CHAPTER XVI
THE SHORE OF DEATH

In relation to the Maid of Sker, the most important places in the immediate vicinity of Barnstaple are undoubtedly Heanton Court, Braunton, and Saunton. Heanton Court, as we have seen, is only a memory. In the early part of the seventeenth century it was described as a “sweet, pleasant seat”; and the account proceeded, “the house is a handsome pile, well-furnished with every variety of entertainment which the earth, the sea, and the air can afford. A place, whether you respect pleasure or profit, daintily situated on an arm of the sea.” A later notice speaks of it as standing at the bottom of a park, very near the river Taw, and acquaints us that it had a new front of two storeys, each of which contained eleven windows, and was ornamented with battlements, while at either end was a tower. Other particulars have been given in a previous chapter ([see p. 211]), and need not be recapitulated here. The reader, however, may be assured of the identity of Blackmore’s Narnton Court with this historic mansion.

Braunton is a village not easily forgotten. The scenery is magnificent, and the great hills

furnish admirable opportunity for climbing. On alighting at the railway station, the stranger will encounter an array of coachmen anxious to whisk him off without delay to Saunton Sands, but he will do well to resist their importunities until, at least, he has inspected the interior of Braunton Church. If he converses with the natives, somebody will be sure to tell him that three successive attempts were made to erect it on Chapel Hill, and that each time the building collapsed, the assumed reason being that the spot chosen by man was not the site approved and predestined by Heaven. He will learn also that in the panel work of the roof of the church, carved on one of the bosses, is the representation of a sow with a litter of pigs. This singular emblem is associated with St Brannock, the Irish missionary; indeed, the very name of the place is said to have been originally Brannock’s town, and it is averred that he founded a church on the site of the present one. As for the sow and her offspring, the legend is that St Brannock was commanded in a dream to rear a Christian temple on the spot where he should light on this vision of fecundity; and it is added that he fetched the timber on a plough, to which he yoked the red deer of the adjacent forests, “who mildly obeyed him,” while he milked the complaisant hinds. The old writer concludes summarily: “But to proceed no farther and to forbear to speak of his cow (which, being killed, chopped in pieces, and boiling in his kettle, came out whole and sound at his call), his staff, his oak, and his man Abel, which would seem wonders—yet all these you may see lively represented unto you in a fair glass window as this present, if you desire it.”

Mr Z. E. A. Wade characterises this venerable tradition rather fiercely as a “senseless story,” and proposes a symbolic interpretation which is certainly ingenious, and in the main not unlikely to be correct.

“Popular story says he tried in vain to build on a certain spot, but was bidden in a dream to rear his proposed church where he should encounter a litter of pigs. He was to rebuild the work of earlier saints, the pige or pigen, female teachers, who had before his day fulfilled the promise of the Psalmist, ‘The women that publish the tidings are a great host.’ Pige is the Danish word for a maid; piga is the Anglo-Saxon form, hence the diminutive of Margaret. So Peg-cross is not unknown....

“The cow or ox of sacrifice—also on an ancient church of Youghal—which finds place in his story, is suggested by the name of the place whence he came, Cowbridge, and by the covering of the boat in which he and his fellow-travellers came. His staff and oak explain themselves.... The ‘man Abel’ in the story carries sticks; ‘Isaac carrying wood represents Christ bearing the Cross,’ said Bede in A.D. 677, a few years after Brannock’s time. ‘Under wood, under rood.’ This saint’s man was ‘the man Christ Jesus.’ The hart was one of the earliest types of the Christian, to be met with over and over again in the Catacombs, and on baptisteries, and the image of the 42nd Psalm is still used in sacred song. It is said of monks in St David’s school ‘that they were required to yoke themselves to the plough and turn up the soil without the aid of oxen.’ The harts at Braunton, like those on the sketch from St Andrew’s, were converts.”

At Braunton dwelt the fair Polly, after her days of service, and before she wedded old David (Maid of Sker, chapter lxiii.).