Nooks and Corners of Cornwall Part 3

An ancient form of tenure survives here. The upper part of Forrabury Common is divided into "st.i.tches"--slips of land divided by boundary marks only--and these st.i.tches are held in severalty from Lady Day to Michaelmas, the proprietors for the rest of the year stocking it in common, according to the amount of their holdings. The hilly part of the common being unfit for cultivation is stocked in common all the year round.

Boscastle has two churches, that of Forrabury, which has been too zealously restored, deal having been subst.i.tuted for the sixteenth-century oak benches and for the old pulpit that was covered with arabesques, and Minster. Near Minster, on Waterpit Downs, is a fine specimen of Celtic interlaced work on a cross shaft. It is now rescued, but for many years it served to bear the pivot of a thres.h.i.+ng-machine.

The church itself stands on the chancel site of an old minster. A doorway, now blocked, once led to the priory buildings, but of them nothing remains.

OTTERHAM AND WARBSTOW BARROWS

Inland from Boscastle is Otterham, which possesses two bells dating from before the Reformation and mentioned in the inventory of Edward VI. The inscriptions on these mediaeval bells are interesting, a frequent one being, "With my living voice I drive away all evil things." A little to the east of Otterham, on a hill 807 ft. above sea level, is Warbstow Barrows, one of the largest and best preserved earthworks in the county.

Its two ramparts have each two entrances, the outer wall being 15 ft.

high with a ditch 15 ft. wide. In the middle is a barrow known as the Giant's Grave, perhaps the resting-place of a chieftain who died in defence of the place, and was buried where he fell. Cornwall is thickly strewn with these memorials of the past. Earthworks of different race encampments lie cheek by jowl, strings of forts reach from sea to sea, and even the cliffs are fortified. These cliff castles, and there are traces of fortification on almost every headland, must have been built by people who were actually "between the devil and the deep sea." Foot by foot they must have given way, till at length they stood with their backs to the sea, defending from their enemies one ultimate rock. Only too often is there a grave within these defences, the grave of the last man, strong enough to hold back the enemy, but slain at last.

To the south-west of Boscastle is Willapark Head, and beyond it are some caves which until recently were haunted, as was all this north-western coast, by mild-eyed seals. "A man with a gun" and the English instinct to "go out and kill something," an instinct useful in the days of the mammoth and the cave-tiger, but more than a little tiresome in our present state of civilisation, is responsible for their disappearance.

There are still the caves to be seen.

ST. NECHTAN'S KIEVE; BOSSINEY

Inland the little towns are of slight interest, with the exception of the old cross at Lambrenny, but the walk along the cliffs--and the Cornish are amiably ignorant that trespa.s.sers ought to be prosecuted--presents an ever-changing panorama of lichened rocks and lacy surf and every shade of wonderful blue. In Trevalga Church is some old woodwork that has been carefully placed against the east wall of the church, and presently we are crossing the neck of the Rocky Valley on our way to derelict Bossiney--Bossiney once having mayor and officers and represented in Parliament by Sir Francis Drake, but now only a sleepy lovely nook in a quiet corner of the land! At the head of the Rocky Valley is St. Nechtan's Kieve, a fine but broken waterfall of some 40 ft. A legend is told of two unknown ladies who inhabited a cottage near by and who died without ever having revealed their names, but the legend sprang like so many others from the fertile brain of the Rev.

Robert Hawker. He thought the place looked as if it ought to have a legend, and not finding one was both ready and able to supply the deficiency. A cross which was formerly part of the garden gate and was supposed to be of the ninth century has been taken to Tintagel, and is now to be seen in the garden of that comfortable old-fas.h.i.+oned hostelry, the Wharncliffe Arms.

TINTAGEL

The far-famed "Dundagel" consists of a single grey street, lined in irregular fas.h.i.+on with grey cottages and houses. In this land of stone you sigh for the cheerful sight of a red-brick building or a glowing tiled roof; but the stone used is grey, and where the roofs are not of a cold blue slate, they are of a thatch held on by ropes that are heavily weighted. The place is still primitive. Until recently the nearest baker lived at Delabole, and to judge by the prizes (instead of cakes) on view in his window, he must have been the king of pastry cooks. In Cornwall, however, the housewife still bakes her own bread and is in other ways more self-sufficing, and let us add more thrifty, than elsewhere.

