Cornwall Part 3

A little further on a column of spray shoots in fluffy steam from a blow-hole every few seconds after the last billow has fallen away. Near it a huge boulder perched on a great plinth balances at an uncertain angle. How did it get there? At every turn "chairs" of stone extend a silent invitation to us to seat ourselves and gaze at the s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing in a silent and endless procession.

The Serpentine rock streaked with hornblende, felspar, slate and green-stone, shows changing colours like a pigeon's breast. It weathers into columns and pillars and arches and caverns, as if on purpose to delight the hearts of children of a larger growth, too old for spades and pails. Only a mile or two away at Kynance Cove these wonders come to perfection in the torn and twisted rocks lying in ma.s.ses on the sh.o.r.e, which is covered with s.h.i.+ning sand in summer but scoured black and stony by the rough seas in winter. By Caerthillian Cove we may pa.s.s to Pentreath beach and Yellow Carn and thus to Kynance. At places the cliffs have broken away forming a natural quarry and here come the people from the little town above, and search for well-coloured fragments of serpentine to fas.h.i.+on into candlesticks, and brooches, and ash-trays to sell to tourists. Dark red is a rare and popular colour and dark green also; chocolate with splashes of green, like variegated marble, is often seen. There is little fis.h.i.+ng to be done on this wild rigid coast, and beyond some rough farming and their "serpentine" shops, it is hard to see what the population live upon. The rocks at the Lizard are split more often horizontally than vertically, and instead of being sharp upright columns as the granite fragments are at Land's End, these are broad lumps giving a curious sense of steady untiring watching with uplifted heads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAERTHILIAN COVE]

One interesting point about rock scenery is that it changes so little in the course of years that the impressions of those who saw it long ago are still not out of date. There are two very simple little books, two generations old now, but full of charm when read on the spot, Mrs.

Craik's _An Unsentimental Journey in Cornwall_ and the Rev. C. A.

Johns's _A Week at the Lizard_, 1848. Mrs. Craik, who wrote _John Halifax, Gentleman_, came here with two nieces near the end of her life, and gives a picture of Lizard-town which might stand to-day. With a horse and "shay" they visited the various points of interest along the coast, climbed into the dank caves and mounted the slippery weed-strewn rocks. It was a bold journey to make at the time, and their taste was in advance of most of their contemporaries who had not learnt to delight in the grand and desolate places of the earth. The Rev. C. A. Johns is well known as the author of _Wild Flowers of the Field_, which ran through numerous editions and is the most popular of his many natural-history books.

Not many days after reading Mrs. Craik's book at the Lizard, I was in the light railway running to Newquay in the north of the county and saw a girl of about sixteen, deeply absorbed in a book, opposite to me. It was bound in the dingy maroon cloth so beloved by the librarians of Free Libraries, and peeping over I saw it was _John Halifax_, thus nearly sixty years after publication giving as much pleasure as when it was new! If the good lady could have known it, how pleased she would have been!

When the sun falls over the shoulder of the cliff in the west, the revolving light from the lighthouse begins to flash out with a regular monotonous beat on its long night vigil. At any time after dark one can see the huge pencil of light darting round, striking the white signal station opposite, losing itself in the sea and so returning. There is something awe-inspiring in that regular sweep of pulsing light every three minutes, hour after hour, carrying its silent sure message to those at sea. If anything happened to the Lizard light what terrible wrecks there would be on this jagged coast!

Nearly as impressive is it to catch by night the glimmer of the Morse code flas.h.i.+ng from s.h.i.+ps which are revealing their names and journeys to those ever-vigilant watchers in the signal station as they pa.s.s. What stories that signal station might tell of the journeyings to and fro, of the s.h.i.+ps conveying food and clothes and necessaries from port to port!

