MULLION COVE.
From Mullion village we may either return to the Helston road at once, or drop down into Poldhu Cove, close under the Marconi towers. Hence we must climb on a good surface the very steep hill to Cury; for Gunwalloe is a place to avoid, although much treasure, they say, lies hidden under the sands there, buried by long dead buccaneers. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the road is liable to be buried under the sands too.
The fine, wide road to Helston passes through dull country, but the little town itself, with its steep hill and many trees, must wear a brave air on every eighth of May, when the townsfolk are “up as soon as any day, O!” and dance off into the fields
“For to fetch the summer home,
The summer and the may, O!”
This Furry Day has been corrupted into Flora Day; but Gilbert derives it very plausibly from foray, and declares that it celebrates a defeat of the Saxons, who attempted a raid on this coast. The original ceremonial included a foray on the neighbours’ houses.
From Kenneggy Downs we may turn aside on a very bad lane to see the curving sands of Prah and the grey tower of Pengerswick, the hiding-place, in Henry VIII.’s time, of a certain homicidal Mr. Milliton. Some say he built it, but this seems an improbably risky thing to do. It is more likely that he occupied his enforced leisure in painting the elaborate pictures and moral verses that are now defaced. Few travellers will turn away from the fine high-road across Kenneggy Downs to attempt the deciphering of Mr. Milliton’s reflections; but it will not delay us to remember that John Wesley, exasperated by the “huge approbation and absolute unconcern” of the people in these parts, preached a sermon on the Downs, with a rare touch of humour, on the resurrection of the dry bones. In a few minutes we run into Marazion, and from the top of the hill first see, through a gap in the hedge, “the great vision of the guarded Mount.”
In starting forth upon a tour in Cornwall there are two things, I think, that one especially sets out to see; and in looking back it is the same two things that one especially remembers to have seen. One is Tintagel; but the spell of Tintagel is largely a matter of the imagination. The other is St. Michael’s Mount; and here, though the imagination has much to feed upon in calmer moments, it is chiefly as a delight to the eye that it appeals to one in those first moments that are so far from calm. Little we care for Edward the Confessor and his monastery, or for any tale of battle and conspiracy, or for any legend of archangels, while the Mount shows as a blur of blue upon the pale, hot sky and in the mirror of the wet sands, and Penzance is veiled in a cloud of gold-dust save for the tall church-tower that rises from the mist, and the hills beyond the bay melt one into the other, and the rocks lie in a long red line across the foreground with a streak of piercing green at their feet. Yet it is hard to choose a moment and a point of view, and say, “This is the best.” At high tide or at low, in sunshine or at dusk, from near or far, from Marazion or from Newlyn, or framed between the red stems of the pines upon the hill, the Mount is always stately, mysterious, strong—always the Mount of the Archangel.
