A BOOK OF THE WEST

                                VOL. II.

                                CORNWALL

                           BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                         LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
                         THE TRAGEDY OF THE CÆSARS THE
                         DESERT OF SOUTHERN FRANCE
                         STRANGE SURVIVALS SONGS
                         OF THE WEST A GARLAND OF
                         COUNTRY SONG OLD COUNTRY LIFE
                         YORKSHIRE ODDITIES FREAKS OF
                         FANATICISM A BOOK OF FAIRY
                         TALES OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES
                         A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AN
                         OLD ENGLISH HOME THE VICAR OF
                         MORWENSTOW THE CROCK OF GOLD

[Illustration: CORNISH FISHERMEN]

                                   A

                            BOOK OF THE WEST

                         BEING AN INTRODUCTION
                         TO DEVON AND CORNWALL

                           BY S. BARING-GOULD

                                VOL. II.

                                CORNWALL

                    WITH THIRTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS

                    NEW YORK: NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK CO.

                         LONDON: METHUEN & CO.

                                  1900

                                CONTENTS

                 CHAPTER                      PAGE

                     I. THE CORNISH SAINTS       1

                    II. THE HOLY WELLS          28

                   III. CORNISH CROSSES         38

                    IV. CORNISH CASTLES         44

                     V. TIN MINING              52

                    VI. LAUNCESTON              67

                   VII. CALLINGTON              96

                  VIII. CAMELFORD              114

                    IX. BUDE                   134

                     X. SALTASH                151

                    XI. BODMIN                 163

                   XII. THE TWO LOOES          173

                  XIII. FOWEY                  188

                   XIV. THE FAL                200

                    XV. NEWQUAY                214

                   XVI. THE LIZARD             242

                  XVII. SMUGGLING              263

                 XVIII. PENZANCE               282

                   XIX. THE LAND’S END         305

                    XX. THE SCILLY ISLES       329

                             ILLUSTRATIONS

     CORNISH FISHERMEN                              _Frontispiece_
        From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.

     S. MELOR’S WELL, LINKINHORNE                _To face page_ 28
        From a photograph by the Rev. A. H. Malan.

     WELL CHAPEL OF S. CLETHER                          ”       33
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     CROSS, S. LEVAN                                    ”       38

     LAUNCESTON                                         ”       44
        From an old print.

     A TIN MOULD                                        ”       62

     LAUNCESTON, CHURCH PORCH                           ”       67
        From a photograph by the Rev. F. Partridge.

     TREWORTHA MARSH                                    ”       83
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     PLAN OF HABITATION ON TREWORTHA MARSH              ”       84
        By permission of the _Daily Graphic_.

     THE COUNCIL HALL, TREWORTHA MARSH                  ”       85
        By permission of the _Daily Graphic_.

     CALLINGTON                                         ”       96
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     CALLINGTON CROSS                                   ”      103
        Drawn by F. B. Bond, Esq.

     THE CHEESEWRING                                    ”      106
        From an old engraving.

     ARSENIC MANUFACTURE                                ”      109
        From a photograph by F. B. Bond, Esq.

     ARSENIC WORKS                                      ”      110
        From a photograph by F. B. Bond, Esq.

     KING ARTHUR                                        ”      118
        From the tomb of Maximilian I. at Innsbruck.

     TINTAGEL                                           ”      122
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     BEEHIVE HUT                                        ”      127
        By permission of the _Daily Graphic_.

     BUDE                                               ”      134
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     MACES AND SEAL OF SALTASH                          ”      151
        Drawn by F. D. Bedford, Esq.

     IN SALTASH                                         ”      152
        Drawn by F. D. Bedford, Esq.

     ANNE GLANVILLE                                     ”      158

     CHALICE, SALTASH                                   ”      161

     PADSTOW HARBOUR                                    ”      163
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     FOWEY HARBOUR                                      ”      188
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     LOSTWITHIEL BRIDGE                                 ”      188
        Drawn by F. B. Bond, Esq.

     S. MAWE’S CASTLE                                   ”      210
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     THE LIZARD                                         ”      242
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     GUNWALLOE CHURCH                                   ”      254
        From a sketch by F. B. Bond, Esq.

     MOUNT’S BAY                                        ”      262
        From a photograph by Messrs. Gibson, Penzance.

     LAND’S END                                         ”      305
        From a painting by A. B. Collier, Esq.

     CHÛN QUOIT                                         ”      326
        From an old engraving.

     THE PULPIT ROCK, SCILLY                            ”      329
        From a photograph.

                                CORNWALL

                               CHAPTER I.

                           THE CORNISH SAINTS

  A saint or squab pie--The saints belong to five classes--I.
     The members of the royal Dumnonian family--II. Irish-Welsh
     colonists--The invasion of Brecknock--Brychan--The
     invasion of Cornwall and Devon--Murtogh Mac Earca--III.
     Irish in West Cornwall--IV. Welsh-Breton saints--V. Pure
     Breton importations--Ecclesiastical colonies--Llans and
     cells--Tribal organisation--Ecclesiastical also tribal--The
     sanctuary--How a tribe was recruited--Jurisdiction--What a
     Celtic monastery was--Rights exercised by the saints--That
     of ill-wishing--Missionary methods of the Celtic
     saints--Illand and S. Bridget--The power of the keys as the
     saints understood it--Reciprocal rights--The saint expected
     to curse the enemies of the secular tribe--Asceticism--A
     legal process carried into religion--Story of the three
     clerks--A higher idea of asceticism gained ground--S.
     Columba and the nettles--The saints and animals--And
     children--How they used their powers--What they did for
     womankind--The biographies, how far trustworthy--The
     interest in knowing something of the founders of the
     Churches.

The story goes that the devil one day came to the Tamar from the Devon
side and stood rubbing his chin and considering.

“No,” said he, “I won’t risk it. Yonder every person is made into a
saint, and everything into squab pie. I do not feel qualified for
either position.”

And it is a fact that nowhere else in England are there so many
villages bearing the names of saints, and these names strange, and
such as may be sought out in vain in the calendars that are easily
accessible. One is impressed with the idea that the vast majority of
these saints are unknown and negligible quantities.

This, however, is an entirely false assumption, and it is based on the
fact that their history has not been studied.

On close examination it will be found that the saintly names in
Cornwall belong to certain well-defined groups, and when we have
determined the localities occupied by these groups we have taken the
first step towards the elucidation of some important problems in the
early history of Cornwall.

Now let us look at these groups.

I. The first belongs to members of the royal Dumnonian family that
ruled Devon and Cornwall.

The first-known prince was Constantine the Blessed (about 460), whose
brother Aldor migrated to Brittany, and married the sister of Germanus
of Auxerre, who came to Britain in 429 and 447 to oppose the spread of
the Pelagian heresy.

Constantine’s son Erbin, prince of the Dumnonii, died about 480. We
know nothing of him save that he was the father of Geraint, the heroic
king who fell at Langport, in Somersetshire, in 522, fighting against
the Saxons.

His name is familiar to us as the husband of Enid, daughter of the
lord of Caerleon, whose virtues and pathetic story have been revived
with fresh interest in Tennyson’s idyl. Geraint has left his name
at Dingerrein, where was his palace, near the church he founded--S.
Gerrans, in Roseland--and a tomb, supposed to be his, is still pointed
out. Although his story is preserved in the Mabinogion, this story has
no pretence to be regarded as history.

His first cousin was Gwen of the Three Breasts, married to Fragan, also
a cousin, who migrated to Brittany. There is a curious monument of
Gwen in Brittany, on which she is actually represented as having three
breasts. But the expression three- or four-breasted was used of a woman
who was married thrice or four times, and had a family by each husband.
The mother of S. Domangard was called the four-breasted for no other
reason than this.

Fragan and Gwen had three sons--Winwaloe, Wethenoc or Winock, and
James--and although the great field of their labours was in Brittany,
yet they certainly visited their cousins in Cornwall and obtained
grants of land there, for they founded churches in two districts,
where their names remain to this day somewhat disguised in Gunwalloe,
Lewanick, and Jacobstow. Geraint and Enid had several children; the
eldest was Solomon or Selyf, who died about 550.

He married Gwen, sister of Non, the mother of S. David, and it was due
to this connection that Non and her son came to Cornwall and founded
Altarnon, Pelynt, and Davidstowe.

Gwen herself we recognise as S. Wenn; she was the mother of S. Cuby,
founder of Duloe and Tregony. Docwin or Cyngar, brother of Solomon,
was an abbot in Somersetshire. In his old age his nephew Cuby took his
uncle with him to Ireland, where he kept a cow for providing the old
man with her milk. A chief carried off the cow, and Cuby left Ireland
and brought the aged uncle back with him. Docwin or Cyngar was the
founder of S. Kew.

Again, another uncle of S. Cuby was Cado, Duke of Cornwall, who makes
a great figure in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history, and in
the Arthurian romances. He was father of Constantine, whom Gildas
attacked so venomously in his spiteful letter about 547, and who was
converted by S. Petrock in his old age. We have in Cornwall two of his
foundations and one in Devon.

After his conversion Constantine went to Ireland and entered a
monastery without disclosing who he was. He was discovered by accident;
for, having been set to grind corn with a hand-quern, he was overheard
laughing and saying, “What would my Cornish subjects think were they to
see me thus engaged?”

II. The second group of saints is of Irish-Welsh origin. The Welsh have
a droll legend to account for the Irish conquest of Brecknock.

Meurig, king of Garth-Madrin (a part of Brecknockshire), had a
daughter, Marchell, who said to her father in coaxing terms, “I _do_
want a fur cloak; the winters here are abominably cold.”

“You shall have one,” answered the father.

On cool reflection Meurig considered that fur cloaks were expensive
luxuries, far beyond the means of a petty Welsh prince.

So he said to Marchell, “My dear, I am going to marry you to a very
agreeable young man, Aulac” (Amalgaidh), “an Irish prince, and he has
ample means at his disposal to provide you with the desired fur cloak.”

So Aulac was invited over, found Marchell charming, and carried her
back with him to Ireland.

Now whilst he was in Wales he had allowed his eyes to wander, and
he had seen that there was a good deal of rich and covetable land
there. So he speedily returned at the head of a host of Irish kernes,
and overran, not Brecknock alone, but all Cardigan, Carmarthen, and
Pembroke, and established himself as prince there.

Whether Marchell ever got her fur cloak history does not say.

Aulac and Marchell had a son, Brychan (the Speckled or Tartan-clad),
who has given his name to the county of Brecknockshire.

Brychan was a much-wived man, unless he be greatly misrepresented, and
had a numerous family.

Not only do the Welsh genealogists give him forty-nine children, but
the Irish, the Cornish, and the Bretons attribute to him several more.

The fact is that all Brychan’s family, grandchildren as well as
children, have been run together, for all such as exercised tribal
rights formed the family clan.

In one of the S. Neot’s windows may be seen good old Brychan seated
on a throne, holding a lapful of progeny before him, dense as young
rabbits.

In Ireland the tribes are called after the founder, as the Hy Conaill,
Hy Fiachra, or sons of Conal, sons of Fiech, though grand, great-grand,
and great-great-grandchildren.

Now the Irish who had invaded South Wales were not allowed a peaceful
time in which to consolidate their power, for in the time of the
grandchildren of Brychan, if not in that of his son Cledwyn, king of
Carmarthen, there came down a Northern Briton, named Dyfnwal, into
South Wales and drove them out, and pretty well exterminated the
family of Cledwyn. This must have been about the year 500, and it was
probably due to this that so many of Brychan’s sons and daughters and
grandchildren took to their heels and crossed the Severn Sea, and
established themselves in North Devon and Cornwall.

It was not till about fifty years later that Caradoc Strong-i’-th’-Arm,
the son of a granddaughter of Brychan and prince of Gallewig, the
region about Callington, marched westward from the Severn, and expelled
the invaders, and recovered Brecknockshire.

When the great migration took place it comprised not only the family of
King Brychan, but also the Gwentian royal family, that was allied to it
by blood.

Of course there has accumulated a certain amount of legend about
Brychan, and we cannot really be sure that such a person ever existed;
that, in fact, the name is not really that of a clan, for Breogan,
which is the same as the Welsh Brychan, was the reputed ancestor of
one of the branches of the Scots or Irish who migrated, according to
legend, from Spain to the Emerald Isle.[1]

What is true is that a certain Irish clan did invade and occupy
Brecknock and Carmarthen, as well as Pembrokeshire, and that about 530
they were driven out of the two first counties, and that they thereupon
invaded and occupied North-East Cornwall from Padstow harbour, and the
north of Devon as far as Exmoor. This was not by any means a first
descent. The whole coast had been a prey to invasions from Ireland for
two centuries. On this occasion among the Irish-Welsh from Gwent and
Brecknock came a great number of saints, that is to say, princes and
princesses devoted to the ecclesiastical profession. The significance
of this I shall explain presently.

I will here only point out that almost all the foundations of churches
in North-east Cornwall were made by members of the same Gwent-Brecknock
family. Is there, it may be asked, any Irish record of this invasion?
We have a good many records of earlier forays and occupations of
Britain by the Irish, but of this particular one only a somewhat
confused legend. There was a certain Princess Earca, married to a king
named Saran, in Ireland, who was much engaged in raids in Britain. She
was the daughter of Loarn, king of Alba or Scotland, from whom Lorn
takes its name, the date of whose birth is given by the Irish annalists
as taking place in 434. He was, in fact, one of the Irish Ulster
adventurers who invaded Scotland.

Earca ran away from her husband to be with Murtogh, a distant cousin of
Saran, and she bore him four sons. The most noted of all was Murtogh
MacEarca, who in time became king of Ireland. Saran then married
Earca’s sister, and by her became the father of S. Cairnech and Lurig,
king of the Scots (Irish) in Britain. Murtogh having committed several
murders in Ireland, fled for protection to his grandfather, Loarn, in
Alba, and murdered him. Thereupon he was banished from what we now call
Scotland. He went to his cousin S. Cairnech to bless his arms, as it
was his intention to offer his services to one of the kings of Britain,
and do as much fighting as came in his way. Before leaving Cairnech he
murdered in cold blood his cousin Luirig, and carried off his wife.

In Britain this ruffian, we are told, became the father of Constantine
and Goidel Ficht, who became the reigning princes in Cornwall.

Murtogh was back in Ireland in 488, for we find him there fighting; and
he remained there stirring up strife, and a cause of bloodshed till he
was elected king of Ireland in 508.

Now, Murtogh most certainly when he went to Britain led a body of
adventurers like himself. He is said to have been the father of
Goidel Ficht, who remained there as sovereign. Now, Goidel Fichti
signifies the Irish Picts, neither more nor less, a generic name, and
his fatherhood of the Irish Picts means no more than that his clan or
horde, which swooped down on Cornwall and Wales, regarded themselves as
Hy Murtogh.

It is rather remarkable that his cousin, the whole brother of S.
Cairnech, was named Broechan or Brychan.

Now, in this story, attached to a perfectly historical character, I
cannot but suspect that we have a reference to a descent on Wales and
Cornwall in or about 470-480.

Perhaps it may interest the reader to hear what was the end of this
ruffian.

On his return to Ireland he brawled and fought till he became king in
508.

He was married to a good wife named Duiseach, and had by her a family,
but he fell under the fascinations of a beautiful woman called Shin,
whereupon he turned away his wife; and--by the witchcraft, so it was
supposed, of the witch--one after another of his children was carried
off by disease, possibly by poison. Duiseach fled for refuge to S.
Cairnech, who blessed her and all who would take up her cause, and
gathered together a body of men resolved on fighting to replace her.
Cairnech gave a book and his staff to be carried to battle before the
host.

Now it happened that in a battle fought in 524 Murtogh had killed
Shin’s father and brother, and though the beautiful woman continued to
exercise her blandishments on the king, she had vowed revenge in her
heart against him. She awaited her opportunity. It came on the eve of
Samhain, All Hallows, when high revelry was kept in the hall at Cletty,
where Murtogh was residing. She had the hall secretly surrounded by
her men, and herself set fire to it. Murtogh was very drunk, the fire
caught his clothes, and, unable to escape by the doors, which were
guarded, he threw himself into a vat of wine to quench the flames, and
so perished, partly by fire, partly by wine, in 527.

It is possible--I cannot say more--that as this incursion, mentioned by
the Irish writers, took place precisely at the period of the Brychan
descent, it may refer to it, and that Brychan may actually have been
Murtogh’s half-brother, who accompanied him to Britain to carve out for
himself a kingdom.

III. The third group is likewise Irish, but unmixed with Welsh
elements. This consists of a swarm, or succession of swarms, that
descended about the year 500 upon the Land’s End and Lizard district.

Concerning them we know something more than we do about the second
group.

Happily Leland, who visited Cornwall in the reign of Henry VIII., made
extracts from their legends then in existence, very scanty extracts,
but nevertheless precious. Moreover, we have one complete legend, that
of S. Fingar or Gwinear, written by a Saxon monk of the name of Anselm.
And we have the lives of many of those who made a temporary stay in the
Land’s End and Lizard districts, preserved in Irish MSS.

IV. A fourth group is that of saints, half Welsh and half Breton, who
made a short stay in Cornwall on their way to and fro.

According to Celtic law, all sons equally divided the inheritance and
principalities of their father. The consequence was that on the death
of a king the most masterful of his sons cut the throats of such of
his brothers as he could lay hold of. And as these little games were
enacted periodically in Brittany, the breath was no sooner out of the
body of a prince than such sons as felt that they had no chance of
maintaining their rights made a bolt of it, crossed into Cornwall, and
either halted there or passed through it on their way to Wales, where
they very generally got married.

Then either they or their sons returned to Cornwall and lingered there,
watching events in Brittany for the safe moment to go back and reassert
their rights, and as they rarely could recover princely rights, they
became ecclesiastics; a compromise was effected, and they were allowed
to return and set up as founders of saintly tribes.

Whilst they tarried in Cornwall they occupied their leisure in founding
churches.

Such was S. Samson, with his disciples S. Mewan, S. Austell, and S.
Erme.

Such again was S. Padarn, who established a large settlement where are
the Petherwins.

When Samson crossed from Wales to Cornwall on his way to Brittany, he
sent word to Padarn that he was going to visit him. They were first
cousins. Padarn heard the news just as he had left his bed, and had
pulled on one shoe and stocking. So delighted was he to hear that
Samson was approaching that he ran to meet him with one leg and foot
shod and the other bare.

Samson founded churches at Southill and Golant.

V. A fifth group consists of importations. In the year 919 or 920,
on account of the devastations of the Normans, Brittany was almost
depopulated. The Count of Poher fled with a number of his Bretons
to Athelstan, and he took with him Alan his son, afterwards called
Barbe-torte, who was Athelstan’s godson. At this date Athelstan could
do little for them; he did not ascend the throne till 924, and it was
not till 926 that he defeated Howel, king of the West Welsh, as the
Cornish and Devon Britons were called, and forced him to submission.
In 935 Athelstan passed through Cornwall to Land’s End and Scilly,
and possibly enough he may have then allowed some of these fugitive
Bretons to settle in Cornwall; and this explains the existence there of
churches bearing the names of merely local and uninteresting saints,
as S. Meriadoc at Camborne, S. Moran, and S. Corentin of Cury. These
foundations mean no more than that some of the Breton settlers had
brought with them the relics of their patrons in Rennes, Nantes, and
Quimper. But an early Celtic foundation had quite another meaning.
Among the Celts churches were not generally called after _dead_ saints,
but after their founders. The process of consecration was this:--

A saint went to a spot where a bit of territory had been granted him,
and fasted there for forty days and nights, and continued instant
in prayer, partaking of a single meal in the day, that plain, and
indulging in an egg only on Sundays. At the conclusion of this period
the _llan_ or _cell_ was his for ever inalienably, and ever after it
bore his name. Moreover, among Celtic saints there existed quite
a rage after multiplication of foundations, _daltha_ churches, as
they were called. Unless a saint could point to his baker’s dozen
of churches founded by himself, he was nought. But not all churches
bearing a saint’s name, say that of Petrock, were founded by him in
person. A saint was supposed never to die, never to let go his hold
over his territory. And when in after-years a chief surrendered land to
a monastery, he gave it, not to the community, but to the saint; and
the church built on that land would bear the name of the saint whose
property it was.

The reader may like to hear something about the organisation of the
Church in Celtic lands. But to understand this I must first very
shortly explain the political organisation.

This among all Celtic people was tribal. The tribe, cinnel, clan, was
under a chief, who had his _dun_ or fort. Every subdivision of the
tribe had also its camp of refuge and its headman.

When the British became Christian, Christianity in no way altered
their political organisation. This we may see from the conduct of S.
Patrick, who converted the Irish. He left their organisation untouched,
and accommodated his arrangements for the religious supervision of
the people to that, as almost certainly it existed in Britain, except
perhaps in the Roman colonial cities.

Now this was very peculiar, quite unlike anything that existed in the
civilised Roman world.

This organisation consisted in the creation of an ecclesiastical tribe
side by side with the tribe of the land. The saint was given by the
king or chief a certain territory, and at once he set to work thereon
to constitute an ecclesiastical tribe subject to his rule, precisely
similar to the secular tribe subject to the rule of the chieftain. A
rill of water usually divided the two settlements. The idea of the
church and the priest in the midst of the tribe of the land, acting as
chapel and chaplain did to the Saxon thane or the Norman baron, did not
occur to the Celt. The two tribes coexisted as separate units, but tied
together by reciprocal rights.

The saint having been given a bit of land, at once constituted his
sanctuary. He put up stones or crosses marking his bounds, a thousand
paces from his cell, in a circle.

Every noble, _arglwyd_, or _flath_ exercised rights of sanctuary, and
the extent of his sanctuary constituted his _llan_, or lawn. The lowest
grade of noble had the limits of his lawn marked at the distance of
three throws of a spear or a ploughshare from his door; the _rig_ or
king had his as far as sixty-four pitches.

Now all those who took refuge within the lawn had sanctuary for a
limited period, and the noble or the saint employed this time of
respite to come to terms with the prosecutor, and furnish the fine
(_eric_) appointed by law for the offence committed by the refugee.
If he could not pay the fine he surrendered the man who had come for
sanctuary, but if he paid it, thenceforth that man became his client,
and he provided him with a _bod_ or _both_, a habitation, and land
to cultivate; he became one of his men. This was an important means
whereby the saint recruited his tribe.

Throughout Cornwall a number of sanctuaries remain, under the name of
“sentry fields.” If we could find out how many and where they are, we
should know what were the mother _llans_ of the early saints.

But a saintly tribe was recruited in another way. Every firstling
of the secular tribe was made over to the saint: the first son of a
family, the first lamb and calf. The son did not necessarily become an
ecclesiastic, but he passed into the ecclesiastical tribe, and became
subject to the jurisdiction of the saint.

But it may be asked, What happened when the saint died?

Every chief had his _taanist_, or successor, appointed during his
life, and enjoying certain privileges. So every saint had his _coarb_
chosen to rule in his name, his steward, his representative on earth.
Here came in an usage very strange to Latin minds. The _coarb_
must be of the royal or chieftain’s race, and the right to rule in
the ecclesiastical tribe belonged to the founder’s family, and was
hereditary, whether he were in ecclesiastical orders or not, to a
female as well as to a male. Thus, although in an ecclesiastical
establishment there was always a bishop to confer orders, he did not
exercise jurisdiction. The rule was in the hands of the head of the
sacred tribe. Thus S. Bridget kept her tame bishop, Conlaeth, who was
wholly under petticoat government. He did kick once, and was devoured
of wolves as a judgment, having strayed, against Bridget’s orders,
among the mountains. S. Ninnocha had as many as four bishops under her
command. Bishop Etchen was subject to the jurisdiction of S. Columba,
who was in priest’s orders.

The Celtic Church as we know it, till gradually brought under Roman
discipline, was purely monastic. The monasteries were the centres
whence the ministry of souls was exercised. Within the sanctuary a
rampart was thrown up, generally of earth, and within this was the
church, and about it the separate circular cells occupied by the monks.
Outside the sanctuary and throughout the lands belonging to the saint
lived those subject to the rule of the saint or his coarb.

There was a right exercised by the saint which had previously been
accorded to the bard. It was that of _ill-wishing_. The right was a
legal one, but hedged about with restrictions. A bard, and after him a
saint, might not ill-wish unless he had been refused a just request. If
he ill-wished unjustly, then it was held that the ill-wish returned on
the head of him who had launched it.

And there can be no doubt that this legal power conferred on the saints
inspired terror. If a chief’s horse fell under him, or his cows refused
their milk, if he got a bad cold or rheumatic pains, he immediately
supposed that he had been ill-wished, and sent for the saint, and
endeavoured to satisfy him.

That this supposed power may have been employed occasionally for
ambitious purposes is likely enough, but in general it was exercised
only for good, to release captives, to mitigate barbarities, to stay
bloodshed, to protect the weak against the strong.

A cheap and easy way of explaining the exercise of this power by the
saints is that of saying that they traded on the credulity of the
people. But it is, I am sure, a false appreciation. They were of the
people, steeped in their ideas, and did not rise above them. To trade
on credulity implies a superiority they did not possess. Besides, it
was the exercise of a formal legal right.

There is one rather significant feature in all the missionary work
of the Celtic saints which contrasts sharply with that of our modern
emissaries into “foreign parts.”

What we do is to collect moneys and start a missioner, who, wherever he
goes, draws for his supplies on the mother-country, and depends, and
his entire mission depends, on the charity of those at home. The Celtic
method was absolutely the reverse. The missioner went among strange
people, and threw himself on their hospitality. That is just one of the
great virtues of a savage race, and these Celtic saints caught at the
one noble trait in the characters of the half-barbarians among whom
they went, and worked upon that and from that point.

The chiefs and kings felt themselves bound in hospitality to maintain
them, to protect them, and to give them settlements. How strongly
this feeling operated may be judged by an instance in the life of S.
Patrick, who went to Laogaire, the Irish king, without any backing
up from behind and without presents. When Laogaire refused Patrick
something he wanted, the apostle and his little band refused to eat.
The king was so alarmed lest they should be starved to death, and it be
imputed to him as due to his niggardliness, that he gave way, and let
Patrick have what he desired.

But this system worked on the material interests of the chiefs. They
argued in their calculating way, “Here are all these missionaries. We
have been feeding them, giving them land and cattle; it is a drain on
our resources. We must really get something out of them in return.”

