NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM THE SCILLY ISLES TO ROSELAND
The Land of Lyonesse: The Scillies: The Law of Wrecks: Mr. Smith: The Admiral's Honour: Ding Dong Mine: St. Michael's Mount: An Old Ceremony: China Clay: Wrecks: Germoe and Breage: Pengersick: Flora Day: The Loe Pool: Serpentine: Gunwalloe and Mullion: The Lizard: Bells: The Helford River: Mawgan: Roseland.
The Land of Lyonesse
If you ask the people they will tell you that without doubt the piece of water between the south of Cornwall and the Scillies was once dry land. If you ask the educated stranger he will hum and haw, and say it is probable, perhaps even likely, and will quote the Saxon Chronicle to the effect that "the sea broke in upon the land and swallowed up many towns and a countless multitude of people." As the old record gives no hint as to where this catastrophe happened, more than one writer has taken it to justify a belief in the Land of Lyonesse. Oh for a Passmore Edwards embued with curiosity rather than philanthropy, who should by dredging operations settle the vexed question for good and all!
The fishermen, looking down through the clear waters on a still day, declare they can make out the ruins of old churches and houses, and that their nets have brought them time and again articles of household economy, pieces of broken doors and roofs and windows. Moreover, when the great wave broke hungrily over the low-lying land a Trevelyan saw the curling breakers and setting spurs to his swift white horse was carried at a mad gallop to Perranuthno. The people show you the cave in which he and the trembling horse took refuge till the wild turmoil should have died down. With what a horrified curiosity the man who lived must have looked out of his cave, watching till the great wave should subside, watching for the reappearance of all those farms and villages that only that morning had been sunning themselves in the warm light. The forest, too, those acres of beech trees stretching out from Marazion and surrounding St. Michael's Mount, that "hoar rock in a wood," what had become of them? The stormy autumn day must have closed down upon him, still looking, wondering, and hoping; but when once more the sun rose it was upon a wide stretch of waters, with the Scillies sparkling in the distance. Between them and the land was only sea—and a people overwhelmed and lost and soon to be forgotten, a people who but yesterday had gone about their daily tasks as unsuspecting as the rest! There was only Trevelyan left to say it was the "Judgment of Heaven," and he, poor soul, appears to have been too shaken, or too little of a priest, to do so.
The Scillies
It used to be said that when the Almighty made Ireland he had left a few handfuls of mud. He threw them into the sea and the result was the Scillies. The proof thereof is that, like Ireland, the Scillies have no snakes!
They may be only a few handfuls of stony mud, but they are lovely islands, though for those whom salt water makes queasy, a little difficult to reach. There is, in fact, a most depressing story told of a lady who was so ill during the four hours' passage from Penzance that when within sight of the islands but before she could be landed she actually died of heart failure.
The Scillies number about 145, twenty-four of which are cultivated, but only five inhabited—St. Mary's, Tresco, St. Martin's, St. Agnes, and Bryher; while Scilly, the islet which has given its name to the group, is an unimportant rock near Bryher.
On St. Agnes is the Well of St. Warna, a saint who protected her protégés from being wrecked and drowned. She has fallen into disrepute, however, owing to the whole population of her island having been wrecked and drowned on their way home from the neighbouring island, whither they had been to church! What a shock to believers in St. Warna. If only it had been a case of bad boys bird's-nesting on the Sabbath or of merry maidens dancing to the music of the blind fiddler, or east coast men fishing on Sunday, but—respectable citizens on their way home from church!
The Law of Wrecks
Ocean currents run strong here. It has long been mistakenly supposed that the Gulf Stream affects the climate of Western Cornwall. Needless to say, the true Gulf Stream does not come within many miles of the duchy; instead, a surface current of warm water is carried north-eastward from hot latitudes, and the ameliorating effects on flowers and plants and vegetables are the same. This warm current does not, however, ameliorate the storms, and in spite of four lighthouses the wrecks are numerous. In 1707 four ships of the Navy were lost here and 2000 men. The islands once had a reputation not only for smuggling, but for wrecking, and for the kind of wrecking that gives no help "to those in peril on the sea," but rather the other way about. Not that the people were altogether to blame. The law of wrecks was largely responsible for the brutalities undoubtedly indulged in towards shipwrecked crews, for it stated definitely that wrecks should be the property of the governor of the isles only "if none of the crew remained alive."
In our gentle days it is hardly believable that the whole populace should have seen to it that a wreck had no survivors. Themselves at the mercy of the waters, one might have thought such constant peril would have bred a fellow-feeling, but the contrary seems to have been the case. In the Tresco Gardens is a terrace devoted entirely to the figure-heads of vessels that have been cast on these shores. Each sorry relic represents its quota of human lives, and, remembering this, it is as if you were in some sort of concentrated graveyard where the bones of the poor dead are not even decently covered and concealed from sight.
Mr. Smith
But laws were presently amended, and then both wrecking and smuggling failed to yield a livelihood. When Mr. Augustus Smith leased the islands from the Duke of Leeds, the present representative of the Godolphins (Dolphin Town is named after them), the people were in a parlous condition. With no industries beyond fishing and kelp-gathering, their poverty had grown with their families. Mr. Smith, however, was a kindly autocrat. He settled among his people at Tresco Abbey, insisted on education, sent the girls to service on the mainland and the lads to sea, built new roads, and improved the quay. One further step was needed, and this was presently taken by Mr. Trevellick, of Rocky Hill, St. Mary's. Collecting a few bundles of the narcissi that bloomed abundantly about the cottages, he sent them to Covent Garden Market. Amazing to the man who had spent his days amid a profusion of such flowers was the return they brought. The news spread, and so did the cultivation of the blooms. From January to May every steamer now carries tons—as much sometimes as thirty—of flowers on their way to be sold, and that although many of the islands are treeless sandhills! As Mr. Salmon says, however: "The distance, the cost of carriage, and the competition of the untaxed foreigner are the difficulty. The trade has been hit very hard by foreign imports and by the crushing cost of freights. Vegetable cargoes cost less from the shores of the Mediterranean than they do from Scilly; the foreigner is given every advantage in his efforts to undersell the Briton, and the Briton, though fighting at home, fights with one hand tied behind!"
The Admiral's Honour
The history of the Scillies is much what its exposed position would lead you to suppose. Olaf of Norway came marauding here, was converted, and is said to have founded Tresco Abbey—the authentic history of which, however, does not begin till later. Athelstane for the love of fighting presently descended on them; and when the fortunes of royalty were at a low ebb Charles, afterwards Charles II., sought refuge there, and lay in great straits not only for the comforts but even for the necessities of life. The Parliament, unable to let well alone, sent a fleet to surround the island where he lay, but a storm—"Judgment of Heaven," cried the Royalists with one voice—dispersed the ships. Thinking the islands an insecure as well as an uncomfortable refuge, however, the Prince left them at the first opportunity, setting sail for Jersey on his way to the greater hospitality of France. After that they became the prey of every strong man who fancied them; and so dangerous a nest of privateers did they become, that Dutch commerce suffered, and Admiral Van Tromp offered to help in their reduction. His offer, however, was not accepted, the English having learnt the danger of calling in foreign assistance. Admiral Blake was sent to teach the Scillies their duty towards Parliament, and in May 1651, Sir John Grenville—whom we last saw as Sir Beville's stripling son—obtaining freedom and retreat for himself and garrison, surrendered the islands. At first Parliament refused to recognise these favourable terms, but Blake was as fine a gentleman as Grenville himself, which is saying a great deal, and he declared that if not allowed to keep his word he would not keep his office. So Grenville was free to depart, and went over seas to join his Prince and share in his poverty and wanderings.
The Scilly Isles are very lovely, perhaps the loveliest part of this lovely county. The climate is mild and equable, the constant breeze prevents too great a heat, while the rigours of winter, thanks to the warm sea-water, are unknown. Seabirds breed on the great rocks, the earth is of a marvellous fertility, and beyond, far below the horizon, the next land is that of another island—Newfoundland!
