Transcriber's Note
Superscript text is indicated by caret signs, e.g. "Esq^{re}".
FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER
MEN IN FAR CORNWALL
[Illustration: Yours thankfully
RS Hawker]
FOOTPRINTS OF
FORMER MEN IN
FAR CORNWALL
BY R. S. HAWKER
VICAR OF MORWENSTOW
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION
BY C. E. BYLES
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE
[Illustration]
LONDON AND NEW YORK
JOHN LANE . MDCCCCIII
EXETER: JAMES G. COMMIN
LAUNCESTON: WALTER WEIGHELL
TRURO: JOSEPH POLLARD
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
PREFACE
Hawker’s prose sketches appeared originally as contributions to various
periodicals, and in 1870 they were published for him in book form by
Mr. John Russell Smith, as “Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall.”
In 1893, eighteen years after his death, a new edition was issued by
Messrs. Blackwood, entitled “The Prose Works of Rev. R. S. Hawker,”
containing two essays previously unpublished, “Humphrey Vivian” and
“Old Trevarten.” The late Mr. J. G. Godwin, who was Hawker’s friend
and adviser in literary matters, edited the volume, and added the
bibliographical footnotes to the several papers. In the present
edition it has been thought appropriate to revert to Hawker’s own more
picturesque title, and this is to be done also in the case of his
poetical works, which will shortly be re-issued as “Cornish Ballads
and other Poems.” The two books will thus form companion volumes. It
is interesting to read them concurrently, and to compare his treatment
of the same themes in prose and verse. An attempt has been made in
the notes to assist such a comparison by indicating some of the more
obvious parallels. In the prose, as in the poems, there is the same
deep and peculiar love of symbol and miracle and superstition, but
the prose further reveals, what might not be suspected from the poems
alone, that Hawker was a humourist as much as a mystic.
Hawker won his literary reputation as a ballad-writer, but his prose
also deserves a share in his fame. He has the gift of style. Like his
handwriting, which makes a manuscript of his a thing of beauty in
itself, it is bold and clear, free from prettiness or affectation, but
with the massive grace of his native rocks, and made distinctive by
a characteristic touch of archaism. The rugged scenery of his abode
had its influence upon his work. He was a hewer of words, as Daniel
Gumb was a hewer of stone, and his language has the strength of rough
masonry wrought in a broad and homely manner out of solid granite. The
sea, and the great spaces of lonely moorland that surrounded him, gave
to his work a sense of breadth and freedom. He is always at his best in
describing his own dearly loved Cornwall, and in particular the wild
coast by which all his years were spent. Perhaps the finest passage of
this kind is that which concludes the legend of Daniel Gumb, and which
forms a prose counterpart to that grand ending of “The Quest of the
Sangraal:”
“He ceased; and all around was dreamy night:
There stood Dundagel, throned: and the great sea
Lay, a strong vassal at his master’s gate,
And, like a drunken giant, sobb’d in sleep.”
There is an element of fiction in Hawker’s biographical studies.
He never let facts, or the absence of them, stand in the way of
his imagination, and he had a Chattertonian habit of passing off
compositions of his own as ancient manuscripts.
His letters are full of complaints that legends “invented” by himself
have been regarded by others as common property. But this is not
surprising when the said inventions wear the solemn garb of history.
Hawker had many of the qualities necessary to historical romance. His
rich native humour, and his rare gift for telling a story; his vivid
presentment of scene, character, and situation, make it a matter of
regret that he did not apply his powers more fully in this direction,
just as it is a matter of regret that his fine poem, “The Quest of the
Sangraal,” is only a fragment, though a fragment worthy to rank beside
“Hyperion.”
Both in his prose and his poetry there is a disappointing lack of
sustained effort. His literary manner and antiquarian tastes bear
many points of resemblance to those of Scott, whose novels it was his
custom to re-read every year as Christmas-time came round. In his local
and scanty degree Hawker has done for the legends and worthies of old
Cornwall what Sir Walter did for those of Scotland.
The prose impulse seems to have moved Hawker somewhat late in life,
all the following papers having been published since 1850, when he had
reached the age of forty-seven. These papers, as a matter of fact,
represent a brave effort in years of increasing pecuniary anxiety to
add to his income by his pen. His letters contain many interesting
allusions to his literary struggles and his dealings with the
editors of his day, among whom were Froude and Dickens. He also met
or corresponded with several other famous contemporaries, including
Tennyson, Longfellow, Kingsley, and Cardinals Newman and Manning.
Earlier, too, he had a correspondence with Macaulay. But on these
matters it will be more fitting to enlarge in the new memoir of Hawker,
which is in course of preparation.
It remains for me to express my warmest thanks to those who have
helped in the production of this volume. Mr. R. Pearse Chope has been
indefatigable in collecting matter for the Appendix, and his are the
notes on “Morwenstow,” “Daniel Gumb’s Rock,” “Cruel Coppinger,”
and “Thomasine Bonaventure.” This Appendix, it is hoped, will be
of interest both in itself and as showing the sources of Hawker’s
information. It enables us, too, to judge his power of imparting colour
and romance to a plain record of facts. The account of old Stowe and
the Granvilles, and their gigantic retainer, Antony Payne, has been
kindly furnished by a descendant of the great Sir Bevill, the Rev.
Prebendary Roger Granville, and it has thus a double interest. Mrs.
Waddon Martyn of Tonacombe Manor, Morwenstow, and her son, Mr. N. H.
