Then, if you have faith, you may see in every dark-featured Devonian a descendant from a captured or shipwrecked Don. There are the names of Miggs and Jenny (among others), which may, or again may not, derive from Miguel and Jeronimo, and Cantrell has been recognised as a debased form of Alcantara, but ’tis a far cry. Here, at any rate, we know the name and rating of the Spanish vessel. She was the hospital-ship St. Peter the Great, and was on her way home, after having, in flight from Drake and his fellows, circumnavigated Great Britain. One hundred and fifty of the one hundred and ninety aboard of her were saved; and possibly the Delmers, the Jaggers, and the Murrens to be met with are descendants of that crew.
Hope is just bidding “good day t’ye” to the old immemorial times, when it was just a hamlet of crabbers and lobster-catchers and the like, for villas and bungalows are putting the old cottages of cob and rock to shame, and they are becoming, although still a small community, as up-to-date as you please, or you don’t please. No longer, I think, is the once-famous “White Ale” of South Devon made or sold at Hope, or even at Kingsbridge; once, in some sort, the metropolis of its brewing. But we need not regret the disappearance of this heady nastiness, which was not in the least like ale, and more nearly resembled that extremely potent and convivial compound, “egg-flip,” than anything else. But “White Ale” had a great and an ancient reputation, and was described a couple of centuries ago as “the nappiest ale that can be drunk.” It was held to be the “ancient and peculiar drink of the Britons and Englishmen, and the wholesomest, whereby many in elder times lived a hundred years.”
If we can frame to believe that, then the disappearance of it is something like a national disaster; but it may well be supposed that although the numbers of police-court cases would sensibly increase with the re-introduction of “White Ale,” those of centenarians would not. The composition of this tipple, which is really grey, seems to be milk, gin, and spice, and, bottled, it blows off in hot weather like a high-pressure boiler.
CHAPTER XXIV
THURLESTONE—THE AVON—BOROUGH ISLAND—RINGMORE—KINGSTON—THE ERME
THE THURLESTONE.
The little headland enclosing the western side of Hope Cove forms the eastern horn of Thurlestone Bay, and as you rise the neck of land dividing the two, you see the strange rock with the hole through it—the Thurlestone—which gives a name, not only to the sandy bay, but to the village of Thurlestone, which stands with its ancient church on the bare hillsides beyond. The Thurlestone, is a mass of red conglomerate, oddly isolated amid the neighbouring slate, standing in deep water, surrounded by a group of small satellite rocks and reefs, and derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon, “thyrlian,” to pierce. It is thus “the drilled,” or pierced stone, and claims philological kin with “nostril,” or nose-hole, and “thrall,” a slave whose ear has been pierced. That standby of topographers, the Domesday Book, calls the village “Torlestan,” which is as near as the Norman-French scribe could arrive at the sound of the Saxon word. My own respect for the Thurlestone is considerably heightened by this evidence of its having worn, a thousand years ago, very much the same appearance it does now. Curiously enough, there is a Thirlestane Castle in Scotland.
When the south-westerly winds bring great seas raging into the bay, with towering white combers dashing in upon the sands, the Thurlestone finds a voice and calls with a sound of roaring, all over this countryside. The rustics say that at such times you shall hear the bellowing of the Thurlestone ten miles distant.