the land. Her abode was in the far west, among the hills of Morwenna,
beside the Severn Sea. She was the daughter of a lordly race, the only
child of her mother; and the father of the house was dead: her name
was Alice of the Combe. Fair was she and comely, tender and tall; and
she stood upon the threshold of her youth. But most of all did men
marvel at the glory of her large blue eyes. They were, to look upon,
like the summer waters, when the sea is soft with light. They were
to her mother a joy, and to the maiden herself, ah! _benedicite_, a
pride. She trusted in the loveliness of those eyes, and in her face
and features and form; and so it was that the damsel was wont to
pass the whole summer day in the choice of rich apparel and precious
stones and gold. Howbeit this was one of the ancient and common usages
of those old departed days. Now, in the fashion of her stateliness
and in the hue and texture of her garments, there was none among the
maidens of old Cornwall like Alice of the Combe. Men sought her far and
near, but she was to them all, like a form of graven stone, careless
and cold. Her soul was set upon a Granville’s love, fair Sir Beville
of Stowe--the flower of the Cornish chivalry--that noble gentleman!
That valorous knight! he was her star. And well might she wait upon
his eyes; for he was the garland of the west. The loyal soldier of a
Stuart king--he was that stately Granville who lived a hero’s life and
died a warrior’s death! He was her star. Now there was signal made of
banquet in the halls of Stowe, of wassail and dance. The messenger
had sped, and Alice of the Combe would be there. Robes, precious and
many, were unfolded from their rest, and the casket poured forth jewel
and gem, that the maiden might stand before the knight victorious. It
was the day--the hour--the time--her mother sate at her wheel by the
hearth--the page waited in the hall--she came down in her loveliness,
into the old oak room, and stood before the mirrored glass--her robe
was of woven velvet, rich and glossy and soft; jewels shone like stars
in the midnight of her raven hair, and on her hand there gleamed afar
off a bright and glorious ring! She stood--she gazed upon her own fair
countenance and form, and worshipped! “Now all good angels succour
thee, my Alice, and bend Sir Beville’s soul! Fain am I to greet thee
wedded wife before I die! I do yearn to hold thy children on my knee!
Often shall I pray to-night that the Granville heart may yield! Ay,
thy victory shall be thy mother’s prayer.” “Prayer!” was the haughty
answer: “now, with the eyes that I see in that glass, and with this
vesture meet for a queen, I lack no trusting prayer!”[33] Saint Juliot
shield us! Ah! words of fatal sound--there was a sudden shriek, a sob,
a cry, and where was Alice of the Combe? Vanished, silent, gone! They
had heard wild tones of mystic music in the air, there was a rush, a
beam of light, and she was gone, and that for ever! East sought they
her, and west, in northern paths and south; but she was never more
seen in the lands. Her mother wept till she had not a tear left; none
sought to comfort her, for it was vain. Moons waxed and waned, and the
crones by the cottage hearth had whiled away many a shadowy night with
tales of Alice of the Combe. But at the last, as the gardener in the
pleasaunce[34] leaned one day on his spade, he saw among the roses a
small round hillock of earth, such as he had never seen before, and
upon it something which shone. It was her ring! It was the very jewel
she had worn the day she vanished out of sight! They looked earnestly
upon it, and they saw within the border, for it was wide, the tracery
of certain small fine runes in the ancient Cornish tongue, which said--
“Beryan erde
Oyn und perde!”
Then came the priest of the place of Morwenna, a grey and silent man!
He had served long years at his lonely altar, a worn and solitary form.
But he had been wise in language in his youth, and men said that he
heard and understood voices in the air when spirits speak and glide. He
read and he interpreted thus the legend on the ring,--
“The earth must hide,
Both eyes and Pride!”