Lawrence Martyn, have been especially kind and helpful. The Rev. John
Tagert, Vicar of Morwenstow, and his daughter, Miss Tagert, Miss Rowe
of Poughill, Miss Louisa Twining, Mr. and Mrs. William Shephard, the
Rev. Canon Bone, the Rev. Ll. W. Bevan of Stratton, Mr. J. Sommers
James, and the Rev. H. Upton Squire of Tetcott, have also rendered
generous and valuable assistance. The portraits of Black John, Arscott
of Tetcott, and Parson Rudall have been reproduced from pictures
kindly lent by Mrs. Calmady, Mrs. Ford of Pencarrow, and the Rev. S.
Baring-Gould respectively. The portrait of Black John was formerly in
the possession of Mr. Hawker.
These acknowledgments would be incomplete if they did not refer to
the zealous care bestowed by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge on his charming
illustrations. His work has been to a large extent a labour of
love. Thanks are also due to the various photographers, amateur and
professional, who have lent their aid. Mr. George Penrose, Curator of
the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro, kindly photographed the
painting of Antony Payne and the flask which formerly belonged to the
giant. The Manning tomb is from a photo by Mr. T. W. Woodruffe. The
interior of Morwenstow Church as it was in Hawker’s time is by S. Thorn
of Bude, as is also the piscina.
C. E. BYLES.
_June, 1903._
CONTENTS
PAGE
MORWENSTOW 1
THE FIRST CORNISH MOLE 27
THE GAUGER’S POCKET 32
THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS 41
THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR 46
BLACK JOHN 79
DANIEL GUMB’S ROCK 90
ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT 109
CRUEL COPPINGER 123
THOMASINE BONAVENTURE 139
THE BOTATHEN GHOST 158
A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS 176
HOLACOMBE 199
HUMPHREY VIVIAN 216
OLD TREVARTEN: A TALE OF THE PIXIES 234
APPENDICES 241
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF REV. R. S. HAWKER _Frontispiece_
_From a photograph by the late Dr. Budd, of Barnstaple._
THE PISCINA IN MORWENSTOW CHURCH
_From a photograph by S. Thorn, of Bude._
THE SHIELD OF DAVID (Fig. 1) AND THE PENTACLE OF
SOLOMON (Fig. 2), ON BOSSES IN THE ROOF OF
MORWENSTOW CHURCH
_From engravings in J. T. Blight’s “Ancient Crosses and
other Antiquities in the East of Cornwall.”_
Fig. 3, ANTONY PAYNE’S FLAGON (see p. 120)
_From a photograph by Mr. George Penrose._
INTERIOR OF MORWENSTOW CHURCH IN HAWKER’S TIME
_From a photograph by S. Thorn, of Bude._
OLD DOORWAY AT STANBURY
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
THE MANNING TOMB IN MORWENSTOW CHURCHYARD
_From a photograph by Mr. T. W. Woodruffe._
TONACOMBE MANOR
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
“BLACK JOHN”
_From a picture lent by Mrs. Calmady, and formerly
belonging to Mr. Hawker._
ARSCOTT OF TETCOTT
_From a picture in the possession of Mrs. Ford, of
Pencarrow._
THE DEVIL’S WRING, COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE CHEESEWRING
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
ANTONY PAYNE’S HOUSE AT STRATTON, NOW THE TREE INN
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
STOWE. THE SECOND HOUSE, BUILT BY JOHN, EARL OF BATH,
SON OF SIR BEVILL GRANVILLE, AND PULLED DOWN IN 1739
_From the picture in the possession of Mrs. Waddon
Martyn, at Tonacombe Manor._
ANTONY PAYNE
_From the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller, now in the
Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro._
GALSHAM, ONCE THE HOME OF CRUEL COPPINGER
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
ST. STEPHEN’S CHURCH, DUNHEVED, BY LAUNCESTON
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
DOORWAY OF THE OLD CHANTRY AND SCHOOL AT WEEK ST. MARY,
FOUNDED BY THOMASINE BONAVENTURE
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
“PARSON RUDALL”
_From a picture in the possession of Rev. S. Baring-Gould._
“THE PLACE” OF BOTATHEN
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
BOSCASTLE HARBOUR
_Drawn in lithography by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge._
The Design on the Title-page, by Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge, represents the
Carving of THE FRUITFUL VINE, in Welcombe Church.
The Panel Design on the Front Cover represents a BENCH END in
Morwenstow Church; that of the Border is the VINE CARVING of the Roof
(see p. 15).
The Panel Design on the Back represents the Carving of THE BARREN
FIG-TREE, in Welcombe Church.
FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER MEN IN FAR CORNWALL
MORWENSTOW[1]
There cannot be a scene more graphic in itself, or more illustrative
in its history of the gradual growth and striking development of the
Church in Celtic and Western England, than the parish of St. Morwenna.
