The Eastern bride of the lord of Pengersick was kind and gentle to all with whom she had to do, and the lord himself, it was said, was generous and helpful to all around; but he made no friendships nor held intercourse with those of his own degree. The returned lord was, in fact, a lonely and solitary man, riding forth alone and spending long hours poring over strange books. His chamber, it is said, was full of strange instruments, liquids and retorts, and as he laboured with these in solitude the castle would be filled with strange odours, which suggested the bottomless pit. At times as the night wind howled round the turrets of the castle his voice might be heard in the intervals of the blast summoning spirits from the unseen world, and as they came in clouds obedient to his bidding their voices were heard above the beating of the waves on the rocks beneath and the howling of the blast in the turrets. He was regarded by the people as a white witch, whilst the witch of Fraddam was a black witch and his antithesis. His spells were more powerful than hers, and he at last drove her to sea in a coffin from Germoe Churchyard, in which, as in a canoe, she could be seen on stormy nights riding over the waves round Pengersick Head, her wild, shrill shrieks of unholy laughter being carried on the storm-wind.
The beautiful lady of Pengersick rarely ventured from the castle; and in summer time, it was said, she would sit for hours with her casement open to the sea, like a true Eastern lady, singing to the accompaniment of her harp the softest, sweetest songs. At times fits of unutterable gloom would settle down on the soul of her lord, and as David with his harp lifted the darkness from the soul of Saul, so this fair lady would soothe to rest the weary spirit of her lord. Years drifted on, bringing but little change, till one day there came a swarthy stranger of gloomy and forbidding mien to Marazion, where he took up his abode. The fishermen would see him sometimes as the night closed in sitting on the rocks overhanging the sea round Pengersick; or cottars would see him in the twilight wandering over the uplands. The lord of Pengersick went no more forth abroad, and a nameless dread seemed to have settled down on him and his lady. At last in the blackness of one awful night, in the midst of a terrible tempest that had risen up out of the Atlantic, a blaze of light shot up from the turrets of Pengersick Castle; and in the morning a blackened heap of ruins alone marked the spot where it had stood, and the lord of Pengersick and his lady, and their Eastern servants and his beautiful steed, and the mysterious stranger of dark and awful mien were never heard of more.
Of course, it is difficult to collect the sediment of truth at the bottom of the foregoing legend. Perhaps we may conclude that some lord of Pengersick, whose old age was not accompanied by the proverbial wisdom of that state, as not infrequently happens, had fallen under the spell of a mercenary Delilah, and that in his infatuation he had allowed his son to be kidnapped by a gang of sea ruffians and carried abroad like Joseph of old, to be added to the hordes of Christian slaves that in those days dragged out a dismal existence at Tunis or Algiers. The spiriting away of the heir would thus leave the field open for the cherished plans and hopes of Delilah. History has a knack of repeating itself, and more slaves have risen to power and influence in the land of their bondage than the patriarch Joseph. Possibly the conscience of the heir of Pengersick was more elastic than that of many of his fellows, and he found it possible to recite the "fateheh" of Islam with reverence and empressement. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were many Christian renegades holding high positions in the service of the Mohammedan Powers of the Mediterranean—some of them Englishmen. Perhaps this may have been the career of the heir of Pengersick, ending in a return to his native land with riches, a bride of the daughters of Islam, and an Arab steed. We may well ascribe the skin disease of his wicked stepmother to leprosy—then very common—rather than to the fumes of the witch's caldron. Adopting this rationalised interpretation of the legend, it is but natural to conclude that one who could thus readily exchange the creed for the "fateheh" had no deep inward convictions, and men without deep convictions are ever prone to embark upon the sea of speculation, and pursue such philosophic phantoms as the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone; hence perhaps the strange instruments and the odours of the bottomless pit with which his name in tradition is associated.
