"_God! of whom music
And song and blood are pure,
The day is never darkened
That had thee here obscure_."
Early in 1897 a landslip on the tall cliffs of Halzaphron--which
face upon Mount's Bay, Cornwall, and the Gulf Stream of the
Atlantic--brought to light a curiosity. The slip occurred during the
night of January 7th to 8th, breaking through the roof of a cavern at
the base of the cliff and carrying many hundreds of tons of rock and
earth down into deep water. For some weeks what remained of the cavern
was obliterated, and in the rough weather then prevailing no one took
the trouble to examine it; since it can only be approached by sea. The
tides, however, set to work to sift and clear the detritus, and on
Whit-Monday a party of pleasure-seekers from Penzance brought their
boat to shore, landed, and discovered a stairway of worked stone
leading up from the back of the cavern through solid rock. The steps
wound spirally upward, and were cut with great accuracy; but the
drippings from the low roof of the stairway had worn every tread into
a basin and filled it with water. Green slippery weeds coated the
lowest stairs; those immediately above were stained purple and crimson
by the growth of some minute fungus; but where darkness began, these
colors passed through rose-pink into a delicate ivory-white--a hard
crust of lime, crenelated like coral by the ceaseless trickle of water
which deposited it.
At first the explorers supposed themselves on the track of a lost holy
well. They had no candles, but by economising their stock of matches
they followed up the mysterious and beautiful staircase until it
came to a sudden end, blocked by the fallen mass of cliff. Still in
ignorance whither it led or what purpose it had served, they turned
back and descended to the sunshine again; when one of the party,
scanning the cliff's face, observed a fragment--three steps
only--jutting out like a cornice some sixty or seventy feet overhead.
This seemed to dispose of the holy well theory, and suggested that the
stairway had reached to the summit, where perhaps an entrance might
be found. The party returned to Penzance, and their report at once
engaged the attention of the local Antiquarian Society; a small
subscription list was opened, permission obtained from the owner of
the property, and within a week a gang of labourers began to excavate
on the cliff-top directly above the jutting cornice. The ground here
showed a slight depression, and the soil proved unexpectedly deep and
easy to work. On the second day, at a depth of seven feet, one of the
men announced that he had come upon rock. But having spaded away the
loose earth, they discovered that his pick had struck upon the edge of
an extremely fine tessellated pavement, the remains apparently of a
Roman villa.
Yet could this be a Roman villa? That the Romans drove their armies
into Cornwall is certain enough; their coins, ornaments, and even
pottery, are still found here and there; their camps can be traced.
That they conquered and colonised it, however, during any of the four
hundred years they occupied Britain has yet to be proved. In other
parts of England the plough turns up memorials of that quiet home life
with its graces which grew around these settlers and comforted their
exile; and the commonest of these is the tessellated pavement with its
emblems of the younger gods, the vintage, the warm south. But in the
remote west, where the Celts held their savage own, no such traces
have ever been found.
Could this at last be one? The pavement, cleared with care, proved
of a disappointing size, measuring 8 feet by 4 at the widest. The
_tessellae_ were exceptionally beautiful and fresh in color; and each
separate design represented some scene in the story of Apollo. No
Bacchus with his panther-skin and Maenads, no Triton and Nymphs, no
loves of Mars and Venus, no Ganymede with the eagle, no Leda, no
Orpheus, no Danaë, no Europa--but always and only Apollo! He was
guiding his car; he was singing among the Nine; he was drawing his
bow; he was flaying Marsyas; above all--the only repeated picture--he
was guiding the oxen of Admetus, goad in hand, with the glory yet
vivid about his hair. Could it (someone suggested) be the pavement
of a temple? And, if so, how came a temple of the sun-god upon this
unhomely coast?
The discovery gave rise to a small sensation and several ingenious
theories, one enthusiastic philologer going so far as to derive the
name Halzaphron from the Greek, interpreting it as "the salt of the
west winds" or "Zephyrs," and to assert roundly that the temple (he
assumed it to be a temple) dated far back beyond the Roman Invasion.
This contention, though perhaps no more foolish than a dozen others,
undoubtedly met with the most ridicule.
And yet in my wanderings along that coast I have come upon broken
echoes, whispers, fragments of a tale, which now and again, as I
tried to piece them together, wakened a suspicion that the derided
philologer, with his false derivation, was yet "hot," as children say
in the game of hide-and-seek.
