NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM LELANT TO PENZANCE
_Gold in Cornwall: Knill's Monument: The Antiquities of the Extreme
West: Cliff Castles: Fogous: Menhirs: Dolmens: Oratories: Superstitions:
St. Ives: Wesley: Irving: A Ripe Old Age: The Mines: Sancreed and St.
Buryan: Lighthouses: Whitesand Bay: The Land's End: Mousehole and Dolly
Pentreath: Newlyn: Penzance._
From Hayle to Marazion on the south coast is four miles--the narrowest
part of the peninsula--and a railway runs from sea to sea. With a deep
curve, however, the road goes on to low-lying Lelant (the valley
church), which is traditionally said to have once been a large village
and port, but to have been reduced to its present inconspicuousness by
the drifting of sand into the haven. Parts of the church are Norman, and
over the south porch stands an eighteenth-century copper sundial, on the
pierced gnomon bracket of which is a quaint representation of Time and
Death, a skeleton bearing an hour glass and a dart.
Among other antiquities discovered here was a large colt having in it
some small bars of gold the size of a straw. A farmer found it embedded
in ashes, and lying about 2 ft. below the surface. Gold has often been
found in Cornwall, but always in small quantities--usually in grains
from the size of sand to that of a pea! The largest piece ever found was
said to have weighed down eight guineas in the scale.
KNILL'S MONUMENT
Not far from Lelant is Worwas Hill, on which a certain John Knill
erected a mausoleum. By some mischance the gentleman was buried in
London, but by his will he directed that every five years L5 was to be
equally divided among ten girls, natives of the borough and daughters of
seamen, fishermen, or tinners, each of them not exceeding ten years of
age, who should between ten and twelve o'clock of the forenoon of a
certain day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least on the ground
adjoining his mausoleum and, after the dance, sing the 100th Psalm.
Alas, for the vanity of human hopes! Every five years the little girls,
gaily be-ribboned, dance in the presence of the local notabilities,
while the one thing that was to have given the ceremony weight and
interest--the body of John Knill--is elsewhere.
THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE EXTREME WEST:
CLIFF CASTLES: FOGOUS: MENHIRS
This narrow neck of land shuts off the small rounded end of the
peninsula, a part that is peculiarly rich in prehistoric remains. It is
as if the old forgotten peoples had been driven back and back, race
after race pushing the one before it into the sea, but each, before it
passed, leaving its footprint on the granite. On every headland are
cliff castles--Cape Cornwall, Ballowal, Chun--the most remarkable being
that of Treryn Dinas, a stronghold with a triple vallum and fosse which
can only be approached by a narrow ridge and which consists of a huge
pile of rocks jutting from a turf-clad neck of land. In contrast with
these are the subterranean passages and chambers (fogous) at Bolleit,
Trewoofe, and Pendeen, the last-named said to be haunted on Christmas
morning by a white-robed lady with the stem of a red rose between her
lips. Above ground are a number of stone circles and solitary monoliths,
from which, or from the cairns, comes the phrase "to raise a stone to
his memory." The monoliths are known as the Pipers and the Blind
Fiddler, the circles, as at Dawns Maen and Boscawen Un, as the Merry
Maidens; and the legend with regard to them is always the same--that the
Pipers played on a Sunday, and that the Maidens danced, their punishment
approximating, in a more lasting form, to that of Lot's wife! Here, too,
are the remains of ancient villages and beehive huts, and at one
place--Chapel Euny--is a subterranean structure consisting of three long
passages and a beehive hut, while at Bosporthennis is a specimen of the
beehive hut so good that it is said to be the best in England. This
district of heath and lonely moorland is so sparsely inhabited that the
little old ruins have been left as they were until the antiquarian came
and dug, unearthing the poor treasures of a simple state of
civilisation, the spindle-whorls, the bone needles, the flint spear and
arrow heads, and the coarse black pottery. The coast scenery of this
part is the finest to be seen for miles, and that not so much on account
of the grandeur of the cliffs as of the tumbling seas, that roll in from
the Atlantic; and days might be spent wandering over these high lands
from castle to castle and from stone to stone, trying to discover the
reason, whether sepulchral or religious, that the monoliths were set
erect; to guess why those strange underground passages were dug and
walled, and what practical need they served; and what was the meaning of
the various earthworks and entrenchments. The people to whom they needed
no explanation have vanished, leaving only riddles behind, riddles that
not the wisest among us, not the most enlightened, not the youngest, is
able to solve.
