THE LIZARD
Meneage--The meaning of Lizard--The character of the
district--Helston--The Furry Day--Pixy pots--Loe
Pool--Tennyson--Serpentine--The Cornish heath--The
Strapwort--Other plants--Woad--S. Piran and the
woad--Windmill--Peter Odger--Mullion--Tregonning Hill--S.
Ruan--S. Winwaloe--One and All--Gunwalloe Church--Cury--The
colonisation of Brittany--Wrecks.
“The learned Scotus”, says Addison in the 174th number of the _Tatler_,
“to distinguish the race of mankind, gives to every individual of that
species what he calls a seity, something peculiar to himself, which
makes him different from all other persons in the world.”
What the learned Scotus said of individuals may as truly be said of
localities; and indisputably the seity of the Lizard is most pronounced.
In itself the district is not beautiful. It consists of a tableland
elevated a few hundred feet above the sea, very bald and treeless, and
without hills to break its uniformity.
[Illustration: THE LIZARD]
Properly it is not the Lizard at all, but Meneage, _i.e._ the land of
the Minachau, the monks. Lizard--Lis-arth, the high-placed or lofty
Lis(court)--applies merely to the head and point where stands now
Lizard Town, and where was formerly the enclosed court of a prince
of the district, or perhaps that of the Irish monks, who occupied the
region and appropriated it.
It is almost an island, for the Helford river runs up to Gweek, five
miles from the Helston river, that opens into Loe Pool.
Helston is not a particularly interesting place in itself. It consists
of a long street leading to the old bowling-green, which is preserved,
and stands above the ravine of the Cober (Gael. _cobhair_, foam), where
is an archway to William Millett Grylls, designed for execution in
sugar-candy and executed in granite.
What makes Helston interesting is the annual observance of the Furry
Day, on May 8th. It has been often described. The morning is ushered
in by a peal of bells from the church tower, and at about nine o’clock
the people assemble and demand their prescriptive holiday. They then
collect donations, and repair to the fields “to bring home the May.”
About noon they return, carrying flowers and branches, and a procession
of dancing couples is formed at the Town Hall; and this proceeds down
the town, dancing in at the front door of every house and out at the
back, and so along their way, with a band preceding them, performing
the traditional Furry Dance tune, which is not of any remarkable age,
being a hornpipe. The dancers first trip in couples, hand in hand,
during the first part of the tune, forming a string of from thirty to
forty couples, or perhaps more; at the second part of the tune the
first gentleman turns, with both hands, the lady behind him, and her
partner turns in like manner as the first lady; then each gentleman
turns his own partner, and they trip on as before. The other couples
pair and turn in the same way and at the same time.
It is considered a slight to pass a house and not to dance through it.
Finally the train enters the Assembly Room, and there resolves itself
into an ordinary waltz.
As soon as the first party has finished another goes through the same
evolutions, and then another, and so on; and it is not till late at
night that the town returns to its peaceful propriety.
The dancers on the first day are the gentlemen and ladies. The servants
go through the same proceedings on the morrow.
I have given both the song and tune in my _Songs of the West_.
A few years ago the celebration was discontinued; but this provoked
such dissatisfaction that it was revived with fresh zest.
The visitor to Helston may see an occasional pixy pot on a roof-ridge
of an old house. This is a bulbous ornament, on which the pixies are
supposed to dance, and in dancing drop luck on the house below.
Loe Pool is the largest lake in Cornwall; the only other is Dozmare.
It is a beautiful sheet of fresh water cut off from the sea by a
pebble ridge, which it was wont to overflow, but a culvert has been
bored through the rocks to enable the Cober to discharge without, as
formerly, rising and inundating the land below Helston.
It is really marvellous to see how the mesembryanthemum flourishes
here, throwing up masses of pink and white blossom.
In the neighbourhood it is fondly dreamed that this was the tarn into
which Arthur had Excalibur cast.
“On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water----”
After the sword had been cast in, hither Arthur was carried by Sir
Bedivere.
“To left and right
The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag, that rang
Sharp smitten with the dint of armed heels--
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon.”
