NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM THE SCILLY ISLES TO ROSELAND
_The Land of Lyonesse: The Scillies: The Law of Wrecks: Mr. Smith: The
Admiral's Honour: Ding Dong Mine: St. Michael's Mount: An Old Ceremony:
China Clay: Wrecks: Germoe and Breage: Pengersick: Flora Day: The Loe
Pool: Serpentine: Gunwalloe and Mullion: The Lizard: Bells: The Helford
River: Mawgan: Roseland._
THE LAND OF
LYONESSE
If you ask the people they will tell you that without doubt the piece of
water between the south of Cornwall and the Scillies was once dry land.
If you ask the educated stranger he will hum and haw, and say it is
probable, perhaps even likely, and will quote the Saxon Chronicle to the
effect that "the sea broke in upon the land and swallowed up many towns
and a countless multitude of people." As the old record gives no hint as
to where this catastrophe happened, more than one writer has taken it to
justify a belief in the Land of Lyonesse. Oh for a Passmore Edwards
embued with curiosity rather than philanthropy, who should by dredging
operations settle the vexed question for good and all!
The fishermen, looking down through the clear waters on a still day,
declare they can make out the ruins of old churches and houses, and that
their nets have brought them time and again articles of household
economy, pieces of broken doors and roofs and windows. Moreover, when
the great wave broke hungrily over the low-lying land a Trevelyan saw
the curling breakers and setting spurs to his swift white horse was
carried at a mad gallop to Perranuthno. The people show you the cave in
which he and the trembling horse took refuge till the wild turmoil
should have died down. With what a horrified curiosity the man who lived
must have looked out of his cave, watching till the great wave should
subside, watching for the reappearance of all those farms and villages
that only that morning had been sunning themselves in the warm light.
The forest, too, those acres of beech trees stretching out from Marazion
and surrounding St. Michael's Mount, that "hoar rock in a wood," what
had become of them? The stormy autumn day must have closed down upon
him, still looking, wondering, and hoping; but when once more the sun
rose it was upon a wide stretch of waters, with the Scillies sparkling
in the distance. Between them and the land was only sea--and a people
overwhelmed and lost and soon to be forgotten, a people who but
yesterday had gone about their daily tasks as unsuspecting as the rest!
There was only Trevelyan left to say it was the "Judgment of Heaven,"
and he, poor soul, appears to have been too shaken, or too little of a
priest, to do so.
THE SCILLIES
It used to be said that when the Almighty made Ireland he had left a few
handfuls of mud. He threw them into the sea and the result was the
Scillies. The proof thereof is that, like Ireland, the Scillies have no
snakes!
They may be only a few handfuls of stony mud, but they are lovely
islands, though for those whom salt water makes queasy, a little
difficult to reach. There is, in fact, a most depressing story told of a
lady who was so ill during the four hours' passage from Penzance that
when within sight of the islands but before she could be landed she
actually died of heart failure.
The Scillies number about 145, twenty-four of which are cultivated, but
only five inhabited--St. Mary's, Tresco, St. Martin's, St. Agnes, and
Bryher; while Scilly, the islet which has given its name to the group,
is an unimportant rock near Bryher.
On St. Agnes is the Well of St. Warna, a saint who protected her
proteges from being wrecked and drowned. She has fallen into disrepute,
however, owing to the whole population of her island having been wrecked
and drowned on their way home from the neighbouring island, whither
they had been to church! What a shock to believers in St. Warna. If only
it had been a case of bad boys bird's-nesting on the Sabbath or of merry
maidens dancing to the music of the blind fiddler, or east coast men
fishing on Sunday, but--respectable citizens on their way home from
church!
THE LAW OF WRECKS
Ocean currents run strong here. It has long been mistakenly supposed
that the Gulf Stream affects the climate of Western Cornwall. Needless
to say, the true Gulf Stream does not come within many miles of the
duchy; instead, a surface current of warm water is carried
north-eastward from hot latitudes, and the ameliorating effects on
flowers and plants and vegetables are the same. This warm current does
not, however, ameliorate the storms, and in spite of four lighthouses
the wrecks are numerous. In 1707 four ships of the Navy were lost here
and 2000 men. The islands once had a reputation not only for smuggling,
but for wrecking, and for the kind of wrecking that gives no help "to
those in peril on the sea," but rather the other way about. Not that the
people were altogether to blame. The law of wrecks was largely
responsible for the brutalities undoubtedly indulged in towards
shipwrecked crews, for it stated definitely that wrecks should be the
property of the governor of the isles only "if none of the crew remained
alive."