ARTHUR

"Who Arthur was," says Milton, "and whether any such person reigned in Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason." We must remember that the traditions concerning him were not reduced to writing until centuries after his death, while Gildas, who was born according to his own account in what would be Arthur's lifetime, does not mention him.

The legends, however, a.s.sert that he was born at Tintagel Castle about 499 A.D., that he had three wives, but no children, and that his second wife, Yenifer (Guinevere), was buried with him at Glas...o...b..ry. Against the probability of this is the fact that Tintagel is not mentioned in Domesday and that its ruins are of the thirteenth century with later additions. It is quite likely, however, that the place, which is strongly situated on a jutting headland--the so-called Island--was fortified from time immemorial. It may originally have been one of those pathetic cliff castles, may have been improved on and made habitable by the conquering race of that epoch, and may eventually have fallen into decay.

THE CASTLE

The present ruins are said to represent a castle built some little time after the Norman Conquest, a castle which speedily fell out of repair, for it had to be restored by Richard, King of the Romans, brother of Henry III., before he could entertain his nephew, David, Prince of Wales, here in 1245.

When Cornwall, till then an earldom, was made a duchy (1337) and bestowed on the Black Prince, a boy seven years old, all the castles were again fallen into decay. At Tintagel the timber had even been removed from the great hall "because the walls were ruinous." The main part of the building appears to have been on the Island, but it was connected with outworks on the sh.o.r.e by a drawbridge. Sir Richard Grenville, who made an official survey in 1583, tells us that this drawbridge, which had been in existence within living memory, was gone, its supports having been washed away by the waves. The sea having continued its work of destruction, the s.p.a.ce is now too wide for any drawbridge to span, and in spite of a handrail the little climb to the "Island" ruins is a dizzy one. Nor is there much to see. Some of the masonry is recent, while the tiny chapel and altar are of about the same date as the later parts of the castle, but the view is fine. It makes up for the disappointment in Tintagel as a castle, for the disappointment of finding that here is no certain tradition of Arthur, that the very people feel about him much as Milton did. He may have been born here, this may have been his very castle of Dindraithon, but if so they know nothing of it. Arthur is a thing of books, of art, not life, of the Morte, the Idylls, and--best of all perhaps--of Clemence Housman's wonderful story "Sir Aglovaine de Galis," but he has no place in present-day folklore.

On the top of the mainland outworks is a doorway which in an eerie manner opens upon s.p.a.ce, and a sheer drop of many hundreds of feet. It shows how much the sea is encroaching. Once upon a time this probably led to the look-out tower. Now the very foundations of that tower are gone and presently the masonry will go too, and the waters will roar unhindered between the mainland and the island.

THE BEACH AND BARRAS HEAD

Far below is a tiny dark beach, the colour of which is explained when having climbed down a wooden stairway clamped to the rock--the only means of approach--it is found to consist entirely of rounded pieces of slate. They are of all weights and sizes, but there is no sand, no sh.e.l.ls, nothing but slate. Opposite the Castle rock is Barras Head, and there at last the big modern hotel can be ignored and the wanderer lie out on the short, dry turf with the long line of hazy coast to either hand and, before him, the islands white with sea-birds and pink with thrift and the boundless stretch of sunlit waters.

"_To be by the translucent green, the blue Deepening to purple where the weed is dense!

To hear the homing call as the brave sweep Of wings is folded on a sea-girt rock!

To lie in golden warmth while tow'ring waves Break with a lazy roar along the cliffs-- To lie and dream._"

It is here that Swinburne, venturing on a swim, was nearly drowned. The same story is told of him on the French coast, only there it was Guy de Maupa.s.sant who brought him back in safety. The great French writer is reported to have said that the little English poet, with his bladder-like head and attenuated body, struck him as hardly sane. Yet it was Maupa.s.sant who died mad, not Swinburne.

AN INSCRIBED STONE

At Tintagel was discovered in 1888 a stone on which is inscribed IMP C G Val Lic Licin, _i.e._, Imperatore Caesare Galerio Valerio Liciniano Licinio, who reigned 307-324 A.D. It is evident therefore that whether Arthur was here or not the Romans were. What a pity that no one has been able to discover any satisfactory evidence in enduring stone of the British king's existence!

