Some sixteen hundred years ago, so tradition tells, there lived in the
South of Ireland a very holy man named Piran. Such was his piety that
he was able to perform miracles. Once he fed ten Irish kings and their
armies for ten days on end with three cows. Men sorely wounded in battle
were brought to him to be cured, and he cured them. Yet the Irish grew
jealous of his power and decided he must be killed.
And so one stormy, boisterous morning the pious Piran was brought in
chains to the summit of a high cliff, and with a huge millstone tied to
his neck his ungrateful neighbours hurled him into the raging billows
beneath. This horrible deed was marked, as the holy man left the top of
the cliff, with a blinding flash of lightning and a terrifying crash of
thunder, and then, to the amazement of the savages who had thus sought
to destroy him, a wonderful thing happened.
As man and millstone reached the sea the storm instantly ceased. The sun
shone out, the waves and the wind died down, and, peering over the edge
of the cliff, the wondering crowd saw the holy man, seated peacefully
upon a floating millstone, drifting slowly away in the direction of the
Cornish shore, some hundreds of miles to the south-east.
St. Piran's millstone bore him safely across the Atlantic waves until at
length--on the fifth day of March--it grounded gently upon the Cornish
coast, between Newquay and Perranporth, on that glorious stretch of sand
known to-day as Perran Beach. Here the Saint landed, and, taking his
millstone with him, proceeded a little distance inland and set himself
to work to convert the heathen Cornish to Christianity.
He built himself a little chapel in the sands and lived a useful and
pious life for many years, loved by his people, until at last, at the
great age of two hundred and six, he died. Then his sorrowing flock
buried him and built over his grave St. Piran's Chapel, the remains of
which you can see to-day hidden away in the sandhills of the Penhale
Sands.
Although Cornwall can boast many saints, St. Piran has greater right
than any other to be called the patron of the Duchy. To him the Cornish
in the old days attributed a vast number of good actions, among them the
discovery of tin, the mining of which has for centuries formed one of
the chief Cornish industries.
This came about, according to the old story, from the saint making use
of some strange black stones that he found, to make a foundation for
his fire. The heat being more intense than usual one day, these stones
melted and a stream of white metal flowed from them.
The saint and his companion, St. Chiwidden, told the Cornish people of
their discovery, and taught them to dig and smelt the ore, thus bringing
much prosperity to the country, the story of which eventually reached
the far-away Phoenicians and brought them in their ships to trade with
the Cornish for their valuable metal.
Good St. Piran has left his name all over the wonderful country
south-west of Newquay. In Perranporth, with its rocks and caves and
glorious bathing beach; in St. Piran's Round, that strange old
earth-work not far away; in the parish of Perranzabuloe, which means
Perran in the Sands; in Perranwell, near Falmouth, and even further
south in Perranuthnoe, which looks out across the waters of Mounts Bay.
But although memorials of him are to be found over most of South
Cornwall, it is the district of the Perran Sands, where he landed, lived
and died, that is his true home. There, where the soft Atlantic breezes
or the fierce winter gales sweep in to Perran Bay, you may look out over
the dancing sea towards Ireland and America with nothing but Atlantic
rollers between, or wander amid the waste of sand dunes that comprise
the Perran Sands and breathe in health with every breath you take.
Perranporth is on the edge of these sandhills, which stretch away
north-east to within four miles of Newquay--all within seven hours'
journey from London.
[Illustration: _St. Piran's Chapel_]
[Illustration]