It occupies the upper and northern nook of the county of Cornwall; shut
in and bounded on the one hand by the Severn Sea, and on the other by
the offspring of its own bosom, the Tamar River, which gushes, with its
sister stream the Torridge, from a rushy knoll on the eastern wilds
of Morwenstow.[2] Once, and in the first period of our history, it
was one wide wild stretch of rocky moorland, broken with masses of
dunstone and the sullen curve of the warrior’s barrow, and flashing
here and there with a bright rill of water or a solitary well. Neither
landmarks nor fences nor walls bounded or severed the bold, free,
untravelled Cornish domain. Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were
none; but strange and narrow paths gleamed across the moorlands, which
the forefathers said in their simplicity, were first traced by angel’s
feet.[3] These, in truth, were trodden and worn by religious men--by
the pilgrim as he paced his way toward his chosen and votive bourn, or
by the palmer, whose listless footsteps had neither a fixed keblah nor
a future abode. Dimly visible by the darker hue of the crushed grass,
these straight and narrow roads led the traveller along from chapelry
to cell, or to some distant and solitary cave. On the one hand, in
this scenery of the past, they would guide us to the “Chapel-piece of
St. Morwenna,” a grassy glade along the gorse-clad cliff, where to
this very day neither will bramble cling nor heather grow; and, on the
other, to the walls and roof and the grooved stone for the waterflow,
which still survive, halfway down a headlong precipice, as the relics
of St. Morwenna’s Well.[4] But what was the wanderer’s guidance along
the bleak, unpeopled surface of these Cornish moors? The wayside
cross. Such were the crosses of St. James and St. John, which even
yet give name to their ancient sites in Morwenstow, and proclaim to
the traveller that, or ever a church was reared or an altar hallowed
here, the trophy of old Syria stood in solemn stone, a beacon to the
wayfaring man, and that the soldiers of God’s army had won their
honours among the unbaptised and barbarous people!
Here, then, let us stand and survey the earliest scenery of pagan
Morwenstow. Before us lies a breadth of wild and rocky land; it is
bounded by the billowy Atlantic, with its arm of waters, and by the
slow lapse of that gliding stream of which the Keltic proverb said,
before King Arthur’s day,--
“Let Uter Pendragon do what he can,
The Tamar water will run as it ran.”
Barrows curve above the dead; a stony cross stands by a mossed and
lichened well; here and there glides a shorn and vested monk, whose
function it was, often at peril of life and limb, to sprinkle the brow
of some hard-won votary, and to breathe the Gospel of the Trinity on
the startled ear of the Keltic barbarian. Let us close this theme of
thought with a few faint echoes from the River of the West:--
“Fount of a rushing river! wild flowers wreathe
The home where thy first waters sunlight claim:
The lark sits hushed beside thee while I breathe,
Sweet Tamar spring, the music of thy name!
On! through thy goodly channel, to the sea:
Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, fair bough,
But never more with footsteps pure and free,
Or face so meek with happiness as now!
Fair is the future scenery of thy days,
Thy course domestic, and thy paths of pride;
Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet’s gaze;
Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide!
Thine, leafy Tetcott, and those neighbouring walls,
Noble Northumberland’s embowered domain:
Thine, Cartha Martha, Morwell’s rocky falls,
Storied Cotehele, and ocean’s loveliest plain.
Yet false the vision, and untrue the dream,
That lures thee from thy native wilds to stray:
A thousand griefs will mingle with that stream:
Unnumbered hearts shall sigh those waves away.
Scenes fierce with men thy seaward current laves,
Harsh multitudes will throng thy gentle brink;
Back! with the grieving concourse of thy waves;
Home! to the waters of thy childhood shrink!
Thou heedest not! thy dream is of the shore;
Thy heart is quick with life,--on! to the sea!
How will the voice of thy far streams implore
Again amid these peaceful weeds to be!
My soul! my soul! a happier choice be thine;
Thine the hushed valley and the lonely sod:
False dream, far vision, hollow hope resign,
Fast by our Tamar spring--alone with God!”
Then arrived, to people this bleak and lonely boundary with the
thoughts and doctrines of the Cross, the piety and the legend of St.
Morwenna. This was the origin of her name and place.
There dwelt in Wales in the ninth century a Keltic king, Breachan[5] by
name--it was from him that the words “Brecon” and “Brecknock” received
origin; and Gladwys was his wife and queen. They had, according to the
record of Leland, the scribe, children twenty-and-four. Now either
these were their own daughters and sons, or they were, according to the
usage of those days, the offspring of the nobles of their land, placed
for loyal and learned nurture in the palace of the king, and so called
the children of his house.
Of these Morwenna was one. She grew up wise, learned, and holy above
her generation; and it was evermore the strong desire of her soul to
bring the barbarous and pagan people among whom she dwelt to the
Christian font. Now so it was that when Morwenna was grown up to
saintly womanhood there was a king of Saxon England, and Ethelwolf
was his noble name. This was he who laid the endowment of his realm
of England on the altar of the Apostles at Rome, the first and eldest
Church-king of the islands who occupied the English throne. He,
Ethelwolf, had likewise many children; and while he intrusted to the
famous St. Swithun the guidance of his sons, he besought King Breachan
to send to his court Morwenna, that she might become the teacher of the
Princess Edith and the other daughters of his royal house.[6] She came.
She sojourned in his palace long and patiently; and she so gladdened
King Ethelwolf by her goodness and her grace, that at last he was fain
to give her whatsoever she sought.