In our gentle days it is hardly believable that the whole populace
should have seen to it that a wreck had no survivors. Themselves at the
mercy of the waters, one might have thought such constant peril would
have bred a fellow-feeling, but the contrary seems to have been the
case. In the Tresco Gardens is a terrace devoted entirely to the
figure-heads of vessels that have been cast on these shores. Each sorry
relic represents its quota of human lives, and, remembering this, it is
as if you were in some sort of concentrated graveyard where the bones of
the poor dead are not even decently covered and concealed from sight.
MR. SMITH
But laws were presently amended, and then both wrecking and smuggling
failed to yield a livelihood. When Mr. Augustus Smith leased the islands
from the Duke of Leeds, the present representative of the Godolphins
(Dolphin Town is named after them), the people were in a parlous
condition. With no industries beyond fishing and kelp-gathering, their
poverty had grown with their families. Mr. Smith, however, was a kindly
autocrat. He settled among his people at Tresco Abbey, insisted on
education, sent the girls to service on the mainland and the lads to
sea, built new roads, and improved the quay. One further step was
needed, and this was presently taken by Mr. Trevellick, of Rocky Hill,
St. Mary's. Collecting a few bundles of the narcissi that bloomed
abundantly about the cottages, he sent them to Covent Garden Market.
Amazing to the man who had spent his days amid a profusion of such
flowers was the return they brought. The news spread, and so did the
cultivation of the blooms. From January to May every steamer now carries
tons--as much sometimes as thirty--of flowers on their way to be sold,
and that although many of the islands are treeless sandhills! As Mr.
Salmon says, however: "The distance, the cost of carriage, and the
competition of the untaxed foreigner are the difficulty. The trade has
been hit very hard by foreign imports and by the crushing cost of
freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the shores of the
Mediterranean than they do from Scilly; the foreigner is given every
advantage in his efforts to undersell the Briton, and the Briton,
though fighting at home, fights with one hand tied behind!"
THE ADMIRAL'S HONOUR
The history of the Scillies is much what its exposed position would lead
you to suppose. Olaf of Norway came marauding here, was converted, and
is said to have founded Tresco Abbey--the authentic history of which,
however, does not begin till later. Athelstane for the love of fighting
presently descended on them; and when the fortunes of royalty were at a
low ebb Charles, afterwards Charles II., sought refuge there, and lay in
great straits not only for the comforts but even for the necessities of
life. The Parliament, unable to let well alone, sent a fleet to surround
the island where he lay, but a storm--"Judgment of Heaven," cried the
Royalists with one voice--dispersed the ships. Thinking the islands an
insecure as well as an uncomfortable refuge, however, the Prince left
them at the first opportunity, setting sail for Jersey on his way to the
greater hospitality of France. After that they became the prey of every
strong man who fancied them; and so dangerous a nest of privateers did
they become, that Dutch commerce suffered, and Admiral Van Tromp offered
to help in their reduction. His offer, however, was not accepted, the
English having learnt the danger of calling in foreign assistance.
Admiral Blake was sent to teach the Scillies their duty towards
Parliament, and in May 1651, Sir John Grenville--whom we last saw as Sir
Beville's stripling son--obtaining freedom and retreat for himself and
garrison, surrendered the islands. At first Parliament refused to
recognise these favourable terms, but Blake was as fine a gentleman as
Grenville himself, which is saying a great deal, and he declared that if
not allowed to keep his word he would not keep his office. So Grenville
was free to depart, and went over seas to join his Prince and share in
his poverty and wanderings.
The Scilly Isles are very lovely, perhaps the loveliest part of this
lovely county. The climate is mild and equable, the constant breeze
prevents too great a heat, while the rigours of winter, thanks to the
warm sea-water, are unknown. Seabirds breed on the great rocks, the
earth is of a marvellous fertility, and beyond, far below the horizon,
the next land is that of another island--Newfoundland!
MOUNT'S BAY
The sea has encroached within late years on the eastern shores of
Mount's Bay, but the harbourage is good, and a fine fleet of
fishing-vessels sails from here. There are echoes of unpleasantness with
regard to Sunday fishing on the part of strangers. As the Newlyn man put
it: "Sunday fishing is wicked, and what's more it spoils our market."