DOLMEN: ORATORIES:
SUPERSTITION
We do at least know that the dolmen was raised above a burial, in the
one instance of Zennor above two. In the dolmen proper, the supporters
of the great capstone are columns and not merely slabs enclosing the
space. Dolmens are found not only in Cornwall, but along the west coast
of Europe and the northern coast of Africa, also in Palestine, India,
and Japan, and appear to be the work of a seafaring people. Their date
is said to be 2000 B.C., the age when bronze was beginning to replace
stone and when the Swiss lake villages were being built. Three of the
early Christian Councils regarded them with suspicion and ordered their
destruction on the ground that they were objects of reverence to the
Celtic Christians. At Lanyon, on Boswavas Moor, not far from the Mulfra
Quoit, is a fine specimen. Unfortunately the great capstone, which was
18 ft. long and under which a man on horseback could ride, slipped from
its supports in 1815. Lieutenant Goldsmith presently dislodged the Logan
stone at Treryn, a mass of granite weighing sixty-five tons; and being
obliged to replace it, the tackle he used was further utilised to
replace the Lanyon capstone. To make this easier, however, the three
uprights were cut down, and the cromlech now to be seen is by no means
so imposing as in its prehistoric state. This seafaring folk, who left
their tiny mark on the surface of the earth and then faded into
obscurity, builded better than we with all our modern appliances!
It was unusual for the early Christians to order the destruction of
monuments of this kind. As a rule they accepted and turned them to
account. We have examples of this in the chapel at Porthcurnow, one of
those very early buildings, formed of a double square, such as lie
hidden among the shifting sands of Perran and Gwithian, and which was
built on a spot already sacred as a place of burial; while on Chapel
Carn Brea, which rises to a height of 660 ft., with Bartine at its
shoulder still higher, is a cairn which held the bones of a Stone Age
chieftain. Above them was a dolmen, and above that relics of British and
Roman times, the whole being crowned by a Christian oratory!
It is hardly a matter for surprise if the people who dwell among these
relics of the immemorial past still retain some of the superstitions of
their forefathers, if their wells still have miraculous qualities and
the crickstone a strange virtue. To them witches are as real as
wreckers, and they cannot believe that the "little people"--once perhaps
inhabiting those subterranean passages and huts--are gone for certain,
and for ever. Get on the right side of an old miner and he will tell you
of the "nuggies," of their silver anvils and their parlours, of how he
has heard their little picks at work, and of how he has hoped all his
life to one day catch sight of a nuggy slipping into its parlour, when
he will, of course, follow and "strike it rich."