And so, out of that frugal mind which was not the exclusive prerogative
of Mrs. Gilpin, they accepted the gospel--at least, the ministrations
of the saints--as a return for what they had themselves granted them:
acres and cows.

There is a story in the life of S. Bridget that illustrates this
somewhat sordid view taken of their dealings with the saints.

Bridget’s father had been lent a sword by King Illand, son of Dunlaing
of Leinster. He asked his daughter to negotiate with the king that this
sword should become his personal property. She agreed. At the same time
one of Illand’s men threw himself upon her, and begged her to put him
into her tribe. So she asked the king for two things: the man and the
sword.

“Humph!” said he. “What am I to have in return?”

“I will obtain for you eternal life, for one thing, and for the other
the assurance that the crown shall remain to your sons.”

“As to eternal life,” replied the practical and sceptical king, “I have
never seen it, and so do not know what it is worth; as to the boys, if
they are worth their salt, they will maintain their own rights. Give me
victory over those Ulster rascals, and you shall have my man and the
sword.”

So Bridget agreed to this.

These Celtic saints certainly appropriated to themselves the right of
the keys, to give heaven to whom they would, and to exclude from it
whoever offended them. Of course they could appeal to the Bible for
their authority, and who were these half-wild men to dispute it with
them and quibble the text away? That they were sincere in their belief
that the power of the keys was given to them is certain.

I have mentioned reciprocal rights.

Now one of those demanded of the saint by the chief of the land was to
march with him to battle and to curse his enemies.

This had been what was expected and exacted of the chief Druid; and in
this, as in many another particular, the saint stepped into the shoes
of the Druid. This is frankly enough admitted in one life, in which
we are told that the king sent for S. Finnchu to curse his enemies,
because the Druid was too old and feeble to do the job effectively.

When a saint passed out of this world he left a bell, a book, or a
crosier, to be the _cathair_ of the tribe, and his coarb marched with
it in his name before the tribesmen.

When the tribe was successful in battle, then certain dues were paid to
the saint for his assistance.

In the lives of some of the early Celtic saints we are told strange
stories of their self-mortification, their rigorous fasts. This was due
to a very curious cause.

According to the Celtic law of distress, the appellant took the matter
into his own hands. There was no executive administration of law.
Everyone who was aggrieved had to exact the penalty as best he might.
If he were too weak to recover the penalty by force, then the legal
proceeding for him was to fast against the debtor or aggressor. He sat
down at his door and starved himself. The person fasted against almost
always gave way, as the fact of the institution of the fast doubled the
fine, and as he did not venture to allow the creditor to proceed to the
last extremities lest he should entail on himself a blood feud.

When S. Patrick wanted to carry a point with King Lear (Laogaire) he
adopted this method and succeeded, and the king gave way.

There is a very odd story--of course mere legend--of S. Germanus
when he came to Britain to oppose the Pelagian heresy. He found one
particular city mightily opposed to the orthodox doctrine, and as he
could not convince the citizens by reasoning with them, he and his
attendant clerks sat down at the gates and starved themselves to force
the citizens into adopting the true faith.

The same law of distress is found in the code of Menu, and the British
Government has had to forbid the _dharma_--_i.e._ the legal fasting
against a creditor--from being put in practice in India.

Now, very naturally, and by an easy transition, the early Celtic
saints carried their legal ideas into their religion, and just as when
S. Patrick, wanting something from King Lear, fasted against him till
he obtained it, so did the followers of Patrick, when they desired
something of God for themselves or for others, proceed against Him by
the legal method of levying a distress.

This is frankly admitted in an odd story in the _Book of Lismore_.
Three clerks agreed together that they would each recite a certain
number of psalms daily, and that should one die the other two would
share his psalms between them. All went smoothly enough for a while.
Then one died, whereupon the survivors divided his portion of the
Psalter between them. But soon after a second died, whereat the
third found himself saddled with the sets of psalms that appertained
to both the others. He was very angry. He thought the Almighty had
dealt unfairly by him in letting the other two off so lightly and
overburdening him, and in a fit of spleen and resentment _he fasted
against Him_.

But this view of asceticism was held only at the outset, and rapidly
sounder ideas gained the mastery, and we find self-denial in the saints
assume quite another complexion.

An instance in point is in the life of S. Columba. One day he saw a
poor widow gathering stinging-nettles, and he asked her why she did it.
“For the pot,” said she; “I have no other food.”

The good old man was troubled. He went back to the monastery and said
to the cook, “I will eat nettles only now.”

When this had gone on for some time, his disciple who cooked the
nettles for him saw that he was falling away in flesh, so he took
a hollow elder-stick, put butter into the tube, and by this means
enriched the dish.

S. Columba said, “The nettles do not taste as before. They have a
richer flavour. What have you done to them?”

“Master dear,” answered his disciple, “I have put nothing into the pot
but this stick, wherewith I stirred its contents.”

Nor were they pedantic in observance of rule.

Travellers came to S. Cronan, and he had meat and ale set on the board,
and he himself and his monks sat down to make merry with them.

“Humph!” said a formalist among them, “at this rate I do not see much
prospect of matins being said.”

“My friend,” answered Cronan, “in receiving strangers we receive
Christ; as to the matins, the angels will sing them in our room.”

Finding that some travellers had wandered all night unable to find
shelter, “This will never do,” said he; “I shall move my quarters to
the roadside.”

Though rough in their treatment of themselves, they were tender-hearted
and kind to bird and beast and man. It was through a frightened fawn
flying for refuge to S. Petrock that Constantine was brought to
repentance. S. Columba prayed with his arms extended till the birds
perched on his hands. Another Columba, the founder, as I suspect, of
Columb Major and Minor, was almost incommoded with their affection,
fluttering about his face.

“How is it,” asked one of his disciples, “that the birds avoid us and
gather round you?”

“Is it not natural,” answered the saint, “that birds should come to a
bird?”

A play on his name, for Columba signifies a dove.

S. Cainnech saw a rich lady with a starved dog.

“Who feeds that poor brute?” he asked.

“I do,” answered the lady.

“Feed it? Maltreat it. Go and eat what you cast to the poor hound, and
in a week return and tell me how you relish such treatment.”

One day an abbot saw a little bird with drooping wings.

“Why is the poor thing so wretched?” he asked.

“Do you not know,” said a bystander, “that Molua is dead? He was full
of pity to all animals. Never did he injure one. Do you marvel then
that the little birds lament his decease?”

It was the same with regard to children.

One day King Eochaid sent his little son with a message to S.
Maccarthen. The child’s mother gave him an apple to eat on the way.
The boy played with it, and it rolled from him and was lost. He hunted
for his apple till the sun set, and then, tired, laid himself down in
the middle of the road and fell asleep. Maccarthen was going along the
road and found the sleeping child there. He at once wrapped his mantle
round him, and sat by him all night. Many horsemen and cars passed
before the child woke, but the old man made them get by as best they
might, and he would neither suffer the child to be disturbed, nor let
an accident befall him in the dark.

Great as were the powers conferred on the Celtic saints or arrogated to
themselves, there can be no doubt but that they employed them mainly
as a means of delivering the innocent, and in putting down barbarous
customs.

S. Erc--in Cornwall Erth--made use of his influence to prevent the king
of Connaught from baptising his new lance, after pagan custom, in the
blood of an infant; S. Euny his in rescuing a boy from being tossed
on the spears of some soldiers. Again, finding after a battle that it
was the custom to cut off the heads of all who had fallen, and stack
them at the king’s door to be counted, he with difficulty induced the
victors to take turves instead of the heads.

I do not think we at all adequately appreciate the service the saints
rendered to the Celtic nations in raising the tone of appreciation of
woman.

Next to founding their own monastic establishments, they were careful
to induce their mothers or sisters to establish communities for the
education of the daughters of the chiefs and of all such maidens as
would be entrusted to them.

The estimation in which woman had been held was very low. In the gloss
to the law of Adamnán is a description of her position in the house. A
trench three feet deep was dug between the door and the hearth, and in
this, in a condition almost of nudity, the women spent the day cooking,
and making candles out of mutton suet. In the evening they were
required to hold these candles whilst the men caroused and feasted, and
then were sent to sleep in kennels, like dogs, outside the house as
guardians, lest a hostile attack should be made during the darkness.

The current coin seems to have been, in Ireland, a serving-maid, for
all fines were calculated by _cumals_--that is, maidservants--and the
value of one woman was the same as that of three cows.

A brother of one of the saints came to him to say that he was bankrupt;
he owed a debt of seven maidservants to his creditor, and could not
rake so many together. The saint paid the fine in cows.

Bridget’s mother was sold as a slave by the father of Bridget to a
Druid, and the father afterwards tried to sell his daughter; but as the
idea had got about that she was wasteful in the kitchen, he could not
find a purchaser.

But this condition of affairs was rapidly altered, and it was so
through the influence of the saints and the foundation of the great
schools for girls by Bridget, Itha, Brig, and Buriana.

Till the times of Adamnán women were called out to fight as well as the
men, and dared not refuse the summons. Their exemption was due to this
abbot. He came on a field of battle and saw one woman who had driven
a reaping-hook into the bosom of another, and was dragging her away
thereby. Horror-struck, he went about among the kings of Ireland and
insisted on the convocation of an assembly in which he carried a law
that women were thenceforth exempted from this odious obligation.

I have but touched the fringe of a great subject, which is one that has
been unduly neglected. The early history of Cornwall is inextricably
mixed up with that of the saints who settled there, or who sprang from
the native royal family. We have unhappily no annals, hardly a Cornish
record, of those early times. Irish, Welsh, Bretons, have been wiser,
and have preserved theirs; and it is to them we are forced to appeal to
know anything of the early history of our peninsula. As to the saintly
lives, it is true that they contain much fable; but we know that they
were originally written by contemporaries, or by writers very near the
time. S. Columba of Tir-da-Glas, whom I take to have been the founder
of the two Columbs in Cornwall and Culbone in Somersetshire, caught one
of his disciples acting as his Boswell, noting down what he said and
did, and he was so angry that he took the MS. and threw it in the fire,
and insisted on none of his pupils attempting to write his life.

S. Erc was wont to retire in Lent to jot down his reminiscences of
S. Patrick. The writer of the _Life of S. Abban_ says, “I who have
composed this am the grandson of him whom S. Abban baptised.” But about
the eleventh century a fashion set in for rewriting these histories and
elaborating the simple narratives into marvellous tales of miracle,
just as in James I.’s reign the grand simple old ballads of the English
nation were recomposed in stilted style that robbed them of all their
poetry and most of their value.

Now it is almost always possible to disengage the plain threads of
history from the flourish and frippery that was woven in at this late
period. The eye of the superficial reader is at once caught by all the
foolery of grotesque miracle, and turns in disgust from the narrative;
but if these histories be critically examined, it will almost always be
found that the substratum is historical.

Surely it affords an interest, and gives a zest to an excursion into
Cornwall, when we know something of the founders of the churches, and
they stand out before us as living, energetic characters, with some
faults, but many virtues, and are to us no longer _nuda nomina_.

                              CHAPTER II.

                             THE HOLY WELLS

  S. Patrick in Ireland--A pagan holy well--S. Samson--Celtic
     saints very particular about the water they drank--S. Piran
     and S. Germoe--S. Erth and the goose-eggs--S. Sithney and
     the polluted well--Dropping of pins into wells--Hanging
     rags about--Well-chapel of S. Clether--Venton Ia--Jordan
     wells--Gwennap ceremony--Fice’s well--Modern stupidity
     about contaminated water.

The system adopted by S. Patrick in Ireland was that of making as
little alteration as he could in the customs of the people, except only
when such customs were flatly opposed to the precepts of the gospel. He
did not overthrow their lechs or pillar-stones; he simply cut crosses
on them. When he found that the pagans had a holy well, he contented
himself with converting the well into a baptistery. It is a question
of judgment whether to wean people gently and by slow degrees from
their old customs, or whether wholly to forbid these usages. S. Patrick
must have known perfectly what the episcopal system was in Gaul, yet
when he came into a land where the Roman territorial organisation had
never prevailed, he accommodated Christian Church government to the
conditions of Celtic tribal organisation.

[Illustration: S. MELOR’S WELL, LINKINHORNE]

He found that the Irish, like all other Celtic peoples, held wells
in great veneration. He did not preach against this, denounce it as
idolatrous, or pass canons condemning it. He quietly appropriated these
wells to the service of the Church, and made of them baptisteries.

What Patrick did in Ireland was what had been done elsewhere.

When S. Samson was travelling in Cornwall between Padstow and Southill,
and visited his cousin Padarn on the way; at a place called Tregear
he found the people dancing round an upright stone, and offering it
idolatrous worship. He did not smash it in pieces. He contented himself
with cutting a cross on it.

Now the Celtic saints were mighty choice in their tipple. They insisted
on having the purest of water for their drink; and not only did they
require it for imbibing, but they did a great deal of tubbing.

One day S. Germoe paid S. Piran a visit; after they had prayed
together, “It is my tubbing time,” said Piran. “Will you have a bath
too?” “With the greatest of pleasure,” responded Germoe. So the two
saints got into the tub together. But the water was so cold that
Germoe’s teeth began to chatter, and he put one leg over the edge,
intending to scramble out. “Nonsense!” said Piran; “bide in a bit, and
you will feel the cold less sharply.”

Germoe did this. Presently Piran yelled out, “Heigh! a fish! a fish!”
and, between them, the two nude saints succeeded in capturing a trout
that was in the vat.

