In compliment to me.’ ”
Old writers give the name of “Caraclowse in clowse” to St. Michael’s Mount, which means the Hoar Rock in the Wood; and that it was at one time surrounded by trees is almost certain, as at very low tides in Mount’s Bay a “submarine forest,” with roots of large trees, may still be clearly seen. At these seasons branches of trees, with leaves, nuts, and beetles, have been picked up.
Old folks often compared an old-fashioned child to St. Michael’s Mount, and quaintly said, “she’s a regular little Mount, St. Michael’s Mount will never be washed away while she’s alive.”
Folk-lore speaks of a time when Scilly was joined to the mainland, which does not seem very improbable when we remember that within the last twenty-five years a high road and a field have been washed away by the sea between Newlyn and Penzance. An old lady, whose memory went back to the beginning of the present century, told me that she had often seen boys playing at cricket in some fields seaward of Newlyn, of which no vestige in my time remained.
But the Lyonnesse, as this tract of land (containing 140 parish churches) between the Land’s End and Scilly was called, and where, according to the Poet Laureate, King Arthur met his death-wound,
“So all day long the noise of battle roll’d
Among the mountains by the winter sea,
Until King Arthur’s Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur ….”