Now as on a day he uttered these words, in the pleasaunce, by the
mound, on a sudden there was among the grass a low faint cry. They
beheld, and oh, wondrous and strange! There was a small dark creature,
clothed in a soft velvet skin in texture and in hue like the Lady
Alice her robe, and they saw, as it groped into the earth, that it
moved along without eyes, in everlasting night! Then the ancient man
wept, for he called to mind many things and saw what they meant; and he
showed them how that this was the maiden, who had been visited with a
doom for her Pride! Therefore her rich array had been changed into the
skin of a creeping thing; and her large proud eyes were sealed up, and
she herself had become
THE FIRST MOLE OF THE HILLOCKS OF CORNWALL!
Ah, woe is me and well-a-day! that damsel so stately and fair, sweet
Lady Alice of the Combe, should become, for a judgment, the dark mother
of the Moles! Now take ye good heed, Cornish maidens, how ye put on
vain apparel to win love! And cast down your eyes, all ye damsels of
the west, and look meekly on the ground! Be ye ever good and gentle,
tender and true; and when ye see your own image in the glass, and ye
begin to be lifted up with the loveliness of that shadowy thing, call
to mind the maiden of the vale of Morwenna, her noble eyes and comely
countenance, her vesture of price, and the glittering ring! Set ye by
the wheel as of old they sate, and when ye draw forth the lengthening
wool, sing ye evermore and say--
“Beryan erde
Oyn und perde!”
FOOTNOTES:
[32] From _Notes & Queries_, 1st ser., vol. ii. p. 225. 1850. See
Appen. B.
[33] Compare “The Silent Tower of Bottreaux.”
“Thank God, thou whining knave! on land,
But thank, at sea, the steersman’s hand.”
[34] The scene of this legend is pointed out in the garden at Tonacombe
Manor.
THE GAUGER’S POCKET[35]
Poor old Tristram Pentire! How he comes up before me as I pronounce his
name! That light, active, half-stooping form, bent as though he had a
brace of kegs upon his shoulders still; those thin, grey, rusty locks
that fell upon a forehead seamed with the wrinkles of threescore years
and five; the cunning glance that questioned in his eye, and that nose
carried always at half-cock, with a red blaze along its ridge, scorched
by the departing footstep of the fierce fiend Alcohol, when he fled
before the reinforcements of the coast-guard.
He was the last of the smugglers; and when I took possession of my
glebe, I hired him as my servant-of-all-work, or rather no-work, about
the house, and there he rollicked away the last few years of his
careless existence, in all the pomp and idleness of “The parson’s man.”
He had taken a bold part in every landing on the coast, man and boy,
full forty years; throughout which time all kinds of men had largely
trusted him with their brandy and their lives, and true and faithful
had he been to them, as sheath to steel.
Gradually he grew attached to me, and I could but take an interest in
him. I endeavoured to work some softening change in him, and to awaken
a certain sense of the errors of his former life. Sometimes, as a sort
of condescension on his part, he brought himself to concede and to
acknowledge, in his own quaint, rambling way--
“Well, sir, I do think, when I come to look back, and to consider what
lives we used to live,--drunk all night and idle abed all day, cursing,
swearing, fighting, gambling, lying, and always prepared to shet
[shoot] the gauger,--I do really believe, sir, we surely was in sin!”
But, whatever contrite admissions to this extent were extorted
from old Tristram by misty glimpses of a moral sense and by his
desire to gratify his master, there were two points on which he was
inexorably firm. The one was, that it was a very guilty practice in
the authorities to demand taxes for what he called run goods; and the
other settled dogma of his creed was, that it never could be a sin
to make away with an exciseman. Battles between Tristram and myself
on these themes were frequent and fierce; but I am bound to confess
that he always managed, somehow or other, to remain master of the
field. Indeed, what Chancellor of the Exchequer could be prepared to
encounter the triumphant demand with which Tristram smashed to atoms
my suggestions of morality, political economy, and finance? He would
listen with apparent patience to all my solemn and secular pleas
for the revenue, and then down he came upon me with the unanswerable
argument--
“But why should the king tax good liquor? If they _must_ have taxes,
why can’t they tax something else?”
My efforts, however, to soften and remove his doctrinal prejudice as to
the unimportance, in a moral point of view, of putting the officers of
his Majesty’s revenue to death, were equally unavailing. Indeed, to my
infinite chagrin, I found that I had lowered myself exceedingly in his
estimation by what he called standing up for the exciseman.