Mount's Bay
The sea has encroached within late years on the eastern shores of Mount's Bay, but the harbourage is good, and a fine fleet of fishing-vessels sails from here. There are echoes of unpleasantness with regard to Sunday fishing on the part of strangers. As the Newlyn man put it: "Sunday fishing is wicked, and what's more it spoils our market."
Ding Dong Mine
At the head of the bay is Gulval, near which lies the Ding Dong Mine, famous as the oldest in Cornwall, so old indeed that it has long since (1880) retired into private life. About seventy years since, a number of Roman and Alexandrian coins of the third and fourth centuries were found near this mine. It is quite possible that the Romans themselves worked Ding Dong and Ting Tang, and other of the old mines. A stone inscribed with the names of Constantine and his son is still preserved at St. Hilary: "Imperatore Cæsare Flavio Valerio Constantino Pio Cæsare nobilissimo divi Constantii Pii Augusti Filio." As Constantine the Great was Cæsar in 306 and became Augustus in 307, this inscription fixes the date of the stone as belonging to the first of those years. When draining a piece of land between Penzance and Marazion, the workmen came upon about a thousand Roman coins of that date; indeed, under stones or buried in urns various large hoards of brass, copper, and lead money have been discovered by old tinworks, and every now and then fine gold and silver coins of Trajan, Nero, and the later emperors.
St. Michael's Mount (Cornish Dinsul)[3]
St. Michael's Mount, which is principally composed of granite, is 190 ft. high and about a mile round. It is said that the members of the St. Aubyn family, to whom it now belongs—having been sold to them by the Bassets—are not considered able to look after themselves in the water until they have swum completely round the Mount.[4]
However imposing the great rock looked when the waves from which it emerged wore the summer green of beech-leaves, it could not have had so great a dignity as now. Fortified from an early date, it soon fell into the hands of the Church, and was presently garrisoned by monks. But so fine a stronghold could not be held sacred to spiritual warfare, and in 1191 a party of soldiers disguised themselves as pilgrims and, so obtaining admission to the fortress, turned on their unarmed hosts and expelled them. From that date the place took part in any little war that might be convulsing the rest of the country, and even started—as in 1548—little wars and rebellions of its own. Henry VIII., who had a most fatherly care for his coast defences, erected batteries here; and during the Civil Wars it belonged in turn to whichever party had the upper hand. Its history, indeed, is a continual change of owners, of fierce sieges, stratagems, plunderings, and hairbreadth escapes. Now it is an old grey rock, which after many vicissitudes has fallen asleep in the sun. The only very ancient part still in existence is the piece of Saxon walling pierced by the principal doorway, and the wonder is, not that there is so little, but that one stone should have been left upon another.
An Old Ceremony
In this part of the country the name Godolphin occurs over and over again. Tresco Abbey was granted to them at the Dissolution, but they lived principally at Godolphin House in Breage, and the old saying ran: "A Trelawny was never known to want courage, a Grenville loyalty, or a Godolphin wit."
The Tudor house to the north of Godolphin Hill (500 ft.) is now a farm. The panelled rooms, a hall, and some great windows are all that remain of the former mansion, but a ceremony, which originated in 1330, is still observed on Candlemas day. "Once a year for ever the reeve of the manor of Lamburn shall come to Godolphin, and there boldly enter the hall, jump upon the table, and stamp or bounce with his feet or club to alarm and give notice to the people of his approach, and then and there make proclamation aloud three times, 'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! I am the reeve of the manor of Lamburn, in Perransand, come here to demand the old rent duties and customs, due to the lords from the said manor of Godolphin," upon which notice there was forthwith to be brought him 2s. 8d. in rent, a quart of beer, a loaf of wheaten bread, and a cheese worth 6d., "which the reeve having received he shall drink of the beer, taste the bread and cheese in the place, and then depart, carrying with him the said rent and the remainder of the viands."
One of the two oldest crosses in Cornwall is in the churchyard at Godolphin. In the opinion of stone-masons it has been "bruised out," probably with wood, and not cut with a metal tool. It may indeed have come into existence before metal was used.