Here is a vessel bound from Galveston to Havre with cotton, she is British; about every second or third that come by is laden with coals from Cardiff; here is another from the other direction, bringing fruit from the Mediterranean to Liverpool, with all the beating up the Irish Channel yet to face; pa.s.sing it, and doubtless hailing it in transit, is another Liverpool s.h.i.+p carrying a general cargo to Italy, and when times are peaceful and there are no scares from submarines, the great American liners from Plymouth swell the number with their enormous bulk. It is a regular, and, if one may use the expression, a well-beaten track around this great blunt headland, and it is small wonder the enemy submarines haunted it to find their prey, as men wait hidden beside the tracks of wild animals in the jungle.

V

KING ARTHUR'S LAND

Tintagel can never disappoint anyone. The very spirit of romance is in the place. If you have climbed across the narrow neck that links the "island" to the main, and pa.s.sing through the low doorway of the ruined castle, have crossed the s.p.a.ce surrounded by the broken wall, and so gone out again to the plateau above, you will find yourself among the sheep and cut off from the world, apparently swinging in s.p.a.ce. There are great mounds all around, in shape like graves, covered with coa.r.s.e tufty gra.s.s munched by the ragged sheep whose hair is blown into knots by the ceaseless wind. It takes very little imagination to picture that around lie the bodies of a mighty host of warriors, at peace at last in sound of the booming sea which clashes in its mad rush through the caverns deep beneath, with the wind whistling over them boisterously, or crooning low even on the mildest summer day.

It is quite likely, as experts say, that the present ruins date only from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Arthur may never have set foot on the tufty gra.s.s of the cube-shaped island; there may never, for that matter, have been an Arthur at all, but lying in the gra.s.s above the slaty ruins and looking through the serrated arch to the onyx-green sea, fretting the black rock, all these doubts seem simply silly and fly away light as the spume flying inland in great b.a.l.l.s.

The spirit of Arthur and his fighting men lives here still. It may possibly have been summoned up by the thoughts of the countless host of pilgrims who have come expectantly to the most beloved of all the shrines of British history. For thoughts if repeated may conjure up visions.

And the vision of Tintagel, that needs no seeking, but comes pressing on you as insistently as the sea-laden air, is one of old-time warriors impregnably ensconced. With their castle standing on the very edge of the gulf--narrower then than now--which separated them from the mainland. Guarded by a drawbridge crossing that sharp s.p.a.ce so that three men could well hold back an host. Protected on all other sides by the sheer cliff, with a fortification at one point where it was just possible to land. Having above a wide plateau from which to gaze seaward and landward far over the rolling slopes of the country, along the deeply broken coast with its sugar-loaves of detached rock, or else out to the s.h.i.+fting ocean, they were in an enviable situation. They had a well of water on the very summit of their stronghold, and pasture for sheep by the dozen to insure plenty of mutton. They could laugh to scorn any such enemies as that age could bring against them.

There are several such striking vantage points along the Cornish coast, one at Tol Pedn, another at Treryn Dinas where is the Logan Rock, and there are signs they have all been utilized, but none of them had the superb advantages of Tintagel with its wide level of turfy heights, and the living water flowing from the heart of the rock.

There is no doubt that some such man as Arthur existed, though it is hardly likely he was the model of refined sensitiveness and perfect chivalry romancers have made him out to be. At any rate he was a gallant warrior if the old chroniclers are to be believed, and it is probable that his standard of conduct was high above his age, or the legend of his virtue would not have clung to him so persistently. The notion that such a king in Cornwall would neglect such a position may be dismissed as absurd, and so we may take it that Arthur fortified himself here on the heights, from whence he ranged far and wide, even so far as Scotland, to win his victorious battles. And all proof seems to point to it that he met his death in Scotland far from the beating of his beloved savage waves in Cornwall.