“There had been divers passons,” he assured me, “in his time in the
parish, and very learned clergy they were, and some very strict; and
some would preach one doctrine and some another; and there was one
that had very mean notions about running goods, and said ’twas a wrong
thing to do; but even he, and the rest, never took part with the
gauger--never! And besides,” said old Trim, with another demolishing
appeal, “wasn’t the exciseman always ready to put _us_ to death when he
could?”
With such a theory it was not very astonishing--although it startled
me at the time--that I was once suddenly assailed, in a pause of his
spade, with the puzzling inquiry, “Can you tell me the reason, sir,
that no grass will ever grow upon the grave of a man that is hanged
unjustly?”
“No, indeed, Tristram. I never heard of the fact before.”
“Well, I thought every man know’d that from the Scripture: why, you
can see it, sir, every Sabbath-day. That grave on the right hand of
the path, as you go down to the porch-door, that heap of airth with no
growth, not one blade of grass on it--that’s Will Pooly’s grave that
was hanged unjustly.”
“Indeed! but how came such a shocking deed to be done?”
“Why, you see, sir, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among
strangers, and there was bribery, and false swearing; and an unjust
judge came down--and the jury all bad rascals, tin-and-copper-men--and
so they all agreed together, and they hanged poor Will. But his friends
begged the body and brought the corpse home here to his own parish; and
they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over, but
’twas all no use, nothing would ever grow--he was hanged unjustly.”
“Well, but, Tristram, you have not told me all this while what this man
Pooly was accused of: what had he done?”
“Done, sir! Done? Nothing whatever but killed the exciseman!”
The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance, were inimitably
characteristic of the hardened old smuggler; and then down went the
spade with a plunge of defiance, and as I turned away, a snatch of his
favourite song came carolling after me like the ballad of a victory:--
“On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There’s a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!
Hush! for the beacon fails:
The skulking gauger’s by.
Down with your studding-sails,
Let jib and foresail fly!
Hurrah for the light once more!
Point her for Shark’s-Nose Head;
Our friends can keep the shore,
Or the skulking gauger’s dead.
On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There’s a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!”
Among the “king’s men,” whose achievements haunted the old man’s memory
with a sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and
his dog occupied a principal place. This officer appeared to have been
a kind of Frank Kennedy[36] in his way, and to have chosen for his
watchword the old Irish signal, “Dare!”
“Sir,” said old Tristram once, with a burst of indignant wrath--“Sir,
that villain Parminter and his dog murdered with their shetting-irons
no less than seven of our people at divers times, and they peacefully
at work in their calling all the while!”
I found on further inquiry that this man Parminter was a bold and
determined officer, whom no threats could deter and no money bribe. He
always went armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large, fierce,
and dauntless dog, which he had thought fit to call Satan. This animal
he had trained to carry in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which,
at a signal from his master, Satan brought to the rescue. “Ay, they was
bold audacious rascals--that Parminter and his dog--but he went rather
too far one day, as I suppose,” was old Tristram’s chuckling remark, as
he leaned on his spade, and I stood by.
“Did he, Trim; in what way?”
“Why, sir, the case was this. Our people had a landing down at
Melhuach,[37] in Johnnie Mathey’s hole, and Parminter and his dog
found it out. So they got into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait,
and when the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took the
ground, down storms Parminter, shouting for Satan to follow. The dog
knew better, and held back, they said, for the first time in all his
life: so in leaps Parminter smash into the boat alone, with his cutlass
drawn; but” (with a kind of inward ecstasy) “he didn’t do much harm to
the boat’s crew----”
“Because,” as I interposed, “they took him off to their ship?”
“No, not they; not a bit of it. Their blood was up, poor fellows; so
they just pulled Parminter down in the boat, and chopped off his head
on the gunwale!”
The exclamation of horror with which I received this recital elicited
no kind of sympathy from Tristram. He went on quietly with his work,
merely moralising thus--“Ay, better Parminter and his dog had gone now
and then to the Gauger’s Pocket at Tidnacombe[38] Cross, and held their
peace--better far.”