“I rejoice that we have the trout,” said Piran, “for I am expecting
home my old pupil Carthagh, and I was short of victuals. We will cook
it for his supper.”

Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up
to their necks in water.

There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land’s End district, to the
purpose, but I admit it is on late authority.

Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs.
They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with
the eggs of geese. The king’s servants demanded them, but she answered
that they were intended as a present to Erc, who spent the day immersed
to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from
which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath,
shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of
watercress.

However, regardless of the saint’s necessities, the servants carried
the eggs away.

When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found
there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed
the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who had set them on, and
all such as should eat them.

The story goes on to tell how these eggs became veritable apples of
discord, breeding internecine strife.

But to return to the wells.

Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature,
I cannot say, but most assuredly the saints of Ireland, Wales, and
Cornwall were vastly particular as to their wells being of the purest
and coldest water obtainable.

S. Senan had settled for a while by a well in Inis Caorach, and one
day his disciple Setna--our Cornish Sithney--found a woman washing
her child’s dirty clothes in the fountain. He flew into a fury, and
his companion Liberius was equally abusive in the language employed.
Shortly after the boy tumbled over the rocks into the sea. The
distracted mother ran to S. Senan, and when he heard the circumstances,
assuming that this was due to the imprecations called down on the woman
and her child by his two pupils, he bade both of them depart and not
see his face again, unless the child should be produced uninjured.
Setna and Liberius sneaked away very disconsolate, but as they happily
found the lad on the beach uninjured, they were once more received into
favour.

It is unnecessary here to repeat all the hackneyed references to the
cult of fountains among the Celts; they may be taken for granted. We
know that such was the case, and that the same cult continues very
little altered among the Irish and Breton peasantry to the present day.
In Cornwall there is now little or none of it. “When I was a man I put
away childish things,” says S. Paul, and the same applies to peoples.
When they are in their cultural childhood they have their superstitious
beliefs and practices; but they grow out of them, and we pity those who
stick in the observance of usages that are unreasonable.

In pagan times money was dropped into wells and springs, and
divination was taken from the rising of bubbles. Now the only relic of
such a proceeding is the dropping in of pins or rush crosses.

Wells were also sought for curative purposes, and unquestionably some
springs have medicinal qualities, but these are entirely unconnected
with the saints, and depend altogether on their chemical constituents.

It is said that rags may still be seen on the bushes about Madron well
as they are about holy wells in Ireland and about the tombs of fakirs
and Mussulman saints. I doubt if any Cornish people are so foolish as
to do such a thing as suspend rags about a well with the idea of these
rags serving as an oblation to the patron of the spring for the sake of
obtaining benefits from him.

In Pembrokeshire till quite recently persons, even Dissenters, were
wont to drink water from S. Teilo’s well out of a portion of the
reputed skull of S. Teilo, of which the Melchior family are the
hereditary custodians.

The immersing of the bone of a saint in water, and the drinking of the
water thus rendered salutary, is still practised in Brittany. This was
done when Ireland was pagan; but the bones soaked were those of Druids.

There is a curious illustration, as I take it, of this practice in S.
Clether’s well chapel, recently restored. Here the stone altar remains
_in situ_; it has never been disturbed.

[Illustration: WELL-CHAPEL OF S. CLETHER]

S. Clether was the son of Clydwyn, prince of Carmarthen and grandson
of Brychan. He came to Cornwall in consequence of the invasion of his
territories by Dyfnwal, and here he spent a great part of his life,
and died at an advanced age. He settled in the Inney valley in a most
picturesque spot between great ruins of rock, where a perennial spring
of the coolest, clearest water gushes forth. There can be very little
doubt that S. Clether employed this spring as his baptistery, for the
traditional usage of fetching water from it for baptisms in the parish
church has lingered on there.

The holy well lies north-east of the chapel or oratory. When the chapel
was reconstructed in the fifteenth century the water from the holy
well was conveyed in a cut granite channel under the wall, and came
sparkling forth in a sort of locker on the right side of the altar in
the thickness of the wall.

To reach this there was a descent of a step in the floor. Thence the
water flowed away underground, and gushed forth in a second holy well,
constructed in the depth of the chapel wall outside on the south near
the east end. Consequently there are two holy wells. The first, I take
it, was the baptismal well; the second was used to drink from. A relic
of the saint was placed in the channel where exposed; the water flowed
over it, acquired miraculous virtues, and was drunk at the second well
outside the chapel by those who desired healing.

That there was a further significance in the management of the course
of the water I do not doubt.

An attempt was made to carry out the imagery of the vision of the holy
waters in Ezekiel:--

     “Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and,
     behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house
     eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east,
     and the waters came down from under from the right side of the
     house, at the south side of the altar.” (xlvii. 1.)

Cornwall possesses a vast number of holy wells, many of them in very
bad repair. That at S. Cleer has been restored admirably; Dupath is in
perfect condition; that of S. Guron at Bodmin has been restored; S.
Melor’s well at Linkinhorn is very beautiful and in perfect condition;
S. John’s well, Morwenstow, S. Julian’s, Mount Edgcumbe, S. Indract’s
in the parish of S. Dominic, the well of S. Sidwell and S. Wulvella
at Laneast, S. Samson’s, Southill, Menacuddle, S. Anne’s, Whitstone,
S. Neot’s, S. Nin’s, Pelynt, Roche, S. Ruan’s, are in good condition,
but many are ruinous, or have been so altered as to have lost their
interest. That of S. Mawes has been built up, and two great cast-iron
pipes carried up from it for the circulation of air over the water,
which is drawn away to a tap which supplies the town or village.[2]

Here is a melancholy account of the condition to which a holy well has
sunk:--

     “Venton Eia (S. Ia’s well), on the cliff overlooking
     Porthmeor.--This ancient well, associated with the memory of
     the patron saint of the town (S. Ives), was formerly held in
     the highest reverence. Entries occur in the borough records
     of sums paid for cleansing and repairing it, under 1668-9
     and 1692-3. On the last of these occasions the well was
     covered, faced, and floored with hewn granite blocks in two
     compartments. It is still known as ‘the Wishing Well,’ from
     the old custom of divination by crooked pins dropped into
     the water. For some years past, however, this ancient source
     of purity has been shamefully outraged by contact with all
     that is foul. Close to it is a cluster of sties, known as
     ‘Pig’s Town,’ and the well has become the receptacle for
     stinking fish and all kinds of offal. Just above it are the
     walls of the new cemetery. All veneration for this spot, so
     dear to countless generations of our forefathers, seems to
     have departed.”[3]

The well of S. Bridget at Landue remains, but the saint’s chapel is
gone. Stables near the well are thought to have polluted the water, and
the well is closed lest the incautious should drink of the reputedly
contaminated waters.

There are a good many holy wells in Devon also, but none of mark. At
Sticklepath above the well rises a very early inscribed stone. There is
a holy well, ruinous, at Halwell, one, probably of S. Lo, at Broadwood,
one at Ermington, from which water is still drawn for baptisms, one at
Lifton, one at Ashburton, probably dedicated to S. Wulvela. S. Sidwell
and S. Anne each has her well at Exeter, and the water of the latter
has of late become of repute, and is in request under the form of beer.
It supplies a brewery.

When S. Cadoc returned from the Holy Land he brought with him a bottle
of water from the Jordan, and poured it into a well in Cornwall. None
that I know of bears his name, but that at Laneast is called Jordan
well.

There is a very singular custom still observed in connection with a
stream in place of a holy well at Gwennap. There, on Good Friday,
children seek two spots by a stream to baptise their _dolls_. This can
be due only to a dim reminiscence of baptising in the open.

In addition to the holy wells, there are the pixy wells, where the
ancient spirits have not been dispossessed by the saints.

Poughill parish takes its name from a puck or pisgie well.

Fice’s well, near Prince Town, has on it “J. F. 1568.” John Fitz, the
astrologer, and his lady were once pixy-led whilst riding on Dartmoor.
After long wanderings in the vain effort to find their way, they
lighted on a pure spring, drank of it; and their eyes were opened to
know where they were and which was their right direction. In gratitude
for this deliverance, old John Fitz caused the stone memorial to be
set over the spring for the advantage of all pixy-led wanderers. Alas!
the convict establishment has enclosed the moor all round, and now
this well, though intact, no longer stands, as I remember it, in wild
moorland, but enclosed by a protecting wall in a field.

In a certain large village of which I know something water was
introduced by means of earthenware pipes for a considerable distance,
and then conveyed to taps at convenient spots by iron and lead.

Now there was one of these taps placed outside the Board school. The
master said within himself, “If I go to the tap, I shall have to pay
the water rate, which will be very heavy; if I never turn the tap, I
surely cannot be required to pay. So I know what I will do. Go to! I
will draw all my water from the well in the yard of the farm at the
back of my premises.”

He did so, and lost his wife and child by diphtheria. Verily even
modern Board school masters might learn something from these wild old
pure water-loving Celtic saints.

NOTE.--Book on Cornish Holy Wells:--

QUILLER-COUCH (M. and L.), _Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall_.
London: Clark, 1894.

                              CHAPTER III.

                            CORNISH CROSSES

  Abundance of crosses--The menhîr--Crosses marked the limits of
     a Llan--Crosses marked places for public prayer--Instance
     of a Cornish Dissenter--Churches anciently few and far
     between--The cross erected where was no church--Which
     therefore precedes the village church--Crosses as
     waymarks--The Abbot’s Way--Interlaced work--The plat a
     subject for study.

There is no county in England where crosses abound as they do in
Cornwall. Second to it comes Devonshire. Indeed, on Dartmoor and in the
west of the latter county they are as numerous as in Cornwall.

Their origin is various.

In the first place, where the pagans worshipped a menhîr or standing
stone, there it was Christianised by being turned into a cross. In the
second place, crosses marked the bounds of a _minihi_ or _llan_, the
sanctuary of the saint.

[Illustration: CROSS, S. LEVAN]

Then, again, the Celtic churches were very small, mere oratories,
that could not possibly contain a moderate congregation. The saints
took their station at a cross, and preached thence. With the Saxons
there was a rooted dread of entering an enclosed place for anything
like worship, fearing, as they did, the exercise of magical rites; and
they were accustomed to hold all their meetings in the open air.
S. Walpurga, the sister of S. Willibald, who wrote in 750, and was a
Wessex woman, says:--

     “It is the custom of the Saxon race that on many estates of
     nobles and of good men they are wont to have not a church,
     but the standard of the holy cross dedicated to our Lord
     and reverenced with great honour, lifted up on high so as
     to be convenient for the frequency of daily prayer.”

In connection with this, I may mention a fact. In the parish of
Altarnon was an old pious Wesleyan, and when the weather was too bad
for him to go to chapel he was wont to go to one of the crosses of
granite that stood near his cottage, kneel there, and say his prayers.
He died not long ago.

Bede, some twenty years before Walpurga, says that--

     “The religious habit was then held in great veneration,
     so that wheresoever a clerk or a monk happened to come he
     was joyfully received, ... and if they chanced to meet him
     upon the way, they ran to him, and bowing, were glad to be
     signed with his hand and blessed with his mouth. On Sundays
     they flocked largely to the” (bishop’s) “church or the
     monasteries to hear the word of God. And if any presbyter
     chanced to come into a village, the inhabitants flocked
     together to hear the word of life; for the presbyters and
     clerks went into the villages on no other account than to
     preach, baptise, visit the sick, and in short to take care
     of souls” (_H.E._, iii. 16).

This shows that, in the first place, among the Anglo-Saxons there
were no churches except the cathedral and the monastic church, and no
parochial clergy. Bede does not actually say that there was a cross
set up from which the itinerant clergy preached, and to which the
faithful resorted for prayer, but this additional fact we have learned
from Walpurga.

So we come to this very interesting conclusion, that the _village
cross preceded the parish church_. The crosses were, in fact, the
religious centres of church life, and we ought accordingly to value
and preserve them with the tenderest care. A great many of those that
we have now on our village greens are comparatively modern, and date
from the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but there still remain a vast
number, not in the midst of a village, but on moors and by highways
of an extremely early description, and which most assuredly have been
the scene of many a primitive “camp meeting” in the fifth and sixth
centuries.

On Sourton Down beside the road stands a cross of very coarse granite.
On it is inscribed PRINCIPI FIL AVDEI, and above it an early and rude
cross of Constantine. Some time in the Middle Ages the rudeness of the
stone gave dissatisfaction, and its head was trimmed into a cross.

A third occasion for the erection of crosses was as waymarks. Across
Dartmoor such a succession of rude crosses exists where was what is
called the Abbot’s Way from Buckfast to Tavistock and to Plympton. But
there are others not on these lines, and such may have served both
as guiding marks and also as stations for prayer. That the monks of
Buckland--and Buckland goes back to pre-Saxon times--did go out to
the moor and there minister to the tin-streamers or squatters and
shepherds, I cannot doubt, and accordingly look with much emotion at
these grey monuments of early Christianity.

The interlaced work which is found on some of the crosses is of the
same character as the ornamentation in the early Irish MSS., and it was
adopted from the Celtic clergy by their Anglian and Saxon converts.

But whence came it?

We know that the Britons delighted in plaited work with osiers, and it
was with wattle that they built their houses, their kings’ palaces, and
defended their camps. By constant use of wattle through long ages they
became extraordinarily skilful in devising plaits; and when they began
to work on stone they copied thereon the delicate interlaced work they
loved to exhibit in their domestic buildings.