China Clay
Tregoning Hill, a little south of Godolphin, was the place where Wm. Cookworthy, a druggist, discovered in 1745 a clay from which porcelain could be made, and from which Plymouth china resulted. This first discovery of china clay has led to that great development of the industry, of which St. Austell is the centre.
Wrecks: Germoe and Breage
Before the lighthouse on the Wolf Rock was built (1871) this rocky coast was the scene of many a wreck. In 1873 the Vicar of Mullion wrote: "In six years and a quarter there have been nine wrecks, with a loss of sixty-nine lives, under Mullion Cliffs, on a bit of coast line not more than a mile and a half in length." It must be confessed that the inhabitants of Germoe and Breage had an unenviable reputation as wreckers:
"God keep us from rocks and shelving sands
And save us from Breage and Germoe men's hands."
But those days have passed away, though Germoe still has a reputation of a kind. It is said that once the men had good singing voices, but were so proud of them that the voices failed; while another distich shows the estimation in which they held themselves:
"Camborne men are bulldogs,
Breage men are brags,
Three or four Germoe men
'Ull scat'um all to rags."
Local jealousies between neighbouring towns are by no means rare in Cornwall. For instance, there is the old enmity between Zennor and St. Ives. It is said that the fishermen belonging to the latter were greatly annoyed one season by the ravages of the hake among the mackerel. They therefore caught the largest they could, whipped him soundly, and restored him to the water—pour encourager les autres.
When a Zennor man wishes to be disagreeable to a native of St. Ives, therefore, he says: "Who whipped the hake?"
But Zennor, one might think, would have hesitated to throw stones, for it is locally known as the place where the cow ate the bellrope, the neighbourhood being so barren and rocky that the straw bellrope was the only provender the poor animal could find—which is suggestive of the Cornish vet. who sent in his bill "to curing your old cow till she died."
Pengersick
One more local story before we go on to Helston, and that because the retort is so neat and the lady, as usual, had the last word. Pengersick Castle is a ruin which, when habitable, was occupied by a man and his wife whose early regard had changed to hatred. Their children were grown up and married, and they had nothing to do but brood upon their mutual dislike, until one day it occurred to both that the world would be a brighter and better place if the other were out of it. No sooner said than done. That day at dinner the good man poured his wife a glass of a rare vintage, and after she had drunken told her with satisfaction that he would now see the last of her—as the wine had been poisoned.
"The wine? Ah, yes, and the soup, too," quoth she, "and as you drank first, my love, the pleasure of seeing the last of you will be mine."
Flora Day
Helston, the little bright town built crossways on the side of a hill, is near the spring of the Kelford River and at the head of the Loe Pool. It had an exciting time in 1548, when the Cornish feeling against the new doctrine of the sacrament found vent in the murder, which took place inside the church, of Wm. Bray, the royal commissioner. In pursuance of his duty he was pulling down images and possibly treating what was sacred in the eyes of the people with only scant reverence. Be that as it may, Wm. Kiltor, a priest of St. Keverne, attacked and slew him, to the secret—not too secret either—joy of the people and the scandal of authority.
The eighth of May in Helston is Flora or Furry Day, and is possibly a relic of the old May Day saturnalia. The young people go (fadgy) into the country singing:
"Robin Hood and Little John,
They both are gone to the fair, O!
And we will away to the merry greenwood
And see what they do there, O!"
They return garlanded with flowers and dance through the houses and gardens of the town, singing the Furry Song. The dance follows a set formula, the procession going in at the front door and out at the back, and being supposed to bestow some sort of benefit upon the houses thus visited. The refrain of the song, to the numerous verses of which topical allusions are often added, is as follows:
"God bless Aunt Mary Moses[5]
With all her power and might, O,
And send us peace in Merry England
Both by day and night, O."
Charles Kingsley was at the Helston Grammar School when the headmaster was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the second master was the Johns who wrote "A Week at the Lizard." It is unlikely the scholars were allowed to take part in the Furry Dance, but he may have watched it time and again, and given his schoolboy contribution.
