The hag avowed her innocence. “Then the Saints aid us all,” replied the girl, and with that she planted a kiss upon the old woman’s shrivelled cheek.
Now a witch cannot shed tears—that is one of the ways you may always tell one—but a kiss given freely and with good will, can break the bonds of magic that bind a witch; and no sooner had the young bride of Hellenclose kissed the aged woman than tears began to well from her eyes. These fell to the ground and caused first a tiny trickle then a regular stream which flowed on through the sand towards the sea at Holywell Bay.
And as the stream grew in size, so the invasion of the sands ceased for sand cannot cross running water, and the Fourth Hall was saved.
To-day you will find Ellenglaze separated from the barren sands about a hundred yards away, by a little brook. So long as that flows, the hamlet is safe, but should it ever dry up, they say there would have to be a fifth hall, and the waste would sweep on until perhaps it reached St. Cubert’s Church on the hill inland.
The lonely and fascinating Perran Sands are easily reached from either Newquay or Perranporth. The coast on the Newquay side is particularly fine, for a succession of steep rocky headlands here thrust themselves into the Atlantic rollers, and between them are quiet little sand-fringed bays where one may idle away a summer afternoon with only the sea birds for company.
Newquay itself, with its many fine hotels and its bathing beaches, is one of the most attractive of all the north Cornish coast towns, from which the most impressive of that coast scenery may easily be visited.
Ellenglaze.