The term “The Gauger’s Pocket,” in old Tristram’s phraseology, had
no kind of reference to any place of deposit in the apparel of the
exciseman, but to a certain large grey rock, which stands upon a
neighbouring moorland, not far from the cliffs which overhang the
sea. It bears to this day, among the parish people, the name of the
Witan-stone--that is to say, in the language of our forefathers, the
Rock of Wisdom; because it was one of the places of usual assemblage
for the Grey Eldermen of British or of Saxon times--a sort of speaker’s
chair or woolsack in the local parliaments. It was, moreover, there is
no doubt, one of the natural altars of the old religion; and, as such,
it is greeted with a fond and legendary reverence still. Hither Trim
guided me one day, to show, as he told me, “the great rock set up by
the giants, so they said--long, long ago, before there was any bad laws
such as they make now.” It was indeed a wild, strange, striking scene;
and one to lift and fill, and, moreover, to subdue the thoughtful mind.
Around was the wild, half-cultured moor; yonder, within reach of sight
and ear, that boundless, breathing sea, with that shout of waters which
came up ever and anon to recall the strong metre of the Greek[39]--
“Hark! how old ocean laughs with all his waves!”
And there, before me, stood the tall, vast, solemn stone: grey and
awful with the myriad memorials of ancient ages, when the white fathers
bowed around the rocks and worshipped!
“And now, sir,” clashed in a shrill, sharp voice, “let me show you the
wonderfullest thing in all the place, and that is, the Gauger’s Pocket.”
Accordingly I followed my guide, for it seems “I had a dream that was
not all a dream,” as he led the way to the back of the Witan-stone;
and there, grown over with moss and lichen, with a movable slice of
rock to conceal its mouth, old Tristram pointed out, triumphantly, a
dry and secret crevice, almost an arm’s-length deep. “There, sir,” said
he, with a joyous twinkle in his eye,--“there have I dropped a little
bag of gold, many and many a time, when our people wanted to have the
shore quiet and to keep the exciseman out of the way of trouble; and
there he would go, if so be he was a reasonable officer, and the byword
used to be, when ’twas all right, one of us would go and meet him, and
then say, ‘Sir, your pocket is unbuttoned;’ and he would smile and
answer, ‘Ay, ay! but never mind, my man, my money’s safe enough;’ and
thereby we knew that he was a just man, and satisfied, and that the
boats could take the roller in peace; and that was the very way, sir,
it came to pass that this crack in the stone was called for evermore
‘The Gauger’s Pocket.’”
FOOTNOTES:
[35] From _Household Words_, vol. vi. pp. 515-517. 1853.
[36] A character in “Guy Mannering.”
[37] A cove some six miles S.W. of Bude. Hawker has a poem on the death
of a noted smuggler, “Mawgan of Melhuach.”
[38] A mistaken spelling: see Appendix A.
[39] The allusion is to a passage in Æschylus, “Prom. Vinct.” 90.
ποντίων τε κυμάτων
ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα.
It was a favourite metaphor of Hawker’s, and occurs over and over again
in his poetry. The best instance is in “The Quest of the Sangraal,”
where he apostrophises Cornwall.
“Thy streams that march in music to the sea,
’Mid Ocean’s merry noise, his billowy laugh.”
THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS[40]
The life and adventures of the Cornish clergy during the eighteenth
century would form a graphic volume of ecclesiastical lore. Afar off
from the din of the noisy world, almost unconscious of the badge-words
High Church and Low Church, they dwelt in their quaint grey vicarages
by the churchyard wall, the saddened and unsympathising witnesses of
those wild, fierce usages of the west which they were utterly powerless
to control. The glebe whereon I write has been the scene of many an
unavailing contest in the cause of morality between the clergyman and
his flock. One aged parishioner recalls and relates the run--that
is, the rescue--of a cargo of kegs underneath the benches and in the
tower-stairs of the church. “We bribed Tom Hockaday, the sexton,” so
the legend ran, “and we had the goods safe in the seats by Saturday
night. The parson did wonder at the large congregation, for divers
of them were not regular church-goers at other times; and if he had
known what was going on he could not have preached a more suitable
discourse, for it was, ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.’
