Nooks and Corners of Cornwall Part 8

Moreover, it has had its vicissitudes. An ancient prophecy had declared:

"_They shall land on the rock of Merlin Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn._"

and, as a matter of fact, one July morning in 1595 four Spanish galleys carrying two hundred men crept up under cover of a fog and, landing them on a rock that bore the name of Merlin, proceeded to verify the prediction. The Spaniards must have been surprised at the lack of opposition with which they met, for though Sir Francis G.o.dolphin--called "the great housekeeper" from his hospitality--did his utmost to rouse the people, the fact that the ancient prophecy was being fulfilled before their eyes had a paralysing effect. So much so that the towns mentioned in the prediction were duly and effectually burnt before a sufficient posse could be raised to drive the Spaniards back to their galleys. Yet we have it on Bacon's authority that the Cornish were no cowards: "These Cornish are a race of men stout of stomach, mighty of body and limb, and that live hardily in a barren country; and many of them of a need could live underground, which were tinners." Nevertheless the Spaniards did their work so thoroughly that the Keigwin Arms, at that date a manor-house, was the only building left standing. This house is interesting as a specimen of Tudor architecture, the walls being several feet thick, while the timbers were said to have been grown in the forest, now submerged, that gave St. Michael's Mount its old name of "the h.o.a.r rock in the wood." This tradition suggests a greater antiquity for the house than that of Elizabeth's reign, or that it was built on the site of some older building.

NEWLYN

Mousehole, like Newlyn, has a fine fis.h.i.+ng-fleet, but even when these picturesque boats are out of sight, there is a flavour in the air, a _soupcon_, a _je ne sais quoi_! A blind man indeed might be expected to know how the little ancient town contrives to pay its way! The artists of Newlyn seem to have risen superior to such a trifle. To the painter, of course, beauty is only of the eye and, after all, the smell of oil paints----

It is wonderful how attractive Cornwall seems to artists of both pen and brush. No village so poor, none so utterly desolate, but it can point to its artist and its cross. Not, of course, that there is any connection between artists and crosses. The broad outlook of the former may have been something of a trial, but it has come to be looked on as of no importance, just a bit of harmless eccentricity.

PENZANCE

Not far from Newlyn is a place that was once a chapel-of-ease to Madron and had no church of its own. It was represented to the authorities, however, that if the people went daily to their parish church at Madron--daily, mark you--the town would be in peril of burning "by the French and other enemies in time of war." Naturally the church was built. That good, that punctilious, that saintly town where all the inhabitants went every day to church is none other than--Penzance. And except that it is a good centre, there is very little else to say about it.

CHAPTER VI

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 mult.i.tude 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 Pa.s.smore 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 "h.o.a.r 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' pa.s.sage 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 lat.i.tudes, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 G.o.dolphins (Dolphin Town is named after them), the people were in a parlous condition. With no industries beyond fis.h.i.+ng 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 compet.i.tion of the untaxed foreigner are the difficulty. The trade has been hit very hard by foreign imports and by the crus.h.i.+ng cost of freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the sh.o.r.es 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 a.s.sistance.

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 sh.o.r.es of Mount's Bay, but the harbourage is good, and a fine fleet of fis.h.i.+ng-vessels sails from here. There are echoes of unpleasantness with regard to Sunday fis.h.i.+ng on the part of strangers. As the Newlyn man put it: "Sunday fis.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.bilissimo 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 h.o.a.rds of bra.s.s, 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 Ba.s.sets--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 princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.dolphin occurs over and over again. Tresco Abbey was granted to them at the Dissolution, but they lived princ.i.p.ally at G.o.dolphin House in Breage, and the old saying ran: "A Trelawny was never known to want courage, a Grenville loyalty, or a G.o.dolphin wit."

The Tudor house to the north of G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.dolphin, 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 G.o.dolphin,"

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."