"IBERICUS, who wandered hither bringing strange gifts and treasure. Watch ye, for out of the wish it is created, and out of the myth will come the solid truth. Mystery of Faith and of Matter! Out of a thought all things were created, and out of a thought will old-time things renew their being.
"ONE OF THE CONTROLLERS
OF THINGS THAT ARE.
A THOUGHT IN BEING."
Next followed more vague pencillings, and several lines of quite undecipherable script, the only two words legible being Constantinus and Justinian. The writing clears up towards the end of the page, and proceeds thus:
"... who followed the Phoenician keels to far-off Isles of the Sea whose treasure was great; whom Phaedrus took in his ship to seek for safety and merchandise in one. Phaedrus gained much tin, and left him on these shores, a Prince among them, marrying Yseuguilt their Princess, and they the forebears of a royal line. (Of) the countries of the Iberi and Kymri they sat upon the thrones, and gave the world the Name that lives in all the nations.
"Who am I? One that sojourned with them from Capernaum through the Isles of Greece and past the straits which Pharos lighted to stormy seas and black rocks where the metals be.
"North, the settlement Tintagella; south, the river mouths, and inland to the forest-lands and the marshes where the rising of the sun. There builded he a Temple such as was of old in Judah, and there he reigned. Thus was I, O man! my name Phocis the Mariner."
In tracing on a map of Cornwall the course indicated in the script, east from the coast between Tintagel and Padstow, my finger lighted on a village on the fringe of Bodmin moor, marked "Temple." Neither I nor J.A. were conscious of the existence of this place-name, nor could we recall our attention having been at any time directed to it.
As to the identity of the royal traveller, the script does not yield a definite statement. If the name is there, it is to be feared that it is irrecoverable owing to the hopelessly obscure nature of the writing in the undeciphered portion. He came from Capernaum, and he came—or was it Phædrus?—seeking for safety and merchandise in one. Can we identify his Princess? Yseuguilt, or Yseult, is one perhaps of many, but it may be that some record is yet extant of a Cornish Yseult who married an Eastern prince or merchant. And what have the antiquaries to say of Temple? Whence did this little place derive its interesting name? Was it merely from a house of the fraternity of the Templars, or from some far older and now half-mythical tradition, lost in the mists of antiquity?
In a script dated 24 April, 1918, the following passage occurs:
"The flow of spiritual forces is westward, following and impelling the forces of material things. By a law of revolution reinforced from all points in the spiritual universe, this movement is universal. This being so, the material things first appear, working on a motive very often in itself most mundane and from your point of view most unspiritual. Thus they whose habitation was in Crete, revisiting the memories and traditions of others of the same race and civilisation which long before had been impelled westward beyond the great continents of America to the shores of Asia, and thence onwards through the desolate tracts of Asia to the great Mediterranean basin, still continued the interminable route ever westward beyond the gates of Hercules to the islands where the fire-drawn metals be: so, as mundane influences impelled them, great immigration was induced by the want of metals for the embellishment of temples, the hardening of bronze for warlike purposes and, in short, for the many needs of man's development in civilisation and knowledge. But soon the spiritual forces which developed and sustained this immigration had deeper objects in view. They followed and transformed it by removing mundane influences, and a great spiritual development arose in the places in which their instruments had prepared the soil, Phocis of the race of Crete trading with Poseidon and seeking Tyrian purple, was thus brought in contact with them who worshipped the One God in contradistinction to the many.... This paved the way for the building of a Temple in his settlement of Tintagella.... Thus first arose that measurement and design which were afterwards as accurately reproduced by that further advance which culminated in the temple of Glastonbury....
"And Tintagella was the ancient place of the shrine of the High God. So the Temple, a reproduction, accurate in every measurement was reproduced at Glaston on this foundation....
"Phocis was Phocis—a centre and nucleus, a focus rightly named but in himself but a merchant prince of Poseidon and Eubeia."[38]
THE STORY OF EAWULF
Note.—During excavation alongside the south aisle footing of the nave, in continuation of the work on the south-west tower footings, an interment of a curious nature was encountered. The skeleton lay in the clay just outside the wall, and the head was protected by a "dropstone" having a cylindrical hollow, open at the neck, in which lay the skull. Between the legs of the skeleton was a second skull, but broken. At the foot was a flat stone laid across, and against it on the further side a number of leg-bones, etc. The following was written shortly after the discovery: