The original name of this parish was the same with the name of the
manor Elerchi, or Elerky; that the appellation of the manor in
Domesday Book, this in the present time, and both derived from the
manerial house. This house stood upon a rising ground, nearly opposite
to the church, and on the west of it, which is now covered with
several houses of a mean condition, and yet marked as something
considerable to the eye, by a grove of tall trees upon it. The great
house, which the ancestors of these trees shaded, has been long down,
I suppose; and the mean houses on the ground have been constructed of
the poorest remains of it. It was bounded on the south by the lane
leading down to its own mills, still called Elerky Mills, and
distinctively noted as higher and lower; and on the east and north by
its lively brook, without a name, that divides the glebe from the
manor, then environs the house, and finally runs to the two mills
below. The manor is accordingly noticed so late as the 5th of Charles
the First, to have two mills within it. These mills even now proclaim
their original relation to each other, by the restrictions which the
higher is under to the lower, in not being able to keep up the water
from the other, beyond a certain space of time. And the house thus
environed by the brook could not have been very small, as it was the
mansion of a district, which in the 12th of Edward the First was
reckoned at forty-two acres, when so many are valued in much less, and
when so few are valued in more; but whence is the original name of
this house derived? Mr. Tonkin derives it from Elerk (C.) a swan, and
makes Elerky to signify the swannery, adding, that “there are the
remains of a large pool under the house, which seems to have been
designed to that end.” In all that part of antiquarian researches
where the eye is to be assisted by the imagination, and the past to be
collected from the broken appearances of the present; every active and
lively mind is apt to cry out against the creative fancies of the
antiquarian poet, and to exclaim in the language of Shakspeare,
――――As imagination bodies forth
The form of things unseen, the Poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
But this spirit of exclamation should be checked. What depends in any
degree upon imagination, may by minds without imagination be easily
turned into ridicule. What is only to be inferred by slow and painful
collation of circumstances, will be ridiculed at once by those who are
too brisk to be slow, and too lively to take pains. And the very
ingeniousness of antiquaries themselves, will at times be a snare to
them also, by inducing them to cut short the labour of investigation,
to ridicule the dull laboriousness of conjecturing industry, and to
leap over the difficulty which it will not take the trouble to remove.
On the whole, therefore, I think Mr. Tonkin’s etymology of Elerky to
be the only one which is easy and natural, and his reference to
“remains of a large pool under the house,” to be sufficiently
grounded. There has evidently been something of the kind there. A
little dam below would easily make one now. The remains were probably
more in Mr. Tonkin’s time than they now are. And these corroborating,
and corroborated by the positive import of Eala, (I.) Alarch (W.) and
Elerk, Elerchy (C.) a swan, and the undoubted signification of the
latter when thus combined Elerch Chy (C.) for a swan’s house, compel
us to adopt the etymon.
But this name has been entirely superseded in popular use by the name
of the saint. So much was the spiritual patron of a church considered
and talked of, that his name was used to the total neglect of the
other. But who was the saint of this church? Symphorian, says Mr.
Tonkin; and Mr. Tonkin is right. It seems odd indeed to suppose such a
corruption of a name as this; Symphorian changed into Veryan. But we
see in Leland, (Itin. ii, 112), that the parish of Trevenny at
Tintagel in this county, “is of S. Symphorian, ther caullid
Simiferian.” This is exactly in point. Symphorian was called in this
parish, as well as in Trevenny, Simiforian or Simiferian, in order to
accommodate it more to our liquified pronunciation. It would then be
sure to be abridged soon, for the more rapid pronunciation of it, by
leaving out the first half of the name, and taking only the last, just
as Elizabeth is popularly abbreviated into Bet. The name would thus be
Phorian, Ferian, Voryan, or Verian; as we have an estate in the parish
before, denominated Tre-Veryan, and as the ordinary appellation of the
parish is St. Veryan in a record above, and in common conversation
Veryan. And the time of observing the parish feast coincides with all,
and confirms it; Symphorian, of Autun in Burgundy, having suffered
martyrdom the 22d of August; and the feast in honour of his martyrdom
being observed accordingly. Eight years ago the feast was agreed, for
the sake of the harvest, to be postponed one month; as, upon the same
principle, the memory of the parishioners says, it had been previously
postponed one fortnight. It is now kept on the first Sunday in
October, was previously kept on the first in September, and originally
on the third Sunday in August.
Nor can the name of St. Symphrogia, or Simprosia, which is said to
occur as the title of the parish “in many fines, records, &c.” be any
thing else than a corruption of St. Symphorian. And as a full
evidence, I find the picture of St. Veryan and his wife were within
memory to be seen in the eastern window of the church.
The square tower of Veryan church appears from its position on the
side of the church, and at the south-western end of the chancel, to
have been an addition to the church. After the lord had deserted
Elerkey for Ruan, the lord’s chapel was lengthened out into a belfry,
with a tower over it. The architecture of this tower seems to a
passing eye different from that of the church itself. And within, I
doubt not, evident traces will appear on examination, of the
posteriority of the tower to the church.