Hither came the “dusky barge” that was to bear Arthur away to the isles
of the blessed. This is very pretty; the lake, the black serpentine
rocks agree well enough, but how was the fairy barge to get over the
pebble ridge? Mr. Rogers had not then cut the culvert. No doubt it was
brimming, but it must have been risky over the bar. I do not believe a
word of it. Arthur never was down there. The reputed site of the battle
is at Slaughter Bridge, near Camelford. But before we settle where
the battle was fought, we must fix Arthur himself, and he is slippery
(historically) as an eel.
What makes the Lizard district interesting is in the first place the
serpentine rock that forms it, and then the plants which luxuriate on
the serpentine.
The serpentine lies to the west, reared up in the magnificent cliffs of
Mullion and Kynance coves, but the main body of the upheaved plateau
consists of another volcanic rock called gabbro. The serpentine is so
called because it has something of the glaze and greenness of a snake’s
skin.
The Lizard rocks have long been an object of interest and dispute among
geologists. For a study of them I must refer to the papers of Mr. T.
Clark in the _Transactions of the Polytechnic Institution of Cornwall_.
The most casual visitor must be struck, if in Meneage at the season of
flowering, with the abundance of the beautiful Cornish heath (_Erica
vagans_), which in growth and general appearance cannot for a moment be
mistaken for the common heath. The Rev. C. A. Johns says of it in his
_Week at the Lizard_:--
“The stems are much branched, and in the upper parts very
leafy, from two to four feet high. The flowers are light
purple, rose-coloured, or pure white. In the purple variety
the anthers are dark purple; in the white, bright red; and
in all cases they form a ring outside the corolla until
they have shed their pollen, when they droop to the sides.
On the Goonhilley Downs in Cornwall these varieties of
heath grow together in the greatest profusion, covering
many hundreds of acres, and almost excluding the two
species so common elsewhere.”
It flowers from July to September.
Another heath found there and near Truro is the _Erica ciliaris_, with
bright purple flowers of oblong form; it is by far the most beautiful
of our English heaths. The flowers are half an inch in length, growing
down the upper part of the stem, and the leaves are delicately fringed
with hairs. It has a somewhat glutinous feel. It is rare except in
Cornwall.
A rare plant, and pretty withal, is the strapwort (_Corrigiola
littoralis_), trailing among the shingle on the bar of Loe Pool. It has
minute white flowers and glaucous leaves. The plant has a curious habit
of shifting its quarters almost every year from one part of the shore
to another.
“Sometimes, for instance, it abounds on the slaty beach at
Penrose, but scarcely a single specimen is to be found on
the opposite side of the lake. Next year, perhaps, it grows
in profusion on the eastern beaches, but has disappeared
from its former station.” (JOHNS.)
The strapwort grows nowhere else in Britain but here and in two places
in Devonshire.
On the cliffs may be seen the sky-blue vernal squill in May and June,
but by midsummer it has disappeared to make room for the autumnal
squill, a much less beautiful species.
In marshy spots may be found the pale pinguicula and the buckbean. Four
kinds of genistas are to be seen in flower, bright and yellow.
The purple allium, or chive garlic, may be found where water has stood
during the winter.
The common asparagus grows in great abundance in the clefts of the
rocks. In ravines flourishes the blood-red crane’s-bill, and the common
harebell, so desiderated on the granite formation, but not found there,
may here be met with.
Mr. Johns says:--
“A sloping bank on the right hand of Caerthillian valley,
about a hundred yards from the sea, produces, I think, more
botanical rarities than any other spot of equal dimensions
in Great Britain. Here are crowded together in so small a
space that I actually covered with my hat growing specimens
all together of _Lotus hispidus_, _Trifolium Bocconi_, _T.
Molinerii_, and _T. Strictum_. The first of these is far
from common, the others grow nowhere else in Great Britain.”
The cross-leaved heath, found elsewhere pretty generally, with its
little cluster of pale waxlike bells at the head of the stalk, does not
affect the Lizard.
The woad, wherewith our British ancestors dyed themselves, flourishes
abundantly in the Meneage peninsula. It has bright yellow flowers in
panicles growing on an upright stem, some two or three feet high, and
appears in June and July.
The woad (_Isatis tinctoria_) yields true indigo, but it contains only
about one-thirtieth of the quantity found on the indigo tinctoria
cultivated in India. The leaves are ground to a paste in a mill, and
then allowed to ferment during eight or twelve days. After that they
are formed into balls and dried.
