And it came to pass as the old man said, and whenever vessels are wrecked on that fateful bar of sand lying across the mouth of Padstow Harbour and men are drowned, it is told that the Mermaid’s distressful cry is still heard bewailing the poor dead sailors.
[1] China.
The Little Cake-bird
Tregoss Moor.
On the Tregoss Moors, where in the long-ago King Arthur and his Noble Knights went a-hunting, was a quaint old thatched cottage built of moorstone, and in it lived an old woman called Tamsin Tredinnick and her little grand-daughter Phillida; it stood between Castle-an-Dinas—a great camp-crowned hill—and the far-famed Roche Rocks.
It possessed only one room, which, fortunately, was fairly large, for it had to contain most of old Tamsin’s possessions, including a low wooden bedstead, an old oak dresser, a hutch for the grail—a coarse flour of which she made bread for herself and little Phillida—and her spinning-wheel.