The various plaits have been worked out by Mr. A. G. Langdon in his
admirable study of the Cornish crosses. At a meeting of the British
Association he exhibited a hundred drawings of different crosses,
etc., illustrative of a paper read by Mr. J. Romilly Allen on “The
Early Christian Monuments of Cornwall.” When some incredulity was
expressed as to there being so many examples in that county, Mr.
Langdon explained that not only did all these come from Cornwall, but
that the examples brought before the Association represented only about
one-third of the whole number known to exist. And since that date a
good many more have been noticed. The variety in design of the crosses
is very great indeed. Some affect the Greek cross, some the Latin;
some are with a figure on them, some plain, others richly ornamented.
But what is remarkable about them is, in the first place, they are
nearly all in granite, a material in which nothing was done from the
seventh century down to the fifteenth, as though the capability of
working such a hard intractable stone had been lost. And, in the second
place, the ornamentation is in the lost art of plaiting, of the beauty
and difficulty of which we can hardly conceive till we attempt it.
There is first the four-string plait, then that with six, and lastly
that with eight. Then three strings are combined together in each
plait, then split, forming the so-called Stafford knot; the knot and
the plait are worked together; now a loop is dropped, forming a bold
and pleasing interruption in the pattern. Then a ring is introduced and
plaited into the pattern; then chain-work is introduced; in fact, an
endless variety is formed, exercising the ingenuity of the artist to
the uttermost. It would be an excellent amusement and occupation for a
rainy day in an hotel for the tourist to set to work upon and unravel
the mysteries of these Celtic knots.

The old interlaced work, or the tradition of it, seems to have lingered
on in the glazing of windows, and some very beautiful examples remain
in England and in France. Mr. Romilly Allen points out:--

     “In Egyptian, Greek, and Roman decorative art the only kind
     of interlaced work is the plait, without any modification
     whatever; and the man who discovered how to devise new
     patterns from a simple plait, by making what I term
     _breaks_, laid the foundation of all the wonderfully
     complicated and truly bewildering forms of interlaced
     ornament found on such a masterpiece of the art of
     illumination as the _Book of Kells_. Although we do not
     know _who_ made the discovery of how to make breaks in a
     plait, we know pretty nearly _when_ it was made.”[4]

He goes on to show that the transition from plaitwork to knotwork
took place _in Italy_ between 563 and 774. But is that not a proof of
introduction into Italy, and not of its discovery there? I am rather
disposed to think that partly through the adoption of the osier wattle
in domestic architecture, partly through the employment of the tartan,
the plait in all its intricacy was a much earlier product of the genius
of the Celtic race.

There is a pretty story in the life of an early Irish saint. He had
been put at school, but could not learn. At last, sick of books, he ran
away. He found a man at work with willow rods, weaving them to form the
walls of a house he was building. He dipped them in water, and laced
them in and out with wonderful neatness, patience, and dexterity. And
the boy, looking on, marvelled at it all, took it to heart, and said
to himself, “These osiers flip out; but when there are patience and
skill combined, they can be made into the most exquisite patterns,
and plaited together into a most solid screen. Why may not I be thus
shaped, if I allow myself to be bent, and am docile in my master’s
hands?” So he went back to school.

                              CHAPTER IV.

                            CORNISH CASTLES

  The ancient camps--Their kinds--1. Rectangular, Roman--2.
     The Saxon burh--3. The Celtic circular or oval camp--The
     _lis_ and the _dun_--4. Stone fortresses--Heroic legends
     in Ireland--The Firbolgs--5. The stone castle with mortar,
     Norman--No good examples.

Anyone with a very little experience can at once “spot” a camp or
castle by the appearance from a distance of a hill or headland; and
the traveller in Devon and Cornwall will pass scores of them, as he
will see by his Ordnance Survey Map, without giving much attention to
them, without supposing that they can be of great interest, unless his
attention has been previously directed to the subject. It is a pity
that anyone should go through a country which may really be said to
make ancient camps and castles its speciality and not know something
about them.

[Illustration: LAUNCESTON]

Of hill castles or camps there are several kinds:--

1. Those that are rectangular or approximately so, and which have been
attributed to the Romans. Of these in Cornwall there are but few.
Tregear, near Bodmin, and Bossens, in S. Erth, have yielded Roman coins
and relics of pottery; but whether actually Roman or Romano-British
remains undecided.

2. There are those which consist of a tump or mound, sometimes wholly
artificial, usually natural, and adapted by art, and in connection with
this is a bass-court, usually, but not universally, quadrilateral. This
was the Saxon type of _burh_; it was also that of the Merovingian. The
classic passage descriptive of these is in the _Life of S. John of
Terouanne_, written in the eleventh century:--

     “It was customary for the rich men and nobles of these
     parts, because their main occupation is the carrying on of
     feuds, to heap up a mound of earth as high as they are able
     to raise it, and to dig round it a broad, open, and deep
     ditch, and to girdle the whole upper edge of the bank with
     a barrier of wooden planks, stoutly fastened together, and
     set round with numerous turrets, and this in place of a
     wall.

     “Within was constructed a house, or rather a citadel,
     commanding the whole area, so that the gate of it could
     alone be reached by means of a bridge that sprang from the
     counterside of the ditch, and was gradually raised as it
     advanced, supported by sets of piers, two, or even three,
     trussed on each side, over convenient spans, crossing the
     moat with a managed ascent, so as to attain the upper level
     of the mound, landing on its edge level with the threshold
     of the door.”

A very good idea of such a camp may be derived from the representation
of the fortifications of Dinan on the Bayeux tapestry.

In France the _mottes_ on which the wooden dongeons of the Merovingian
chiefs were planted certainly abound; but in many cases the bank
enclosing the bass-court has disappeared. Good examples may be seen
at Plympton, at Lydford, and at Launceston. At the former and latter
Norman walls took the place of the palisading; but at Lydford a keep
was erected on the tump, but the line of earthworks was never walled.

In Ireland and in Scotland such camps abound; they are there due
to Saxon and Danish invaders. In Ireland they are called _motes_,
in England _burhs_. They afforded the type on which the Normans
constructed their castles.

3. A much more common form of camp in Devon and Cornwall is one that is
circular or oval, and consists of concentric rings of earth, or earth
and stone mixed, with ditches between.

There is, however, a variant where a headland is fortified, either one
standing above the sea into which it juts, or at the junction of two
streams. There it sufficed to run defensive banks and ditches across
the neck of the promontory.

This description of camp or castle is usually supposed to be Celtic.

In Ireland such a camp is a _rath_. The same word is employed for
similar camps in a portion of Pembrokeshire.

Every noble had a right to have a _rath_, and every chief had his _lis_
or _dun_.

A lis was an enclosed space, with an earth-mound surrounding it, and
was the place in which justice was administered. _Lis_ enters into many
place-names in Cornwall, as Liskeard, Lesnewth, Listewdrig, the court
of that king who killed S. Gwynear and bullied S. Ewny and the other
Irish settlers; Lescaddock, Lescawn, Lestormel, now corrupted into
Restormel.

In Ireland _les_ had a wider meaning. S. Carthagh was throwing up a
mound around a plot of land where he was going to plant a monastery.

“What are you about there?” asked an inquisitive woman.

“Only engaged in the construction of a little _lis_,” was the reply.

“Lis beg!” (small lis), exclaimed the woman. “I call it a lis mor” (a
big lis). And Lismore is its name to this day.

In Ireland every king had his _dun_. This was an enlarged rath with an
outer court in which he held his hostages, for the law required this:
“He is no king who has not hostages in lock-up.”

Dun in Welsh is _din_, and _dinas_ is but another form of the same
word, and signifies a royal residence.

A gloss to an old Irish law tract says that a royal dun must have two
walls and a moat for water.

Dun in Scotland is applied to any fort. According to the Gaelic
dictionaries, it is “a heap or mound,” and even a dung-hill is a dun.

In fact, the French _dune_ and the Cornish _towan_ derive from the same
root. Dun so much resembles the Anglo-Saxon _tun_ that we cannot always
be sure of the derivation of a place-name that ends in tun.

Every tribe had its dun, to which the cattle were driven, and where the
women and children were placed in security in times of danger. This
would be in addition to the royal residence, that is the dun of the
_rig_.

Within the dun were numerous structures of timber, roofed with oak
shingles, some of a large description, such as a banqueting hall; but
the habitations of the garrison were circular, of wickerwork, and
thatched with rushes.

In Cornwall there is Dingerrein, the dinas of S. Geraint;
Castel-an-Dinas; Damelioc (Din-Maeloc); Dunheved, the old name for
Launceston; Dundagel.

4. I come now to the stone fortresses that are found in parts of
Cornwall and Wales. They are also to be seen in Scotland and Ireland.
These are called caerau in Wales. A cathair is the term applied to them
in Ireland, and cathair signifies as well a city.

They are found in England only in Somersetshire, Devon, and Cornwall;
and in Wales only in such parts as were invaded and occupied from
Ireland.

In Kerry and the isles of Arran are those in best preservation, and
from these we can see that the walls were regularly built up with
double faces, rubble being between them. Very usually in Arran stones
are placed with the end outwards, so that they serve as ties to hold
the walls together.

The Welsh examples are very perfect, and precisely similar to those in
Ireland.

We know that the Gauls built stone camps--Cæsar calls them their
_oppida_--but they employed beams of timber along with the stone to
tie the walls together. The wood has everywhere rotted away, and the
enclosing walls of the Gaulish camps now present the same appearance
precisely as do the similar stone camps in Devon, Somerset, and
Cornwall. When the timber decayed the stones fell into heaps. In Arran
and Anglesey there was no timber; consequently stones were employed as
ties, and there the walls remain comparatively intact.

Within the _caer_ were circular stone beehive huts; also chambers that
were circular were contrived in the thickness of the walls. These
“sentry boxes” have been noticed in Wales, and also in Cornwall and
Devon.

The account of Castel-an-Dinas, before it was robbed for the erection
of a tower, is precisely such as might be given of one of those in
Ireland or Wales:--

     “It consisted of two stone walls, one within the other,
     in a circular form, surrounding the area of the hill. The
     ruins are now fallen on each side of the walls, and show
     the work to have been of great height and thickness. There
     was also a third or outer wall built more than half-way
     round. Within these walls are many little enclosures of a
     circular form, about seven yards in diameter, with little
     walls round them of two or three feet high; they appear to
     have been so many huts for the shelter of the garrison.”

In fact, this was a royal dinas. Not only had it the requisite double
wall, but also the _drecht gialnai_, or dyke of the hostages. Every
king retained about him pledges from the under-chiefs that they would
be faithful.

There are several of these stone camps in Devon and Cornwall. In
Somersetshire Whorlebury is very interesting; in Devon are Whit Tor
and Cranbrook; in Cornwall the Cheesewring camp, Carn Brea, Chun
Castle, the camp of Caer Conan on Tregenning Hill, Helborough, beside
Castel-an-Dinas in Ludgvan.

The heroic legends of Ireland attribute these stone camps to the
Firbolgs, the non-Aryan dusky race that was in possession previous to
the arrival of the Celts. But that the Milesians learned from them the
art of constructing such castles is very certain, for in Christian
times the monks imitated them in some of their settlements.

Lord Dunraven, who has photographed these stone duns, says:--

     “The legends of the early builders are preserved in the
     compilations of Irish scribes and bardic writers dating
     from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The story,
     which is said by these writers to have been handed down
     orally during the earliest centuries of the Christian
     era, and committed to writing when that art first became
     known in Ireland, is the history of the wanderings and
     final destruction of a hunted and persecuted race, whose
     fate would seem to have been mournful and strange as the
     ruined fortresses of the lost tribe which now stand before
     us. Coming to Ireland through Britain, they seem to have
     been long beaten hither and thither, till, flying still
     westward, they were protected by Ailill and Maeve, who are
     said to have reigned in Connaught about the first century
     of the Christian era. From these monarchs they obtained a
     grant of lands along the western coast of Galway, as well
     as the islands of Arran, where they remained till their
     final expulsion. Thus their forms seem to pass across the
     deep abyss of time, like the white flakes of foam that are
     seen drifted by the hurrying wind over the wild and wasted
     ruins of their fortresses.”

Excavations show that these stone caers are more ancient than the
Christian era; they belong to the period of flint weapons and the
introduction of bronze. But, as already stated, the conquerors of the
rude stone monument builders adopted some of their arts, and some of
their camps are much later.

5. The stone castle, the walls set in mortar, is not earlier in Devon
and Cornwall than the Norman Conquest. There are no really stately
castles in either county, with the exception of Launceston. Rougemont,
Exeter, is eminently unpicturesque; Tiverton, Totnes, Plympton, are
almost complete ruins; Lydford--well, as Browne the poet wrote of it in
the reign of James I.:--

   “They have a castle on a hill;
    I took it for an old windmill,
        The vanes blown off by weather;
    To lie therein one night, ’tis guessed
    ’T were better to be stoned or pressed
        Or hanged ere you come hither.”

And ruin that has fallen on it has not improved its appearance.

Okehampton is but a mean relic; Restormel is circular; Trematon is
like a pork-pie; Pendennis, S. Mawes, late and insignificant. Tintagel
owes everything to its superb situation and to the legend that it was
the place where King Arthur was born. The most picturesque of all is
Pregersick, near Breage, but that is late. Its story shall be told in
the chapter on Penzance.

