, in the present writer's imagination, add to the pity of the occasion, for in shallow water and so near land, it seems exceptionally hard that so many should have lost their lives. The remarkable attraction of the Manacles rocks for vessels was illustrated the following year, when the Paris strayed among them, happily with no disastrous results. The Glasgow barque Glenbervie struck in moderate weather one night, in January 1902, on the Ray, a rock two miles distant, off Lowlands Point, and although the crew were saved, the vessel became a total loss.
The narrow and miraculous escapes from among this tangle of reefs have been many. The Cornish Magazine, now extinct, once published an article, in which the writer spoke of a Porthoustock fisherman telling him, from memory, the names of thirty vessels of all kinds, from steamships down to ketches, that had been totally lost here. He told a thrilling tale of a ship drifting inshore in a fog, and of the captain anchoring until the fog cleared away, when he sailed off in safety, to the astonishment of the many who had collected on the cliffs. There was also the story of the steamship which came so close to the cliffs that the noise of her engines could be distinctly heard on shore, but she, too, got away. Many have been the ships among the Manacles, and no word ever said about it; their captains even going the length of covering over the name of their vessels with a sail, lest their mistake in navigation should be published to the world.
The village of St. Keverne lies rather over a mile inland.
"St. Keverne" is another form of "St. Piran." It has also been spelled "Keveran" and "Kieran." Its church is very large and roomy, and is one of those few in Cornwall that have a spire. The fine inscribed font has demi-angels at the angles, holding crossed swords.
In the churchyard, among other memorials of shipwreck, is the granite cross, bearing the simple inscription, "MOHEGAN, R.I.P." marking where lie many of the dead who were lost in that wreck. Near by is the touching epitaph upon "Charles Cyril Brownjohn, London, aged 23. S.S. Mohegan, Oct. 14, 1898. The devoted and only son of a widowed mother. He never said an unkind word to her in his life."
I do not think there were ever any distinguished persons born at St. Keverne. One notoriety, Sir James Tillie, was born here, and one other was vicar, as would appear from the records of 1467, in which, among a number of piratical Cornishmen, who had helped themselves to a quantity of merchandise from a Breton ship, we find the vicar, whose share of the booty was three tuns of wine. An order was given to arrest these enterprising persons, but they could not be found; and so St. Keverne apparently had a new, and let us hope, a better, vicar.