When I’m in Germoe I count myself well;
True love’s in Germoe, in Breage I’ve got none,
When I’m in Germoe I count myself at home.”—
Through Rev. S. Rundle.
All Cornishmen at one time were supposed to be “wreckers,” and from the peninsular-shape of their county came the proverb, “’Tis a bad wind that blows no good to Cornwall.” But the dwellers in Breage and Germoe must in olden times, from the following distich, have been held in worse repute than their neighbours:
“God keep us from rocks and shelving sands,
And save us from Breage and Germoe men’s hands.”
The most noted and daring Cornish smuggler of the last century, Coppinger, a Dane, lived on the north coast, and of him a legendary catalogue of dreadful tales is told, all to be found in the Rev. R. S. Hawker’s book, the Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall. He lays the scene of his exploits in the neighbourhood of Hartland Bay, my informant near Newquay. He swam ashore here in the prime of life, in the middle of a frightful storm, from a foreign-rigged vessel that was seen in the offing, and of which nothing more was ever heard or known. Wrapped in a cloak, that tradition says he tore from off the shoulders of an old woman who was on the beach, he jumped up behind a farmer’s daughter, who had ridden down to see the wreck, and was by her taken to her father’s house, where he was fed, clothed, and most hospitably received. He was a fine, handsome, well-built man, and gave himself out to be most highly connected in his own country. He soon won the young woman’s affections, and at her father’s death, which took place not long after, he easily induced her to marry him; but it was far from a happy union. Luckily they had but one child—a deaf and dumb idiot, who had inherited his father’s cruel disposition, and delighted in torturing all living things. It is even said that he cunningly killed one of his young playmates. Coppinger, after his marriage, organized a band of smugglers, and made himself their captain; and quickly through his misdeeds earned the title of cruel Coppinger. One legend relates that he once led a Revenue cutter into a dangerous cove, of which he alone knew the soundings, and that he and his crew came out of it in safety, but the other vessel with all on board perished. Mr. Hawker calls Coppinger’s ship the “Black Prince,” and says he had it built for himself in Denmark, and that men who had made themselves in any way obnoxious to him on land were carried on board her, and compelled by fearful oaths to enrol themselves in her crew.
In 1835 an old man of the age of ninety-seven related to this writer that when a youth he had been so abducted, and after two years’ service he had been ransomed by his friends with a large sum. “And all,” said the old man, very simply, “because I happened to see one man kill another, and they thought I should mention it.” The same author gives him a wonderfully fleet horse, which no one but Coppinger could master, and says that on its back he made more than one hairbreadth escape. He has also a marvellous account of his end, in which he disappears as he came, in a vessel which he boarded in a storm of thunder, lightning, and hail. As soon as he was in her, “she was out of sight in a moment, like a spectre or a ghost.” For this he quotes the following verse:—
“Will you hear of the cruel Coppinger?