The Loe Pool
This is a beautiful stretch of fresh water that winds like a river through the forked and wooded valley and widens as it comes within sight of the sea, from which, like the Swan Pool—a smaller lake on the other side of the promontory—it is separated by a bar of sand and shingle. Until recently the Mayor of Helston was wont to present two leathern purses containing three half-pence each to the lord of Penrose and ask leave to cut through the bar and release the surplus waters. The old cutting of the Loe Bar used to tinge the sea with yellow as far as the Scilly Isles. Now, however, the quantity of the water is regulated by sluices and the ceremony has fallen into disuse.
Serpentine
After the more exposed northern and western shores of Cornwall, the airs of the south are balmy. There is no fear, as the farmer put it, that "the bullocks will be blown off the cliff pasture into the sea, the wheat off the land, and the turnips out of their sockets." In the Morrab Gardens at Penzance palms grow in the open, while in Falmouth strange spiky, spiney plants, whose home is in desert sands far south of Britain, are to be seen. But the Meneage (stone), as the Lizard district is called, though mild, is exhilarating, and on Goonhilly Downs the wind can be sufficiently keen. This district is of a peculiar geological structure, consisting of a moderately elevated tableland, deeply carved at the edges by valleys and richly wooded except at the southern extremity. The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine, and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. It causes a sensation of vast wealth to go on to the beaches and from the scattered millions select your own pebbles for the polisher. The more red in your chosen fragments, the more iron, and the harder they will be to polish; while a handsome piece of entirely red ore may be altogether beyond their powers, for serpentine is a rock not a pebble, and the local appliances are crude. The Lizard is also the paradise of the botanist, for the Cornish heath (erica vagans), the sea asparagus, the henbane, and many other plants grow abundantly in this district. From Helston to the Lizard is a pleasant scrambling walk along the fine black cliffs. At Gunwalloe the church rises from the edge of the cliff, its belfry being built into the solid rock about 14 ft. away. In Mullion Church is some admirable wood-carving, and on the west face of the tower a well-cut crucifixion, and at Kynance are some curious rocks known as "The Bellows" and "The Post Office," which are as interesting to the geologist as they are wonderful to the ordinary visitor.
GUNWALLOE AND MULLION
A curious story is told of a wreck at Gunwalloe, where the St. Andrew, a treasure-ship belonging to the King of Portugal, was driven ashore. The Portuguese had entered into an agreement with the local notabilities for the disposal of their goods, when down rode three Cornish gentlemen at the head of their retainers and carried off the spoil. Unfortunately for them the Portuguese had an Englishman on board, and he promptly brought the matter before the courts and caused an inquiry to be made. But the treasure, as then enumerated, must have been enough to make the mouths water not only of the local authorities, but of any starveling gentleman to whom news of its arrival had come; for it consisted of 8000 cakes of copper, eighteen blocks of silver, and a chest containing £6000, besides pearls, precious stones, chains, brooches, jewels, tapestry, rich hangings, satins, velvets, and four sets of armour.
Just below Gunwalloe are the fine Halzaphron Cliffs. A ship was wrecked here about a hundred years ago, and the bodies from it were said to have been the last which were refused sepulchre in consecrated ground. It makes one's blood boil to think of the barbarities that from the beginning have been perpetrated in the name of religion. There was actually a law on the Statute Book which refused such burial to strangers, on the score that they might not have been Christians. Christians forsooth—pretty Christians they who framed that law!
Another lingering superstition is connected with the Rev. Thomas Flavel, who was buried at Mullion 1682. The man was a noted ghost-layer, and was said to charge five guineas every time he officiated in this way. He was also an enthusiastic Royalist, and Walker thus describes him: "A venerable old gentleman; and lookt the more so in those Times for that he had vowed never to cut off his Beard till the Return of his Majesty to his Kingdom, by which time he had gotten a very long one." His epitaph is curious:
"Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet,
The World my goods; my Soul, my God who gavet;
For from these four—Earth, Satan, World, and God,
My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul I had."
On the cliffs by Mullion and above Poldhu (black pool) is the earliest of the permanent wireless stations in England. It forms a prominent, strange but not altogether ugly feature of the landscape—the people think it brings bad weather—and is at any rate in strong contrast to the deep and glorious coves by which in switchback fashion, now cliff, now coombe, the barren dusty headland of the Lizard (chief's high dwelling) is reached.