DING DONG MINE
At the head of the bay is Gulval, near which lies the Ding Dong Mine,
famous as the oldest in Cornwall, so old indeed that it has long since
(1880) retired into private life. About seventy years since, a number of
Roman and Alexandrian coins of the third and fourth centuries were found
near this mine. It is quite possible that the Romans themselves worked
Ding Dong and Ting Tang, and other of the old mines. A stone inscribed
with the names of Constantine and his son is still preserved at St.
Hilary: "Imperatore Caesare Flavio Valerio Constantino Pio Caesare
nobilissimo divi Constantii Pii Augusti Filio." As Constantine the Great
was Caesar in 306 and became Augustus in 307, this inscription fixes the
date of the stone as belonging to the first of those years. When
draining a piece of land between Penzance and Marazion, the workmen came
upon about a thousand Roman coins of that date; indeed, under stones or
buried in urns various large hoards of brass, copper, and lead money
have been discovered by old tinworks, and every now and then fine gold
and silver coins of Trajan, Nero, and the later emperors.
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT
(CORNISH DINSUL)[3]
St. Michael's Mount, which is principally composed of granite, is 190
ft. high and about a mile round. It is said that the members of the St.
Aubyn family, to whom it now belongs--having been sold to them by the
Bassets--are not considered able to look after themselves in the water
until they have swum completely round the Mount.[4]
However imposing the great rock looked when the waves from which it
emerged wore the summer green of beech-leaves, it could not have had so
great a dignity as now. Fortified from an early date, it soon fell into
the hands of the Church, and was presently garrisoned by monks. But so
fine a stronghold could not be held sacred to spiritual warfare, and in
1191 a party of soldiers disguised themselves as pilgrims and, so
obtaining admission to the fortress, turned on their unarmed hosts and
expelled them. From that date the place took part in any little war that
might be convulsing the rest of the country, and even started--as in
1548--little wars and rebellions of its own. Henry VIII., who had a most
fatherly care for his coast defences, erected batteries here; and
during the Civil Wars it belonged in turn to whichever party had the
upper hand. Its history, indeed, is a continual change of owners, of
fierce sieges, stratagems, plunderings, and hairbreadth escapes. Now it
is an old grey rock, which after many vicissitudes has fallen asleep in
the sun. The only very ancient part still in existence is the piece of
Saxon walling pierced by the principal doorway, and the wonder is, not
that there is so little, but that one stone should have been left upon
another.
AN OLD CEREMONY
In this part of the country the name Godolphin occurs over and over
again. Tresco Abbey was granted to them at the Dissolution, but they
lived principally at Godolphin House in Breage, and the old saying ran:
"A Trelawny was never known to want courage, a Grenville loyalty, or a
Godolphin wit."
The Tudor house to the north of Godolphin Hill (500 ft.) is now a farm.
The panelled rooms, a hall, and some great windows are all that remain
of the former mansion, but a ceremony, which originated in 1330, is
still observed on Candlemas day. "Once a year for ever the reeve of the
manor of Lamburn shall come to Godolphin, and there boldly enter the
hall, jump upon the table, and stamp or bounce with his feet or club to
alarm and give notice to the people of his approach, and then and there
make proclamation aloud three times, 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! I am the reeve
of the manor of Lamburn, in Perransand, come here to demand the old rent
duties and customs, due to the lords from the said manor of Godolphin,"
upon which notice there was forthwith to be brought him 2_s_. 8_d_. in
rent, a quart of beer, a loaf of wheaten bread, and a cheese worth
6_d_., "which the reeve having received he shall drink of the beer,
taste the bread and cheese in the place, and then depart, carrying with
him the said rent and the remainder of the viands."
One of the two oldest crosses in Cornwall is in the churchyard at
Godolphin. In the opinion of stone-masons it has been "bruised out,"
probably with wood, and not cut with a metal tool. It may indeed have
come into existence before metal was used.
CHINA CLAY
Tregoning Hill, a little south of Godolphin, was the place where Wm.
Cookworthy, a druggist, discovered in 1745 a clay from which porcelain
could be made, and from which Plymouth china resulted. This first
discovery of china clay has led to that great development of the
industry, of which St. Austell is the centre.