In ancient times this pasty mess was directly used in dyeing by
those who carried on all kinds of domestic works at home. During
the putrefactive fermentation of the woad ammonia is formed and
hydrogen evolved. The latter, while in the nascent state, reduces the
blue indigo to the state of white indigo, which, being soluble, can
penetrate the wool to be dyed, where it is deposited in the insoluble
state as blue indigo, on exposure to the oxygen of the air.
There is an incident in the life of S. Piran, or Kieran, who founded
a church, S. Keverne, in the Lizard district, which is connected with
dyeing with woad.
His mother was one day engaged in preparing the dye, called by the
Irish _glasin_. Kieran, then a child, was present; and as it was deemed
unlucky for a male person to witness the preparation of the dye, she
bundled him out of the cabin, whereon he uttered a curse, “May there
be a dark stripe in the wool,” and the cloth in dyeing actually did
exhibit a dark grey stripe in it. The _glasin_ was again prepared, and
again Kieran was turned out of the house, whereon he again cursed the
process that the material to be dyed might be whiter than bone, and
again it was as he had said. The woad was prepared a third time, and
Kieran’s mother asked him not to spoil it, but, on the contrary, to
bless it. This he did with such effect that there was not made before
or after a _glasin_ that was its equal, for what remained in the vat
served not only to colour all the cloth of the tribe, but made the cats
and dogs that touched it blue as well. The explanation of the miracle
is very simple. The two failures were due to imperfect fermentation
in one case and over-fermentation in the other, accidents to which
woad was always liable, especially when prepared, as it was in ancient
times, from the fresh leaves, in different stages of growth, and at one
period of the year, when the weather was warm and changeable.[24]
We can see in this story how a fable of a miracle grew up. The
circumstance certainly may have happened, and it was afterwards
attributed to the saintly boy being turned out of doors, and
ill-wishing the dye-vat.
Before the introduction of indigo, woad was specially cultivated in
Europe, but after the former was brought in, the woad was no longer
raised. At first, indeed, indigo and woad were employed together in
dyeing; then came the plan of using certain chemicals in place of
woad, which injured the wool and destroyed the quality of cloths; so
that in Thuringia orders were issued by the Government prohibiting the
employment of indigo.
There is plenty of material for dyeing to be found in Meneage. The
moss _Hypnum cupressiformum_ is still employed in the county of Mayo
for the purpose of giving wool for stockings a reddish brown colour
mottled with white. The white woollen yarn to be dyed is made into
skeins; these are tied at intervals by very tight ligatures of linen
thread, and then put into the dye vat. The binds prevent the dye from
penetrating into that portion of the wool compressed by them, and
these portions remain pure white, whereas the rest comes out a rich
orange-brown colour. When this thread is knitted into stockings it
produces a pretty mottled pattern--the heather, as it is now called.
And in all probability the speckled garments to which old King Brychan
owed his name were thus produced.
Bed-straw and madder again yield yellow and red, and alder and bogbean
a fine black. So the Lizard, when other trades fail, can go in for
dyeing.
There is a single windmill in the district.
The story goes that at one time it was rumoured that a second was about
to be constructed. The miller was concerned. He went to see the man who
entertained the scheme.
“I say, mate, be you goin’ to set up another windmill?”
“I reckon I be; you don’t object? There’s room for more nor one.”
“Oh, room, room enough! But there mayn’t be wind enough to sarve us
both.”
An old chap named Peter Odger lived near Mullion. He was somewhat given
to the bottle. One day he went with a cart and horse along the road,
and took a keg of cider with him. The day was hot, the cider got into
his head, and he fell asleep. Some boys found the horse standing in the
road feeding. They took the brute out and drove it away.
An hour later Peter awoke, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. “Well, if
iver!” said he. “Be I Peter Odger or be I not? ’Tes contrary any way.
If I be Peter Odger, I’ve lost an ’orse; if I bain’t, why I’ve gained
a cart.”
Peter and his wife did not get on very “suant” together. At last Peter
could endure domestic broils no longer; so one day he took every penny
he had, and started for the United States. He shipped from Liverpool.
