Cornwall, that craggy promontory which England thrusts out into the
Atlantic as a man might thrust out his leg, is often called the "Land
of Saints." It gains this name because every other village is named
after a saint, and for the most part they are saints unknown to the
calendar, and never heard of in other parts of the country. There are
St. Cuby and St. Tudy, St. Piran and St. Ewe, St. Blazey and St. Eve,
St. Merryn and St. Buryan, St. Gennys and St. Issey, and scores of
other strangely-named saints.
The names of these saints take us back to a time when England was a
heathen country, and our Saxon forefathers still followed the worship
of Odin and Thor. Cornwall, then, was filled with British Christians,
driven west before the Saxon inroads, and the land abounded with Celtic
saints, many of them from Ireland, Wales, and Brittany.
Every saint founded a church, bearing his name, and in time the village
which grew up around the church took the name, and often bears it to
this day. The process of founding was in this fashion: When the saint,
during his wanderings through the land, came to a place where he
thought a church was needed, he begged a small piece of land from the
chief of the tribe living in that spot. Upon this patch of territory
the saint abode, fasting and praying for forty days and nights, and at
the end of that period the patch of land was sacred to him for ever,
and bore his name. Then he and his disciples built a church there, and
sometimes a monastery gathered about it. When the saint had placed all
in order at one spot, he often moved on to another, and founded a fresh
church there.
The old saints were much loved by the people, for they were always
using their influence with the chiefs and great men on the side of
mercy and kindness towards the poor and helpless. Many stories were
told of them, and are still remembered. One day St. Columba was
walking along the road, when he saw a poor widow gathering
stinging-nettles. He asked her why she did it, and she replied that
she was too poor to buy other food, and that she gathered nettles for
the pot.
"Then," said Columba, "while my people are so poor, I will eat no
better food."
He went back to the monastery and said to the disciple who prepared his
food: "From this day I will eat nothing but nettles."
But, after a time, the disciple saw that the good old man was getting
very thin and weak, and it troubled him. So he took a hollow
elder-stalk, filled it with butter, and stirred the butter into the
nettle-broth.
"The nettles have a new taste," said St. Columba; "they are rich and
sweet. I must see what you have put into them;" and he came to see
them cooked.
"You see, master dear," said his disciple, "I do not put anything into
the pot save this stick, with which I stir them."
In a rough and cruel age the saints taught people to be kind to
children and to poor dumb beasts and birds. Here is a story of a saint
and a child.
There was a saint whose name was St. Maccarthen, and the ruler of his
countryside was King Eochaid. One day the king sent his little son
with a message to the saint. The little boy's mother gave him a red,
round apple to eat on the way. The boy played with his pretty apple as
he went, tossing it up and catching it. As it happened, it rolled from
him and was lost. The child hunted here and there until he was tired
out, and as the sun was setting he laid himself down in the middle of
the way and went to sleep. As he slept, St. Maccarthen came along the
road. The saint at once wrapped his mantle round the sleeping child,
and sat beside him all night to guard his slumber. Many people passed
along the way, but the saint turned them aside, for he would neither
break the child's slumber nor permit an accident to befall him.
Many a saint had not only a church named after him, but a well also.
Cornwall is full of "holy wells." In former days these wells were held
to possess miraculous powers, and people came from great distances to
drink the sacred water and make vows to the saint in whose honour the
well was named. One of the best-known of these wells is the Well of
St. Keyne. It was believed that, in the case of a newly-married
couple, the first to drink of the water of this well would hold the
mastery of the household. Southey has a ballad on this subject,
describing how a bridegroom hurried from the church to the well. But
all in vain: his wife had taken a bottle of the water to church with
her!
Cornwall is a land of bleak, rugged granite heights and desolate moors,
with lovely dells nestling amid the wilderness, combes filled with
trees, and fields whose grass is green the winter through. Its coast
is for the most part very dangerous, with immense cliffs, broken but by
few openings. It is a coast to which the sailor gives a wide berth,
especially in stormy weather, and if he fails to do so, he will almost
certainly pay the penalty with his life. Many terrible shipwrecks have
taken place off the shores of Cornwall, especially upon the deadly
Manacles, the great reef near the Lizard, and the churchyards in the
neighbourhood are full of the graves of many and many a drowned man or
woman tossed up on the beach near at hand.
If you should go for a stroll on the cliffs about the Lizard some fine
morning in July, you would see fishermen there, smoking and staring out
to sea in, as it would seem to you, an idle fashion. But, suddenly,
one of them, who has been sitting on the turf, springs to his feet. He
begins to leap and yell as if he had gone mad. He points out to sea,
and begins to roar over the edge of the cliff to his friends below.
His companions on the watch now show an equal excitement, and you
wonder what it is all about. You look long at the place to which they
are pointing, and at length you make out that there is a darkish patch
of water over which a number of sea-birds are hovering. It is a vast
shoal of pilchards coming in-shore, and the apparent idlers on the
cliff were watching for it.
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE]
The men on the cliff are called "huers"--shouters (from the French
_huer_, to shout)--and their cries and signals direct their friends in
the boats which way to pull to surround the shoal. From the surface
the shoal cannot be seen, but the "huers" aloft can make out every
movement of the vast mass offish, and guide the fishermen below.
A pilchard is a fish which looks much like a herring, but it is
smaller, though it has larger scales. The shoals appear at the end of
June, but at that time they are in deep water, and the fishing-smacks
sail out in search of them and put down drift-nets. These nets are
hung in the water like walls of hemp set across the drift of the tide.
The pilchards swim into the nets, thrust their heads through the
meshes, and are caught by the gills. This kind of fishing can only be
carried on by night, for the pilchards are too keen-sighted to swim
into the meshes by day.
As the season advances, the pilchards come nearer in-shore, and now the
great season of the pilchard-fishery arrives. A great shoal of
pilchards is a marvellous sight. The sea appears to be literally
packed solid with them. The surface boils with their movement, and
numbers are seen leaping out of the water like trout in a stream. Now
the fishermen get out their mighty seine-nets and prepare to wall up
the multitude of pilchards.
Guided by the "huers," they shoot the great nets around the shoal till
it is enclosed. Then smaller nets are shot into the great net, and in
these the fish are drawn to the surface beside the waiting boats. It
is a wonderful sight to see the net come up. It is filled with one
quivering mass of silver, and into this mass the fishermen dip baskets
and toss the fish into the boats by scores and hundreds. When a boat
is filled, it heads at once for the shore, and a waiting boat takes its
place; and so it goes on till the great seine-net is empty.
On shore the scene is every whit as busy as on sea. Every living soul
in the fishing village swarms down to the beach to lend a hand. The
boats are rapidly emptied, and sail or pull back to the shoal; the
workers ashore carry the fish to the cellars, where the women take them
in hand. Anything and everything that will carry fish is pressed into
service. The pilchards are piled on donkey-carts, wheelbarrows, and
hand-carts; two boys have a clothes-basket between them, and small
children carry a dozen or two in little baskets. Into the cellars go
the fish as swiftly as possible.
A fish-cellar for pilchards is usually cut out of the rock, and the
floor is covered with a layer of salt. Upon this salt the women
engaged in the task of curing the fish spread a complete layer of
pilchards. Salt is spread again till the fish are covered, and then
comes another layer of pilchards; and in this way, by alternate layers
of salt and fish, the cellar is filled. On top of all are placed
weighted boards to press out the water and oil from the mass below, and
the cellar is left for some weeks for the fish to cure. Then it is
opened, and the salted fish are packed in barrels and sent away to
market.