The housewife, on persuasion, may be got to tell how when she (or her
mother) went in the morning to fill the kibble at the well she saw the
pisky stealing away over the dewy fields by the first grey glimmer of
light. Possibly he had taken eggs from her hen-roost, or if she were a
wise woman and had baked him a hearth cake and left with it a sup of
milk, he had perhaps "redded up" the place for her. It would be a matter
of give-and-take, but the people in the low grey houses, with their
thick walls and stone-held thatch, would be able to more than guess
which mound it was into which the piskies vanished and which were the
fairy rings about which they danced at dusk or in the moonlight. So wild
was the country and so much does one piece of granite look like another
that there were hiding-places in plenty, nooks that at a later date
would be used by the smugglers and other law-breaking gentry, corners
behind which the small race could lurk when the larger, more dangerous
humans came striding by. Over against these tales of the "little people"
must be set the stories told by those little people themselves, the
stories of the giants, of the bigger folk whose terrors they magnified a
hundredfold that their babies might be thus persuaded to keep out of
danger. And because after all there must have been intermarriage, the
occasional courting of pisky and giant, both sets of stories have been
handed down from one generation to another. The Cornish are not a booky
folk, they have not produced a great literature, and even nowadays they
read little but their Bibles. Such a people would be likely to remember
and treasure up the stories handed down from mother to child. They are,
moreover, very social. In the loneliest parts there is seldom an evening
when the labourers do not drop in at each other's cottages for a
"crack," and every now and then the soft deep voices utter a word that
has dropped out of the common talk, but which for them still has its
right meaning, and the fathers tell over again the stories their fathers
told to them. Some of the stories have come to the surface and are known
to the "foreigner" (as every one born east of the Tamar is called). We
have, for instance, that of the Zennor mermaid, which has taken such
hold on local thought that it is even carved upon a bench-end in the
little grey church. It was the story of a squire's son who sang in the
choir and sang so beautifully that Sunday by Sunday a mermaid
(Cornish--merrymaid) crept up from the sea to hear him. Like Hans
Andersen's story she had found her prince, but unlike that story she in
the end persuaded him to go away with her; and as he never returned, the
wiseacres shook their heads and thought of him as lying drowned under
the blue waters.
The antiquities of this, the extreme west, and the resulting strange
traditions and beliefs are not the only matter of interest in this part
of the world. Superimposed upon the survivals of a far-off time are
those of the last thousand and odd years when Cornwall was struggling
with the disabilities of its exposed position, when the Danes fell on
the coasts burning and harrying, and corsairs carried off the poor
fishermen and sold them as slaves. In 1635 a Turkish pirate ship was
brought _nolens volens_ into St. Ives Bay, and the peaceful folk, not
immediately recognising her build, were surprised to hear sounds as of
guns and firing. The firing was not at those on shore, it was in fact
entirely confined to those on board, and it was as if the ship were
divided against herself. In the end the truth appeared. The pirate had
captured three small vessels of Looe and Fowey and seized their crews.
These men, however, were not of a slavish kind. Rising in a body, they
knocked the captain overboard, drove the Turks below and set sail for
St. Ives. Having a fair wind they made it safely; though the pirates,
also a hearty folk, spent their time firing at them through the timbers
of the deck.
WESLEY
We warrant those pirates had much the same reception at the hands of the
St. Ives men as was dealt out to John Wesley when, in course of time,
that small neat gentleman made his way into the district. The Cornish
seem to have been--let us use the past tense--own brother to the
Irishman in their love of a riot, any sort of a riot, for any reason or
none; and Wesley got more than a taste of mob violence. Yet in the end
he could say: "Here God has made all our enemies to be at peace with us,
so that I might have preached in any part of the town. But I rather
chose a meadow, that such as would might sit down, either on the grass
or on the hedges--so the Cornish term their broad stone walls. Well-nigh
all the town attended and with all possible seriousness. Surely forty
years' labour has not been in vain."
So at last the little man was made welcome and could feel that he had
roused the fishing-town from its long religious lethargy. I wonder
whether in his strenuous life, and he came twenty-seven times to St.
Ives, he ever found time to wander into the old church, study the
wonderful carving of its bench-ends, and take pleasure in its ancient
communion plate "and its pair of collecting basins with handles," or
whether he was only occupied with things of the spirit?
IRVING
Inland from St. Ives lies the ugly mining village of Halsetown, where
Sir Henry Irving spent the years of his childhood. His mother was a
Cornish woman of the Behenna family, and to Halsetown she brought him to
stay with an aunt. The uncle was captain of a local mine--"captain"
meaning any sort of an overseer from the manager to a man with only a
boy under him! Here the lad ran wild with his cousins. "At any rate,"
said he in after years, "Halsetown gave me a good physical start in
life. I attribute much of my endurance of fatigue--which is a necessary
part of an actor's life--to the free and open and healthy years I spent
there." Nor are these many hours of sunshine and the salubrious air only
good for youth; life lengthens here unnoticeably until it has reached
three figures, and even then shows a strength that is amazing. Mrs.
