The men of a fishing-village were nicknamed “Congers,” “because they threw a conger overboard to drown it.”
“Who whipped the hake?” was applied to the inhabitants of another town, because hake, it is said, being excessively plenty, the fishermen flogged one of those fish, and flung it back into the sea; upon which all the hakes left that coast, and kept away for years.[65]
“Who drowned the man in a dry ditch?” belongs especially to another place.
Certain Cornishmen built a wall around the cuckoo, to prevent that bird from leaving the county, and thus to insure an early spring. When built, the bird flew out, crying “Cuckoo! cuckoo!” “If we had put one course more on the wall we should a’ kept’n in,” said they.
Camborne is so called from Camburne, a crooked well-pit of water. This crooked well was at one time far famed for the cure of many diseases.
The persons who washed in this well were called Merrasicke. I know not the meaning of the word. According to an old Cornish custom of fixing nicknames on people, the inhabitants of Camborne are called Mearageeks, signifying perverse, or obstinate.—(Lanyon.)
The Church was anciently called Mariadoci. I therefore suspect that the above terms have some connexion with this name. By an easy corruption, and the addition of geeks, or gawks, (meaning awkward,) either word can be produced.
Of the Gorran men it is asked, “Who tried to throw the moon over the cliffs?”
THE MUTTON FEAST.
An old tradition—the particulars of which I have failed to recover—says that a flock of sheep were blown from the Gwithian Sands over into St Ives Bay, and that the St Ives fishermen caught them,—believing them to be a new variety of fish,—either in their nets, or with hook and line, and brought them ashore as their night’s catch.