The Land's End, strange low headland, has seen plenty of stirring days, from the time when the Danish long-ships came creeping round to harry Cornwall and Devon, to that later date when the great storm and the descendants—probably—of those very Danes sent the great Armada fleeing up the narrow seas. Turner came here for the colour and the wild blue seas, and Tennyson to wonder whether his Arthur had ever been so far south. The rock is of split and tumbled granite, one of the few instances in the duchy where that stone comes into contact with the sea; and if Penwith, as all that part is called, really means the "wooded headland," that barren rock and rough water must once have been far enough apart. A little south of the Land's End is the finer rock of Pordenack, and all round this southern point the bays and coves are charming, the cliffs fine and the caverns and rocks numerous and fantastic. Tol-Pedn (the holed headland—so called from a huge blow-hole) has its Witches' (or Maggy Figgy's) Chair and shelters the pretty hamlet of Porthgwarra, the inhabitants of which are darker than the majority of Cornishmen. Tradition is in favour of a wrecked Spanish galleon. Not, we suppose, the spectre ship of Porthcurnow, a neighbouring cove. There a black square-rigged vessel sails up the beach and up the combe, making no difference between land and water, and presently vanishes like mist—and that in the valley the Eastern Telegraph Company has made its own! The hamlet is interesting on account of its name. That distinguished scholar, Canon Isaac Taylor, says: "Cornwall, or Cornwales, is the kingdom of the Welsh of the Horn," but others think the name is from the Kernyw, the tribe who lived in these parts, they being called the Kernyw Gaels, to distinguish them from the Gaels of Wales and those of Brittany. Be it as it may, in Porthcurnow we have an interesting survival of the old tribal name.
The church of St. Levan is on the hillside in a deep valley and beyond its admirable carving, its screen with a geometrical pattern of leaves, its font of a stone not found in the neighbourhood, and its unusual holy water stoup—at the north and east entrances to the church are the old lych stones used as resting-places for funerals! There is also a cleft boulder of granite about which it was prophesied that when a pack-horse should ride through "St. Levan's stone" the world would come to an end, and the fact that such handy material for building has been left unused shows that for some reason it must have been held in veneration.
Mousehole and Dolly Pentreath
Mousehole is said to have been the last place at which Cornish was spoken, and this has resulted in the legend of Dolly Pentreath. She was a fishwife who, in course of time, came on the parish; and it was believed, not only that she lived to a great age, but that she was the last person to speak the ancient language. Against this, the facts must be set forth. Dorothy Pentreath is given in the parish register as born 1714 and died 1777; while Wm. Matthews, who also spoke Cornish—speaking it with his cronies—and lived at Newlyn, did not die till 1800. In spite of this, however, two credulous persons—Prince Lucien Buonaparte and the Vicar of Paul—raised a stone to her memory in 1860, and referred in particular to the old age which was not hers and the language which she certainly spoke, but was not the last to speak.
"Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died 1778, said to have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish.
"Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land."
But if Mousehole has no right to its legend, its own age cannot be called into question. In 1347 it was recognised as a Cornish port, while in the time of Henry VII. a lay subsidy roll shows its inhabitants to have been nearly equal in number to those of Penzance.
Moreover, it has had its vicissitudes. An ancient prophecy had declared:
"They shall land on the rock of Merlin
Who shall burn Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn."
and, as a matter of fact, one July morning in 1595 four Spanish galleys carrying two hundred men crept up under cover of a fog and, landing them on a rock that bore the name of Merlin, proceeded to verify the prediction. The Spaniards must have been surprised at the lack of opposition with which they met, for though Sir Francis Godolphin—called "the great housekeeper" from his hospitality—did his utmost to rouse the people, the fact that the ancient prophecy was being fulfilled before their eyes had a paralysing effect. So much so that the towns mentioned in the prediction were duly and effectually burnt before a sufficient posse could be raised to drive the Spaniards back to their galleys. Yet we have it on Bacon's authority that the Cornish were no cowards: "These Cornish are a race of men stout of stomach, mighty of body and limb, and that live hardily in a barren country; and many of them of a need could live underground, which were tinners." Nevertheless the Spaniards did their work so thoroughly that the Keigwin Arms, at that date a manor-house, was the only building left standing. This house is interesting as a specimen of Tudor architecture, the walls being several feet thick, while the timbers were said to have been grown in the forest, now submerged, that gave St. Michael's Mount its old name of "the hoar rock in the wood." This tradition suggests a greater antiquity for the house than that of Elizabeth's reign, or that it was built on the site of some older building.