leading directly to the "Cheese-Wring" rocks (so called from their
supposed resemblance to a Cornish cheese-press or "_wring_"). On our
road to this curiosity, about a mile and a half from St. Clare's Well,
we stopped to look at one of the most perfect and remarkable of the
ancient British monuments in Cornwall. It is called Trevethey Stone, and
consists of six large upright slabs of granite, overlaid by a seventh,
which covers them in the form of a rude, slanting roof. These slabs are
so irregular in form as to look quite unhewn. They all vary in size and
thickness. The whole structure rises to a height, probably, of fourteen
feet; and, standing as it does on elevated ground, in a barren country,
with no stones of a similar kind erected near it, presents an appearance
of rugged grandeur and aboriginal simplicity, which renders it an
impressive, almost a startling object to look on. Antiquaries have
discovered that its name signifies The Place of Graves; and have
discovered no more. No inscription appears on it; the date of its
erection is lost in the darkest of the dark periods of English history.
Our path had been gradually rising all the way from St. Clare's Well;
and, when we left Trevethey Stone, we still continued to ascend,
proceeding along the tram-way leading to the Caraton Mine. Soon the
scene presented another abrupt and extraordinary change. We had been
walking hitherto amid almost invariable silence and solitude; but now,
with each succeeding minute, strange, mingled, unintermitting noises
began to grow louder and louder around us. We followed a sharp curve in
the tram-way, and immediately found ourselves saluted by an entirely new
prospect, and surrounded by an utterly bewildering noise. All about us
monstrous wheels were turning slowly; machinery was clanking and
groaning in the hoarsest discords; invisible waters were pouring onward
with a rushing sound; high above our heads, on skeleton platforms, iron
chains clattered fast and fiercely over iron pulleys, and huge steam
pumps puffed and gasped, and slowly raised and depressed their heavy
black beams of wood. Far beneath the embankment on which we stood, men,
women, and children were breaking and washing ore in a perfect marsh of
copper-coloured mud and copper-coloured water. We had penetrated to the
very centre of the noise, the bustle, and the population on the surface
of a great mine.
When we walked forward again, we passed through a thick plantation of
young firs; and then, the sounds behind us became slowly and solemnly
deadened the further we went on. When we had arrived at the extremity of
the line of trees, they ceased softly and suddenly. It was like a change
in a dream.
We now left the tram-way, and stood again on the moor--on a wilder and
lonelier part of it than we had yet beheld. The Cheese-Wring and its
adjacent rocks were visible a mile and a half away, on the summit of a
steep hill. Wherever we looked, the horizon was bounded by the long,
dark, undulating edges of the moor. The ground rose and fell in little
hillocks and hollows, tufted with dry grass and furze, and strewn
throughout with fragments of granite. The whole plain appeared like the
site of an ancient city of palaces, overthrown and crumbled into atoms
by an earthquake. Here and there, some cows were feeding; and sometimes
a large crow winged his way lazily before us, lessening and lessening
slowly in the open distance, until he was lost to sight. No human beings
were discernible anywhere; the majestic loneliness and stillness of the
scene were almost oppressive both to eye and ear. Above us, immense
fleecy masses of brilliant white cloud, wind-driven from the Atlantic,
soared up grandly, higher and higher over the bright blue sky.
Everywhere, the view had an impressively stern, simple, aboriginal look.
Here were tracts of solitary country which had sturdily retained their
ancient character through centuries of revolution and change; plains
pathless and desolate even now, as when Druid processions passed over
them by night to the place of the secret sacrifice, and skin-clad
warriors of old Britain halted on them in council, or hurried across
them to the fight.
On we went, up and down, in a very zig-zag course, now looking forward
towards the Cheese-Wring from the top of a rock, now losing sight of it
altogether in the depths of a hollow. By the time we had advanced about
half way over the distance it was necessary for us to walk, we
observed, towards the left hand, a wide circle of detached upright
rooks. These we knew, from descriptions and engravings, to be the
"Hurlers"--so we turned aside at once to look at them from a nearer
point of view.