Zenobia Stevens, who was buried at Zennor in 1763, aged 102, was tenant
for ninety-nine years of the Duke of Bolton. On the expiration of her
lease, being then in her hundredth year, she went on this matter of
business to the Duke's Court at St. Ives; and it is said that she
excused herself from accepting a second glass of wine on the plea that
it was growing late and she had not only some way to go, but had to ride
home on a young unbroken horse.
THE MINES
Among these rough cliffs are sudden smiling valleys, but the moors are
disfigured by a number of mine workings that have ceased to pay, and the
ruins of which add to the desolation of the scene. A little above St.
Just are three celebrated mines: Wheal Owles, into which the sea broke
and which is now only the tomb of the eighteen men who were then working
in her; Botallack, visited by King Edward and Queen Alexandra in 1865,
while Prince and Princess of Wales, but no longer working; and Levant,
exploited for tin, copper, and arsenic, and still employing several
hundred men. The workings of this mine run for nearly a mile under the
sea, and the men say that on stormy days the noise over their heads is
terrific. These men live at St. Just, a mining town in the old church of
which are some frescoes--St. George about to slay the dragon before
Cleodolinda and her comrades, and Christ surrounded by the symbols of
various trades. Of greater interest perhaps is the Plan-an-Guare, 126
ft. in diameter and with the remains of six tiers of seats. This rural
amphitheatre is still sometimes used as a place of assembly and was once
no doubt utilised for miracle plays, but who constructed it and for what
purpose is lost in the mists of antiquity. Not far from the
Plan-an-Guare is Kenidjack Cliff (the howling wind), a "hooting cairn"
regarded by the superstitious country side as haunted by more than
natural sounds. During the construction on it of butts for rifle
practice, some twenty to thirty pieces of pure copper were found under
stones which were probably the remains of an old building. The purity of
the copper points to this hoard having been the property of a founder of
tools or weapons belonging to the Bronze Age, and no doubt this founder
was a workman of some importance in the district. The story connected
with him has been forgotten, the fact that he ever existed has passed,
but about the place still clings that old fear of the weapon-maker,
whose every-day task it was to forge the mysterious givers of death.
SANCREED
It is a far journey from a "hooting cairn" to the pettiness of the
social struggle, even though the struggle was for a precedence which has
passed out of fashion. In Bishop Sparrow's report of July 1671, on
Sancreed Church, a curious state of affairs came to light, for the
parish was quarrelling over precedence in church sittings! "One John
Adams of mean estate and fortune" had actually seated himself higher up
than "those who are of the Twelve of the parish and their wives," and
great had been the scandal. Also one Francis Lanyon, who had married
"into a very worthy family," his wife, if you please, being niece to
Colonel Godolphin, was without "a convenient seat." Sancreed has an old
rood screen (or rather part of one), of which Sedding says: "I know of
no finer specimen elsewhere in the county. Like so much old Cornish work
it is more than local; it is purely parochial."
Its neighbour, St. Buryan, is also celebrated for its screen, which was,
however, seriously injured by the vicar in 1814. From what remains, it
would appear to have been exceptionally beautiful, carved, coloured,
gilt, and of opulent and bold workmanship. This church stands high, 400
ft. above the sea; and about a mile distant are the remains of what is
believed to be the oratory of St. Buryan. The story goes that first
Egbert in 813 fought a battle here at Bolleit (place of blood) and later
Athelstane in 926. There is no historical evidence for either battle,
but tradition is a smoke under which a little flame may generally be
found. At any rate, a battle was fought and the conqueror, standing on
this high land, saw afar off the Scillies, and realised that there were
yet worlds to conquer. So pleased was he, that he vowed, if successful,
to found a college for priests on this high land, and so the church of
St. Buryan came into being.
