"Eternal life be his whose loving care
Gave Paul an almshouse and the church repair."
Two words here prove how Cornish was affected by the Roman occupation—pobl for people, and egles for church.
Photo by][Gibson & Sons.
When Paul was burned Mousehole suffered also, and its only house that survived was the manor of the Keigwins, now the "Keigwin Arms," whose appearance quite justifies the antiquity claimed for it. Borrow, when he came here, must have been struck by the similarity of the name of Mousehole with that of Mousehold Heath, with which he was so familiar at Norwich; there seems no satisfactory explanation of either name. Perhaps both embody some Celtic root. Mousehole was once called Porth Enys, the island-port; and there is a little islet, St. Clement's, lying off it. The place is in every way quieter than Newlyn; there are fewer visitors in the summer months, less bustle on the quays, less stir of fish-auctions; even the artists are rarer. All is quaintness and primitive seclusion. There may be a somewhat too aggressive savour of pilchards; but we must excuse this when we remember what the pilchards mean to these fisher-folk, who were once considered somewhat of a race apart, with a supposed infusion of Spanish blood in them. There was a quay here and a chapelry in very early days, and the place was active enough before Penzance had come forward as a port at all; it is said that there was also a small oratory on St. Clement's Isle. The fisher-folk have spent a good deal on improving their harbour. The coast is grand and cavernous. On both sides, near Newlyn and at Lamorna, there is some busy quarrying; the quarries at Lamorna supplied much of the granite for the Thames Embankment. Being a favourite trip from Penzance, the cove at Lamorna is pretty well known; it opens to the sea from a very beautiful little valley formed by the Lamorna stream, wooded with hazels and alders. There need be no complaint just here that Cornwall is treeless, though beyond and above the land stretches unwooded and desolate. But it is a grand sort of desolation; only in thick weather or fierce driving storms do we feel in a kind of lost world. At the head of the Lamorna valley is an estate known as Trewoofe, or Troove, with a remarkable fogou (subterranean passage), not easy to find and not easy to enter. It runs for about 36 feet, being 6 feet high and nearly as wide, and is formed of rugged unhewn blocks. Stories tell that it successfully sheltered a party of fugitive Royalists once, and it may also have been used by smugglers of later date; but for its origin we must go farther back, and perhaps it takes us to the dim days when race was struggling with race on this far western limit of land. There are so many prehistoric relics near as to be almost bewildering, and this is surely not the place in which to discourse learnedly of them all; besides which, the utmost learning does little but reveal our dense ignorance of their real significance. Troove belonged to the Le Veales, or Levelis, family, who came over with the Conqueror, and flourished in this spot for six centuries, dying at last in the person of Arthur Levelis, who was buried at St. Buryan in 1671. The modern house retains only a few fragments of the mansion; but the doorway remains, its jambs sculptured with queer figures, and three calves' heads carved above it as the family arms. About half a mile westward is Boleigh, or Boleit, with the Pipers—two rough granite figures. When Athelstan traversed Cornwall from end to end, about the year 936, he is said to have fought his last battle against the defeated British at Boleit; not content with the whole of Cornwall, he crossed to the Scillies and took these also. It is quite possible that there was fighting here at that time, but very certainly the Pipers were not then raised as burial monoliths; they are clearly of far earlier date. In an open field near is the stone circle of Dawns mên, the dancing-stones, known as the Merry Maidens; there are nineteen rough boulders of granite, and there was probably a twentieth. Naturally, there is the usual story that they were maidens who danced on the Sabbath and were thus punished, the Pipers being similarly doomed for playing the dances.