All this coast is slaty shale; there is a miniature quarry just away to the west round the next headland, and the materials lying to hand were not likely to be neglected in days when transport was more of a consideration than now. So the crumbling walls which cling to the cliff are of slate, sharp and jagged, and inside the arches present a serrated edge like a crocodile's teeth. These arches are pointed which shows they were of later date than Arthur, and the rest of the masonry can hardly be said to have any style. The first mention of Tintagel in public records is in 1305, and in 1337 the castle was fairly habitable, at any rate that part of it standing on the mainland. We can imagine the original castle, which this one superseded, to have been much the same only with heavy round arches. So we can picture the past without great difficulty. And lying in peace we can repeople the place with the gorgeous figures of Tennyson's Idylls, much better known to most people than _La Mort d'Arthur_. The constant splash of the waves and the steady cropping of the sheep are broken now and again by a Woof! exactly like the growl of an angry beast. This is caused by a blow-hole in the cliff from which, when the wind is strong and onsh.o.r.e, the spout of water is sent out forty feet or more.

Right beneath us is a cavern cut through the solid rock from side to side, and into this the sea scours at its height, the breakers from each end meeting with a shock in the middle. The rocks, which are so black and frigid outside, are rounded within, and coloured a strange sea-green, with almost a wan look, while the floor is composed of myriads of flat stones, round and oval, all sizes, from a sixpence to a soup-plate, making a natural pavement easy to the tread. The beach at the mouth of the cave is the same, armoured by myriads and myriads of flat smooth rounded stones lying so closely together as to give the appearance of a dragon's scales; it would not be hard to conjure up imaginary dragons here for the cave is by tradition "Merlin's Cave," and magicians and dragons are always regarded as contemporaneous. These plates of slate, for they are nothing else, have had all the angles scoured off them by the scourging surge. The village people collect them, picking out all that are of one size, to form neat pavements. You also see them set like some strange mosaic on the fronts of the houses, stuck in mortar, and making a deep frieze; the effect is not beautiful.

But the ruined castle on the island is not all that remains of man's handiwork here, for high on the mainland, on the great boss of earth fronting the island, are the remains of another castle, now falling piecemeal into the gulf below as the cliff crumbles. Some hold that the "island" was originally an island in reality, and that the slender neck of rock now linking it to the mainland is the result of cliff-falls and debris. But whether that was so or not the purpose of the landward castle can only be guessed. It may have been an outwork, though that seems rather unnecessary. Over it hover screaming jacks, who love the sheltering crevices of artificial walls, and occasionally may be seen a red-legged and beaked Cornish chough which here alone on the Cornish coast is not extinct, and is supposed by the children to re-embody the spirit of King Arthur.

Arthur lived about A.D. 500. His story is so overlaid with legend that it is difficult to find any grains of truth concerning him. Tennyson makes him of miraculous birth, cast upon the sh.o.r.e by a wave at Tintagel, of which the earlier name was Dundagil, but even amid the romantic surroundings of Tintagel we cannot swallow that bit of poetic licence.

Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, went to pay homage to the King of Britain, Uther Pendragon of glorious name, at the n.o.ble city of Winchester, and, like a foolish man, took his beautiful wife Igerna with him. Uther kept his eye on the lady and presently the unhappy husband, having returned to his domain of Cornwall, was besieged in the strong castle of Damelioc, not far from Tintagel. Damelioc, represented to this day by an earthwork, is on the road running through Delabole to Padstow, or more correctly Rock, and is about eight miles from Tintagel. Meantime, Gorlois had left his wife in Tintagel, probably thinking his own life would be safer if he were apart from her, for he must have been well aware of all the consequences his foolish indiscretion had brought about. This did not save him; he was slain, and meantime the British King obtained access to Tintagel and wooed the lady.

In due time Arthur was born, and succeeded to the chieftains.h.i.+p or Dukedom of Cornwall, apparently without question, and proved himself one of the strongest and bravest rulers that ever held high position. His arms were everywhere triumphant, and about a dozen victories are placed to his credit, but he fell at last, fighting his traitorous nephew Mordred somewhere about the year 542, when Mordred was slain and Arthur, mortally wounded, carried from the battlefield to die. This was the Battle of Camulodunum and it was for long supposed to have been fought quite near Tintagel, close by the present town of Camelford, the similarity of names giving colour to the error. Besides there was a very fierce battle fought near Camelford in some remote time, and the tradition of it is strong to this day. The place is marked by Slaughter Bridge, to be found by going half a mile down a side road from the station. It is a small bridge over a tiny stream, and it is supported by great blocks of stone instead of piers. If you linger there a girl comes from a rough shanty near and says she will show you King Arthur's tomb.

