Gold in Cornwall: Knill's Monument: The Antiquities of the Extreme West: Cliff Castles: Fogous: Menhirs: Dolmens: Oratories: Superstitions: St. Ives: Wesley: Irving: A Ripe Old Age: The Mines: Sancreed and St. Buryan: Lighthouses: Whitesand Bay: The Land's End: Mousehole and Dolly Pentreath: Newlyn: Penzance.
From Hayle to Marazion on the south coast is four miles—the narrowest part of the peninsula—and a railway runs from sea to sea. With a deep curve, however, the road goes on to low-lying Lelant (the valley church), which is traditionally said to have once been a large village and port, but to have been reduced to its present inconspicuousness by the drifting of sand into the haven. Parts of the church are Norman, and over the south porch stands an eighteenth-century copper sundial, on the pierced gnomon bracket of which is a quaint representation of Time and Death, a skeleton bearing an hour glass and a dart.
Among other antiquities discovered here was a large colt having in it some small bars of gold the size of a straw. A farmer found it embedded in ashes, and lying about 2 ft. below the surface. Gold has often been found in Cornwall, but always in small quantities—usually in grains from the size of sand to that of a pea! The largest piece ever found was said to have weighed down eight guineas in the scale.
Knill's Monument
Not far from Lelant is Worwas Hill, on which a certain John Knill erected a mausoleum. By some mischance the gentleman was buried in London, but by his will he directed that every five years £5 was to be equally divided among ten girls, natives of the borough and daughters of seamen, fishermen, or tinners, each of them not exceeding ten years of age, who should between ten and twelve o'clock of the forenoon of a certain day, dance for a quarter of an hour at least on the ground adjoining his mausoleum and, after the dance, sing the 100th Psalm. Alas, for the vanity of human hopes! Every five years the little girls, gaily be-ribboned, dance in the presence of the local notabilities, while the one thing that was to have given the ceremony weight and interest—the body of John Knill—is elsewhere.
The Antiquities of the Extreme West: Cliff Castles: Fogous: Menhirs
This narrow neck of land shuts off the small rounded end of the peninsula, a part that is peculiarly rich in prehistoric remains. It is as if the old forgotten peoples had been driven back and back, race after race pushing the one before it into the sea, but each, before it passed, leaving its footprint on the granite. On every headland are cliff castles—Cape Cornwall, Ballowal, Chûn—the most remarkable being that of Treryn Dinas, a stronghold with a triple vallum and fosse which can only be approached by a narrow ridge and which consists of a huge pile of rocks jutting from a turf-clad neck of land. In contrast with these are the subterranean passages and chambers (fogous) at Bolleit, Trewoofe, and Pendeen, the last-named said to be haunted on Christmas morning by a white-robed lady with the stem of a red rose between her lips. Above ground are a number of stone circles and solitary monoliths, from which, or from the cairns, comes the phrase "to raise a stone to his memory." The monoliths are known as the Pipers and the Blind Fiddler, the circles, as at Dawns Maen and Boscawen Un, as the Merry Maidens; and the legend with regard to them is always the same—that the Pipers played on a Sunday, and that the Maidens danced, their punishment approximating, in a more lasting form, to that of Lot's wife! Here, too, are the remains of ancient villages and beehive huts, and at one place—Chapel Euny—is a subterranean structure consisting of three long passages and a beehive hut, while at Bosporthennis is a specimen of the beehive hut so good that it is said to be the best in England. This district of heath and lonely moorland is so sparsely inhabited that the little old ruins have been left as they were until the antiquarian came and dug, unearthing the poor treasures of a simple state of civilisation, the spindle-whorls, the bone needles, the flint spear and arrow heads, and the coarse black pottery. The coast scenery of this part is the finest to be seen for miles, and that not so much on account of the grandeur of the cliffs as of the tumbling seas, that roll in from the Atlantic; and days might be spent wandering over these high lands from castle to castle and from stone to stone, trying to discover the reason, whether sepulchral or religious, that the monoliths were set erect; to guess why those strange underground passages were dug and walled, and what practical need they served; and what was the meaning of the various earthworks and entrenchments. The people to whom they needed no explanation have vanished, leaving only riddles behind, riddles that not the wisest among us, not the most enlightened, not the youngest, is able to solve.
Dolmen: Oratories: Superstition
We do at least know that the dolmen was raised above a burial, in the one instance of Zennor above two. In the dolmen proper, the supporters of the great capstone are columns and not merely slabs enclosing the space. Dolmens are found not only in Cornwall, but along the west coast of Europe and the northern coast of Africa, also in Palestine, India, and Japan, and appear to be the work of a seafaring people. Their date is said to be 2000 b.c., the age when bronze was beginning to replace stone and when the Swiss lake villages were being built. Three of the early Christian Councils regarded them with suspicion and ordered their destruction on the ground that they were objects of reverence to the Celtic Christians. At Lanyon, on Boswavas Moor, not far from the Mulfra Quoit, is a fine specimen. Unfortunately the great capstone, which was 18 ft. long and under which a man on horseback could ride, slipped from its supports in 1815. Lieutenant Goldsmith presently dislodged the Logan stone at Treryn, a mass of granite weighing sixty-five tons; and being obliged to replace it, the tackle he used was further utilised to replace the Lanyon capstone. To make this easier, however, the three uprights were cut down, and the cromlech now to be seen is by no means so imposing as in its prehistoric state. This seafaring folk, who left their tiny mark on the surface of the earth and then faded into obscurity, builded better than we with all our modern appliances!