                               CHAPTER V.

                               TIN MINING

  The granite eruptions in Devon and Cornwall--_Elvans_--
     _Lodes_--Tin passing into copper--Stream-tin--Story of S.
     Piran and S. Chigwidden--Dartmoor stream-tin--Joseph of
     Arimathea--The Cassiterides--Jutes--Danish incursions--Tin
     in King John’s time--Richard, Earl of Cornwall--Elizabeth
     introduces German engineers--Stannary towns--Carew on
     mining--Blowing-houses--Miners’ terms--Stannary Courts--Dr.
     Borlase on tin mining--Present state.

I remember being at a ball many years ago at that epoch in the
development of woman when her “body” was hooked along her dorsal ridge.
Now I learn from competent authorities that it is held together in
other fashion.

There was at the ball a very lusty stout lady in slate-grey satin.

By nature and age, assisted by victuals, she was unadapted to take
violent exercise. Nevertheless dance she would. Dance she did, till
there ensued an explosion. Hooks, eyes, buttons, yielded, and there
ensued an eruption of subjacent material. In places the fastenings held
so that the tumescent under-garments foamed out at intervals in large
bulging masses.

This is precisely what took place with Mother Earth in one of her
gambols. Her slate panoply gave way, parted from N.E. to S.W., and out
burst the granite, which had been kept under and was not intended for
show.

Her hooks and eyes gave way first of all in South Devon, and out
swelled the great mass of Dartmoor. They held for a little space, and
then out broke another mass that constitutes the Bodmin moors. It
heaved to the surface again north of S. Austell, then was held back as
far as Redruth and Camborne. A few more hooks remained firm, and then
the garment gave way for the Land’s End district, and, finally, out of
the sea it shows again in Scilly.

Or take it in another way. Cornwall is something like a leg. Let it be
a leg vested in a grey stocking. That stocking has so many “potatoes”
in it, and each “potato” is eruptive granite.

Granite, however, likewise cracked, formed “faults,” as they are
called, in parallel lines with the great parent crack to which it owed
its appearance, and cracks also formed across these; and through the
earlier cracks up gushed later granite in a molten condition, and these
are dykes.

Moreover, the satin body not only gave way down its great line of
cleavage, but the satin itself in places yielded, revealing, not now
the under-linen which boiled out at the great faults, but some material
which, I believe, was the lining. So when the granite broke forth there
were subsidiary rifts in the slate, and through these rifts a material
was extruded, not exactly granite, but like it, called _elvan_. These
elvan dykes vary from a few feet to as many as four hundred in
breadth, and many can be traced for several miles. The younger granite
intruded into the older granite is also called elvan.

But when the secondary fissures occurred, the intrusive matter was not
only a bastard granite, but with it came also tin and copper. And these
metallic lines, which run on Dartmoor from E. to W., and in Cornwall
from E.N.E. to W.S.W., are called _lodes_.

The cross-cracks do not contain metal. They are called _cross-courses_.

In addition there are some capricious veins that do not run in the
normal direction, and these are called _counter-lodes_. Their usual
direction is N.E.

The cross-courses, although without metal, are of considerable value to
the miner, because, as he knows well, the best lodes are those which
are thus traversed.

There is, however, one description of cross-course that is called
_floocan_, and which is packed with clay, and holds back water. These
are accordingly not cut through if it can possibly be avoided.

A very curious feature in the lodes is, that after going down to a
variable depth the tin is replaced by copper.

Percy was the first to establish this, towards the close of last
century. He pointed out that many an old tin mine was in his time
worked for copper. And it came to be supposed that this would be found
to be an unchanging law: Go deep enough after tin, and you come to
copper. But this opinion was shaken when it was found that Dolcoath,
the profoundest mine in Cornwall, which had for some time been worked
for copper, became next rich in tin. What seems to have been the case
was this: when a vent offered, there was a scramble between the two
minerals which should get through first and out of the confinement
under earth’s crust, and now a little tin got ahead; then came copper
trampling on its heels, but was itself tripped up by more tin.

Now, when the granite came to the surface, it did not have everything
its own way, and hold its nose on high, and lord it over every other
rock as being the most ancient of all, though not the earliest to put
in an appearance. There was a considerable amount of water about. There
is plenty and to spare in the west of England now, but we may feel
grateful that we do not exist in such detestable weather, nor exposed
to such sousing rains, nor have to stand against such deluges, as those
which granite had to encounter. Hot, over-hot, it may have been below,
but it was cold and horribly wet above.

The rains descended; the floods came, and beat on the granite, which,
being perhaps at the time warm and soft, and being always very
absorbent, began to dissolve.

As it dissolved, the water swept away all its component parts, and
deposited the heaviest near at hand, and took the lightest far away.
Now the heaviest of all were the ore from the veins or lodes, and
the water swept this down into the valleys and left it there, but
it carried off the dissolved feldspar and deposited it where it
conveniently could and when it was tired of carrying it. The former is
stream-tin; the latter is china clay.

Now to get at stream-tin very little trouble is needed. The rubble
brought down and lodged in the valleys has to be turned over; and the
ore is distinguishable by its weight and by a pink tinge, like the
rouge ladies were wont (a hundred years ago) to put on their cheeks and
lips. There is no tunnelling, no nasty shafts and adits to be made; and
shafts and adits were beyond the capacity of primitive man, furnished
with bone and oak picks only. Besides, why take the trouble to mine
when the tin lay ready to be picked up?

The story told in Cornwall of the discovery of tin is this:--

S. Piran came over from Ireland in a coracle, and, like a prudent man,
brought with him a bottle of whisky. On landing on the north coast he
found that there was a hermit there named Chigwidden. The latter was
quite agreeable to be friends with the new-comer, who was full of Irish
tales, Irish blarney, and had, to boot, a bottle of Irish whisky. Who
would not love a stranger under the circumstances? Brothers Chigwidden
and Piran drank up the bottle.

“By dad,” said Piran, “bothered if there be another dhrop to be
squeezed out! Never mind, my spiritual brother; I’ll show you how to
distil the crayture. Pile me up some stones, and we’ll get up the divil
of a fire, and we shall manage to make enough to expel the deuce out of
ould Cornwall.”

So Chigwidden collected a number of black stones, and the two saints
made a fine fire--when, lo! out of the black stones thus exposed to the
heat ran a stream like liquid silver. Thus was tin discovered.

The story won’t wash.

Tin was invented a thousand years at least before either Piran or
Chigwidden were thought of. But that was most certainly the way in
which it was revealed.

On Dartmoor the stream tin can thus be run out of the ore with a peat
fire. And the Dartmoor stream tin has this merit: it is absolutely
pure, whereas tin elsewhere is mingled with wolfram, that makes it
brittle as glass; and to separate wolfram from tin requires a second
roasting and is a delicate process.

Another Cornish story is to the effect that Joseph of Arimathea came
in a boat to Cornwall, and brought the Child Jesus with him, and the
latter taught him how to extract the tin and purge it of its wolfram.
This story possibly grew out of the fact that the Jews under the
Angevin kings farmed the tin of Cornwall. When tin is flashed, then
the tinner shouts, “Joseph was in the tin trade,” which is probably a
corruption of “S. Joseph to the tinner’s aid!”

We will now shortly take the history of tin mining in Devon and
Cornwall.

Whether the west of Cornwall and Scilly were the Cassiterides of the
ancients is doubtful. But one thing is sure: that they had their tin,
or some of it, from Britain.

Diodorus Siculus, who flourished in the time of Augustus, says so:--

     “The inhabitants of that extremity of Britain which is
     called Belerion both excel in hospitality”--they do
     so still--“and also, by reason of their intercourse
     with foreign merchants, are civilised in their mode of
     life”--very much so. “These prepare the tin, working very
     skilfully the earth which produces it. The ground is rocky,
     but it has in it earthy veins, the produce of which is
     brought down and melted and purified. Then, when they have
     cast it into the form of cubes, they carry it to a certain
     island adjoining Britain, called Ictis. During the recess
     of the tide the intervening space is left dry, and they
     carry over abundance of tin in carts.... From thence the
     traders who purchase the tin of the natives transport it
     to Gaul, and finally, travelling through Gaul on foot, in
     about thirty days bring their burdens on horses to the
     mouth of the Rhine.”

Ictis has been variously supposed to be S. Michael’s Mount, the Isle of
Wight, and Romney in Kent.

Whether the Romans worked the tin in Devon and Cornwall is very
questionable. No evidence has been produced that they did so. The Saxon
invasion must have destroyed what little mining activity existed in
the two counties, at least in Devon. It is noticeable that, although
Athelstan penetrated to Land’s End and crossed to Scilly, he is not
said to have paid any attention to the tin workings, which he assuredly
would have done had they then been valuable. To the incursions of the
Saxons succeeded those of the Danish freebooters, who ran up the rivers
and burnt Tavistock and Lydford in 997, and carried fire and sword
through the stannary districts of Devon.

Under the Norman rule mining revived. The general use of bells in
churches caused a considerable demand for tin, more particularly as
those for cathedrals were of large calibre. The chief emporium of the
tin trade was Bruges, whence the merchants of Italy obtained the west
of England tin and distributed it through the Levant. There exists an
interesting record of Florentine commercial industry by one Balducci,
composed between 1332 and 1345, in which is described the trade in
Cornish tin, and how it was remelted into bars at Venice and stamped
with the lion of S. Mark.

In King John’s time the tin mines were farmed by the Jews. The right to
it was claimed by the king as Earl of Cornwall.

Old smelting-houses in the peninsula are still called “Jews’ houses,”
and, judging by certain noses and lips that one comes across
occasionally in the Duchy, they left their half-breeds behind them.

During the time of Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans,
the produce of the tin mines was considerable, and it was in fact
largely due to his reputed wealth from this source that he was elected
(1257).

The tin workings went on with varying prosperity till the reign of
Elizabeth, when she introduced German engineers and workmen, with
improved appliances. In her time the tinners of Cornwall were divided
into four portions, named from the principal works of that period. Each
of these divisions had its steward under the Lord Warden, who kept his
court once in every three weeks. The four stannary towns of Cornwall
were Helston, Truro, Lostwithiel, and Liskeard; and at Lostwithiel may
be seen the remains of the ducal palace; and at Luxulyan the church,
in the tower of which the stannary records and charters were formerly
preserved.

In Devon the stannary towns were Tavistock, Ashburton, and Chagford, to
which Plympton was added in the reign of Edward III., and Lydford was
appointed as the stannary prison.

Ordinary justices of the peace had no jurisdiction over the miners in
their disputes.

Carew, who was about the court of Queen Elizabeth, has furnished
us with a valuable record of the state of the mines before the
introduction of new German machinery and methods.

He notices both the stream-works and the lodes, and his opinion was
that the deposits in the former were the result of the Deluge.

He then describes the process of _shoding_, that is of tracing the
direction of a vein by fragments found near the surface. The shode
pits, which are also called costeening pits, were holes sunk into the
ground to no great depth till indications of the lode were reached. The
miners next sank pits seven or eight feet deep till they reached the
lode itself.

     “If they misse the load in one place, they sincke a like
     shaft” (pit) “in another beyond that, commonly further up
     the hill, and so a third and a fourth, until they light at
     last upon it.”

Over Dartmoor and the Bodmin moors “the old men’s workings” may be
seen; hardly a gully has not been streamed, every river-bed has been
turned over. The face of the moor is in places welted to such an extent
that it alters the character of the scene. These workings are now
grass-grown; they are very ancient, and clearly were conducted open
to the sky. As the miners worked up a river-bed they built a colander
behind them of rude blocks of granite, through which the stream might
flow away, and many a rivulet now runs underground through these
artificial passages.

In dressing the ore the miners broke it with hammers, and then “vanned”
it on their broad oak shovels. The wind bore away the valueless
dust, leaving the metal behind. By the side of the “goyles,” or
deep workings, may be found “vanning-steads” where this process was
conducted. But with the introduction of machinery the _crazing-mill_
was employed, worked by a waterwheel, in which the ore was passed
between two grinding-stones. The washing of the dust which took the
place of the dry process was this:--

     “The streame, after it hath forsaken the mill, is made to
     fall by certayne degrees” (steps) “one somewhat distant
     from another, upon each of which at every descent lyeth
     a green turfe, three or four foote square and one foote
     thick. On this the tinner layeth a certayne portion of the
     sandie tinne, and with his shovell softly tosseth the same
     to and fro, that through this stirring the water, which
     runneth over it, may wash away the light earth from the
     tinne, which, of a heavier substance, lyeth fast to the
     turfe.”

After the black tin, or ore, had been thus treated it was conveyed to
the blowing-house. The usage on Dartmoor was, when a miner was far from
one of these, to tie the ore in a bag marked with his name or sign, and
hang it about a dog’s neck; the beast then conveyed it to the mill.

Of the “blowing-houses” a great many remain on Dartmoor. There are two
on the Yealm, one, very perfect, on the Erme, one very early, before
the introduction of the waterwheel, at Deep Swincombe, several on the
Dart.

