THE SUN NEVER SHINES ON THE PERJURED.
There appears to exist a very old superstition, to the effect that when a man has deeply perjured himself,—especially if by his perjury he has sacrificed the life of a friend,—he not merely loses the enjoyment of the sunshine, but he actually loses all consciousness of its light or its warmth. Howsoever bright the sun may shine, the weather appears to him gloomy, dark, and cold.
I have recently been told of a man living in the western part of Cornwall, who is said to have sworn away the life of an innocent person. “The face of this false witness is the colour of one long in the tomb; and he has never, since the death of the victim of his forswearing, seen the sun.” It must be remembered the perjured man is not blind. All things around him are seen as by other men, but the sense of vision is so dulled that the world is for ever to him in a dark, vapoury cloud.
CHARACTERISTICS.
An esteemed and learned correspondent, himself a Cornishman, writing to me on the Cornish character, says:—
“There are some adages in which beadledom receives various hard knocks—that abstraction mostly taking the shape of some unlucky mayor; and I have heard in Cornwall, but never elsewhere, that the greatest fool in the place for the time being is always made the mayor.
“There is an adage of the Mayor of Calenich, (and yet I doubt if ever that hamlet had such an officer.) Calenich is one mile from Truro, and the mayor’s hackney was pastured two miles from home; so, as his worship would by no means compromise his dignity by walking to Truro, he invariably walked to his horse to ride there, so that it was said of any one who would keep up appearances at great trouble, that he was ‘like the Mayor of Calenich, who walked two miles to ride one.’
“The class who never know on which side their bread is buttered, are said to be ‘like the Mayor of Market-Jew, sitting in their own light;’ and the stupid man whose moods, whether of sadness or merriment, are inopportune, is, as may be, said to be ‘like the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when the town-jail was enlarged.’
“Many persons are chronicled in the same manner.
“‘Like Nicholas Kemp, he’s got occasion for all.’ Nicholas was said to be a voter in a Cornish borough, who was told to help himself (so that no one should have given him a bribe,) from a table covered with gold, in the election committee-room. Taking off his hat, he swept the whole mass into it, saying, ‘I’ve occasion for all.’