A short scramble takes you down steep banks where tree-trunks grow out horizontally turning up at an angle to reach the light, and brambles and creepers cling thickly, while the long hart's-tongue ferns dip in the running water, floating down stream like strange seaweed; then you see a great monolith with a Latin inscription, of which the only word still decipherable is "filius." You point out to the little guide that in all probability King Arthur was not buried here at all but in Scotland where the evidence shows that the Battle of Camulodunum was fought, and she makes no objection provided the fee is forthcoming.

No doubt some great chieftain was laid here after the battle, where thousands were killed, so that a thousand years later the bridge retains the name of Slaughter Bridge, but it is likely the event took place long after Arthur's death. For its date is generally now acknowledged to be the year 823 in the time of King Egbert. It was between the Britons and Saxons, and history does not say which was victorious. It may have been a drawn fight, in which case the ground was strewn with bodies and the waters of the stream dyed crimson all for nothing.

It is in later times that the dignity of King has been conferred on Arthur, and some suppose he was King of Britain; but it seems more likely that he gained slices of territory spasmodically as the result of fighting, and was really only ruler in his own corner of the country continuously, though his battles spread his name far and wide. There were so many rulers in those days and the country was so cut up that it is not likely he was able to a.s.sert himself supremely, and the conquests of Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Gaul and Spain attributed to him are pure legends. In a very interesting little book called _King Arthur in Cornwall_ by W. Hows.h.i.+p d.i.c.kinson, the case is put clearly:--

"The evidence which is wanting with regard to Arthur's battle on the Camel comes to light on the Firth of Forth. There is reason to suppose that tradition did not err in the fatal a.s.sociation of Arthur and Mordred, though the place of the last scene was not Cornwall but Scotland. The name Camlan which has been freely given by later writers to the supposed battle on the Camel, is not to be found there, nor, so far as I can ascertain, in Cornwall.

"Skene and Stuart Glennie maintain with much converging evidence that Camlan is Camelon on the river Carron in the valley of the Forth, where it is said are the remains of a Roman town. Here, according to Scotch tradition Arthur and Mordred met. We have evidence which appears to be sufficient that Mordred was King of the Picts, or, as he is sometimes termed, King of Scotland, and the head of a confederacy of Picts, Scots and Saxons, or, as some authorities have it of Picts, Scots and renegade Britons. With this composite army he gave battle to Arthur and his faithful British force, in which the latter were defeated and Arthur slain.

"It is worth noting as in favour of the Scottish location of the battle that Geoffrey [of Monmouth] who places it on the Camel states Mordred's force to have consisted of Picts and Scots. It is surely improbable that Arthur could have been confronted in Cornwall by a great army of these northern savages.... It may be added that an earthwork with double lines of circ.u.mvallation in the neighbouring valley of the Tay now known as Barry Hill, is designated by tradition as Mordred's castle."

Where Arthur was buried will ever remain an open question; Glas...o...b..ry long claimed the honour but that has for some time been discredited by those who have gone into the evidence. The romantic account of his "pa.s.sing," as given by Malory and Tennyson is very fine. It tells how Arthur, wounded to death, is carried down to the waterside and gives his sword, Excalibur, to Sir Bedivere to throw into the water, and how the knight, after some hesitation, does as he wishes, when a hand and arm arise out of the surface of the lake, brandish the sword three times and disappear. Then a little barge appears and carries the dying King off to the Vale of Avallon from whence he will one day return. The grand myth about Excalibur is generally said locally to have taken place at a dreary little pool known as Dozmare, a lonely tarn, flat and bleak, fringed by reeds, on a tableland several hundred feet above the sea near Brown w.i.l.l.y, and on this a.s.sumption many a persevering tourist has paid it a visit. But Tennyson in describing the scene took a much more beautiful place as his model, for he describes Looe Pool which could by no possibility be a.s.sociated with the tragedy. This is close to Helston at the entrance to the Lizard Peninsula. It is two or three miles long, and formed by the widening out of the little river Cober. The water formerly escaped into the sea but gradually a bar was built up, and there was an old custom by which the Corporation of Helston had to present the lord of the manor with two leather purses, each containing three halfpence, in consideration of which they were then allowed to cut through the bar, but that has long been discontinued. The bar is now a mighty thing where great stones are hurled by powerful waves and even on a calm day the thunder of the surf breaking on it is heard for miles.