One of his best sermons; but there it did not touch us, you see, for
we never tasted anything but brandy or gin. Ah! he was a dear old man
our parson, mild as milk; nothing ever put him out. Once I mind, in
the middle of morning prayer, there was a buzz down by the porch, and
the folks began to get up and go out of church one by one. At last
there was hardly three left. So the parson shut the book and took off
his surplice, and he said to the clerk, ‘There is surely something
amiss.’ And so there certainly was; for when we came out on the cliff
there was a king’s cutter in chase of our vessel, the _Black Prince_,
close under the land, and there was our departed congregation looking
on. Well, at last Whorwell, who commanded our trader, ran for the
Gullrock (where it was certain death for anything to follow him), and
the revenue commander sheered away to save his ship. Then off went our
hats, and we gave Whorwell three cheers. So, when there was a little
peace, the parson said to us all, ‘And now, my friends, let us return
and proceed with divine service.’ We did return; and it was surprising,
after all that bustle and uproar, to hear how Parson Trenowth went on,
just as nothing had come to pass: ‘Here beginneth the Second Lesson.’”
But on another occasion, the equanimity and forbearance of the parson
were sorely tired. He presided, as the custom was, at a parish feast,
in cassock and bands, and had, with his white hair and venerable
countenance, quite an apostolic aspect and mien. On a sudden, a busy
whisper among the farmers at the lower end of the table attracted his
notice, interspersed as it was by sundry nods and glances towards
himself. At last one bolder than the rest addressed him, and said that
they had a great wish to ask his reverence a question if he would
kindly grant them a reply: it was on a religious subject that they had
dispute, he said. The bland old man assured them of his readiness to
yield them any information or answer in his power.
“But what was the point in debate?”
“Why, sir, we wish to be informed if there were not sins which God
Almighty would never forgive?”
Surprised and somewhat shocked, he told them “that he trusted there
were no transgressions, common to themselves, but, if repented of and
abjured, they might clearly hope to be forgiven.” But, with a natural
curiosity, he inquired what kind of iniquities they had discussed as
too vile to look for pardon. “Why, sir,” replied their spokesman, “we
thought that if a man should find out where run goods was deposited and
should inform the gauger, that such a villain was too bad for mercy.”
How widely the doctrinal discussions of those days differed from our
own! Let us not, however, suppose that all the clergy were as gentle
and unobtrusive as Parson Trenowth. A tale is told of an adjacent
parish, situate also on the sea-shore, of a more stirring kind. It
was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when a traveller arrived
where the road ran along by a sandy beach, just above high-water
mark. The stranger, who was a native of some inland town, and utterly
unacquainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the brink of
the tide just as a “landing” was coming off. It was a scene not only
to instruct a townsman but also to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just
beyond the billows, lay the vessel well moored with anchors at stem and
stern. Between the ship and the shore boats laden to the gunwale passed
to and fro. Crowds assembled on the beach to help the cargo ashore. On
the one hand a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head knocked
in, for simplicity of access to the good cognac, into which they dipped
whatsoever vessel came first to hand: one man had filled his shoe. On
the other side they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore. Horrified
at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and, oblivious of
personal danger, he began to shout, “What a horrible sight! Have you no
shame? Is there no magistrate at hand? Cannot any justice of the peace
be found in this fearful country?”
“No--thanks be to God,” answered a hoarse, gruff voice; “none within
eight miles.”
“Well, then,” screamed the stranger, “is there no clergyman hereabout?
Does no minister of the parish live among you on this coast?”
“Ay! to be sure there is,” said the same deep voice.
“Well, how far off does he live? Where is he?”
“That’s he yonder, sir, with the lanthorn.” And sure enough there he
stood, on a rock, and poured, with pastoral diligence, the light of
other days on a busy congregation.
FOOTNOTE:
[40] From _Household Words_, vol. viii. pp. 305, 306. 1853.
THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR[41]