The cruciform church on the cliff is largely Norman, but portions of it belong to almost every succeeding age and period. Some have even held that it contains Saxon work, but the authorities are not agreed.

A DANGEROUS OCCUPATION

On the way to Trebarwith along the cliffs--and Trebarwith is a narrow rocky opening up which the tide rushes with tremendous force--are quarries. It is strange to see men, with the carelessness of long habit, walk to the very edge of the cliff, lie down and, with their legs hanging over, feel with their feet for the rough ladder that leads down the rock-face to the quarry opening; or to see them stand on a plank that juts out over the sea, and is maintained in its position by a chunk of rock, casually adjusted. If the plank should give, or the rock roll aside! But a man stands there from morning till night loading and unloading slates.

THE BATTLE OF GAFULFORD

Inland from Tintagel is Camelford, with its local tradition of a battle.

At Slaughter Bridge, near Worthyvale, one and a half miles from Camelford, fragments of armour, ornaments of bridles, weapons, have been found, and in 823 a battle was certainly fought at some place then called Gafulford between the Saxons of Devon and the Celts of Cornwall, a battle in which the Cornish were defeated. May not this unknown Gafulford be Camelford? Writers have suggested that this may have been the scene of Arthur's last battle; but the weight of tradition is against this theory, a more likely place having been pointed out in Scotland.

ARTHUR'S HALL

While on the subject of the legendary British king, it would be interesting to see a supposed feasting-chamber, which from before the time of Henry VIII. was known as Arthur's Hall. South-west of Brown w.i.l.l.y, it is about five miles from Camelford, in the parish of St.

Breward. It appears at present as a pit hollowed out in a light sandy soil. This excavation, which is 159 ft. long, is enclosed by an earthen bank with slabs of granite about 7 ft. high, placed evenly on the inner side. The absence of true walls makes it doubtful whether it was roofed over, but it may have had a self-supporting skeleton roof, covered with a web of branches or with sods.

LANTEGLOS

As is so often the case in Cornwall, the Camelford church is at some distance from the place to which it ministers, being, indeed, a mile and a half away at Lanteglos. In the churchyard is a celebrated stone with an inscription in eleventh-century Saxon capitals: "aeLSELTH & GENERETH WROHTE THYSNE SYBSTEL FOR aeLWYNEYS SAUL & FOR HEYSEL." About a quarter of a mile from the church is the well-known entrenchment called Castle Goff, with a single rampart and ditch.

THE FORTY BREWERS OF HELSTON

Below Lanteglos is the manor of Helston, and Domesday records "that there were forty brewers on the royal manor of Henliston." This is the only mention in the great survey of brewers as an item of population, and forty seems a good many for one place. Did they brew all the beer in the county; and was it Henliston ale that so appalled Andrew Borde when he thought to visit Cornwall, that he turned back saying: "it looked as if pigges had wrasteled in it"?

THE RIVER

Camelford is not far from either of the sources of the Camel, and the upper moorland reaches of the twin streams abound in charming spots where the water frets among boulders and swirls in suns.h.i.+ne and shadow among ferns and wild flowering shrubs. The sisters do not join forces till they reach Kea Bridge, over ten miles from their source, but as soon as depth allows of their existence sweet small trout are plentiful.

THE DELABOLE SLATE

Between Camelford and Tintagel are the now silent quarries of North Delabole (or Dennyball). The road winds between great walls and under archways of slate which look as if a touch would send the whole erection sliding and rus.h.i.+ng down upon the wayfarer. But the slates were set up by cunning fingers and have withstood the gales of this coast for a score of years. Very different is their mournful creeper-grown desolation from the arid activity of Delabole. The approach to the high grey windy street is marked by deep ferny lanes. Here are thirty acres of quarry and rubble heap, a hideous excavation. In 1602 the quarry, already old, was 900 ft. long, in 1882 it had grown to 1300 ft., and it is growing still. The best slate is called bottom stone and lies at a depth of from 25 to 40 fathoms, for the quarry is now over 400 ft. deep.

Beautiful crystals the so-called Cornish diamonds, are found in these workings, truly the only beautiful things in a most dreary place.