As the vessel neared the Newfoundland coast it got into the cold
current setting down from the north, and an iceberg hove in sight. This
was too much for Peter. “I likes warmth,” said he, “and the only warmth
I don’t like is when my wife gives it me. I reckon I’ll go home.” So he
covenanted to work his passage back, and by some means or other he did
not surrender his ticket for the passage across.
Without landing in America, Peter returned in the vessel in which he
had gone out, and with his ticket in his pocket. He walked quietly into
his cottage, and put the ticket up on the mantel-shelf.
“Thear, old woman,” said he, “I’ve been and got your ticket for the
other world. It cost a sight o’ money, but I don’t grudge it.”
Mrs. Odger in the meanwhile had been hard put to it, with no money in
the house, and had led a hand-to-mouth existence, mainly on charity.
She did not like it. She was glad to see Peter back.
“You’ve been a long time away,” she said.
“Ees, I reckon. I just tripped over to see that all were ready for you
in the other world. They’m expectin’ of you, and here’s your ticket.”
It is said that Mrs. Odger was amiable after that. The ticket was ever
held in terror over her head.
At Mullion, once a quiet, lost corner of the world, are now three
monster hotels with electric light; their windows look out seaward
across the great bay towards Penzance and the granitic headlands of
Penwith. From the Lizard the only prominent hill visible is Tregonning,
which was held by the Irish colony in the beginning of the sixth
century against the Cornish King Tewdrig, and is still crowned with
their stone camp.
One of the Irish who settled in Meneage was S. Ruan, or Rumon. How
long he remained there we do not know, but he not only founded two
churches in the Lizard district and blessed there a holy well, but he
also planted an establishment at Ruan Lanihorne, near Tregony, and a
chapel at the mouth of the Fal; his bones were translated to Tavistock
Abbey in 960. He was a convert of S. Patrick, but left his native
island early for Britain, where he was ordained. On leaving Cornwall
he visited Brittany, and got into trouble there, for the people took
it into their heads that he was a magician, who every night went about
in the form of a wolf and devoured their sheep and carried off their
children. One woman even denounced him to the prince, Gradlo, for
having eaten her daughter. The prince, or duke, could not directly
oppose the superstition of his people, so he announced that he would
expose Ruan to his wolf-dogs, and if they smelt anything of the wild
beast about him they would tear him to pieces. This was a satisfactory
decision; it promised sport. But, in the meantime, Gradlo suffered his
hounds to be with Ruan, and to be fed from his hand. Accordingly, when
the old Irish monk was produced before his accusers and the hounds let
in on him, they licked his hands. The people were quite satisfied, and
Ruan doubtless then had a hint to make tracks for Cornwall once more,
where there were no wolves--at least, in the Lizard district.
Mullion Church is perhaps dedicated to S. Melyan, a prince of Cornwall,
who was treacherously murdered by his brother-in-law, Riwhal, at a
conference. I have already told the story. But it is also possible that
the patron saint may be a Brittany bishop.
Landewednack and Gunwalloe are foundations of S. Winwaloe, related to
the Cornish royal family, but chiefly known as a founder in Brittany.
His great foundation there was Landewennec; but that he visited Britain
to see what was the rule observed in British monasteries is what we
are expressly told in his _Life_. However, he clearly came to Britain
to make foundations as well, and he not only established the Cornish
Landewednack and Gunwalloe in the Lizard district, but churches near
Launceston, and Portlemouth on the estuary of the Kingsbridge creek in
Devon.
[Illustration: GUNWALLOC CHURCH]
His mother is called Gwen the Three-breasted, and she is actually
represented with three breasts on a monument in Brittany. She was niece
of Constantine I. of Cornwall and Devon, and cousin of Geraint. Gwen
had been married before, and had become the mother of S. Cadfan. She
and her husband had a rough time of it when they landed in Brittany,
at Brehat, at the mouth of the Gouet, as the region was almost void of
population, and given up to wilderness and wood. Winwaloe was sent into
the little islet of Brehat to S. Budoc, who lived there and received
and taught disciples. It is interesting to know that the circular huts,
or foundations of the huts, of his monastery still exist there as well
as the cemetery, and the abbot’s beehive habitation is kept in repair
as a landmark for fishermen.