Now the piece of ground, or the acre of God, which in those old days
was wont to be set apart or hallowed for the site of a future shrine
and church, was called the “station,” or in native speech the “stowe,”
of the martyr or saint whose name was given to the altar-stone. So, on
a certain day thus came and so said Morwenna to the King: “Largess,
my lord the king, largess, for God’s sake!” “Largess, my daughter?”
answered Ethelwolf the king; “largess! be it whatsoever it may.” Then
said Morwenna: “Sir, there is a stern and stately headland in thy
appanage of the Tamar-land, it is a boundary rugged and tall, and
it looks along the Severn Sea; they call it in that Keltic region
Hennacliff--that is to say, the Raven’s Crag--because it hath ever been
for long ages the haunt and the home of the birds of Elias.[7] Very
often, from my abode in wild Wales, have I watched across the waves
until the westering sun fell red upon that Cornish rock, and I have
said in my maiden vows, ‘Alas! and would to God a font might be hewn
and an altar built among the stones by yonder barbarous hill.’ Give me,
then, as I beseech thee, my lord the king, a station for a messenger
and a priest in that scenery of my early prayer, that so and through
me the saying of Esaias the seer may come to pass, ‘In the place of
dragons, where each lay, there may be grass with reeds and rushes.’”
Her voice was heard; her entreaty was fulfilled. They came at the cost
and impulse of Morwenna; they brought and they set up yonder font, with
the carved cable coiled around it in stone, in memory of the vessel
of the fishermen of the East anchored in the Galilæan Sea. They built
there altar and arch, aisle and device in stone. They linked their
earliest structure with Morwenna’s name, the tender and the true;
and so it is that notwithstanding the lapse of ten whole centuries of
English time, at this very day the bourn of many a pilgrim to the West
is the Station of Morwenna, or, in simple and Saxon phrase, Morwenstow.
So runs the quaint and simple legend of our Tamar-side; and so ascend
into the undated era of the ninth or tenth age the early Norman arches,
font, porch, and piscina of Morwenstow church.[8]
The endowment, in abbreviated Latin, still exists in the registry of
the diocese.[9] It records that the monks of St. John at Bridgewater,
in whom the total tithes and glebe-lands of this parish were then
vested, had agreed, at the request of Walter Brentingham, the Bishop
of Exeter, to endow an altar-priest with certain lands, bounded on the
one hand by the sea, and on the other by the Well of St. John of the
Wilderness, near the church. They surrendered, also, for this endowment
the garbæ of two bartons of vills, Tidnacomb[10] and Stanbury, the
altarage, and the small tithes of the parish. But the striking point
in this ancient document is that, whereas the date of the endowment
is A.D. 1296, the church is therein referred to by name as an old
and well-known structure. To such a remote era, therefore, we must
assign the Norman relics of antiquity which still survive, and which,
although enclosed within the walls and outline of an edifice enlarged
and extended at two subsequent periods, have to this day undergone no
material change.
We proceed to enumerate and describe these features of the first
foundation of St. Morwenna,[11] and to which I am not disposed to
assign a later origin than from A.D. 875 to A.D. 1000.
First among these is a fine Norman doorway at the southern entrance
of the present church. The arch-head is semicircular, and it is
sustained on either side by half-piers built in stone, with capitals
adorned with different devices; and the curve is crowned with the
zigzag and chevron mouldings. This moulding is surmounted by a range
of grotesque faces--the mermaid and the dolphin, the whale, and other
fellow-creatures of the deep; for the earliest imagery of the primeval
hewers of stone was taken from the sea, in unison with the great
sources of the Gospel,--the Sea of Galilee, the fishing men who were
to haul the net, and the “catchers of men.” The crown of the arch is
adorned with a richly carved, and even eloquent, device: two dragons
are crouching in the presence of a lamb, and underneath his conquering
feet lies their passive chain.
But it is time for us to unclose the door and enter in. There stands
the font in all its emphatic simplicity. A moulded cable girds it on to
the mother church; and the uncouth lip of its circular rim attests its
origin in times of a rude taste and unadorned symbolism. For wellnigh
ten centuries the Gospel of the Trinity has sounded over this silent
cell of stone, and from the Well of St. John[12] the stream has glided
in, and the water gushed withal, while another son or daughter has
been added to the Christian family. Before us stand the three oldest
arches of the Church in ancient Cornwall. They curve upon piers built
in channelled masonry, a feature of Norman days which presents a
strong contrast with the grooved pillars of solid or of a single stone
in succeeding styles of architecture. The western arch is a simple
semicircle of dunstone from the shore, so utterly unadorned and so
severe in its design that it might be deemed of Saxon origin, were
it not for its alliance with the elaborate Norman decoration of the
other two. These embrace again, and embody the ripple of the sea and
the monsters that take their pastime in the deep waters. But there is
one very graphic “sermon in stone” twice repeated on the curve and on
the shoulder of the arch. Our forefathers called it (and our people
inherit their phraseology) “The Grin of Arius.” The origin of the name
is this. It is said that the final development of every strong and
baleful passion in the human countenance is a fierce and angry laugh.
In a picture of the Council of Nicæa, which is said still to exist, the
baffled Arius is shown among the doctors with his features convulsed
into a strong and demoniac spasm of malignant mirth. Hence it became
one of the usages among the graphic imagery of interior decoration to
depict the heretic as mocking the mysteries with that glare of derision
and gesture of disdain, which admonish and instruct, by the very name
of “The Grin of Arius.” Thence were derived the lolling tongue and
the mocking mouth which are still preserved on the two corbels of
stone in this early Norman work. To this period we must also allot the
piscina,[13] which was discovered and rescued from desecration by the
present vicar.
The chancel wall one day sounded hollow when struck; the mortar was
removed, and underneath there appeared an arched aperture, which had
been filled up with jumbled carved work and a crushed drain. It was
cleared out, and so rebuilt as to occupy the exact site of its former
existence. It is of the very earliest type of Christian architecture,
and, for aught we know, it may be the oldest piscina in all the land.
At all events, it can scarcely have seen less than a thousand years.
