Under the year 1693 we are reminded of perils, now happily impossible, that then lurked around these shores. There is an entry of half-a-crown paid to William Thomas "for his labour to goe to ffalmouth to give an account that two ffrench privateers lay in our bay"; and a little later another half-crown was given "to ffower poore boyes that were taken by a ffrench privateer." The beginning of 1698 seems to have been especially devoted to charities; we have record of sums given to two distressed men and their children whose houses were burnt; to two poor Irishmen cast away at Zennor; to a poor traveller and his wife, a seaman who had lost his hand, a captain who had lost all his goods by wreck, and a poor disbanded soldier. Also, four shillings given to two "poore soldiers which came from Silly." It has generally been understood that Scillonians object to their name being spelt in this manner; yet we have a later entry of expense "examining the Silly Soldiers." One is tempted to quote much further from these alluring records, and they certainly assist us considerably in understanding the old-time ways of living, as we ramble about the tortuous byways, nooks and corners of St. Ives. In the letter the accounts are strictly local; in the spirit they may be taken as typical of almost any West Country town of that date, and they have the frequent touch of humanity that relieves bare figures from monotony.
In connection with the flourishing condition of Methodism at St. Ives, it is important to remember that John Wesley paid the town as many as twenty-seven visits, beginning in 1743 and ending in 1789. There was already a society of his followers here when he began his visits, but they were very unpopular with the majority of the townsfolk, who accused them of sympathy with the Pope and the Jacobites. Wesley's own reception was very mixed; he received some countenance and a good deal of mob violence. Not only the vicar and curate of St. Ives were against him, but he had a still more formidable opponent in Dr. Borlase, the antiquarian vicar of Ludgvan. When a parishioner tried to persuade Borlase that Wesley's preaching was doing good, he exclaimed, "Get along; you are a parcel of mad, crazy-headed fellows." Yet two years after his first visit Wesley was able to describe St. Ives as "the most still and honourable post (so are the times changed) which we have in Cornwall." But when he paid his fifth visit, in 1750, it is clear that opposition had not died out. He tells us that: "Having first sent to the mayor to inquire if it would be offensive to him, I preached in the evening not far from the market-place. There was a vast concourse of people, very few of the adult inhabitants of the town being wanting. I had gone through two-thirds of my discourse, to which the whole audience was deeply attentive, when Mr. S. sent his man to ride his horse to and fro through the midst of the congregation. Some of the chief men in the town bade me go on, and said no man should hinder me, but I judged it better to retire to the room." We may be sure it was no personal shrinking, but a regard for the public peace, that caused the preacher's decision. Twenty years later he wrote: "Here God has made all our enemies to be at peace with us, so that I might have preached in any part of the town. But I rather chose a meadow, where such as would might sit down, either on the grass or on the hedges—so the Cornish term their broad stone walls, which are usually covered with grass." Of his last visit he says that "well-nigh all the town attended, and with all possible seriousness. Surely forty years' labour has not been in vain here." The numberless meeting-houses and Bethels throughout Cornwall bear at least one form of testimony to the enduring fruits of that "forty years' labour."
There are other things besides Methodists at St. Ives; there are painters and pilchards. The colony of artists here is almost as famous as that of Newlyn, and there are at least sixty different studios. Pictures from St. Ives have won world-wide fame; in fact, artistically, Cornwall would have long since become stale were it not for its inexhaustible charm. The painters bring something of a Latin Quarter element with them, and are by no means limited to British in nationality. Mr. Stanhope Forbes says: "I remember finding in a house at St. Ives where I was calling, four painters of four different nationalities. In that town Zorn, the well-known Swedish artist, painted his first oil picture, which now hangs in the Luxembourg, and for it his palette was set by an equally celebrated American painter who at that time resided there."