The blowing-house was a small structure of one chamber and a _cache_,
or storeplace, underground. The doorway was rarely high enough to
admit a man without stooping double. The walls were of stone without
mortar, and, as far as can be judged from their remains, had no window.
The furnace was heated with charcoal, and the fire blown by means of
a great pair of bellows worked by a tiny waterwheel. The process was
so roughly conducted that “divers light sparkles” of tin are said to
have lodged in the thatched roof in sufficient quantities to render
the burning of the roof once in seven years worth the undertaking. The
melted metal ran out into a spoon-shaped hollow in a block of granite,
or elvan, and was run into moulds also cut in slabs, many of which
remain near the old blowing-houses.

The white tin was then conveyed to a royal smelting-house, where it
received a stamp; and no miner was suffered to dispose of his metal
till it had thus been marked, and he had paid his due to the Crown for
it.

[Illustration: A TIN MOULD]

Some of the terms used by tin miners may not prove uninteresting.

Stream-tin when found scattered beneath the surface on a small
declivity is called _shode_, and runs to a depth that varies from one
to ten feet. A right to work a certain portion is called a _sett_.
The rubbish thrown out of a mine is called _stent_; sand or gravel,
including tin, is termed _gard_; the walling on each side of a _tye_
or adit is called _stilling_; the channels by which superfluous water
is let run off are _cundards_, a corruption of “conduits.” Oblong pits
for a washing-floor are _gounces_; the frame of iron bars above is a
_ruddle_.

Buckets are _kibbals_; breaking up ore is _bucking_.

A _whim_ is said to have derived its name from this: A man named
Coster, observing the labour that was expended on bringing up the
refuse from the mines in buckets, fell a-thinking.

“Well, old man,” said a mate, “what be up wi’ you?”

“I have a whim in my head,” he answered, “and I’m tryin’ to reduce he
to practice.”

Coster’s whim was much joked about, but when set up outside his head at
the pit mouth, it proved to be no joke at all, but a real boon.

Superincumbent earth is _burden_.

A miner worked at Headland Warren mines, on the Webburn, and lived at
Challacombe. Every day when leaving work he brought away with him a
lump of ore in his pocket, and on reaching his lodging threw it away
among the furze bushes. Years after the farmer at Challacombe removed
three cartloads of these lumps; that was when tin was at £60 a ton.

From a speech of Sir Walter Raleigh in Parliament in 1601, when Lord
Warden of the Stannaries, it would appear that the pay of a working
tinner was then four shillings per week, finding himself. Of this he
boasts as a great change for the better, inasmuch as previously the
tinner had received but half that amount. By all accounts the tinners
were in a worse condition than the agricultural labourers.

The Stannary Parliament for the tinners on Dartmoor sat on Crockern Tor
till the court was removed to Truro.

The first Parliament held there of which records remain was on
September 11th, 1494; the last I have heard of was held at the close of
last century.

The Cornish tinners had their Stannary Court on Caradon.

Already in Carew’s time mines had been driven into the bowels of the
earth. It would appear that levels were at about five fathoms under
each other, and the water was raised to the surface by means of “a
winder and keeble, or leathern bags, pumps, or buckets.”

Dr. Borlase describes the engines that were employed just after the
middle of last century. He took a mine in Illogan as typical.

There were seven shafts upon the lode, upon one of which there was a
fire-engine working the pumps, and raising the water of the mine to the
adit level, twenty fathoms from the surface. Another shaft had a whim
upon it, and the remaining six had common winzes at their heads. The
walls of the lode were supported by timber, and planks were laid on
them for the _deads_, or unprofitable rock. Captains superintended the
work. The machines employed were the _water-whim_, the _rag and chain
pump_, the _bobs_, and the _fire-engine_. The whim was much the same
as the common horse-whim of the present day, employed to draw up the
water in kibbles or buckets. The rag and chain pump consisted of an
iron chain, furnished at intervals with knobs of cloth, stiffened with
leather, which on being turned round a wheel was made to pass through a
wooden pump cylinder, twelve or fifteen feet long, and to heave up the
water that rose in this cylinder between the knobs of rag. These pumps
were worked by hand. The waterwheels with bobs worked other pumps.

The machinery seems to us clumsy and imperfect in the extreme.

The atmospheric or steam-engine of Newcomen was costly, as it consumed
an enormous amount of coal; but in 1778 it began to give place to
Watt’s engine.

Since then the machinery employed advanced with strides till reaching
perfection, when the need for any ceased in Cornwall and Devon, where
nearly all mines have been abandoned. Barca tin can be raised so much
more cheaply, being surface tin, that lode tin cannot compete with it
in the market.

Now the mining districts of Cornwall are desolate. Heaps of refuse,
gaunt engine-houses, with their chimneys, stand against the sky,
hideous objects, and as useless as they are ugly. The Cornish miner
has gone abroad. There he remains till he has made his little pile,
when he returns home, builds a house for his wife and children, remains
idle till money gets low, when away he goes again.

A good deal of discussion has taken place relative to the causes of
the decline and extinction of the mining industry in Cornwall. The
primary cause is that already referred to, but there is another. Into
that industry too much dishonesty was allowed to intrude. Speculators
became shy of embarking capital in companies to work bogus mines. The
promotion of such schemes was too frequent not in the end to discredit
Cornish mining altogether.

The surface tin in the “Straits” mines must come to an end shortly, and
then let us trust captains in Cornwall will have learned by experience
that in the end honesty is the best policy.

Formerly the metals were taken out of Cornwall for distribution
over Europe. Now the coined metal is being brought into Cornwall
by trainloads of tourists, by coveys of bicyclists, come to visit
one of the most interesting of English counties and inhale the most
invigorating air, and everywhere they drop their coin. So life is full
of compensations.

[Illustration: LAUNCESTON CHURCH PORCH]

                              CHAPTER VI.

                               LAUNCESTON

  Launceston a borrowed name--Celtic system of separation
     between town of the castle and town of the church--A
     saint’s curse--Old name Dunheved--Castle--Church--Sir
     Henry Trecarrel--The river Tamar--Old houses--S.
     Clether’s Chapel--Altarnon--The corn man--Cutting a
     neck--The Petherwins--Story of S. Padarn--Is visited
     by his cousin, Samson--Trewortha Marsh--Kilmar--An
     ancient village--Redmire--Cornish bogs--Dozmare
     Pool--Lewanick--Cresset-stone--Trecarrel--Old mansions--The
     Botathen ghost.

The most singular thing about the former capital of Cornwall is that
it does not bear its true name. Launceston is Llan Stephan, the church
of S. Stephen. Now the church of S. Stephen is on the summit of a hill
on the further side of the river, divided from the town by the ancient
borough of Newport.

The true name of the town is Dunheved. It grew up about the Norman
castle, instead of about the church, and as it grew, and the colony at
S. Stephen’s dwindled, it drew to itself the name of the church town.

Launceston is, in fact, one of those very interesting instances of the
_caer_ and the _llan_, separated the one from the other by a stream.
According to the Celtic system, a church must stand in its own lawn,
surrounded by its own tribesmen, and the chief in his _caer_ or
_dun_ must also be without competing authority surrounded by his own
vassals. Consequently, in Cornwall, churches are, as a rule, away from
the towns, which latter have grown up about the chieftain’s residence,
except in such instances as Padstow and Bodmin, where a religious,
monastic settlement formed the nucleus. Camelford, an old borough
town, is over two miles from its parish church, Lanteglos, without
even a chapel-of-ease in it, an ecclesiastical scandal in the diocese.
Callington, the old capital of the municipality of Galewig, is three
miles from its church of Southill.

The church of Launceston has grown up out of a small chapel erected for
the convenience of those who lived about the castle walls, hangers-on
upon the garrison.

The Norman baron, and perhaps the Saxon eorlderman, liked to have
his chaplain forming part of his household, and much at his disposal
to say mass and sing matins in a chapel to which he could go without
inconvenience, forming part of his residence. But such an arrangement
was alien to Celtic ideas. Among the Celts the saint stood on an
entirely independent footing over against the secular chief, and was in
no way subordinate to him. The chaplain of the Norman might hesitate
about reprimanding too sharply the noble who supplied him with his
bread-and-butter. But the Celtic saint had no scruples of that sort. If
a chief had carried off a widow’s cow, or had snatched a pretty wench
from her parents, the saint seized his staff and went to the _dun_ and
demanded admittance. A saint’s curse was esteemed a most formidable
thing. If unjustly pronounced, it recoiled like a boomerang against him
who had hurled it. Once pronounced, it must produce its effect, and the
only means of averting its fall was to turn it aside against a tree or
a rock, which it shivered to atoms. In this the Celtic saint merely
stepped into the prerogatives of the Druid.

In Cormac’s _Glossary of Old Irishisms_--and Cormac, king-bishop of
Cashel, died in 903--is a curious instance of the force of a curse in
pagan times.

The wife of Caier fell in love with Neidhe the bard, her husband’s
nephew. Now a bard had the privilege of hurling a curse if a request
made by him should be refused, but not else. So the woman, desiring to
be rid of her husband, bade the bard ask of the king a knife which had
been given to him in Alba, on condition that he never parted with it.
Neidhe demanded the knife.

“Woe and alas!” said Caier, “it is prohibited to me to give it away.”

Neidhe was now able to pronounce a _glam dichinn_, or curse. Here it
is:--

   “Evil, death, and short life to Caier!
    May spears of battle slay Caier;
    The rejected of the land be Caier;
    Buried under mounds and stones be Caier!”

Caier went out next morning to wash at the well, when he found that
boils and blains had broken out over his face, disqualifying him for
reigning, as a king must be unblemished. He accordingly fled the
country, and concealed his disgrace in the _dun_ on the Old Head of
Kinsale, and Neidhe took to him the wife and throne of his uncle. Caier
remained at Kinsale till he died, blasted by the curse pronounced by
the bard.

The saints did just the same, only not for such scandalous reasons;
they did it in the cause of humanity, and for the protection of the
weak against the strong.

But it will be seen, from what has been said, that the Celtic saint
was a very independent personage, and that he and the chief had their
separate residences. It will be found that usually a stream divided the
territory of the saint from that of the chieftain.

All this in illustration of Llan Stephan and Dunheved, the castle and
the church facing and glowering at each other from opposite heights.

Launceston Castle is Norman. That there stood here a castle in Celtic
times is certain; the name Dunheved indicates as much. The _heved_
in composition is a difficulty. Some suppose it a Saxon addition:
_haefod_, a head; but it is more probable that the whole name is
Celtic, and signifies the summer _dun_. _Hafod_ is a summer residence
in contradistinction to a _hendre_, which is that for the winter--the
old house, in principal use. The keep consists of concentric rings on a
mound natural originally, but much adapted by art. That the castle was
employed to dominate the West Welsh, first by the Saxons and then by
the Normans, is indisputable. It formed one in a chain of fortresses
employed by the Saxon kings, of which Warbstow and Helborough and
Killibury were others. That the garrison of Warbstow was composed of
Mercians is probable, as they dedicated their chapel to S. Werburga,
a Mercian princess-saint. Another contingent was planted at Wembury,
commanding Plymouth harbour, where also they introduced the same saint,
who really had no “call” to come into these parts.

The parish church of Launceston, dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen,
is a very interesting structure externally, of carved granite of
extraordinary but somewhat barbaric richness.

The church was begun in 1511. Henry Trecarell, of Trecarell, in Lezant,
was rebuilding his mansion there in great splendour. He had already
constructed a chapel and a noble banqueting hall, and had got masses
of carved granite ready for a gateway, when his only son, a child,
was drowned in a basin of water whilst the nurse was bathing him, she
having left him for a few moments. The mother survived the shock only a
few hours. Henry Trecarell, the father, dropped for ever the intended
mansion for himself, and devoted his wealth to a higher ambition--the
glory of God. He rebuilt not only the church of Linkinhorne, but also
that of Launceston. On the south porch of the latter on a shield appear
the Trecarell arms, arg. two chevrons _sable_, which are those of Ashe
of Devon, Trecarell being really an Ashe, but he bore the name of his
Cornish residence. On a scroll is the date 1511. The niche over the
door has lost its image, but on the left are S. George and the dragon,
and on the right S. Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar. Above S.
George is the Good Samaritan, and above S. Martin is Balaam striking
his ass.

At the east end of the chancel, externally in the central gable, are
the royal arms, the supporters of which are the lion and red dragon
(the unicorn was substituted for the dragon by James I. in 1603). Under
the sill of this window, in an arched recess, is a recumbent figure of
the Magdalen. Four surpliced minstrels are on each side of the niche,
and above the line of the niche similar figures ascend in pairs, but
those in the two topmost storeys seem never to have been completed. The
instruments which these musicians hold are the rebec, the lute, the
bagpipe, shawm, and harps, and one plays the viol, turning a handle
like a hurdy-gurdy. The leader of each set of minstrels carries a
_bâton_, and wears a chain about his neck.

The devices carved round the church are repetitions of the plumes of
the Prince of Wales, pomegranates, balm-plants dropping precious gums,
the Tudor rose, and the arms of Trecarell, Kellaway (three pears), and
the castle of Dunheved. Above the plinth encircling the building is a
line of panelled tracery. In every alternate panel is a shield, bearing
a letter, that make up the words: “Ave Maria, gracia plena! Dominus
tecum! Sponsus amat sponsum. Maria optimam partem elegit. O quam
terribilis ac metuendus est locus iste! Vere aliud non est hic nisi
domus Dei et porta celi” (“Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord be with
thee! The bridegroom loves the bride. Mary hath chosen the best part.
Oh, how terrible and fearful is this place! Truly this is no other than
the house of God and the gate of heaven”).