It perpetuates the original form of this appanage of the chancel; for
the horn of the Hebrew altar,[14] as is well known to architectural
students, was in shape and in usage the primary type of the Christian
piscina. These horns were four, one at each corner, and in outline like
the crest of a dwarf pillar, with a cup-shaped mouth and a grooved
throat, to receive and to carry down the superfluous blood and water of
the sacrifices into a cistern or channel underneath. Hence was derived
the ecclesiastical custom that, whenever the chalice or other vessel
had been rinsed, the water was reverently poured into the piscina,
which was usually built into a carved niche of the southward chancel
wall. Such is the remarkable relic of former times which still exists
in Morwenstow church, verifying, by the unique and remote antiquity of
its pillared form, its own primeval origin.
[Illustration: THE PISCINA IN MORWENSTOW CHURCH
_From a photo by S. Thorn, Bude_]
But among the features of this sanctuary none exceed in singular and
eloquent symbolism the bosses of the chancel roof. Every one of these
is a doctrine or a discipline engraven in the wood by some Bezaleel or
Aholiab of early Christian days. Among these the Norman rose and the
_fleur-de-lis_ have frequent pre-eminence. The one, from the rose of
Sharon downward, is the pictured type of our Lord; the other, whether
as the lotus of the Nile or the lily of the vale, is the type of
His Virgin Mother; and both of these floral decorations were employed
as ecclesiastical emblems centuries before they were assumed into the
shields of Normandy or England. Another is the double-necked eagle,
the bird of the Holy Ghost in the patriarchal and Mosaic periods of
revelation, just as the dove afterwards became in the days of the
Gospel; and, mythic writers having asserted that when Elisha sought
and obtained from his master “a double portion of Elijah’s spirit,”
this miracle was portrayed and perpetuated in architectural symbolism
by the two necks of the eagle of Elisha. Four faces cluster on another
boss,--three with masculine features, and one with the softer impress
of a female countenance, a typical assemblage of the Trinity and the
Mother of God. Again we mark the tracery of that “piety of the birds,”
as devout writers have named the fabled usage of the pelican.[15] She
is shown baring and rending her own veins to nourish with her blood her
thirsty offspring,--a group which so graphically interprets itself to
the eye and mind of a Christian man that it needs no interpretation.
[Illustration: FIG. 2
THE PENTACLE OF SOLOMON
ON A BOSS IN THE CHANCEL ROOF AT MORWENSTOW]
But very remarkable, in the mid-roof, is the boss of the pentacle[16]
of Solomon. This was the five-angled figure which was engraven on
an emerald, and wherewith he ruled the demons;[17] for they were
the vassals of his mighty seal: the five angles in their original
mythicism, embracing as they did the unutterable name, meant, it may
be, the fingers of Omnipotence as the symbolic Hand subsequently came
forth in shadows on Belshazzar’s wall. Be this as it may, it was the
concurrent belief of the Eastern nations that the sigil of the Wise
King was the source and instrument of his supernatural power. So Heber
writes in his “Palestine”--
“To him were known, so Hagar’s offspring tell,
The powerful sigil and the starry spell:
Hence all his might, for who could these oppose?
And Tadmor[18] thus and Syrian Balbec rose.”
[Illustration: FIG. 1
THE SHIELD OF DAVID
ON A BOSS IN THE CHANCEL ROOF AT MORWENSTOW]
Hence it is that we find this mythic figure, in decorated delineation,
as the signal of the boundless might of Him whose Church bends over
all, the pentacle of Omnipotence! Akin to this graphic imagery is the
shield of David, the theme of another of our chancel-bosses. Here the
outline is six-angled: Solomon’s device with one angle more, which,
I would submit, was added in order to suggest another doctrine--the
manhood taken into God, and so to become a typical prophecy of the
Incarnation. The framework of these bosses is a cornice of vines. The
root of the vines on each wall grows from the altar-side; the stem
travels outward across the screen towards the nave. There tendrils
cling and clusters bend, while angels sustain the entire tree.
“Hearken! there is in Old Morwenna’s shrine,
A lonely sanctuary of the Saxon days,
Reared by the Severn Sea for prayer and praise,
Amid the carved work of the roof a vine.
Its root is where the eastern sunbeams fall
First in the chancel, then along the wall,
Slowly it travels on--a leafy line
With here and there a cluster; and anon
More and more grapes, until the growth hath gone
Through arch and aisle. Hearken! and heed the sign;
See at the altar-side the steadfast root,
Mark well the branches, count the summer fruit.
So let a meek and faithful heart be thine,
And gather from that tree a parable divine!”
A screen[19] divides the deep and narrow chancel from the nave. A
scroll of rich device runs across it, wherein deer and oxen browse on
the leaves of a budding vine. Both of these animals are the well-known
emblems of the baptised, and the sacramental tree is the type of the
Church grafted into God.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MORWENSTOW CHURCH AS IT WAS IN HAWKER’S
TIME, SHOWING HIS ROOD SCREEN
_From a photo by S. Thorn, Bude_]
A strange and striking acoustic result is accomplished by this and by
similar chancel-screens: they act as the tympanum of the structure, and
increase and reverberate the volume of sound. The voice uttered at the
altar-side smites the hollow work of the screen, and is carried onward,
as by some echoing instrument, into the nave and aisles; so that the
lattice-work of the chancel, which at first thought might appear to
impede the transit of the voice, does in reality grasp and deliver into
stronger echo the ministry of tone.