For the stretch of sea overlooked by Halzaphron covers the lost land
of Lyonnesse. Take a boat upon a clear, calm day, and, drifting, peer
over the side through its shadow, and you will see the tops of tall
forests waving below you. Walk the shore at low water and you may fill
your pockets with beech-nuts, and sometimes--when a violent tide has
displaced the sand--stumble on the trunks of large trees. Geologists
dispute whether the Lyonnesse disappeared by sudden catastrophe
or gradual subsidence, but they agree in condemning the fables of
Florence and William of Worcester, that so late as November, 1099,
the sea broke in and covered the whole tract between Cornwall and the
Scillies, overwhelming on its way no less than a hundred and forty
churches! They prove that, however it befell, we must date the
inundation some centuries earlier. Now if my story be true--But let it
be told:
* * * * *
In the year of the great tide Graul, son of Graul, was king in the
Lyonnesse. He lived at peace in his city of Maenseyth, hard by
the Sullêh, where the foreign traders brought their ships to
anchor--sometimes from Tyre itself, oftener from the Tyrian colonies
down the Spanish coast; and he ruled over a peaceful nation of
tinners, herdsmen, and charcoal-burners. The charcoal came from the
great forest to the eastward where Cara Clowz in Cowz, the gray rock
in the wood, overlooked the Cornish frontier; his cattle pastured
nearer, in the plains about the foot of the Wolves' Cairn; and his
tinners camped and washed the ore in the valley-bottoms--for in those
days they had no need to dig into the earth for metal, but found
plenty by puddling in the river-beds.
So King Graul ruled happily over a happy people until the dark morning
when a horseman came galloping to the palace of Maenseyth with a cry
that the tide had broken through Crebawethan and was sweeping north
and west upon the land, drowning all in its path. "Hark!" said he,
"already you may hear the roar of it by Bryher!"
Yann, the King's body-servant, ran at once to the stables and brought
three horses--one for Queen Niotte; one for her only child, the
Princess Gwennolar; and for King Graul the red stallion, Rubh,
swiftest and strongest in the royal stalls, one of the Five Wonders
of Lyonnesse. More than six leagues lay between them and the Wolves'
Cairn, which surely the waters could never cover; and toward it the
three rode at a stretch gallop, King Graul only tightening his hand
on the bridle as Rubh strained to outpace the others. As he rode he
called warnings to the herdsmen and tinners who already had heard the
far roar of waters and were fleeing to the hills. The cattle raced
ahead of him, around him, beside him; he passed troop after troop; and
among them, in fellowship, galloped foxes, badgers, hares, rabbits,
weasels; even small field-mice were skurrying and entangling
themselves in the long grasses, and toppling head over heels in their
frenzy to escape.
But before they reached the Wolves' Cairn the three riders were alone
again. Rubh alone carried his master lightly, and poised his head to
sniff the wind. The other two leaned on their bridles and lagged after
him, and even Rubh bore against the left-hand rein until it wearied
the King's wrist. He wondered at this; but at the base of the cairn he
wondered no longer, for the old gray wolf, for whose head Graul had
offered a talent of silver, was loping down the hillside in full view,
with her long family at her heels. She passed within a stone's throw
of the King and gave him one quiet, disdainful look out of her green
eyes as she headed her pack to the southward.
Then the King understood. He looked southward and saw the plain full
of moving beasts. He looked northward, and two miles away the rolling
downs were not, but in their place a bright line stretched taut as a
string, and the string roared as if a great finger were twanging it.
Queen Niotte's horse had come to a standstill. Graul lifted and set
her before him on Rubh's crupper, and called to Gwennolar to follow
him. But Gwennolar's horse, too, was spent, and in a little while he
drew rein and lifted her, too, and set her on the stallion's broad
back behind him. Then forward he spurred again and southward after
the wolves--with a pack fiercer than wolves shouting at Rubh's heels,
nearer and yet nearer.
And Rubh galloped, yet not as before; for this Gwennolar was a
witch--a child of sixteen, golden-tressed, innocent to look upon as a
bird of the air. Her parents found no fault in her, for she was their
only one. None but the Devil, whom she had bound to serve her for a
year and a day, knew of her lovers--the dark young sailors from
the ships of Tyre, who came ashore and never sailed again nor were
seen--or beneath what beach their bodies lay in a row. To-day his date
was up, and in this flood he was taking his wages.