The water of the lake is otherwise drained. Its banks are well wooded.

In Tennyson's _Mort d'Arthur_ when Sir Bedivere, last survivor of the Knights of the Round Table, carried his mortally wounded ruler from the stricken field--

"On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."

And when Sir Bedivere, charged with the mission of throwing the magic sword Excalibur into the water, left the dying King:--

"From the ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old Knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He stepping down By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock, Came on the s.h.i.+ning levels of the lake."

Thence twice he returned faithless, his mission unperformed, to report:--

"I heard the ripple was.h.i.+ng in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag."

All around Tintagel there are innumerable references to King Arthur. In fact it might be said that only the devil is more popular in this respect than Arthur, for his name occurs perhaps a little more frequently. Mr. d.i.c.kinson says: "We have King Arthur's Hall, Hunting Seat, Bed, Quoit, Cups and Saucers, Tomb and Grave." The cups and saucers are the round holes weathered in the stones on the summit of Tintagel island. The grave is a sepulchral mound lying within Warbstowe Bury, one of the largest British camps in Cornwall. This is not very far north of Boscastle. It is a vast circular mound with a sort of crater on the top, and in the middle of this is another mound, which has been called a Viking's grave and the Giant's grave as well as King Arthur's.

Another place much a.s.sociated with King Arthur, which cannot be pa.s.sed over, is the earthwork known as Cardinham Castle about four miles east of Bodmin. This has been identified by good authorities with Caradigan where Arthur held his court, to which there are many references in Arthurian legends.

On the other side of Tintagel, on the road between Camelford and Wadebridge, and not four miles from the latter place, is Killibury Castle identified with Kelliwic. Arthur was "lord of Kelliwic," and these a.s.sociations all taken together carry a fair amount of evidence as to the presence of the chivalrous ruler in this district.

Whatever else is doubtful we cannot but be sure that Arthur's existence and reputation contributed in no small degree to the preservation of the men of the British race in this corner of the island when they were in danger of being pushed back into the sea by the oncoming Saxons, and it is to this that Cornwall owes in some ways its distinctive character, preserving racial features that are found nowhere else. The men of Ireland and of Wales are related certainly to the original Cornish but there is a distinct cleavage. Arthur may have made his fame known right across England, his victories may have carried him to the capital, Winchester, and beyond, but it is certain that his name will ever be a.s.sociated most strongly with this far corner of the country where he was born and where he had his homeland a.s.sociations. And these a.s.sociations, being the very earliest of the British race surviving, serve to attract from far our Colonial brothers and our American cousins; Tintagel will never lack visitors.

But with the castle we have not exhausted by any means all that is worth seeing here.

Leaving the castle on the mainland we come very quickly to the "little grey church on the windy hill" with its graveyard wall almost swallowed up in rising gra.s.s and turf, and some of the tombstones heavily b.u.t.tressed against the prevailing winds. The church tower must have formed a mark for generations to men of the sea. It stands up straight and bleak with never a tree to hide it. The entrances to the graveyard are over a pavement of round stone bars placed a few inches apart so that the cattle dare not cross them for fear of slipping in between with their narrow hoofs. There are many marks of great age inside the building and the grey stone walls, that have been many times restored, have heard the strong west winds whistling round them from the sea and moaning the tale of the wrecks on the coast for many generations.

