Talland Cherubs

The low and roomy building, in places green with damp, is paved with mutilated ledger-stones, whose fragments have long ago suffered what seems to be an abiding divorce, so that disjointed invocations, and sacred names, and gruesome injunctions to “Prepare for Death,” start into being as you pace the floor. Here, too, more than in any other place, do people seem moved to verse in commemorating their departed friends, not infrequently casting their elegies in the first person, so that the dead of Talland appear to a casual observer to be the most conceited and egotistical of corpses. Of this type, the following epitaph is perhaps the most striking:—

“Erected
to the memory of
Robert Mark;
late of Polperro, who Unfortunately
was shot at Sea the 24th day of Jany
in the Year of our Lord God
1802, in the 40th Year of His AGE.

In prime of Life most suddenly,
Sad tidings to relate;
Here view My utter destiny,
And pity My sad state:
I by a shot, which Rapid flew,
Was instantly struck dead;
Lord pardon the Offender who,
My precious blood did shed.
Grant Him to rest and forgive Me,
All I have done amiss;
And that I may Rewarded be,
With Euerlasting Bliss.”

Now, this Robert Mark was a smuggler. He was at the helm of a boat which had been obliged to run before a revenue cutter, and the boat was at the point of escaping when the cutters crew opened fire, killing him on the spot.

But the most curious of all the epitaphs within the church of Talland is that engraved on the monument to “John Bevyll of Kyllygath.” The monument is an imposing edifice of slate, in the south aisle, with a figure of John Bevyll, habited in a curious Elizabethan costume, carved in somewhat high relief on top. The verses are the more curious, in that they employ archaic heraldic terms, now little known. They set out by describing the Bevyll arms, “A Rubye Bull in Perle Filde”—that is to say, in modern heraldry, a Bull gules in a field argent:—

“A Rubye Bull in Perle Filde;
doth shewe by strength & hew
A youth full wight yet chast & cleane
to wedded feere moste trew.
From diamonde Beare in Perle plot
aleevinge he achived
By stronge and stedfast constancy
in chastnes still conciued.
To make all vp a mach he made
with natiue Millets plaste
In natiue seate, so nature hath
the former vertues graste
His Prince he serud in good regard
twyce Shereeve and so iust
That iustlye still on Justice seate
Three princes him did trust.
Suche was his lyfe and suche his death,
whos corps full low doth lye.
Whilste Soule by Christe to happy state
with hym doth rest on hye.
Learne by his life suche life to leade,
his death let platform bee.
In life to shun the caufe of death,
that Christe maye leeve in thee.”

“John Bevyll lyued yeares threscore three & then did yealde to dye
He dyd bequeath his soule to God, his corps herein to lye.”

Below are very circumstantial accounts of the marriages and intermarryings of the Bevyll family, and on the old bench ends of the church their arms are displayed with countless quarterings.

The growing dimness in the church warned us of departing day, and so we went out into the churchyard, glancing as we passed at the many mournful inscriptions to sailors and fishermen drowned at sea.