There are two very different histories of these rocks; the antiquarian
account of them is straightforward and practical enough, simply
asserting that they are the remains of a Druid temple, the whole region
about them having been one of the principal stations of the Druids in
Cornwall. The popular account of the Hurlers (from which their name is
derived) is very different. It is contended, on the part of the people,
that once upon a time (nobody knows how long ago), these rocks were
Cornish men, who profanely went out (nobody knows from what place), to
enjoy the national sport of hurling the ball on one fine "Sabbath
morning," and were suddenly turned into pillars of stone, as a judgment
on their own wickedness, and a warning to all their companions as well.
Having to choose between the antiquarian hypothesis and the popular
legend on the very spot to which both referred, a common susceptibility
to the charms of romance at once determined us to pin our faith on the
legend. Looking at the Hurlers, therefore, in the peculiar spirit of the
story attached to them, as really and truly petrified ball-players, we
observed, with great interest, that some of them must have been a little
above, and others a little below our own height, in their lifetime; that
some must have been very corpulent, and others very thin persons; that
one of them, having a protuberance on his head remarkably like a
night-cap in stone, was possibly a sluggard as well as a
Sabbath-breaker, and might have got out of his bed just in time to
"hurl;" that another, with some faint resemblance left of a fat grinning
human face, leaned considerably out of the perpendicular, and was, in
all probability, a hurler of intemperate habits. At some distance off we
remarked a high stone standing entirely by itself, which, in the absence
of any positive information on the subject, we presumed to consider as
the petrified effigy of a tall man who ran after the ball. In the
opposite direction other stones were dotted about irregularly, which we
could only imagine to represent certain misguided wretches who had
attended as spectators of the sports, and had therefore incurred the
same penalty as the hurlers themselves. These humble results of
observations taken on the spot, may possibly be useful, as tending to
offer some startling facts from ancient history to the next pious layman
in the legislature who gets up to propose the next series of Sabbath
prohibitions for the benefit of the profane laymen in the nation.
Abandoning any more minute observation of the Hurlers than that already
recorded, in order to husband the little time still left to us, we soon
shaped our course again in the direction of the Cheese-Wring. We arrived
at the base of the hill on which it stands, in a short time and without
any difficulty; and beheld above us a perfect chaos of rocks piled up
the entire surface of the eminence. All the granite we had seen before
was as nothing compared with the granite we now looked on. The masses
were at one place heaped up in great irregular cairns--at another,
scattered confusedly over the ground; poured all along in close, craggy
lumps; flung about hither and thither, as if in reckless sport, by the
hands of giants. Above the whole, rose the weird fantastic form of the
Cheese-Wring, the wildest and most wondrous of all the wild and wondrous
structures in the rock architecture of the scene.
If a man dreamt of a great pile of stones in a nightmare, he would dream
of such a pile as the Cheese-Wring. All the heaviest and largest of the
seven thick slabs of which it is composed are at the top; all the
lightest and smallest at the bottom. It rises perpendicularly to a
height of thirty-two feet, without lateral support of any kind. The
fifth and sixth rocks are of immense size and thickness, and overhang
fearfully, all round, the four lower rocks which support them. All are
perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the
interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their
extraordinary top-heavy form, on slanting ground half-way down a steep
hill. Look at them from whatever point you choose, there is still all
that is heaviest, largest, strongest, at the summit, and all that is
lightest, smallest, weakest, at the base. When you first see the
Cheese-Wring, you instinctively shrink from walking under it. Beholding
the tons on tons of stone balanced to a hair's breadth on the mere
fragments beneath, you think that with a pole in your hand, with one
push against the top rocks, you could hurl down the hill in an instant a
pile which has stood for centuries, unshaken by the fiercest hurricane
that ever blew, rushing from the great void of an ocean over the naked
surface of a moor.
Of course, theories advanced by learned men are not wanting to explain
such a phenomenon as the Cheese-Wring. Certain antiquaries have
undertaken to solve this curious problem of Nature in a very off-hand
manner, by asserting that the rocks were heaped up as they now appear,
by the Druids, with the intention of astonishing their contemporaries
and all posterity by a striking exhibition of their architectural skill.