WRECKS:
GERMOE AND BREAGE
Before the lighthouse on the Wolf Rock was built (1871) this rocky coast
was the scene of many a wreck. In 1873 the Vicar of Mullion wrote: "In
six years and a quarter there have been nine wrecks, with a loss of
sixty-nine lives, under Mullion Cliffs, on a bit of coast line not more
than a mile and a half in length." It must be confessed that the
inhabitants of Germoe and Breage had an unenviable reputation as
wreckers:
"_God keep us from rocks and shelving sands
And save us from Breage and Germoe men's hands._"
But those days have passed away, though Germoe still has a reputation of
a kind. It is said that once the men had good singing voices, but were
so proud of them that the voices failed; while another distich shows the
estimation in which they held themselves:
"_Camborne men are bulldogs,
Breage men are brags,
Three or four Germoe men
'Ull scat'um all to rags._"
Local jealousies between neighbouring towns are by no means rare in
Cornwall. For instance, there is the old enmity between Zennor and St.
Ives. It is said that the fishermen belonging to the latter were greatly
annoyed one season by the ravages of the hake among the mackerel. They
therefore caught the largest they could, whipped him soundly, and
restored him to the water--_pour encourager les autres_.
When a Zennor man wishes to be disagreeable to a native of St. Ives,
therefore, he says: "Who whipped the hake?"
But Zennor, one might think, would have hesitated to throw stones, for
it is locally known as the place where the cow ate the bellrope, the
neighbourhood being so barren and rocky that the straw bellrope was the
only provender the poor animal could find--which is suggestive of the
Cornish vet. who sent in his bill "to curing your old cow till she
died."
PENGERSICK
One more local story before we go on to Helston, and that because the
retort is so neat and the lady, as usual, had the last word. Pengersick
Castle is a ruin which, when habitable, was occupied by a man and his
wife whose early regard had changed to hatred. Their children were grown
up and married, and they had nothing to do but brood upon their mutual
dislike, until one day it occurred to both that the world would be a
brighter and better place if the other were out of it. No sooner said
than done. That day at dinner the good man poured his wife a glass of a
rare vintage, and after she had drunken told her with satisfaction that
he would now see the last of her--as the wine had been poisoned.
"The wine? Ah, yes, and the soup, too," quoth she, "and as you drank
first, my love, the pleasure of seeing the last of you will be mine."
FLORA DAY
Helston, the little bright town built crossways on the side of a hill,
is near the spring of the Kelford River and at the head of the Loe Pool.
It had an exciting time in 1548, when the Cornish feeling against the
new doctrine of the sacrament found vent in the murder, which took place
inside the church, of Wm. Bray, the royal commissioner. In pursuance of
his duty he was pulling down images and possibly treating what was
sacred in the eyes of the people with only scant reverence. Be that as
it may, Wm. Kiltor, a priest of St. Keverne, attacked and slew him, to
the secret--not too secret either--joy of the people and the scandal of
authority.
The eighth of May in Helston is Flora or Furry Day, and is possibly a
relic of the old May Day saturnalia. The young people go (_fadgy_) into
the country singing:
"_Robin Hood and Little John,
They both are gone to the fair, O!
And we will away to the merry greenwood
And see what they do there, O!_"
They return garlanded with flowers and dance through the houses and
gardens of the town, singing the Furry Song. The dance follows a set
formula, the procession going in at the front door and out at the back,
and being supposed to bestow some sort of benefit upon the houses thus
visited. The refrain of the song, to the numerous verses of which
topical allusions are often added, is as follows:
"_God bless Aunt Mary Moses[5]
With all her power and might, O,
And send us peace in Merry England
Both by day and night, O._"
Charles Kingsley was at the Helston Grammar School when the headmaster
was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the second master was the
Johns who wrote "A Week at the Lizard." It is unlikely the scholars were
allowed to take part in the Furry Dance, but he may have watched it time
and again, and given his schoolboy contribution.
THE LOE POOL
This is a beautiful stretch of fresh water that winds like a river
through the forked and wooded valley and widens as it comes within sight
of the sea, from which, like the Swan Pool--a smaller lake on the other
side of the promontory--it is separated by a bar of sand and shingle.