Gwennolar wreathed her white arms around her father and clung to him,
while her blown hair streamed like gold over his beard. And King Graul
set his teeth and rode to save the pair whom he knew to be dearest and
believed to be best. But if Niotte weighed like a feather, Gwennolar
with her wickedness began to weigh like lead--and more heavily yet,
until the stallion could scarcely heave his strong loins forward, as
now the earth grew moist about his hoofs. For far ahead of the white
surge-line the land was melting and losing its features; trickles of
water threading the green pastures, channelling the ditches, widening
out into pools among the hollows--traps and pitfalls to be skirted,
increasing in number while the sun sank behind and still the great
rock of Cara Clowz showed far away above the green forest.
Rubh's head was leaning and his lungs throbbed against the King's
heels. Yet he held on. He had overtaken the wolves; and Graul,
thinking no longer of deliverance, watched the pack streaming beside
him but always falling back and a little back until even the great
gray dam dropped behind. A minute later a scream rang close to his
ear; the stallion leaped as if at a water-brook, and as suddenly sank
backward with a dozen wolves on his haunches.
"Father!" shrieked Gwennolar. "Father!" He felt her arms dragged from
around his neck. With an arm over his wife Niotte he crouched,
waiting for the fangs to pierce his neck. And while he waited, to his
amazement the horse staggered up, shook himself, and was off with a
bound, fleet as an arrow, fleeter than ever before, yet not fleeter
than the pack now running again and fresh beside him. He looked back.
Gwennolar rose to her knees on the turf where the wolves had pulled
her down and left her unhurt; she stretched out both arms to him, and
called once. The sun dipped behind her, and between her and the sun
the tide--a long bright-edged knife--came sweeping and cut her down.
Then it seemed as if the wolves had relinquished to the waters not
their prey only but their own fierce instinct; for the waves paused
at the body and played with it, nosing and tumbling it over and over,
lifting it curiously, laying it down again on the green knoll, and
then withdrawing in a circle while they took heart to rush upon it
all together and toss it high, exultant and shouting. And during that
pause the fugitives gained many priceless furlongs.
They reached the skirts of the great forest and dashed into its
twilight, crouching low while Rubh tore his way between the gray
beech-trunks and leaped the tangles of brier, but startled no life
from bough or undergrowth. Beast and reptile had fled inland; and the
birds hung and circled over the tree-tops without thought of roosting.
Graul's right arm tightened about his wife's waist, but his left hand
did no more than grasp the rein. He trusted to the stallion, and
through twilight and darkness alike Rubh held his course.
When at length he slackened speed and came to a halt with a shudder,
Graul looked up and saw the stars overhead and a glimmering scarp of
granite, and knew it for the gray rock, Cara Clowz. By the base of
it he lowered Niotte to the ground, dismounted, and began to climb,
leading Rubh by the bridle and seeking for a pathway. Behind him the
voices of crashing trees filled the windless night. He found a ledge
at length, and there the three huddled together--Niotte between
swooning and sleep, Graul seated beside her, and Rubh standing
patient, waiting for the day. When the crashing ceased around them,
the King could hear the soft flakes of sweat dripping from the
stallion's belly, and saw the stars reflected now from the floor where
his forest had stood. Day broke, and the Lyonnesse had vanished.
Forest and pasture, city, mart and haven--away to the horizon a
heaving sea covered all. Of his kingdom there remained only a thin
strip of coast, marching beside the Cornish border, and this sentinel
rock, standing as it stands to-day, then called Cara Clowz, and now
St. Michael's Mount.
If you have visited it, you will know that the mount stands about half
a mile from the mainland; an island except at low water, when you
reach it by a stone causeway. Here, on the summit, Graul and Niotte
built themselves a house, asking no more of life than a roof to
shelter them; for they had no child to build for, and their spirit was
broken. The little remnant of their nation settled in Marazion on the
mainland, or southward along the strip of coast, and set themselves to
learn a new calling. As the sea cast up the bodies of their drowned
cattle and the trunks of uprooted trees, they took hides and timber
and fashioned boats and launched forth to win their food. They lowered
nets and wicker pots through the heaving floor deep into the twilight,
and, groping across their remembered fields, drew pollack and conger,
shellfish and whiting from rocks where shepherds had sat to watch
their sheep, or tinners gathered at noonday for talk and dinner. At
first it was as if a man returning at night to his house and, finding
it unlit, should feel in the familiar cupboard for food and start
back from touch of a monstrous body, cold and unknown. Time and use
deadened the shock. They were not happy, for they remembered days of
old; but they endured, they fought off hunger, they earned sleep; and
their King, as he watched from Cara Clowz their dark sails moving out
against the sunset, could give thanks that the last misery had been
spared his people.