(If any of these antiquarian gentlemen be still living, I would not
recommend them to attempt a practical illustration of their theory by
building miniature Cheese-Wrings out of the contents of their
coal-scuttles!) The second explanation of the extraordinary position of
the rocks is a geological explanation, and is apparently the true one.
It is assumed on this latter hypothesis, that the Cheese-Wring, and all
the adjacent masses of stone, were once covered, or nearly covered, by
earth, and were thus supported in an upright form; that the wear and
tear of storms gradually washed away all this earth, from between the
rocks, down the hill, and then left such heaps of stones as were
accidentally complete in their balance on each other, to stand erect,
and such as were not, to fall flat on the surface of the hill in all the
various positions in which they now appear. Accepting this theory as the
right one, it still seems strange that there should be only one
Cheese-Wring on the hill--but so it is. Plenty of rocks are to be seen
there piled one on another; but none of them are piled in the same
extraordinary manner as the Cheese-Wring, which stands alone in its
grandeur, a curiosity that even science may wonder at, a sight which is
worth a visit to Cornwall, if Cornwall presented nothing else to see.
Besides the astonishment which the rock scenery on the hill was
calculated to excite, we found in its neighbourhood an additional cause
for surprise of a very different description. Just as we were preparing
to ascend the eminence, the silence of the great waste around us was
broken by a long and hearty cheer. The Hurlers themselves, if they had
suddenly returned to a state of flesh and blood, and resumed their
interrupted game, could hardly have made more noise, or exhibited a
greater joviality of disposition, than did some three or four tradesmen
of the town of Liskeard, who had been enjoying a pic-nic under the
Cheese-Wring, had seen us approaching over the plain, and now darted out
of their ambush to welcome us, flourishing porter-bottles in their hands
as olive branches of peace, amity, and good-will. My companion skilfully
contrived to make his escape; but I was stopped and surrounded in an
instant. One benevolent stranger held a glass in a very slanting
position, while a brother philanthropist violently uncorked a bottle and
directed half of its contents in a magnificent jet of light brown froth
all over everybody, before he found the way into the tumbler. It was of
no use to decline imbibing the remainder of the light brown
froth--"_There_ was the Cheese-Wring (cried all the benevolent strangers
in chorus), and _here_ was the porter--_I_ must drink all their good
healths, and _they_ would all drink mine--this was Cornish hospitality,
and Cornish hospitality was notoriously the finest thing in the world!
As for my friend there, who was drawing, they bore him no ill-will
because he wouldn't drink--they would buy his drawing, and one of the
commercial gentlemen, who was a stationer, would publish a hundred, two
hundred, five hundred, a thousand copies of it, on sheets of
letter-paper, price one penny! What had I got to say to that?--If that
wasn't hospitality, what the devil was?"
All this might have been very amusing, and our new friends might have
proved excellent companions, under a different set of circumstances.
But, as things were, we neither of us felt at all sorry when their
manners subsequently exhibited a slight change, under the influence of
further potations of porter. Soon, they began to look stolid and
suspicious--suddenly, they discovered that we were not quite such good
company as they had thought us at first--finally, they took their
departure in solemn silence, leaving us free at last to mount the hill,
and look out uninterruptedly on the glorious view from the summit, which
extended over a circumference of a hundred miles.
Turning our faces towards the north-east, and standing now on the
topmost rock of one of the most elevated situations in Cornwall, we were
able to discern the sea on either side of us. Two faint lines of the
softest, haziest blue, indicated the Bristol Channel on the one hand,
and the English Channel on the other. Before us lay a wide region of
downs and fields, all mapped out in every variety of form by their
different divisions of wall and hedge-row--while, farther away yet,
darker and more indefinite, appeared the Dartmoor forest and the
Dartmoor hills. It was just that hour before the evening, at which the
atmosphere acquires a more mellow purity, a more perfect serenity and
warmth, than at earlier periods of the day. The shadows of great clouds
lay in vast lovely shapes of purple blue over the whole visible tract of
country, contrasting in exquisite beauty with the sunny glimpses of
landscape shining between them. Beneath us, the picturesque confusion of
rocks, topped by the quaint form of the Cheese-Wring, seemed to fade
away mysteriously into the grass of the moorland; beyond which, high up
where the hills rose again, a little lake, called Dosmery Pool, shone in
the sunlight with dazzling, diamond brightness. In the opposite
direction, towards the west, the immediate prospect was formed by the
rugged granite ridges, towering one behind the other, of Sharp Torr and
Kilmarth--the long hazy outlines of the plains and hill-tops of southern
and inland Cornwall closing grandly the distant view.
