We left Looe in the late afternoon, and toiled up the steep and stony hill that begins to ascend directly after the “Jolly Sailor” is passed. Atop of this hill we immediately and perversely lost our way, and the remainder of the afternoon was spent in plunging through “town-places”10 and fields, and climbing over Cornish hedges, until we reached the church of Talland, nestling under the lee of the hills that run down precipitously to Talland Bay. Talland Church is peculiar in having its tower set apart from the main building, and connected with it only by an archway. But its peculiarities do not end here, for the place is very much of a museum of antiquities, and epitaphs of an absurdly quaint character abound. I am afraid Talland Church echoed with our laughter, more than was seemly, on this diverting afternoon. Here is an example:—

“In Memory of
Hugh Fowler Who Departed this
Life the 10^th day of August.
In y^e year 1771. Aged 50 years Old.

Also with thin lie the remains
of Elizabeth his Wife who Died
the 6 day of April 1789 Aged 69
Years.”

Pursy cherubs of oleaginous appearance, and middle-aged double-chinned angels wearing pyjamas, decorate, with weirdly humorous aspect, the ledger-stone on which this crazy-patchwork epitaph is engraved, and grin upon you from the pavement with the half-obliterated grins of a century and more. One of them is pointing with his claw to an object somewhat resembling a crumpled dress-tie, set up on end, probably intended for an hour-glass. Here are some of these devices, reproduced exactly, neither extenuated nor with aught of exaggeration.

The low and roomy building, in places green with damp, is paved with mutilated ledger-stones, whose fragments have long ago suffered what seems to be an abiding divorce, so that disjointed invocations, and sacred names, and gruesome injunctions to “Prepare for Death,” start into being as you pace the floor. Here, too, more than in any other place, do people seem moved to verse in commemorating their departed friends, not infrequently casting their elegies in the first person, so that the dead of Talland appear to a casual observer to be the most conceited and egotistical of corpses. Of this type, the following epitaph is perhaps the most striking:—

“Erected
to the memory of
Robert Mark;
late of Polperro, who Unfortunately
was shot at Sea the 24^th day of Jan^y
in the Year of our Lord God
1802, in the 40^th Year of His AGE.

Now, this Robert Mark was a smuggler. He was at the helm of a boat which had been obliged to run before a revenue cutter, and the boat was at the point of escaping when the cutters crew opened fire, killing him on the spot.

But the most curious of all the epitaphs within the church of Talland is that engraved on the monument to “John Bevyll of Kyllygath.” The monument is an imposing edifice of slate, in the south aisle, with a figure of John Bevyll, habited in a curious Elizabethan costume, carved in somewhat high relief on top. The verses are the more curious, in that they employ archaic heraldic terms, now little known. They set out by describing the Bevyll arms, “A Rubye Bull in Perle Filde”—that is to say, in modern heraldry, a Bull gules in a field argent:—

Below are very circumstantial accounts of the marriages and intermarryings of the Bevyll family, and on the old bench ends of the church their arms are displayed with countless quarterings.

The growing dimness in the church warned us of departing day, and so we went out into the churchyard, glancing as we passed at the many mournful inscriptions to sailors and fishermen drowned at sea.

Among the old stones the following epitaph attracted our attention; it is a gem of grotesqueness.

Talland is a wild and lonely spot even in these crowded days: a hundred years ago, it was a place to be shunned by reason of devils, wraiths, and fearful apparitions, that (according to the country folk) haunted the neighbourhood. But these tricksy sprites found their match in the vicar of Talland for the time being, a noted devil-queller, and layer of gnomes, known far and wide as Parson Dodge, a cleric who never failed to exorcise the most malignant of demons; a clergyman before whom Satanus himself, to say nothing of his troops of fearful wild-fowl, was popularly believed to tremble and flee discomfited. Not only did Parson Dodge attend to the evil spirits of his own parish, he was constantly in requisition throughout the county, and, so workmanlike were his methods, I don’t believe there is an active devil of any importance in Cornwall at this day.

The vicarage was a spot to be approached with fear o’ nights, for it was reputed to be the resort of the parson’s familiars, who assembled there to do his bidding, and the place to which came baffled and unwilling imps to be finally exorcised. Whatever truth there may have been in these things, there can be little doubt, I fear, that Talland was the scene of many successful “runs” by smugglers, in which Parson Dodge took no inactive part. Supernatural spirits, it may shrewdly be surmised, were not the only ones in which that redoubtable minister was interested.