But there were dawns which discovered one or two missing from the tale
of boats, home-comings with heavy news for freight, knots of women and
children with blown wet hair awaiting it, white faces and the wails of
widow and orphan. The days drew in and this began to happen often--so
often that a tale grew with it and spread, until it had reached all
ears but those of King Graul and Queen Motte.
One black noon in November a company of men crossed the sands at
low-water and demanded to speak with the King.
"Speak, my children," said Graul. He knew that they loved him and
might count on his sharing the last crust with them.
"We are come," said the spokesman, "not for ourselves, but for our
wives and children. For us life is none too pleasant; but they need
men's hands to find food for them, and at this rate there will soon be
no men of our nation left."
"But how can I help you?" asked the King.
"That we know not; but it is your daughter Gwennolar who undoes us.
She lies out yonder beneath the waters, and through the night she
calls to men, luring them down to their death. I myself--all of us
here--have heard her; and the younger men it maddens. With singing and
witch fires she lures our boats to the reefs and takes toll of us,
lulling even the elders to dream, cheating them with the firelight and
voices of their homes."
Now the thoughts of Graul and Niotte were with their daughter
continually. That she should have been lost and they saved, who cared
so little for life and nothing for life without her--that was their
abiding sorrow and wonder and self-reproach. Why had Graul not turned
Rubh's head perforce and ridden back to die with her, since help her
he could not? Many times a day he asked himself this; and though
Niotte's lips had never spoken it, her eyes asked it too. At night he
would hear her breath pause at his side, and knew she was thinking of
their child out yonder in the cold waters.
"She calls to us also," he answered, and checked himself.
"So it is plain her spirit is alive yet, and she must be a witch,"
said the spokesman, readily.
The King rent his clothes. "My daughter is no witch!" he cried. "But I
left her to die, and she suffers."
"Our lads follow her. She calls to them and they perish."
"It is not Gwennolar who calls, but some evil thing which counterfeits
her. She was innocent as the day. Nevertheless your sons shall not
perish, nor you accuse her. From this day your boats shall have a
lantern on this rock to guide them, and I and my wife will tend it
with our own hands."
Thenceforward at sunset with their own hands Graul and Niotte lit and
hung out a lantern from the niche which stands to this day and is
known as St. Michael's Chair; and trimmed it, and tended it the night
through, taking turns to watch. Niotte, doited with years and sorrow,
believed that it shone to signal her lost child home. Her hands
trembled every night as Graul lit the wick, and she arched her palms
above to shield it from the wind. She was happier than her husband.
Gwennolar's spell defied the lantern and their tottering pains. Boats
were lost, men perished as before. The people tried a new appeal.
It was the women's turn to lay their grief at the King's door. They
crossed the sands by ones and twos---widows, childless mothers, maids
betrothed and bereaved--and spread their dark skirts and sat before
the gateway. Niotte brought them food with her own hands; they took
it without thanks. All the day they sat silent, and Graul felt their
silence to be heavier than curses--nay, that their eyes did indeed
curse as they sat around and watched the lighting of the lantern, and
Niotte, nodding innocently at her arched hands, told them, "See, I
pray; cannot you pray too?"
But the King's prayer was spoken in the morning, when the flame and
the stars grew pale together and the smoke of the extinguished lamp
sickened his soul in the clean air. His gods were gone with the oaks
under which he had worshipped; but he stood on a rock apart from the
women and, lifting both hands, cried aloud: "If there be any gods
above the tree-tops, or any in the far seas whither the old fame
of King Graul has reached; if ever I did kindness to a stranger or
wayfarer, and he, returning to his own altars, remembered to speak of
Graul of Lyonnesse: may I, who ever sought to give help, receive help
now! From my youth I have believed that around me, beyond sight as
surely as within it, stretched goodness answering the goodness in my
own heart; yea, though I should never travel and find it, I trusted
it was there. O trust, betray me not! O kindness, how far soever
dwelling, speak comfort and help! For I am afflicted because of my
people."
Seven mornings he prayed thus on his rock: and on the seventh,
his prayer ended, he stood watching while the sunrays, like dogs
shepherding a flock, searched in the mists westward and gathered up
the tale of boats one by one. While he counted them, the shoreward
breeze twanged once like a harp, and he heard a fresh young voice
singing from the base of the cliff at his feet--
"_There lived a king in Argos,--
A merchantman in Tyre
Would sell the King his cargoes,
But took his heart's desire:
Sing Io, Io, Io!--_"
Graul looked toward his wife. "That will be the boy Laian," said
Motte; "he sits on the rock below and sings at his fishing."
"The song is a strange one," said Graul; "and never had Laian voice
like that."