All that we had hitherto seen on and around the spot where we now stood,
had not yet exhausted its objects of attraction for strangers.
Descending the rocks in a new direction, after taking a last look at the
noble prospect visible from their summit, we proceeded to a particular
spot near the base of the hill, where the granite was scattered in
remarkable abundance. Our purpose here was to examine some stones which
are well known to all the quarrymen in the district, as associated with
an extraordinary story and an extraordinary man.
During the earlier half of the last century, there lived in one of the
villages on the outskirts of the moor on which the Cheese-Wring stands,
a stonecutter named Daniel Gumb. This man was noted among his companions
for his taciturn eccentric character, and for his attachment to
mathematical studies. Such leisure time as he had at his command he
devoted to pondering over the problems of Euclid: he was always drawing
mysterious complications of angles, triangles, and parallelograms, on
pieces of slate, and on the blank leaves of such few books as he
possessed. But he made very slow progress in his studies. Poverty and
hard work increased with the increase of his family, and obliged him to
give up his mathematics altogether. He laboured early and laboured late;
he hacked and hewed at the hard material out of which he was doomed to
cut a livelihood, with unremitting diligence; but times went so ill with
him, that in despair of ever finding them better, he took a sudden
resolution of altering his manner of living, and retreating from the
difficulties that he could not overcome. He went to the hill on which
the Cheese-Wring stands, and looked about among the rocks until he
found some that had accidentally formed themselves into a sort of rude
cavern. He widened this recess; he propped up a great wide slab, to make
its roof: he cut out in a rock that rose above this, what he called his
bed-room--a mere longitudinal slit in the stone, the length and breadth
of his body, into which he could roll himself sideways when he wanted to
enter it. After he had completed this last piece of work, he scratched
the date of the year of his extraordinary labours (1735) on the rock;
and then removed his wife and family from their cottage, and lodged them
in the cavity he had made--never to return during his lifetime to the
dwellings of men!
Here he lived and here he worked, when he could get work. He paid no
rent now: he wanted no furniture; he struggled no longer to appear to
the world as his equals appeared; he required no more money than would
procure for his family and himself the barest necessaries of life; he
suffered no interruptions from his fellow-workmen, who thought him a
madman, and kept out of his way; and--most precious privilege of his new
position--he could at last shorten his hours of labour, and lengthen his
hours of study, with impunity. Having no temptations to spend money, no
hard demands of an inexorable landlord to answer, he could now work with
his brains as well as his hands; he could toil at his problems,
scratching them upon the tops of rocks, under the open sky, amid the
silence of the great moor. Henceforth, nothing moved, nothing depressed
him. The storms of winter rushed over his unsheltered dwelling, but
failed to dislodge him. He taught his family to brave solitude and cold
in the cavern among the rocks, as _he_ braved them. In the cell that he
had scooped out for his wife (the roof of which has now fallen in) some
of his children died, and others were born. They point out the rock
where he used to sit on calm summer evenings, absorbed over his tattered
copy of Euclid. A geometrical "puzzle," traced by his hand, still
appears on the stone. When he died, what became of his family, no one
can tell. Nothing more is known of him than that he never quitted the
wild place of his exile; that he continued to the day of his death to
live contentedly with his wife and children, amid a civilized nation,
under such a shelter as would hardly serve the first savage tribes of
the most savage country--to live, starving out poverty and want on a
barren wild; forsaking all things enduring all things for the love of
Knowledge, which he could still nobly follow through trials and
extremities, without encouragement of fame or profit, without vantage
ground of station or wealth, for its own dear sake. Beyond this, nothing
but conjecture is left. The cell, the bed-place, the lines traced on the
rocks, the inscription of the year in which he hewed his habitation out
of them, are all the memorials that remain of Daniel Gumb.
