[Local Place Names and Superstitions.]
CHAPTER IX.
It has been said that the history of England is written in the names of her fields and enclosures. Certain it is that in almost every parish, if the names of the fields be gone over, some name of exceeding interest or curiousness will be discovered, embalming some long-forgotten fact or tradition. There are in the parish of Breage two fields called "The Sentry"; this name is of course obviously a corruption of the word "sanctuary." These two sanctuary fields are at opposite ends of the parish; one forms the site of the main shaft of Wheal Vor Mine, and the other is in the Kenneggie district. Their situation thus lends force to a suggestion that they may in remote times have been actually used as local sanctuaries.[61] The probability of this seems to be increased by the fact that a field contiguous to the Kenneggie sanctuary field, is called the Church Close. Possibly in ancient days in the Church Close there stood a sanctuary chapel, whose story has long since faded into the mists of oblivion. Originally every church and churchyard was a sanctuary for criminals. The sanctuary seats at Hexham Abbey and Beverley Minster and the sanctuary knocker in Durham Cathedral are still in existence. A person who had committed murder or other heinous crime was safe if he could reach a sanctuary before he was waylaid and arrested; once within the sanctuary, if in forty days he confessed his crime and took a solemn oath before the coroner to depart from the country and never return again, he was allowed to go unmolested into exile. Possibly our two local sanctuaries may have been thus used in Celtic times. Had they continued to be used as such in later times, it is probable that some record of this use would have survived.
Two fields in the parish possess the gruesome name of "Park Blood." Certain local antiquaries have drawn the conclusion that the numerous fields of Blood dotted over West Cornwall commemorate the sites of desperate tribal struggles. It seems much more probable and reasonable, however, that "Park Blood"[62] is merely the corruption of the ancient Cornish for "Field of Flowers." This derivation, it is fair to add, seems in keeping with a number of other local names of fields, as "Eye Bright Field," "Bramble Field," "Furzy Croft Field," etc.
Another field of somewhat gruesome name is "Venton Ghost." Mr. Jenner suggests that this name may be a corruption of "Well of Blood," a title which may well have been due to the red waters of a chalybeate spring.
From a field whose name naturally suggests at a first sight ghosts and hauntings, we pass naturally to a field which bears the portentous name of "Wizard's Plot"; alas! all memory of the wizard who once probably dwelt on this spot, and practised his spells and necromancy there, has long since faded into oblivion.
It would be interesting to know how a field on Methleigh Farm obtained the name of "The Martyr's Close." As to who these martyrs were tradition can give no light. It is possible that the name may commemorate one of the many acts of ferocity committed in the name of religion in the days of the "Saints," when slight religious differences were ample justification for any form of homicide, or it may have had, as seems more probable to the writer, some connection with the story of the unfortunate men whose skeletons, bearing upon them the unmistakable traces of violent death, were discovered lying in a shallow grave beneath the site of the pulpit in Breage Church. If this latter theory be accepted it seems probable that the field earned its present name through some act of military reprisal during the Parliamentary Wars.
In the Germoe district there is a field called "Bargest Croft." At first sight "Bargest" suggests a corruption of "Bargheist,"[63] the Teutonic and Scandinavian animal spectre, whose apparitions play such a large part in the folklore of the North of England. The resemblance in the words, however, is only superficial, "Bargest" evidently being a corruption of "Bargas," a kite, which is a more or less common form in compound local place names.
Turning from place names which have been culled in the main from the tithe map to the parish tithe itself. Probably our tithe with other Cornish tithe came first to be paid in Celtic times, not through any force of law, but gradually by custom, each owner of land making what was deemed a fitting payment for the maintenance of the bishop and clergy of the diocese and possibly to some extent for the relief of the poor. As in so many other instances long custom came gradually to obtain the force of legal enactment and the payment of tithe to become legally binding. When Churches were built at Breage and Germoe, our local tithe instead of going to the support of the clergy of the diocese generally, would pass to the special use of the clergy of Breage and Germoe; the right of appointing such clergy passing also by custom, it seems more than probable, to the builders of the Churches and their heirs.
When we deal with the fast fading superstitions of the district, it is interesting to note the extreme frequency in local folklore of superstitions exactly parallel to the Northern superstition of the Bargheist. At no very distant time, judging from the accounts of the aged, the majority of the lanes, roads and lonely places of the district were inhabited by spectral animals. The Board School master, however, has been allowing them no close time, and they soon will be as extinct as the mammoth, the cave bear, or the woolly haired rhinoceros. It is considered unlucky locally to behold these spectral animals, just as in the Northern superstitions the appearance of the Bargheist denotes disaster to the beholder. A flock of phantom sheep on the main road have not yet been quite exterminated, and their pitter-patter on wild, stormy nights may still be heard by the belated wayfarer, whilst a little further on, closely contiguous to the main road, it is said a phantom "passun" may still be seen; also certain houses have been pointed out to the writer as having been terribly troubled with "sperruts."