Just outside the screen, and at the step of the nave, is the grave
of a priest. It is identified by the reversed position of the carved
cross on the stone, which also indicates the self-same attitude in
the corpse. The head is laid down toward the east, while in all
secular interment the head is turned to the west. Until the era of
the Reformation, or possibly to a later date, the head of the priest
upon the bier for burial, and afterwards in the grave, was always
placed “versus altare;” and, according to all ecclesiastical usage,
the discipline was doctrinal also. The following is the reason as laid
down by Durandus and other writers. Because the east, “the gate of the
morning,” is the keblah of Christian hope, inasmuch as the Messiah,
whose symbolic name was “The Orient,” thence arrived, and thence, also,
will return on the chariots of cloud for the Judgment: we therefore
place our departed ones with their heads westward, and their feet and
faces towards the eastern sky,[20] that at the outshine of the Last
Day, and the sound of the archangel, they may start from their dust,
like soldiers from their sleep, and stand up before the Son of man
suddenly! But the apostles were to sit on future thrones and to assist
at the Judgment: the Master was to arrive for doom amid His ancients
gloriously, and the saints were to judge the world. These prophecies
were symbolised by the burial of the clergy, and thence, in contrast
with other dead, their posture in the grave. It was to signify that it
would be their office to arise and to “follow the Lord in the air,”
when He shall arrive from the east and pass onward, gathering up
His witnesses toward the west. Thus, in the posture of the departed
multitudes, the sign is, “We look for the Son of Man: ad Orientem
Judah.” And in the attitude of His appointed ministers, thus saith the
legend on the tombs of His priests, “They arose and followed Him.”
The eastern window of the chancel,[21] as its legend records, is the
pious and dutiful oblation of Rudolph, Baron Clinton, and Georgiana
Elizabeth his wife. The central figure embodies the legend of St.
Morwenna, who stands in the attitude of the teacher of the Princess
Edith, daughter of Ethelwolf the Founder King; on the one side is shown
St. Peter, and on the other St. Paul. The upper spandrels are filled
with a Syrian lamb, a pelican with her brood, and the three first
letters of the Saviour’s name. The window[22] itself is the recent
offering of two noble minds; and while on this theme we may be pardoned
for the natural boast that the patrons of this chancel have called by
the name of Morwenna one of the fair and graceful daughters of their
house. “Nomen, omen,” was the Roman saying,--“Nomen, numen,” be our
proverb now! But before we proceed to descend the three steps of the
chancel floor, so obviously typical of Faith, Hope, and Charity, let us
look westward through the tower-arch; and as we look we discover that
the builders, either by chance or design, have turned aside or set out
of proportional place the western window of the tower. Is this really
so, or does the wall of the chancel swerve? The deviation was intended,
nor without an error could we render the crooked straight. And the
reason is said to be this: when our Redeemer died, at the utterance
of the word τετέλεσται, “It is done!” His head declined towards His
right shoulder, and in that attitude He chose to die. Now it was to
commemorate this drooping of the Saviour’s head, to record in stone
this eloquent gesture of our Lord, that the “wise in heart,” who traced
this church in the actual outline of a cross, departed from the precise
rules of architect and carpenter.
The southern aisle, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, with its
granite and dunstone pillars, is of the later Decorated order, and
is remarkable for its singular variety of material in stone. Granite
pillars are surmounted by arches of dunstone; and, _vice versa_,
dunstone arches by pillared granite. This is again a striking example
of doctrine proclaimed in structure, and is symbolic of the fact
that the Spiritual Church gathered into one body every hue and kind
of belief; whereas “Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, bond and
free,” were to be all one in Christ Jesus: so the material building
personified, in its various and visible embrace, one Church to grasp,
and a single roof to bend over all. This, the last addition to the
ancient sanctuary of St. Morwenna, bears on the capital of a pillar
the date A.D. 1475,[23] and thus the total structure stands a graphic
monument of the growth and stature of a scene of ancient worship, which
had been embodied and completed before the invention of printing and
other modern arts had worked their revolution upon Western Europe.
The worshipper must descend three steps of stone as he enters into this
aisle of St. John; and this gradation is intended to recall the time
and the place where the multitude went down into the river of Dan “at
Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptising.”
The churchyard of Morwenstow is the scene of other features of a remote
antiquity. The roof of the total church--chancel, nave, northern and
southern aisles--is of wood. Shingles of rended oak occupy the place of
the usual, but far more recent, tiles which cover other churches; and
it is not a little illustrative of the antique usages of this remote
and lonely sanctuary, that no change has been wrought, in the long
lapse of ages, in this unique and costly, but fit and durable, roofing.
It supplies a singular illustration of the Syriac version of the 90th
Psalm, wherein, with prophetic reference to these commemorations of the
death-bed of the Messias, it is written, “Lord, Thou hast been our
roof from generation to generation.”
The northern side of the churchyard is, according to ancient usage,
devoid of graves.[24] This is the common result of an unconscious sense
among the people of the doctrine of regions--a thought coeval with
the inspiration of the Christian era. This is their division.[25] The
east was held to be the realm of the oracles, the especial gate of the
throne of God; the west was the domain of the people--the Galilee of
all nations was there; the south, the land of the mid-day, was sacred
to things heavenly and divine; but the north was the devoted region
of Satan and his hosts, the lair of the demon and his haunt. In some
of our ancient churches, and in the church of Welcombe,[26] a hamlet
bordering on Morwenstow, over against the font, and in the northern
wall, there is an entrance named the Devil’s door: it was thrown open
at every baptism, at the Renunciation, for the escape of the fiend;
while at every other time it was carefully closed. Hence, and because
of the doctrinal suggestion of the ill-omened scenery of the northern
grave-ground, came the old dislike[27] to sepulture on the north side,
so strikingly visible around this church.