We lingered about the wild habitation of the stonemason and his family,
until sunset. Long shadows of rocks lay over the moor, the breeze had
freshened and was already growing chill, when we set forth, at last, to
trace our way back to Liskeard. It was too late now to think of
proceeding on our journey, and sleeping at the next town on our line of
route.
Returning in a new direction, we found ourselves once more walking on a
high road, just as the sun had gone down, and the grey twilight was
falling softly over the landscape. Stopping near a lonely farm-house, we
went into a field to look at another old British monument to which our
attention had been directed. We saw a square stone column--now broken
into two pieces--ornamented with a curiously carved pattern, and
exhibiting an inscription cut in irregular, mysterious characters. Those
who have deciphered them, have discovered that the column is nearly a
thousand years old; that it was raised as a sepulchral monument over the
body of Dungerth King of Cornwall; and that the letters carved on it
form some Latin words, which may be thus translated:--"PRAY FOR THE
SOUL OF DUNGERTH." Seen in the dim light of the last quiet hour of
evening, there was something solemn and impressive about the appearance
of the old tombstone--simple though it was. After leaving it, we soon
entered once more into regions of fertility. Cottages, cornfields, and
trees surrounded us again. We passed through pleasant little valleys;
over brooks crossed by quaint wooden bridges; up and down long lanes,
where tall hedges and clustering trees darkened the way--where the
stag-beetle flew slowly by, winding "his small but sullen horn," and
glow-worms glimmered brightly in the long, dewy grass by the roadside.
The moon, rising at first red and dull in a misty sky, brightened as we
went on, and lighted us brilliantly along all that remained of our
night-walk back to the town.
I have only to add, that, when we arrived at Liskeard, the lachrymose
landlady of the inn benevolently offered us for supper the identical
piece of cold "_corned beef_" which she had offered us for dinner the
day before; and further proposed that we should feast at our ease in the
private dungeon dining-room at the back of the house. But one mode of
escape was left--we decamped at once to the large and comfortable hotel
of the town; and there our pleasant day's pilgrimage to the moors of
Cornwall concluded as agreeably as it had begun.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I visited St. Cleer's Well, for the second time, ten years after the
above lines were written; and I am happy to say that two gentlemen,
interested in this beautiful ruin, are about to restore it--using the
old materials for the purpose, and exactly following the original
design. (March, 1861.)
IV.
CORNISH PEOPLE.
It is my purpose, in this place, to communicate some few facts relating
to the social condition of the inhabitants of Cornwall, which were
kindly furnished to me by friends on the spot; adding to the statement
thus obtained, such anecdotes and illustrations of popular character as
I collected from my own observations in the capacity of a tourist on
foot.
If the reader desires to compare at a glance the condition of the
Cornish people with the condition of their brethren in other parts of
England, one small particle of practical information will enable him to
do so at once. In the Government Tables of Mortality for Cornwall there
are no returns of death from starvation.
Many causes combine to secure the poor of Cornwall from that last worst
consequence of poverty to which the poor in most of the other divisions
of England are more or less exposed. The number of inhabitants in the
county is stated by the last census at 341,269--the number of square
miles that they have to live on, being 1327.[2]--This will be found on
proper computation and comparison, to be considerably under the average
population of a square mile throughout the rest of England. Thus, the
supply of men for all purposes does not appear to be greater than the
demand in Cornwall. The remote situation of the county guarantees it
against any considerable influx of strangers to compete with the natives
for work on their own ground. We met a farmer there, who was so far from
being besieged in harvest time by claimants for labour on his land, that
he was obliged to go forth to seek them himself at a neighbouring town,
and was doubtful whether he should find men enough left him unemployed
at the mines and the fisheries, to gather in his crops in good time at
two shillings a day and as much "victuals and drink" as they cared to
have.