All along this coast are steep descents and strange rock freaks. To the north, across the gully leading down to Tintagel Castle, there is a mighty fracture which has split asunder a huge angle of rock, that looks as if it only needed a giant push to thrust it back into the fracture, closely fitting. Yet the chasm below is so sheer and stern that no one can climb up the sides. The sea-birds know it. It was a happy chance for them that made this citadel free from the sullying steps of man, and the steep slopes of brilliant green amid the bare rock surfaces are peppered all over with them as if with a handful of comfits.

The wild music of a host of gulls is the bagpipes of the coast, and arouses the same feelings in the breast of the sea-lover as the pipes do in that of a Scotsman. It is a.s.sociated with the sound of the surge and the deadly thrust and heavy swell at the foot of the tough cliff. These things tug at the heart of a sea-lover. Lying amid the p.r.i.c.kly furze, sheltered for a moment from the deadly wind-whistle, and gazing across that unscalable chasm, we have before us that gull-fortress exactly as it and its kind have been reproduced on the canvas of a well-known painter many many times. What business has he to do the thing so well that we are familiarized with the stern beauty of the haunts of the freest of birds, and feel when we see them in Nature that half the charm has been forestalled by the blunting of our sensibility?

It is no easy task to scramble along these rough cliff edges, and one not to be undertaken by cripples or invalids.

Not very far is one of the valleys so attractive to the Cornish folk, who find in them the growth and snugness that contrast so impressively with their bleak uplands.

Down the Rocky Valley a stream gushes merrily, tumbling in miniature waterfalls every few yards, and meeting at last the oncoming wave with a shock as the sweet water mingles with salt. Everything grows amazingly, and the huge rectangular rocks high overhead on each side of the gully, are mostly draped in ma.s.ses of ivy. They resemble ruins, as Cornish rocks often do, so that it is frequently most difficult to distinguish the natural from the artificial. Most people's idea of ivy is neat flat clinging stuff but here it grows in lumps, yards in thickness, and decorated with brilliant bunches of black berries in the season when there is little else to compete with it. In the valley which leads from the nearest station, Camelford, to Tintagel just such ma.s.ses may be seen. The road runs downhill for about four miles, leading mysteriously into what seems the mouth of a quarry. The sides are covered with untidy, loose clumps of furze, with mighty stones, and ever and always, in all corners, moss so rich that it might almost be mistaken for a bed of miniature ferns. Climb up on one side and you get a glimpse into a pool, with sides sheer like a hewn cistern, and something so weird and awful in its onyx depths that it suggests robbery with violence, suicides, hangings, and anything else gruesome, while the water drips perpetually from the green lines of slime on its sharp walls. Further on are the glistening piles of slate from a disused quarry. The real quarry of Delabole, famous far and wide, is behind, beside the railway, from which one may look right down into it. The road to Tintagel opens out at last and then, if we are lucky enough to be going westward at sunset, we may see suddenly a hazy glow as of a forest fire over all the wide expanse of sea and sky, and outlined against it the great black lumps of rock off Trebarwith Strand.

With Tintagel must be a.s.sociated Boscastle but a few miles along the coast to the north, for hardly anyone who visits the one place will fail to see the other, yet the two are singularly different. Boscastle lies all down the sides of one of those curious clefts, which would be called chines or denes elsewhere, and in this instance the drop is extraordinarily steep. To go sheer down is a feat most people will find difficult, even on foot, and the new road has been designed to help.

Even that would be accounted steep in any ordinary place. Down, down it goes into the neck of the funnel, and looks for all the world as if it were leading to a slate quarry, and then suddenly there opens out one of the grandest harbours on the coast, with huge sloping cliffs running alongside and curving round, making the entrance both difficult and dangerous. With their lovely curves and angles they add greatly to the vision. From the heights of these cliffs Lundy Island can be seen when the air is clear. There is an old saw:--