Mr. Botterell, in his "Traditions and Hearth Stories of the West of Cornwall,"[55] gives a more copious account of this legend of Pengersick than the one here followed. He states that he heard the legend from the lips of an elderly man at Gwinear, who had often heard it related in the days of his youth. The main features of this story are, however, the same; we have the additional statement in Mr. Botterell's legend that the old lord of Pengersick had himself in his youth been a soldier of fortune, and that the wander lust from time immemorial had been effervescent in the blood of the race. The legend runs that the old lord in the beginning of his days, as there were no wars at home, had betaken himself in search of loot and glory "to outlandish countries far away in the East, to a land inhabited by a people little better than savages, who instead of tilling the ground or digging for tin, passed the time in roving from place to place as they had need of fresh pasturage for their cattle, and that they lived in tents covered with the skins of their flocks, and that their raiment was made of the same material, and yet they had rich stores of jewels and gold, which they had obtained by the plunder of their more settled and industrious neighbours."
It is said, most probably with truth, that St. Germoe's Chair was erected by some member of the Pengersick family, possibly as a peace-offering to Mother Church after some more than usually wild and lawless deed. The recess in the south chancel wall of Germoe Church, with its canopy of carved stone now meant to be used as sedilia, most probably was the tomb of some member of this restless race. This brief account of the Pengersick family may be closed with the prosaic statement that one of them represented Helston in Parliament in 1397 and again in 1406.
The manor of Pengersick in the reign of Henry VIII. passed by purchase to the family of Militon. The Militons descended from a daughter of the Pengersicks[56] it is interesting to note. According to Leland, Job Militon, the purchaser, came from Devonshire. On his arrival at Pengersick he set about building the present crumbling grey tower, which though sadly shorn of its former splendours dominates the valley. Hals, whose veracity is much open to doubt, states that Militon had fled to this remote corner of the world to hide his head and avoid avenging justice, having imbrued his hands in the blood of a fellow-man. Whether this deed was done by accident or with intent Hals does not say. It is more than probable that it was never done at all. The reason for the fortifying of the house of the Militons is not far to seek: it stands close to the sea, and the sea in those days was the open highway of all lawless spirits. Often from the summit of the grey Keep of Pengersick, in the years that followed its erection, might have been seen the sails of Barbary corsairs on the bosom of the sea. The crew of the merchantmen and the lonely fisherman in his little boat were alike eagerly snapped up by these marauders to swell the growing population of slaves in Tripoli and Algiers. Under the shadow of night, when the sea was calm and the landing good, these rovers of the sea would steal inshore in open boats and surround some sleeping hamlet or farmhouse. The strong men were carried off to labour as slaves under the hot sun of Africa till death liberated them from their misery, whilst the portion that fell to the fair daughter was the listless ennui of the harem. The sea rovers were not the only danger that would menace the dwellers in Pengersick Castle in those days; the constant wars in which this country was embroiled would bring danger also from privateers, the licensed robbers of the sea. Spanish, French and Dutch men-of-war and privateers, each in turn would appear in the bay as the centuries drifted on. From generation to generation, down to the first fifteen years of this century, Mount's Bay echoed to the hoarse rumble of guns, and the cannon smoke of ships engaged in deadly conflict drifted over its waters; whilst numbers of lawless men, smugglers by repute and pirates[57] when occasion served, dwelt upon its shores. Well might the first Militon ensconce himself within the fortified walls of his Keep of Pengersick, considering the condition of the times in which he lived.
An extract from the State Papers for the year 1526 makes it clear that the ancient spirit of the wild Pengersicks was by no means absent from the souls of the Militons. A Portuguese ship had been wrecked at Gunwalloe and much cargo saved. The cargo was seized by the servants of Job Militon, second of the name at Pengersick, Thomas St. Aubyn and William Godolphin; when the unfortunate owner applied to the justices for redress he was told that such was the custom of the country, and that no redress of any kind was possible. It may be here mentioned that Job Militon was ultimately made Governor of St. Michael's Mount after the ill-starred rebellion of Humphrey Arundell.