When Winwaloe came to man’s estate he resolved on founding a monastery
of his own. He gathered together a certain number of disciples,
thirteen in all, and they settled on a bleak island off the western
coast, and remained there for three years.
On this islet was a rocky hill, whereon S. Winwaloe sat and taught; and
far away to the east, as he taught, he saw the green forests and the
smiling pastures of the mainland golden with buttercups, and there rose
the smoke from the hearths of the inhabitants.
Now when the three years were ended, one day there came an
extraordinary ebb-tide. And when the saint saw that there was a way
dry, or almost dry, to the land, “Arise,” said he; “in God’s name let
us go over;” and he bade his disciples follow him. “But,” said he, “let
none go alone; let one hold my hand, and with his other hand hold his
brother’s, and so let us advance in chain, and we shall peradventure be
able to reach the land before the tide turns and overwhelms all. Let
us hold together, that the strong may support the weak, and that if one
falls the others may lift him up.”
Now when Winwaloe said this, he spoke like a true Cornishman, and it
shows that the great Cornish principle of One and All was seated in his
heart all those centuries ago; in fact, in the sixth century.
An old miner from Australia said to me the other day, “Never saw such
fellows as those Cornishmen; they hold together like bees. When I
was out in Australia there was a Cornishman with me, my pal. One day
someone said to us, ‘There is a Cornishman from Penzance just landed
at Melbourne.’ ‘Where’s his diggings?’ asked my pal. ‘Oh, he is gone
up country to----’ I forget the name of the mine. Will you believe it,
off went my pal walking, I can’t tell you how far, and was away several
days from his work--gone off to see that newly-arrived chap; didn’t
know his name even, but _he was a Cornishman_, and that was enough to
draw him.”
Sir Redvers Buller told me a story. He was on his way with a regiment
of soldiers to Canada. Off the entrance to the S. Lawrence the vessel
was enveloped in fogs and delayed, so that provisions ran short. Now
there was a station on an islet there for shipwrecked mariners, where
were supplies. So Sir Redvers went ashore in a boat to visit the store
and ask for assistance.
When he applied, he found a woman only in charge.
“No,” said she; “the supplies are for those who be shipwrecked, not for
such as you.”
“But this is a Government depôt, and we are servants of the Crown.”
“Can’t help it; you’m not shipwrecked.”
Now there was a very recognisable intonation in the woman’s voice. Sir
Redvers at once assumed the Cornish accent, and said, “What! not for
dear old One and All, and I a Buller?”
“What! from Cornwall, and a Buller! Take everything there is in the
place; you’m heartily welcome.”
Gunwalloe is a chapelry in the parish of Cury. It has a singular tower
standing by itself against the sandhill at the back. There is a holy
well on the beach, but the tide has filled it with stones. It was
formerly cleared out on S. Gunwalloe’s Day, but this, unfortunately, is
one of the good old customs that have fallen into neglect.
About Cury a word must be said. It is dedicated to S. Corentine, a
saint of Quimper, in Brittany, and this is probably a place where
Athelstan placed one of the batches of Bretons who fled to him for
protection in 920, but whom he could not have planted in Cornwall till
936. That Cornwall should have received refugees from Brittany was but
just, for Brittany had been colonised from Devon and Cornwall to a very
considerable extent. As the facts are little known, I will narrate them
here.
The advance of the Saxons and the rolling back of the Britons had
heaped up crowds of refugees in Wales and in Devon and Cornwall, more
in fact than the country could maintain. Accordingly an outlet had to
be sought.
The Armorican peninsula was thinly populated.
In consequence of the exactions of the decaying empire, and the ravages
of northern pirates, the Armorican seaboard was all but uninhabited,
and the centre of the peninsula was occupied by a vast untrodden
forest, or by barren stone-strewn moors. Armorica, therefore, was a
promising field for colonisation.
Procopius says that in the sixth century swarms of immigrants arrived
from Britain, men bringing with them their wives and children. These
migrations assumed large dimensions in 450, 512-14, and between 561 and
566.
So early as 461 we hear of a “Bishop of the Britons” attending the
Council of Tours. In 469 the British settlers were in sufficient force
at the mouth of the Loire to become valuable auxiliaries against the
invading Visigoths.