The studios are specially thronged during the winter months, as the climate allows much open-air work; in the summer many of the painters fly to other hunting-fields, leaving Cornwall to the tourist. The Cornish have grown accustomed to the painters by this time, and cease to regard them with wondering curiosity; they are recognised as having distinct local uses. Many of the pictures now displayed in exhibitions bespeak a close intimacy between the painters and the fishermen. But the pilchards are of still more importance to the little huddled town where the fishers live; and these usually begin to arrive about August, when the huers have already taken up their position on the high places around, in order to signal the first sighting of the shoals. The huers are on watch from August till late October, and it is the method of taking by seine that renders their signalling of great importance. The exact position of the fish must be ascertained before the seine-nets are dropped to enclose them. The takes are sometimes enormous, but seasons greatly vary, as the fish are governed by laws of feeding whose operation we cannot easily trace. The average annual taking of pilchards in Cornwall is estimated at 20,000 hogsheads. Gulls in countless numbers hover above the fishing-boats, and swoop down for their share in the spoil; sometimes, however, scared away by the more powerful gannets, with whom they dare not dispute. At times the gulls are a distinct nuisance and something more to the fisherman; they will snatch fish from his very boat, and the constant loss must be very considerable; yet there is a superstitious idea that the gull is the fisherman's friend—an idea in which we might rejoice more if it led the men to be equally humane towards other living creatures. The same mercy is by no means shown to the gannet. But a more serious enemy of the men is the dogfish, who tear their nets; and the fishers are taking their revenge by trying to popularise this fish as an article of food, under the name of the "flake." Besides the prevalent fishing with seines, there is much drift-fishing from St. Ives, taking place at night; the boats being dotted about within and outside the bay, with their headlights showing like twinkling stars. The St. Ives men are not dependent on pilchards only, happily for them; in winter their seines take many mullet, which are mostly sent to Paris. The shore-seine used for these is comparatively small; it is coiled and passed round the school, and the two ends then drawn ashore. Here, as elsewhere, the men are usually parcelled into companies—a kind of limited share-company; they take turns in shooting the nets, and profits are shared. The control of affairs by husband and wife is a different sort of share-company; the wife is supreme mistress at home, but the man becomes "boss" as soon as he gets his sea-boots on. Many mackerel are often brought to St. Ives, and the men go still further afield after herring; but somehow the catch of the pilchard seems the most distinctively local feature, and the fish, once common much further east, is still an important actuality to all the Land's End fishing ports. The typical Cornishman has always been a fisher or a tin-miner; and both still flourish.
Picturesque and artistic St. Ives clusters narrowly about the harbour and on the neck of the Island; the more modern residences and lodging-houses stretch above Porthminster Beach, with a popular development at Carbis Bay. More inland suburbs are chiefly devoted to the mining that has suffered so many vicissitudes—flourishing, then decadent, and now flourishing again. One such centre is Halsetown, a mining settlement founded something less than a century ago by James Halse, of the old Cornwall Hals family; he was a solicitor and a mayor of St. Ives, intimately connected with the mines. But in this rather unattractive quarter we are less likely to think of Halse than we are of Sir Henry Irving, who spent his childhood here. The reputation of a great actor becomes very much a phantom affair after a few years; but as we still associate the name of Garrick with a brilliant period of the Georgian age, so the name of Irving must always be linked with the later brilliant period of the Victorian. To the younger generation of theatre-goers he is fast becoming like a half-mythical demigod—one of those whom the elder folk mention with regretful shakings of the head when newer favourites are lauded. The actor was not born in Cornwall, but in Somerset; his mother, however, was a Cornish woman named Behenna, and one