LIGHTHOUSES AND
WHITESAND BAY
A mile and a half off the Land's End is the Longships Lighthouse. Built
on a rock 70 ft. above low water and itself 55 ft. high, its top is yet
often buried in the spray and the lanthorn broken. Further out, on the
Wolf Rock, is another lighthouse; while off the Seven Stones, dangerous
rocks between the mainland and the Scillies, is a lightship moored in
forty fathoms of water, but in such an exposed position that it has
before now been driven from its moorings.
But there were neither lighthouses nor lightships on these rocks when
Athelstane landed at Whitesand Bay on his return from the conquered
Scillies. Even now it is an ugly bit of water to traverse, and it must
have been worse then. He was probably glad enough to see the great
stretch of white sand with Sennen Cove lying in the midst thereof like
an emerald set in silver. Later the bay acquired a bad reputation. So
far from the madding crowd, so secret and so storm-beaten, it gave
evil-doers a sense of security. Who would dare to venture after them
among these rocks and clefts? Corsairs, pirates, smugglers, each in turn
made use of the white beach. Thither came Perkin Warbeck in 1497 with
his four little barques and six score men; thither John Lackland when
seeking to dispossess his trusting brother of the realm; thither
Stephen, the oath-breaker, who was, however, none so bad a king. Rough
are the winds and rougher still the seas that beat upon this lovely bay,
and it is a little puzzling why these and other personages should have
chosen it as a landing-place.
THE LAND'S END
Alas for romance, this same Land's End is but a low and unimpressive
rock which, like the blunt head of some titanic animal, thrusts a grey
muzzle into the water. It is only 60 ft. high, yet this is the last
stone, the last bit of land, the ultimate west, this west that appeals
so strongly to the Cornishman abroad:
"_There's never a wave upon western beaches
Falls and fades to a wreath of foam
But takes at the last a voice that reaches
Over the distance and calls me home._"
LOWRY.
The Land's End, strange low headland, has seen plenty of stirring days,
from the time when the Danish long-ships came creeping round to harry
Cornwall and Devon, to that later date when the great storm and the
descendants--probably--of those very Danes sent the great Armada fleeing
up the narrow seas. Turner came here for the colour and the wild blue
seas, and Tennyson to wonder whether his Arthur had ever been so far
south. The rock is of split and tumbled granite, one of the few
instances in the duchy where that stone comes into contact with the sea;
and if Penwith, as all that part is called, really means the "wooded
headland," that barren rock and rough water must once have been far
enough apart. A little south of the Land's End is the finer rock of
Pordenack, and all round this southern point the bays and coves are
charming, the cliffs fine and the caverns and rocks numerous and
fantastic. Tol-Pedn (the holed headland--so called from a huge
blow-hole) has its Witches' (or Maggy Figgy's) Chair and shelters the
pretty hamlet of Porthgwarra, the inhabitants of which are darker than
the majority of Cornishmen. Tradition is in favour of a wrecked Spanish
galleon. Not, we suppose, the spectre ship of Porthcurnow, a
neighbouring cove. There a black square-rigged vessel sails up the beach
and up the combe, making no difference between land and water, and
presently vanishes like mist--and that in the valley the Eastern
Telegraph Company has made its own! The hamlet is interesting on account
of its name. That distinguished scholar, Canon Isaac Taylor, says:
"Cornwall, or Cornwales, is the kingdom of the Welsh of the Horn," but
others think the name is from the Kernyw, the tribe who lived in these
parts, they being called the Kernyw Gaels, to distinguish them from the
Gaels of Wales and those of Brittany. Be it as it may, in Porthcurnow we
have an interesting survival of the old tribal name.