The author of the _Life of S. Winwalloe_ says:--
“The sons of the Britons, leaving the British sea, landed
on these shores at the period when the barbarian Saxon
conquered the isle. These children of a beloved race
established themselves in this country, glad to find repose
after so many griefs. In the meantime the unfortunate
Britons who had not quitted this country were decimated
by plague. Their corpses lay without sepulchre. The major
portion of the isle was depopulated. Then a small number of
men, who had escaped the sword of the invaders, abandoned
their native land to seek refuge, some among the Scots
(Irish), the rest in Belgic Gaul.”
The plague to which reference is made is the Yellow Death, that carried
off Maelgwn Gwynedd, King of Wales, 547.
The invasion was not a military occupation; the settlers encountered
no resistance. Every account we have represents them as landing in a
country that was denuded of its population, except in the district of
Vannes and on the Loire.
In or about 514 Riwhal, son of a Damnonian king, arrived with a large
fleet on the north-east coast, and founded the colony and principality
of Domnonia on the mainland.
One swarm came from Gwent, that is to say, Monmouthshire and
Glamorganshire, where the Britons were hard pressed by the Saxons; and
this Gwentian colony planted itself in the north-west of the Armorican
peninsula, and called it Leon, or Lyonesse, after the Caerleon that had
been abandoned.
This Leon was afterwards annexed to Domnonia in Brittany, so as to form
a single kingdom.
Again another swarm took possession of the western seaboard, and called
that Cornu, either after their Cornwall at home, or because Finisterre
is, like that, a horn thrust forward into the Atlantic.
By degrees Vannes, itself a Gallo-Roman city, was enveloped by the
new-comers, so that in 590 the Bishop Regalis complained that he
was as it were imprisoned by them within the walls of his city.
The Gallo-Roman prelate disliked these British invaders and their
independent ways. S. Melanius of Rennes and S. Felix of Nantes shared
his dislike. The prelates exercised much of the magisterial authority
of the imperial governors, and to this the newly-arrived Britons
refused to submit. The Britons brought with them their own laws,
customs, and organisation, both civil and ecclesiastical, as well as
their own language.
They were at first few in numbers, and did not desire to emancipate
themselves wholly from Britain. Consequently, although establishing
themselves in clans, they held themselves to be under the sovereignty
of their native princes at home.
This appears from the coincidence of the names of the kings in Armorica
and in insular Domnonia.[25]
About the downs may be seen numerous cairns and barrows. Some of these
have been explored, and some fine urns of the Bronze Age, that were
found near Gunwalloe, are now in the Truro Museum.
Alas! there is one thing for which Lizard is notorious, and that is
wrecks. The last great tragedy of that nature was the loss of the
_Mohegan_, in 1898. A mysterious loss, for the two lights of Lizard
shone clear to the left, and she was steered straight on the deadly
Manacles, where she went to pieces. The churchyards of S. Keverne,
Landewednack, and Mullion contain the graves of many and many a drowned
man and woman thrown up by the sea. But, be it remembered, formerly
those thus cast up, unless known, were not buried in churchyards, but
on the cliffs, as there was no guarantee that the bodies were those
of Christians. For this reason it is by no means uncommon on these
cliffs to come on bones protruding from the ground on the edge of the
sea--the remains of drowned mariners, without name, and of an unknown
date. Indeed, it was not till 1808 that an Act was passed requiring
the bodies of those cast up by the sea to be buried in the parish
churchyard. “What is the usual proceeding?” said a curate to some
natives, as a drowned man from a wreck was washed ashore. “In such a
case as this what should be done?”
“Sarch ’is pockets,” was the prompt reply.
NOTE.--Books on the Lizard:--
JOHNS (C. P.), _A Week at the Lizard_. S.P.C.K., 1848. Though an old
book, quite unsurpassed.
HARVEY (T. G.), _Mullyon_. Truro, 1875.
CUMMINS (A. H.), _Cury and Gunwalloe_. Truro, 1875. Good, but all these
books are wild in their derivation of place-names, and not too much to
be trusted in their history, as, for instance, when they mistake the
Breton Cornouaille for Cornwall, and relate as occurring in the latter
what actually belongs to the Breton Cornouaille.