Though St. Buryan lies about three miles from the coast, it must be visited for the beauty of its church and the interest of its traditions. The church is so named after Buriena, a beautiful Irish girl who came to Cornwall to become a saint, but it is very difficult to decide definitely as to her personality. We may conjecture that she came to Cornwall about the same time as St. Piran, perhaps in his company, and that she set up her cell in a field formerly called the Sanctuary, and later the Sentry. The present church is always understood to have been founded by Athelstan, when he sighted the Scilly Isles from this high ground, and vowed that if he returned safely from their conquest he would endow a collegiate establishment here. The expedition to Scilly accomplished, he observed his vow, and founded an establishment consisting of a dean and three prebendaries, with jurisdiction over the parishes of Buryan, Levan, and Sennen. There was trouble later, because the Buryan priests claimed freedom from episcopal control; but we find the Bishop of Exeter dedicating the church here in 1238, of which some Norman arches, font, and stoup survive; Athelstan's church has quite vanished. The building is about 100 feet long, and compared with the nave the chancel is almost like a cathedral choir, thus proving its collegiate character, the stalls still remaining. Much foolish restoration has done irreparable damage, but the church is still beautiful in design and detail; unhappily the screen was badly mutilated, and many bench-ends destroyed. When Blight wrote his admirable book on the churches of West Cornwall the Miserere seats could be raised; later, they were very stupidly fixed down. On the floor of the tower lies the ancient tomb of "Clarice La Femme Cheffrei De Bolleit," with an inscription in Norman-French characters of the thirteenth century, begging visitors to pray for her soul, and promising a ten days' pardon to those who do so; there can be no harm in our testing the efficacy of this offer. The tower that rises above this remarkably interesting grave is 90 feet in height, and as the church itself stands high it forms a fine landmark. Outside there is a shaftless cross of Celtic appearance, but not supposed to be Celtic in origin, though it certainly may have been adapted from a Celtic original. There is another old cross outside the churchyard gate, which may perhaps at one time have been included within the sacred pale, as traces of burial have been found. But churchyards were not often diminished in this manner, and the graves must probably be otherwise accounted for. In the church is an altar-cloth, now rarely used, worked by two maiden ladies more than two centuries since.
St. Buryan is familiar to all visitors to the Land's End, as the cars usually make it a halting-place. Even more famous, and perhaps more attractive to the conventional sight-seer, is the Logan Stone of Treryn, or Treen; but what makes this spot truly worth seeing is not the mass of poised rock, which certainly stirs clumsily when pushed, but the grand headland itself, on which there is a dinas, or old entrenchment. The coast here has more beauties than can be named, but this immemorial stronghold of a vanished race, on its magnificent bluff of granite that juts from a turf-clad neck of land, is far more glorious than any logging-stone, even though it may have been displaced and replaced by a nephew of the poet Goldsmith. The little hamlet of Treen is just across the fields. Logan rocks are simply a freak of nature, in spite of the Druidic nonsense that has been talked about them; softer soils have been eroded beneath, and the rock has remained balanced. Treen is in the parish of St. Levan, but we have to pass Porthcurnow Cove before reaching that saint's immediate locality. Porthcurnow, with its fine shore and grand seas, and its memories of Tregeagle, whose doom is to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow to the farther side of Land's End, has in some sense had its romance knocked out of it by the establishment of the Eastern Telegraph Company, and the presence of about a hundred keen, sport-loving telegraphists. They have a comfortable settlement for their exile here, with excellent cricket and tennis grounds and perfect accommodation. Their duties resemble those of any telegraph instrument-room in the country, but the locality should render their leisure hours delightful. Hunt tells a tale of a Spectre Ship at Porthcurnow, but all these traditions were dying when he told them, and that is a good while ago now. The name of Porthcurnow is interesting, as it probably embodies the root of the name of Cornwall itself; and there was once a very ancient chapel here, raised on a burial cairn of far greater antiquity; very slight traces remain. Perhaps Penberth and St. Loy's Coves ought to have been mentioned; but we must pass on to St. Levan, who was a very attractive saint, with an engaging touch of human nature about him. Even so, his identity is a little doubtful. The prefix St. is quite modern in Cornwall, and as this parish was once spoken of as Siluan, and is still sometimes called Slevan, it is possible that the real saint was Silvanus, and not Levan at all. Whoever he was, he had a little oratory and holy well on the cliff below the site of the present church; and he lived on a single fish each day. One day two fish persisted in being caught; and when he reached his cell he found that his sister Breaca (whose name survives at Breage) had paid him a visit with her two children. This legend goes on the usual supposition that the saint was really the Irish Levan, brother of St. Breage. Unhappily the children ate so eagerly that they were choked by the fishbones, in memory of which bream (or sometimes chad) used to be called "choke-cheeld." Mr. Baring-Gould says this caused a coolness between brother and sister. He had another unpleasantness with a woman Joanna, who lived near, who was a rigid vegetarian, and quarrelled with the saint for catching his fish on Sunday. He said that to fish was no worse than to do gardening. We may repeat these old stories, but the Cornish folk of to-day know nothing of them; they are dead, except as matter for the guide-books. St. Levan Church is snugly sheltered. It has been carefully restored and is very attractive, with a good tower, some fine bench-ends, and a beautiful screen. Outside the church is a cleft boulder of granite, and there used to be a local saying that when a pack-horse should ride through St. Levan's stone the world would come to an end. A little beyond is the really delightful Porthgwarra, with its rugged stone slip and tunnels leading to the little fishing-cove. Visitors are beginning to discover Porthgwarra, and it is one of those quiet, lonely haunts where lodgings must be booked long in advance. Cornwall has a good many such—the resort of those who shun the ordinary watering-place.