The church was consecrated on June 18th, 1524. It was never completed,
as may be seen by the condition of the west end. The tower belongs
to the earlier church, and is twenty-six feet west of the church.
Trecarell doubtless intended to rebuild that in a stately style
according with the church, but the religious disturbances of the
Reformation took all heart out of him, and he abandoned his task.
The interior is very disappointing, but it must be remembered it was
intended to have a screen of surpassing richness, which would have
brought the whole into proportion. The pulpit alone was completed, and
that is of singular richness. The modern carving in the church is thin
and fanciful.

The neighbourhood of Launceston is rich in objects of interest and
scenes of great beauty. The Inney valley will well repay a visit.
There is an Inney also in South Wales. It is an excellent stream for
fishing, and flows into the Tamar at Cartamartha (_Caer Tamar_), in a
glen of wooded loveliness. The unfinished mansion of Trecarell deserves
a visit. There are also old houses at Treguddic and Basil, both much
spoiled by bad “restoration.” On the heights commanding the river
are Laneast, with old bench-ends, old glass, and a holy well, and S.
Clether, with its well chapel, recently reconstructed. It was in a
condition of complete ruin; almost every stone was prostrate, and the
rebuilding was like the putting together of a child’s puzzle. At the
north-east of the chapel is a rather fine holy well, about three feet
six inches from the north wall. A description has already been given
in the chapter on holy wells, and the explanation of some very curious
features in it.

But there is one further feature of interest in this structure that
deserves to be noted. The old granite altar, rude, like a cromlech, had
never been cast down. It remained intact, and has been left intact in
the reconstructed chapel.

S. Clether was the son of Clydwyn, king of Carmarthen. Clydwyn’s
sister was married to an Irish priest, Brynach, who, on account of
the ill-favour in which the Irish were regarded in South Wales, moved
into Cornwall and Devon. After a long while he returned, but was again
badly received. However, Clether welcomed him, and Brynach spoke to
his nephew of the God-forsaken condition of North Cornwall, and an
overpowering impulse came over the king to surrender his principality
to his sons, and to depart for Cornwall, there to labour for the
evangelisation of his Welsh brethren in the peninsula. He had relatives
there. His uncle Gwynys was at S. Genes, on the coast, and his aunt
Morwenna at Morwenstow. How long he remained at S. Clether we do not
know, but he probably moved on to S. Cleer, near Liskeard, where also
he has a fine holy well, and there died. We do not know the precise
date, but it was about A.D. 550.[5]

A very fine and interesting church, deserving a visit, is that of
Altarnon (_Alt-ar-Nôn_, the cliff of S. Non). The village is called
Penpont (the head of the bridge). The church is rich in carved oak,
benches, and screen. On several of the benches may be seen carved the
corn man, that is to say the little figure that was plaited out of the
heads of wheat in the last sheaf at a harvest.

About this and the custom of “crying, ‘A neck!’” at harvest I will say
a few words.

Towards the end of last century the member for North Devon was
extremely unpopular, especially with the lower classes, and there had
been a disturbance on the occasion of his election, in which he had run
some personal risk. The time was when Lord North was Prime Minister.

Not long after the election he went to Dunsland, the seat of George
Bickford.

Whilst strolling near the house he came near a harvest field, whereon
he saw a rush of men, and he heard a cry of “Us have’n! us have’n! A
neck! a neck!”

Panic-stricken, he ran, nimble as a hare, to the house, and shouted to
Mr. Bickford, “For God’s sake, hide me, anywhere, in the cellar or the
attics! There is a mob after me who want to string me up!”

What the M.P. for North Devon saw and heard was the “crying, ‘A neck!’”
a custom universal in Devon and Cornwall till reaping machines came in
and abolished it. It is now most rarely practised, but I can remember
it in full swing some forty or fifty years ago.

Mrs. Bray, in her _Borders of the Tamar and Tavy_, thus describes it in
1832:--

     “One evening, about the end of harvest, I was riding out
     on my pony, attended by a servant who was born and bred a
     Devonian. We were passing near a field on the borders of
     Dartmoor, where the reapers were assembled. In a moment
     the pony started nearly from one side of the way to the
     other, so sudden came a shout from the field which gave him
     this alarm. On my stopping to ask my servant what all that
     noise was about, he seemed surprised by the question, and
     said, ‘it was only the people making their games, as they
     always did, to the _spirit of the harvest_.’ Such a reply
     was quite sufficient to induce me to stop immediately, as I
     felt certain here was to be observed some curious vestige
     of a most ancient superstition; and I soon gained all the
     information I could wish to obtain upon the subject. The
     offering to the ‘spirit of the harvest’ is thus made:--

     “When the reaping is finished, towards evening the
     labourers select some of the best ears of corn from the
     sheaves; these they tie together, and it is called the
     _nack_. Sometimes, as it was when I witnessed the custom,
     the nack is decorated with flowers, twisted in with the
     seed, which gives it a gay and fantastic appearance. The
     reapers then proceed to a _high place_ (such, in fact,
     was the field, on the side of a steep hill, where I saw
     them), and there they go, to use their own words, to ‘holla
     the nack.’ The man who bears the offering stands in the
     midst and elevates it, whilst all the other labourers form
     themselves into a circle about him; each holds aloft his
     hook, and in a moment they all shout as loud as they can
     these words, which I spell as I heard them pronounced, and
     I presume they are not to be found in any written record:
     ‘Arnack, arnack, arnack, wehaven, wehaven, wehaven.’ This
     is repeated several times; and the firkin is handed round
     between each shout, by way, I conclude, of libation. When
     the weather is fine, different parties of reapers, each
     stationed on some height, may be heard for miles round,
     shouting, as it were, in answer to each other.

     “The evening I witnessed this ceremony many women and
     children, some carrying boughs, and others having flowers
     in their caps, or in their hands, or in their bonnets, were
     seen, some dancing, others singing, whilst the men (whose
     exclamations so startled my pony) practised the above rites
     in a ring.”

Mrs. Bray goes on to add a good deal of antiquated archæological
nonsense about Druids, Phœnicians, and fantastic derivations. She
makes “wehaven” to be “a corruption of _wee ane_,” “a little one,”
which is rubbish. “Wehaven” is “we have’n,” or “us have’n,” “we have
got him.” As I remember the crying of the neck at Lew Trenchard, there
was a slight difference in the procedure from that described by Mrs.
Bray. The field was reaped till a portion was left where was the best
wheat, and then the circle was formed, the men shouted, “A neck! A
neck! We have’n!” and proceeded to reap it. Then it was hastily bound
in a bundle, the ears were plaited together with flowers at the top of
the sheaf, and this was heaved up, with the sickles raised, and a great
shout of “A neck! A neck!” etc., again, and the drink, of course.

The wheat of the last sheaf was preserved apart through the winter,
and was either mixed with the seed-corn next year or given to the best
bullock.

My old coachman, William Pengelly, who had been with my grandfather,
father, and then with myself, and who died at an advanced age in 1894,
was wont annually, till he became childish with age, to make the little
corn man or neck, and bring it to be set up in the church for the
harvest decorations. I kept a couple of these for some years, till the
mice got at them and destroyed them.

In Essex a stranger passing a harvest field stands the chance of
being run up to by the harvesters, caught in a loop of straw twisted,
and held till he has paid a forfeit. To the present day in Devon, at
haysel, the haymakers will make a twist of dry grass, and with this
band catch a girl--or a girl will catch a boy--and hold her or him till
the forfeit of a kiss has been paid, and this is called “making sweet
hay.”

Hereby hangs a tale.

The Quakers in Cornwall have, as elsewhere, their Monthly Advices read
to them in the meeting-house, wherein are admonitions against various
sorts of evil. Among these is one against “vain sports.” Now, just
about haymaking-time a newly-joined member heard this injunction, and
he timidly inquired whether “making sweet hay with the mīdens” came
under the category. “Naw, sure!” was the answer; “that’s a’ i’ the way
o’ Natur’.”

Our Guy Fawkes is actually the straw man transferred from harvest to
November.

These straw men take the place of human victims, and the redemption
with silver or a kiss is also a last reminiscence of the capture of a
victim to be sacrificed for the sake of a future harvest to the Earth
Spirit. In Poland the man who gives the last stroke at thrashing is
wrapped in corn and wheeled through the village. In Bavaria he is tied
up in straw and cast on a dunghill.

Among the Pawnees, as late as 1838, the sacrifice was carried out in
grim reality. A girl was burnt over a slow fire, and whilst her flesh
was still warm it was cut to pieces, and bits were carried away to
be buried in the cornfields. At Lagos, in Guinea, it was till quite
recently the custom to impale a young girl alive to ensure good crops.
A similar sacrifice was offered at Benin. The Marimos, a Bechuana
tribe, sacrifice a human being for the crops. He is captured, then
intoxicated, carried into the fields, and there slaughtered. His blood
and ashes, after the body has been burned, are distributed over the
tilled land to ensure a good harvest next year. The Gonds of India
kidnapped Brahman boys for the same purpose. The British Government had
to act with great resolution in putting down the similar sacrifices of
the Khonds some half-century ago.

The mode of performing these sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve
days before the sacrifice the victim’s hair was cut. Crowds assembled
to witness the sacrifice. On the day before, the victim was tied to
a post and anointed with oil. Great struggles ensued to scrape off
some of this oil or to obtain a drop of spittle from the victim. The
crowd danced round the post, saying, “O god, we offer this sacrifice
for good crops, seasons, and health.” On the day of the sacrifice the
legs and arms were first broken, and he was either squeezed to death
or strangled. Then the crowd rushed on him with knives and hacked
the flesh from the bones. Sometimes he was cut up alive. Another very
common mode was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden
elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and as it whirled round the
crowd cut the flesh off while life remained. In some villages as many
as fourteen of these wooden elephants were found, all of which had been
used for this purpose. In one district the victim was put to death
slowly by fire. A low stage was erected, sloping on each side like
a roof; upon this the victim was placed, his limbs wound about with
cords to prevent his escape. Fires were then lighted and hot brands
applied to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as much
as possible, for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the
supply of rain. The next day the body was cut to pieces. The flesh was
at once taken home by delegates of the villages. To secure its rapid
arrival it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed
with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who
had remained at home fasted until the flesh arrived. When it came it
was divided into two portions, one of which was offered to the Earth
Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground. The other portion was
divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present.
Each head of a house rolled his share in leaves and buried it in his
favourite field. In some places each man carried his portion of flesh
to the stream that watered his fields.

Since the British Government has suppressed the human sacrifices
inferior victims have been substituted, such as goats.

Here, then, we have almost before our eyes a change of the victim. A
still further change takes place when an image is used as a substitute;
and there is again modification when the person captured and destined
for sacrifice is allowed to redeem himself with a handsel or a kiss.
But the fact that in Europe, aye, and in England, we have these
modified customs only now dying out, is an almost sure proof that at a
remote period our ancestors practised the awful rites at harvest and
in spring, of which a description has been given as still in use in
Africa, and as only just put an end to in America and in India.

North and west of Launceston is the Petherwin district; the former
of these is in Devon, although lying west of the Tamar, as is also
Werrington.

These three churches, all dedicated to S. Padarn, form a large
territory once under his government. It was his Gwynedd, but whether so
called from its being open moorland or from its being exposed to the
winds--windblown (_Gwynt_)--I cannot say. Padarn was son of Pedredin
and Gwen Julitta, and was first cousin of S. Samson. He was born in
Brittany, but owing to a family revolution his father and uncles fled
to Wales, but Padarn remained as a babe with his mother. Finding her
often in tears, he asked her the reason, and she told him that she
mourned the loss of his father. So when Padarn had come to man’s estate
he went in quest of him, and finally found him in Ireland, where, old
rascal, he had embraced the monastic life, entirely regardless of
what was due to the wife of his bosom. As Pedredin absolutely refused
to leave his newly-chosen mode of life, Padarn returned to his mother,
and they went together to Wales, passing through Cornwall. In Wales he
founded Llanbadarn Fawr in Cardiganshire, which became an episcopal
see; but he got across with Maelgwn, king of North Wales, as also with
King Arthur, who in the lives of the Welsh saints is always represented
as a bully, showing that they were written before that king had been
elevated into the position of a hero of romance by Geoffrey of Monmouth
in the twelfth century. His position now became untenable, and he left
Wales. It was then, I presume, that he made his great settlement in
East Cornwall.

According to one account he crossed into Brittany with Caradoc
Strong-i’-th’-Arm, but the expedition ended in no results, and he
returned. Now after a while Cousin Samson arrived in Padstow harbour,
and resolved on making a Cornish tour before he crossed into Brittany,
whither he much desired to go and see what could be done towards the
recovery of his paternal acres. At Padstow he visited S. Petrock. Then
he went along the north-east, and as he approached Gwynedd, or Padarn’s
Venedotia, he sent word that he was coming. Now Padarn was getting out
of bed when the tidings reached him, and he had pulled on one stocking
and shoe; but so delighted was he to hear that his cousin was at hand,
that he ran to meet him with one leg shod and the other bare.

[Illustration: TREWORTHA MARSH]

The dates of his life are approximately these. He came to Wales in
525, remained there till 547, when he migrated to Devon and Cornwall,
where he remained to his death in 560.[6] When the Saxons obtained the
mastery, North Petherwin and Werrington were given to the abbey of