Vol. XII. No. 337.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1828. [PRICE 2d.
Cheese Wring.
(_To the Editor of the Mirror_.)
[Illustration]
In presenting your readers with a representation of the Wring Cheese, I
offer a few prefatory remarks connected with the early importance of the
county in which it stands, venerable in its age, amid the storms of
elements, and the changes of religions. Its pristine glory has sunk on
the horizon of Time; but its legend, like a soft twilight of its former
day, still hallows it in the memories of the surrounding peasantry.
Cornwall is allowed by antiquaries to be the Capiterides; and the Abbé
de Fontenu, in the _Memoires de Literature_, tom. vii. p. 126, proves,
according to Vallancey, that the Phoenicians traded here for tin before
the Trojan war. Homer frequently mentions this metal; and even in
Scripture we have allusions to this land under the name of Tarshish
(Ezekiel, c. xxvii., v. 12-25), being the place whence the Tyrians
procured various metals, and among the rest, the English metal tin. It
appears that the primitive Greeks had a clearer knowledge of these
shores than those in after years; and although Homer, in his shield of
Achilles, describes the earth surrounded by water, yet Herodotus,
notwithstanding his learning and research, candidly states his ignorance
in the following words:--"Neither am I better acquainted with the
islands called Capiterides, from whence _we are said_ to have our tin."
The knowledge of these shores existed in periods so remote, that it
faded. We dwindled away into a visionary land--we lived almost in fable.
The Phoenician left us, and the link of our history was severed. Hyde de
Religione Vet. Persarum, c. iv. p. 121, supposes Solomon to have traded
with the Peruvians; and the analogies between the Pyramids in Mexico and
Egypt confirm the opinion, and sanction the belief that the ancients had
a more extended knowledge of, and a greater traffic over, the earth than
history records. In the most early ages, worship was paid to stone
idols; and the Pagan introduction of statues into temples was of a
recenter date. The ancient Etruscans, as well as the ancient Egyptians,
revered the obeliscal stone, (the reason why to the obeliscal stone is
given by Payne Knight, in his extraordinary work;) nor was it, according
to Plutarch, till 170 years after the founding of the city that the
Romans had statues in their temples, their deities being considered
invisible. Many stone pillars exist in this country, especially in
Cornwall; and it is a fair inference that the Phoenician imported his
religious rites in return for his metallic exports--since we find
mention made of stone pillars in Genesis, xxviii. v. 20; Deuteronomy,
xxvii. v. 4.; Joshua, xxiv.; 2 Samuel, xx. v. 8.; Judges, ix. v. 6., &c.
&c. Many are the conjectures as to what purport these stones were used:
sometimes they were sepulchral, as Jacob's pillar over Rachel, Gen.
xxxv. 20. Ilus, son of Dardanus, king of Troy, was buried in the plain
before that city beneath a column, Iliad, xi. 317. Sometimes they were
erected as trophies, as the one set up by Samuel between Mizpeh and
Shen, in commemoration of the defeat of the Philistines; one was also
erected at Murray, in Scotland, as a monument of the fight between
Malcolm, son of Keneth, and Sueno the Dane. We also find them as
witnesses to covenants, like that of Jacob and Laban, which, though
originally an emblem of a civil pact, became afterwards the place of
worship of the whole twelve tribes of Israel. All these relics, to say
nothing of the cromlechs in Malabar, bear a silent and solemn testimony
of some by-gone people, whose religious and civil customs had extended
wide over the earth. Their monuments remain, but their history has
perished, and the dust of their bodies has been scattered in the wind.
The Druids availed themselves of those places most likely to give an
effect to their vaticinations; and not only obtained, but supported by
terror the influence they held over the superstitious feelings of our
earliest forefathers. Where nature presented a _bizarre_ mass of rocks,
the Druid worked, and peopled it with his gods, the most remarkable of
which is the subject of our engraving, called the Wring Cheese, or
Cheese Wring, in the parish of St. Clare, near Liskeard, in Cornwall.
This singular mass of rocks is 32 feet high. The large stone at the top
was a logan, or rocking-stone. Geologists are inclined to consider it as
a natural production, which is probably the case in part, the Druids
taking advantage of favourable circumstances to convert these crags to
objects of superstitious reverence. On its summit are two rock basins;
and it is a well-known fact, that baptism was a Pagan rite of the
highest antiquity, (vide the Etruscan vases by Gorius.) Here, probably,
the rude ancestor of our glorious land was initiated amidst the mystic
ceremonies of the white-robed Druid and his blood-stained sacrifices. A
similar mass exists at Brimham, York; and in the "History of Waterford,"
p. 70, mention is made of St. Declan's stone, which, not liking its
situation, miraculously _swam_ from Rome, conveying on it St. Declan's
bell and vestment.