Until recently the Mayor of Helston was wont to present two leathern
purses containing three half-pence each to the lord of Penrose and ask
leave to cut through the bar and release the surplus waters. The old
cutting of the Loe Bar used to tinge the sea with yellow as far as the
Scilly Isles. Now, however, the quantity of the water is regulated by
sluices and the ceremony has fallen into disuse.
SERPENTINE
After the more exposed northern and western shores of Cornwall, the airs
of the south are balmy. There is no fear, as the farmer put it, that
"the bullocks will be blown off the cliff pasture into the sea, the
wheat off the land, and the turnips out of their sockets." In the Morrab
Gardens at Penzance palms grow in the open, while in Falmouth strange
spiky, spiney plants, whose home is in desert sands far south of
Britain, are to be seen. But the Meneage (stone), as the Lizard district
is called, though mild, is exhilarating, and on Goonhilly Downs the wind
can be sufficiently keen. This district is of a peculiar geological
structure, consisting of a moderately elevated tableland, deeply carved
at the edges by valleys and richly wooded except at the southern
extremity. The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and
everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and
beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine,
and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock
being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A
considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the
Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. It causes a
sensation of vast wealth to go on to the beaches and from the scattered
millions select your own pebbles for the polisher. The more red in your
chosen fragments, the more iron, and the harder they will be to polish;
while a handsome piece of entirely red ore may be altogether beyond
their powers, for serpentine is a rock not a pebble, and the local
appliances are crude. The Lizard is also the paradise of the botanist,
for the Cornish heath (_erica vagans_), the sea asparagus, the henbane,
and many other plants grow abundantly in this district. From Helston to
the Lizard is a pleasant scrambling walk along the fine black cliffs. At
Gunwalloe the church rises from the edge of the cliff, its belfry being
built into the solid rock about 14 ft. away. In Mullion Church is some
admirable wood-carving, and on the west face of the tower a well-cut
crucifixion, and at Kynance are some curious rocks known as "The
Bellows" and "The Post Office," which are as interesting to the
geologist as they are wonderful to the ordinary visitor.
GUNWALLOE AND
MULLION
A curious story is told of a wreck at Gunwalloe, where the St. Andrew, a
treasure-ship belonging to the King of Portugal, was driven ashore. The
Portuguese had entered into an agreement with the local notabilities for
the disposal of their goods, when down rode three Cornish gentlemen at
the head of their retainers and carried off the spoil. Unfortunately for
them the Portuguese had an Englishman on board, and he promptly brought
the matter before the courts and caused an inquiry to be made. But the
treasure, as then enumerated, must have been enough to make the mouths
water not only of the local authorities, but of any starveling gentleman
to whom news of its arrival had come; for it consisted of 8000 cakes of
copper, eighteen blocks of silver, and a chest containing L6000, besides
pearls, precious stones, chains, brooches, jewels, tapestry, rich
hangings, satins, velvets, and four sets of armour.
Just below Gunwalloe are the fine Halzaphron Cliffs. A ship was wrecked
here about a hundred years ago, and the bodies from it were said to have
been the last which were refused sepulchre in consecrated ground. It
makes one's blood boil to think of the barbarities that from the
beginning have been perpetrated in the name of religion. There was
actually a law on the Statute Book which refused such burial to
strangers, on the score that they might not have been Christians.
Christians forsooth--pretty Christians they who framed that law!
Another lingering superstition is connected with the Rev. Thomas Flavel,
who was buried at Mullion 1682. The man was a noted ghost-layer, and was
said to charge five guineas every time he officiated in this way. He was
also an enthusiastic Royalist, and Walker thus describes him: "A
venerable old gentleman; and lookt the more so in those Times for that
he had vowed never to cut off his Beard till the Return of his Majesty
to his Kingdom, by which time he had gotten a very long one." His
epitaph is curious:
"_Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet,
The World my goods; my Soul, my God who gavet;
For from these four--Earth, Satan, World, and God,
My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul I had._"
On the cliffs by Mullion and above Poldhu (black pool) is the earliest
of the permanent wireless stations in England. It forms a prominent,
strange but not altogether ugly feature of the landscape--the people
think it brings bad weather--and is at any rate in strong contrast to
the deep and glorious coves by which in switchback fashion, now cliff,
now coombe, the barren dusty headland of the Lizard (chief's high
dwelling) is reached.