The events of the last twenty years have added fresh interest to
God’s acre, for such is the exact measure of the grave ground of St.
Morwenna. Along and beneath the southern trees, side by side, are
the graves of between thirty and forty seamen, hurled by the sea, in
shipwreck, on the neighbouring rocks, and gathered up and buried there
by the present vicar and his people. The crews of three lost vessels,
cast away upon the rocks of the glebe and elsewhere, are laid at rest
in this safe and silent ground. A legend for one recording-stone
thus commemorates a singular scene. The figurehead[28] of the brig
_Caledonia_, of Arbroath, in Scotland, stands at the graves of her
crew, in the churchyard of Morwenstow:--
“We laid them in their lowly rest,
The strangers of a distant shore;
We smoothed the green turf on their breast,
’Mid baffled ocean’s angry roar!
And there--the relique of the storm--
We fixed fair Scotland’s figured form.
She watches by her bold--her brave--
Her shield towards the fatal sea;
Their cherished lady of the wave
Is guardian of their memory!
Stern is her look, but calm, for there
No gale can rend, or billow bear.
Stand, silent image, stately stand!
Where sighs shall breathe and tears be shed;
And many a heart of Cornish land
Will soften for the stranger-dead.
They came in paths of storm--they found
This quiet home in Christian ground.”
[Illustration: DOORWAY AT STANBURY, showing the initials of Kempthorne
and Manning.]
Halfway down the principal pathway of the churchyard is a granite
altar-tomb. It was raised, in all likelihood, for the old “month’s
mind,” or “year’s mind,” of the dead: and it records a sad parochial
history of the former time. It was about the middle of the sixteenth
century that John Manning, a large landowner of Morwenstow, wooed and
won Christiana Kempthorne, the vicar’s daughter. Her father was also a
wealthy landlord of the parish in that day. Their marriage united in
their own hands a broad estate, and in the midst of it the bridegroom
built for his bride the manor-house of Stanbury, and labelled the
door-heads and the hearths with the blended initials[29] of the married
pair. It was a great and a joyous day when they were wed, and the
bride was led home amid all the solemn and festal observances of the
time. There were liturgical benedictions of the mansion-house, the
hearth, and the marriage-bed; for a large estate and a high place
for their future lineage had been blended in the twain. Five months
afterwards, on his homeward way from the hunting-field, John Manning
was assailed by a mad bull, and gored to death not far from his home.
His bride, maddened at the sight of her husband’s corpse, became
prematurely a mother and died. They were laid, side by side, with their
buried joys and blighted hopes, underneath this altar-tomb--whereon the
simple legend records that there lie “John Manning and Christiana his
wife, who died A.D. 1546, without living issue.”
[Illustration: THE MANNING TOMB IN MORWENSTOW CHURCHYARD (P. 24)
_From a photo by Mr. T. W. Woodruffe_]
When the vicar of the parish arrived, in the year 1836, he brought
with him, among other carved oak furniture, a bedstead of Spanish
chestnut, inlaid and adorned with ancient veneer: and it was set up,
unwittingly, in a room of the vicarage which looked out upon the tombs.
In the right-hand panel of the framework, at the head, was grooved
in the name of John Manning; and in the place of the wife, the left
hand, Christiana Manning, with their marriage date between. Nor was
it discovered until afterwards that this was the very couch of wedded
benediction, a relic of the great Stanbury marriage, which had been
brought back and set up within sight of the unconscious grave; and
thus that the sole surviving records of the bridegroom and the bride
stood side by side, the bedstead and the tomb, the first and the last
scene of their early hope and their final rest.
Another and a lowlier grave bears on its recording-stone a broken
snatch of antique rhythm, interwoven with modern verse. A young
man[30] of this rural people, when he lay a-dying, found solace in
his intervals of pain in the remembered echo of, it may be, some
long-forgotten dirge; and he desired that the words which so haunted
his memory might somehow or other be engraved on his stone. He died,
and his parish priest fulfilled his desire by causing the following
death-verse to be set up where he lies. We shall close our legends of
Morwenstow with these simple lines.[31] The fragment which clung to the
dying man’s memory was the first only of these lines:--
“‘Sing! from the chamber to the grave!’
Thus did the dead man say,--
‘A sound of melody I crave
Upon my burial-day.
‘Bring forth some tuneful instrument,
And let your voices rise:
My spirit listened as it went
To music of the skies!
‘Sing sweetly while you travel on,
And keep the funeral slow:
The angels sing where I am gone;
And you should sing below!
‘Sing from the threshold to the porch,
Until you hear the bell;
And sing you loudly in the church
The Psalms I love so well.
‘Then bear me gently to my grave:
And as you pass along,
Remember, ’twas my wish to have
A pleasant funeral-song!
‘So earth to earth--and dust to dust--
And though my bones decay,
My soul shall sing among the just,
Until the Judgment-day?’”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The foundations of this article first appeared in Mr. Blight’s
“Ancient Cornish Crosses,” Penzance, 1850; in an article entitled
“A Cornish Churchyard,” in _Chambers’s Journal_, 1852; also, as the
“Legend of Morwenstow,” in _Willis’s Current Notes_, 1856; and in its
present extended form, in “Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall,”
1870, embodying the author’s latest corrections and impressions.