of his aunts was Mrs. Penberthy, wife of Captain Isaac Penberthy, whose captaincy of course referred to his position as overseer of mines here at Halsetown. Hither Irving was brought in his fourth year, and his memories of Cornwall remained vivid to his dying day. "I recall Halsetown," he said, "as a village nestling between sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack from the mines, and with the Knill monument standing prominent as a landmark to the east. It was a wild and weird place, fascinating in its own peculiar beauty, and taking a more definite shape in my youthful imagination by reason of the fancies and legends of the people. The stories attaching to rock and well and hill were unending; every man and woman had folk-lore to tell us youngsters. We took to them naturally—they seem to fit in wisely with the solitudes, the expanses, the superstitious character of the Cornish people, and never clashed in our minds with the Scriptural teachings which were our daily portion at home. These legends and fairy stories have remained with me but vaguely—I was too young—but I remember the 'guise dancing,' when the villagers went about in masks, entering houses and frightening the children. We imitated this once, in breaking in on old Granny Dixon's sleep, fashioned out in horns and tails, and trying to frighten her into repentance for telling us stories of hell-fire and brimstone. The attempt was not too successful." Mrs. Penberthy was a Methodist and a teetotaler, of deeply religious instincts; yet the boy's life with his cousins was evidently free and uncramped. The uncle was strong, somewhat passionate, but lovable. If there was some sternness in the home atmosphere, there was also plenty of affection, and that is the most vital point. "Halsetown gave me a good physical start in life, at any rate," said the actor. "I attribute much of my endurance of fatigue, which is a necessary part of an actor's life, to the free and open and healthy years I lived at Halsetown, and to the simple food and regular routine ordered by my aunt. We rambled much over the desolate hills, or down to the rocks at the seashore. There was plenty of natural beauty to look for, and I suppose we looked for it. I know the sea had a potent attraction for me. I was a wiry youth, as I believe, when the time came for me to join a London school."
The Knill monument mentioned by Irving claims a little more attention. John Knill, born at Callington in 1733, after being articled to a Penzance solicitor, became collector of Customs at St. Ives, and in 1767 was chosen mayor. A few years later Government sent him to Jamaica to inspect the ports; he was private secretary to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and in late life he became a practising solicitor at Gray's Inn, as well as magistrate for the county of Middlesex. He died in London, 1811. Long before this date he had erected his own mausoleum on Worvas Hill, near St. Ives, and to this his remains were brought. Among many legacies, his will directed that certain ceremonies should be observed once every five years, on the festival of St. James the Apostle; £10 to be spent "in a dinner for the mayor, collector of Customs, and clergyman, and two friends to be invited by each of them, making a party of nine persons, to dine at some tavern in the borough; £5 to be equally divided amongst ten girls, natives of the borough and daughters of seamen, fishermen or tinners, each of them not exceeding ten years of age, who shall, between ten and twelve o'clock of the forenoon of that day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least, on the ground adjoining the mausoleum, and after the dance sing the 100th Psalm of the old version, to the fine old tune to which the same was then sung in St. Ives Church; £1 to a fiddler who shall play to the girls while dancing and singing at the mausoleum, and also before them on their return home therefrom; £2 to two widows of seamen, fishermen or tinners of the borough, being sixty-four years old or upwards, who shall attend the dancing and singing of the girls, and walk before them immediately after the fiddler, and certify to the mayor, collector of Customs, and clergyman, that the ceremonies have been duly performed; £1 to be laid out in white ribbons for breast-knots for the girls and widows, and a cockade for the fiddler, to be worn by them respectively on that day and on the Sunday following." These observances have been duly performed, the last date being 1906, when many visitors attended to witness the proceedings.