THE LIZARD
This is the southernmost point of England, a blunt rounded headland,
lying crouched over the deep water, eternally--by day and by night--on
the look-out. When the first lighthouse was built here, at the charges
of Sir John Killigrew in 1619--note that Godolphin land has given place
to the country of the Killigrews--it was disapproved of by the Trinity
House. They thought it would serve to light pirates and foreign enemies
to a safe landing-place!
To the east of Penolver Point the coast curves sharply in towards the
north and is honeycombed with curious caves and blow-holes, Dolor Hugo
(from fogou--a subterranean passage), the Devil's Frying Pan by
Cadgwith, Raven's Hugo, and others. Here are bays, picturesque with
rocks and far from the madding crowd, far also from a railway station,
Helston being the nearest; but that is no matter, the ten-mile drive
over Goonhilly Downs being well worth the extra weariness and cost.
MEDIAEVAL BELLS
Cornwall has about fifty bells, dating from before the Reformation. As
they had been used to summon the people to rebellion, orders came from
London that all bells except "the least of the ring" were to be removed
from the churches. This, however, was a command that the recipients
thought would be more honoured in the breach than the observance; which
is why there are so many good examples, as for instance, at
Landewednack, of mediaeval bells. This the most southern parish in
England has a curious church tower, the admixture of light granite and
dark serpentine giving it a chequer-board appearance. It was visited by
the plague in 1645, and a hundred years later the burials were disturbed
in order to make room for some shipwrecked sailors--whose Christianity
one supposes to be vouched for--when to the horror of the inhabitants
the plague at once reappeared. Since then they have let sleeping dogs
lie.
Landewednack claims to be the last place at which a sermon was preached
in Cornish (1678), the incumbent being the Rev. Thos. Cole, who lived to
the great age of 120. This fine old gentleman is said to have not long
before his death walked to Penryn and back, a distance of thirty miles!
Past Cadgwith, Kennack, Coverack, Porthoustock, and Porthalla,
well-known fishing villages, and all romantically situated, but not
otherwise interesting, the wanderer comes by way of St. Keverne, a big
church with a fresco unique in Cornwall as giving the Greek form of the
St. Christopher legend, to Nare Point and the mouth of the Helford
River. It is a question which is the more beautiful, this ten-mile long
creek with its bold scenery or the softer, more feminine Fal. It rises a
little above Helston, at Buttris, flows down to Gweek, where it broadens
into an estuary and applies its waters to the nourishing of many
oysters--which oysters were unkindly described by Lord Byron, when he
stayed at Falmouth, as tasting of copper!
About a mile from Gweek is the "Tolvan," a large irregular slab of
granite, near the centre of which is a hole. Weakly children were
formerly brought to the "crickstone" and passed at sunrise, nine times,
through this hole. The custom having fallen into disrepute, however, the
Tolvan now forms part of a cottage fence.
MAWGAN
Mawgan Church, which lies between Gweek and Trelowarren, the seat of the
Vyvyans, has a brass to one of the Bassets inscribed:
"_Shall we all die,
We shall die all,
All die shall we,
Die all we shall._"
which quaint lines are also found on a tombstone at Gunwalloe and
elsewhere. Trelowarren itself has some interesting pictures, in
particular the Vandyke of Charles I. presented by Charles II. in
acknowledgment of Sir Rd. Vyvyan's services to his father. This family
also possesses the pearl necklace of Queen Henrietta Maria, in which
she sat for the painting now at Hampden Court.
But of all the charming spots up these rocky and wooded creeks commend
me to Condora, for there in 1735 were found twenty-four gallons of Roman
brass coin. Think of it, dream of it, penniless man. Not a few coppers,
but twenty-four gallons!
What a beautiful sound have some of these Cornish names! Rosemullion
Head juts out over the Helford River on the north, and above it we have
Rosemerrin and the Swan Pool, and not far off St. Anthony in Roseland.
It is true that Rhos only means a heath, and that we are on the borders
of the gorse-grown districts, known as Roseland; but the word has
different associations for the "foreigner," and whatever the true
meaning, the lovely name brings to memory the thought and the scent and
the colour of the lovelier flowers.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Dinsul. There is good reason to think Sul = the Sul of Bath "Aquae
Sulis," and this again the "Sally, Sally Waters" of our nursery game.
Many of her attributes have been taken over by St. Keyne.
[4] Appendix B. See pp. 201-2.
[5] Mary Mowes, _i.e._ the Virgin.