The Lizard
This is the southernmost point of England, a blunt rounded headland, lying crouched over the deep water, eternally—by day and by night—on the look-out. When the first lighthouse was built here, at the charges of Sir John Killigrew in 1619—note that Godolphin land has given place to the country of the Killigrews—it was disapproved of by the Trinity House. They thought it would serve to light pirates and foreign enemies to a safe landing-place!
To the east of Penolver Point the coast curves sharply in towards the north and is honeycombed with curious caves and blow-holes, Dolor Hugo (from fogou—a subterranean passage), the Devil's Frying Pan by Cadgwith, Raven's Hugo, and others. Here are bays, picturesque with rocks and far from the madding crowd, far also from a railway station, Helston being the nearest; but that is no matter, the ten-mile drive over Goonhilly Downs being well worth the extra weariness and cost.
Mediæval Bells
Cornwall has about fifty bells, dating from before the Reformation. As they had been used to summon the people to rebellion, orders came from London that all bells except "the least of the ring" were to be removed from the churches. This, however, was a command that the recipients thought would be more honoured in the breach than the observance; which is why there are so many good examples, as for instance, at Landewednack, of mediæval bells. This the most southern parish in England has a curious church tower, the admixture of light granite and dark serpentine giving it a chequer-board appearance. It was visited by the plague in 1645, and a hundred years later the burials were disturbed in order to make room for some shipwrecked sailors—whose Christianity one supposes to be vouched for—when to the horror of the inhabitants the plague at once reappeared. Since then they have let sleeping dogs lie.
Landewednack claims to be the last place at which a sermon was preached in Cornish (1678), the incumbent being the Rev. Thos. Cole, who lived to the great age of 120. This fine old gentleman is said to have not long before his death walked to Penryn and back, a distance of thirty miles!
Past Cadgwith, Kennack, Coverack, Porthoustock, and Porthalla, well-known fishing villages, and all romantically situated, but not otherwise interesting, the wanderer comes by way of St. Keverne, a big church with a fresco unique in Cornwall as giving the Greek form of the St. Christopher legend, to Nare Point and the mouth of the Helford River. It is a question which is the more beautiful, this ten-mile long creek with its bold scenery or the softer, more feminine Fal. It rises a little above Helston, at Buttris, flows down to Gweek, where it broadens into an estuary and applies its waters to the nourishing of many oysters—which oysters were unkindly described by Lord Byron, when he stayed at Falmouth, as tasting of copper!
About a mile from Gweek is the "Tolvan," a large irregular slab of granite, near the centre of which is a hole. Weakly children were formerly brought to the "crickstone" and passed at sunrise, nine times, through this hole. The custom having fallen into disrepute, however, the Tolvan now forms part of a cottage fence.
Mawgan
Mawgan Church, which lies between Gweek and Trelowarren, the seat of the Vyvyans, has a brass to one of the Bassets inscribed:
"Shall we all die,
We shall die all,
All die shall we,
Die all we shall."
which quaint lines are also found on a tombstone at Gunwalloe and elsewhere. Trelowarren itself has some interesting pictures, in particular the Vandyke of Charles I. presented by Charles II. in acknowledgment of Sir Rd. Vyvyan's services to his father. This family also possesses the pearl necklace of Queen Henrietta Maria, in which she sat for the painting now at Hampden Court.
But of all the charming spots up these rocky and wooded creeks commend me to Condora, for there in 1735 were found twenty-four gallons of Roman brass coin. Think of it, dream of it, penniless man. Not a few coppers, but twenty-four gallons!
What a beautiful sound have some of these Cornish names! Rosemullion Head juts out over the Helford River on the north, and above it we have Rosemerrin and the Swan Pool, and not far off St. Anthony in Roseland. It is true that Rhos only means a heath, and that we are on the borders of the gorse-grown districts, known as Roseland; but the word has different associations for the "foreigner," and whatever the true meaning, the lovely name brings to memory the thought and the scent and the colour of the lovelier flowers.