The church of St. Levan is on the hillside in a deep valley and beyond
its admirable carving, its screen with a geometrical pattern of leaves,
its font of a stone not found in the neighbourhood, and its unusual holy
water stoup--at the north and east entrances to the church are the old
lych stones used as resting-places for funerals! There is also a cleft
boulder of granite about which it was prophesied that when a pack-horse
should ride through "St. Levan's stone" the world would come to an end,
and the fact that such handy material for building has been left unused
shows that for some reason it must have been held in veneration.
MOUSEHOLE AND
DOLLY PENTREATH
Mousehole is said to have been the last place at which Cornish was
spoken, and this has resulted in the legend of Dolly Pentreath. She was
a fishwife who, in course of time, came on the parish; and it was
believed, not only that she lived to a great age, but that she was the
last person to speak the ancient language. Against this, the facts must
be set forth. Dorothy Pentreath is given in the parish register as born
1714 and died 1777; while Wm. Matthews, who also spoke Cornish--speaking
it with his cronies--and lived at Newlyn, did not die till 1800. In
spite of this, however, two credulous persons--Prince Lucien Buonaparte
and the Vicar of Paul--raised a stone to her memory in 1860, and
referred in particular to the old age which was not hers and the
language which she certainly spoke, but was not the last to speak.
"Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died 1778, said to have been
the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish.
"Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the
land."
But if Mousehole has no right to its legend, its own age cannot be
called into question. In 1347 it was recognised as a Cornish port, while
in the time of Henry VII. a lay subsidy roll shows its inhabitants to
have been nearly equal in number to those of Penzance.
Moreover, it has had its vicissitudes. An ancient prophecy had declared:
"_They shall land on the rock of Merlin
Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn._"
and, as a matter of fact, one July morning in 1595 four Spanish galleys
carrying two hundred men crept up under cover of a fog and, landing them
on a rock that bore the name of Merlin, proceeded to verify the
prediction. The Spaniards must have been surprised at the lack of
opposition with which they met, for though Sir Francis Godolphin--called
"the great housekeeper" from his hospitality--did his utmost to rouse
the people, the fact that the ancient prophecy was being fulfilled
before their eyes had a paralysing effect. So much so that the towns
mentioned in the prediction were duly and effectually burnt before a
sufficient posse could be raised to drive the Spaniards back to their
galleys. Yet we have it on Bacon's authority that the Cornish were no
cowards: "These Cornish are a race of men stout of stomach, mighty of
body and limb, and that live hardily in a barren country; and many of
them of a need could live underground, which were tinners." Nevertheless
the Spaniards did their work so thoroughly that the Keigwin Arms, at
that date a manor-house, was the only building left standing. This house
is interesting as a specimen of Tudor architecture, the walls being
several feet thick, while the timbers were said to have been grown in
the forest, now submerged, that gave St. Michael's Mount its old name of
"the hoar rock in the wood." This tradition suggests a greater antiquity
for the house than that of Elizabeth's reign, or that it was built on
the site of some older building.
NEWLYN
Mousehole, like Newlyn, has a fine fishing-fleet, but even when these
picturesque boats are out of sight, there is a flavour in the air, a
_soupcon_, a _je ne sais quoi_! A blind man indeed might be expected to
know how the little ancient town contrives to pay its way! The artists
of Newlyn seem to have risen superior to such a trifle. To the painter,
of course, beauty is only of the eye and, after all, the smell of oil
paints----
It is wonderful how attractive Cornwall seems to artists of both pen and
brush. No village so poor, none so utterly desolate, but it can point to
its artist and its cross. Not, of course, that there is any connection
between artists and crosses. The broad outlook of the former may have
been something of a trial, but it has come to be looked on as of no
importance, just a bit of harmless eccentricity.
PENZANCE
Not far from Newlyn is a place that was once a chapel-of-ease to Madron
and had no church of its own. It was represented to the authorities,
however, that if the people went daily to their parish church at
Madron--daily, mark you--the town would be in peril of burning "by the
French and other enemies in time of war." Naturally the church was
built. That good, that punctilious, that saintly town where all the
inhabitants went every day to church is none other than--Penzance. And
except that it is a good centre, there is very little else to say about
it.