A little eastward of Carbis Bay is Lelant, the mother-parish of St. Ives. Its full title is St. Uny Lelant, and the dedication is to the Irish Eoghain or Euinus, whom we find in Brittany as Uniac. There are other traces of him in Cornwall, as at Redruth and Sancreed; and it is probable that he arrived in Cornwall about the same time as St. Ia, but the fullest traditions of him relate to his Irish life. The word "Lelant" is explained as Lan-nans, the "valley-church"; in old books we still find the parish named as Lanant. The stronghold of Tewdrig, who murdered St. Ia and other saints, is supposed to have been on the coast here, its traces concealed by the sweeping sands that very nearly made an end of the village entirely, as they really did destroy its one-time harbour. A number of skeletons of prehistoric date were discovered when cutting for the railway to St. Ives, proving the early occupation of these coasts. Norden, writing more than three centuries since, says that Lelant was "sometyme a haven towne, but now of late decayed by reason of the sande which has choaked the harbour and buried much of the landes and houses; many devises they use to prevent the absorption of the churche." But the cultivation of the sand-rush, arundo arenaria, has done what the other "devises" failed to do; and the rushy towans have now provided an ideal golf-course, which prospers though the little town is somnolent. It is here that St. Ives visitors do most of their golfing, and the ground is described as "a natural seaside course, with charming views in all directions. The holes are rather short and tricky, and put a premium on local knowledge. Last, but not least, Lelant can boast a climate absolutely ideal for golf in winter." Lelant Church is interesting, but has lost its fine old bench-ends and screen. It is connected with the memory of a former vicar, Parson Polkinghorne, who was a renowned ghost-layer, a redoubtable fox-hunter, and a skilled hurler. His exorcising formula is said to have commenced with the words "in Nommy Dommy," and we are told it was in Latin throughout—as we may believe from this specimen. But the days of the exorcist are over now—there are no ghosts to lay, or only such as will not be laid.
There is a ferry at Lelant, taking the traveller across the Hayle creek to sandy Phillack, one of the mother-parishes of Hayle. This is the narrowest section of the Cornish peninsula, and from Hayle River to Mount's Bay is only about four miles across; a good road makes the journey from sea to sea. It is just a neck of land dividing north from south, and persons susceptible to climatic change say that the difference can be noticed when they get half-way across. Hayle, a little waterside town of less than two thousand inhabitants, is not particularly attractive. There is a charm in the endless sand-blown dunes that stretch on both sides of the estuary, but dismal weather can make them desolate, and wild weather converts them into a howling waste; while Hayle itself, with some small shipping and industry, is a place that the lover of beauty does not often care for. But it is not altogether to be despised, and it is conveniently situated on the main Great Western line. This Hayle district was once the great landing-place of saints from Ireland, who came here rather numerously about fifteen centuries since; those who came from Wales usually landed near Padstow or came to Cornwall by way of Devon. One such Irish saint was Gwythian, who built his oratory a few miles north of Hayle, and the remains of this rugged little church have lately been rescued from the sands, with a special service of commemoration held over it. The Irish saints brought their style of building with them, and such relics as those of St. Piran and St. Gwythian are exactly similar in style to the oldest memorials of the same nature in Ireland. The masonry was of the simplest—a mere laying of rough stones together without mortar. Some have supposed this oratory of St. Gwythian to be the earliest religious building surviving in Britain, but it is very difficult to say anything definite. If the little church really survived as the saint left it its claim would be a good one, but, like St. Piran's, it is more likely to be a century or two later. Visitors must not expect to learn much about the saints or about the monuments from the countryfolk, either here or anywhere else in Cornwall. With luck they may get a few quaint notions and superstitions out of the older people; but the younger folk are educated in a different manner now—universal school systems tend to uniformity and usually to a deadening of the imagination. For the legends and traditions of the country-side it is necessary to go to the guide-books, which are themselves often misleading. If a traveller were to go through Cornwall compiling a book that should contain solely what he saw and heard, it would be something quite different from the ordinary handbook, and those who only know the Duchy by reading about it would be chiefly struck by its omissions. The people, here as elsewhere, no longer care much for the traditions of their forefathers; and the delightful literary works that belong to topography are the result and the supply of a culture in which the ordinary men and women of the localities have small share. The visitor should carry the best literary guide he can procure with him, otherwise he is likely to learn little of the country's lore and its antiquities—unless now and then he applies to a clergyman or perhaps an intelligent schoolmaster. The days of oral tradition have passed for ever. We need not complain when we remember that written literature is a result of this decease.