[2] Woolley Moor.
[3]
“Ah! native Cornwall, throned upon the hills,
Thy moorland pathways worn by Angel feet.”
_Quest of the Sangraal._
[4]
“If, traveller, thy happy spirit know
That awful Fount whence living waters flow,
Then hither come to draw: thy feet have found
Amidst these rocks a place of holy ground.”
_The Well of St. Morwenna._
[5] Breachan figures as a saint on a window in St. Neot’s church,
called “The Young Women’s Window,” erected in 1529 at the cost of the
maidens of the village. Mr. Baring-Gould says that “Brychan” lived in
the fifth century, and that Morwenna was probably his grand-daughter.
[6] According to Mr. Baring-Gould, this story is full of anachronisms,
arising from the confusion of three different saints, Morwenna of
Cornwall, Modwenna of Burton-on-Trent, and Monynna of Newry.
[7] Compare Hawker’s poem “A Croon on Hennacliff.”
[8] This prose description of Morwenstow church has its metrical
counterpart in “Morwennæ Statio.” The poetry in stone has never been
more beautifully expressed than by those strong and simple lines.
[9] See Appendix A.
[10] A mistake for “Tunnacomb.” See Appendix A.
[11] See Appendix A_a_.
[12] The water for baptisms at Morwenstow is always drawn from this
well, which Hawker won for the glebe by a law-suit soon after his
appointment to the living.
[13] See Appendix A.
[14] In Blight’s book on “Ancient Cornish Crosses,” etc., there is an
engraving of the Morwenstow Piscina and a Hebrew altar, with a note by
Hawker.
[15] Among some unpublished MSS. of Hawker’s is the following verse,
dated 1840:--
“Thus said the pious Pelican unto her thirsty Young,
‘Drink, drink! my desert children: be beautiful and strong.
What tho’ it be the lifeblood from my veins ye drain away;
Ye will grow and glide in glory, and for me, O let me die.’”
[16] Hawker had a seal engraved with this pentacle. Compare the lines
in his poem “Baal-Zephon.”
“Oh for the Sigil! or the chanted spell!
The pentacle that Demons know and dread.”
In a letter to Miss Louisa Twining, Hawker writes: “The pentacle of
Solomon, or five-pointed figure, was derived from his seal wherewith
he ruled the genii. It was a sapphire, and it contained a hand _alive_
which grasped a small serpent, also alive. Through the bright gem both
were visible, the hand and the ‘worm’ as of old they called it. When
invoked by the king, the fingers moved and the serpent writhed and
miracles were wrought by spirits which were vassals of the gem....
Because of this mystic Hand the pentacle or five-pointed (fingered)
figure became the Sigil of Signomancy in the early ages.”
[17] For an instance of its use in exorcism, see the “Botathen Ghost”
story, p. 158.
[18] “And Solomon built ... Baalath, and Tadmor in the Wilderness” (1
Kings ix. 17-18).
[19] This screen was constructed by Mr. Hawker from the rescued
remnants of an older screen, pieced together with ironwork. It has
since been taken down, and the old carving placed in other parts of the
church.
[20] See Appendix A_b_.
[21] The chancel has been restored by Lord Clinton. The old altar
ornaments used by Mr. Hawker are preserved in the vestry.
[22] See note on p. 6. Two new lancet windows have since been placed
in the chancel, one by Mrs. Waddon Martyn, of Tonacombe, in memory of
her husband, the other by friends of the Rev. J. Tagert, to commemorate
the restoration of the church during his vicariate. A larger memorial
window has also been placed by the Martyn family at the east end of the
north aisle.
[23] This appears to be an error, as the date on the pillar (in Roman
figures) is 1564. (See Appendix A.)
[24] See Appendix A_b_.
[25] Compare the apportionment of the regions among the four great
knights, Lancelot, Perceval, Tristan, and Galahad, in “The Quest of the
Sangraal.”
“Let us arise
And cleave the earth like rivers; like the streams
That win from Paradise their immortal name:
To the four winds of God, casting the lot....”
The mystic attributes of the four regions are told in lines of
incomparable grandeur.
[26] More about this village is to be found in the article “Holacombe.”
[27] This dislike is disappearing. When I was at Welcombe recently
a grave was being dug on the northern side of the church. The
grave-digger said he had been christened and married by Mr. Hawker:
“one of the best passons,” he added, “us ever had.”--ED.
[28] See p. 62.
[29] These initials are still to be seen at Stanbury, now a farmhouse.
The scene of Mr. Baring-Gould’s novel “The Gaverocks” is partly laid
there.
[30] Richard Cann, who died February 15, 1842. Compare Hawker’s
head-note to the poem in “Cornish Ballads,” where it is called “The
Dirge.”
[31] It may be said that the first editions of some of Hawker’s poems
are on the grave-stones in Morwenstow churchyard. Other verses of
this kind are those “On the Grave of a Child,” and some of the prose
inscriptions bear traces of the same authorship.
THE FIRST CORNISH MOLE[32]
A MORALITY FROM THE ROCKY LAND
A lonely life for the dark and silent mole! Day is to her night. She
glides along her narrow vaults, unconscious of the glad and glorious
scenes of earth and air and sea. She was born, as it were, in a grave;
and in one long, living sepulchre she dwells and dies. Is not existence
to her a kind of doom? Wherefore is she thus a dark, sad exile from the
blessed light of day? Hearken!