Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

by Robert Stephen Hawker

We endeavoured to sound the local mind of our informant as to the history of the place and origin of the grave; but all we could drag out of her, after questions again and again, was “great warriors, supposing, in old times.” Such was the dirge of the mighty dead, and their requiem, at Warbstow Barrow. But the sun had begun to lean, and we were bound for Boscastle, the breviate of Bottreau[128] Castle, and the abode of the earls[129] of that name.

Boscastle Harbour.

Strange, striking, and utterly unique is the first aspect of this village by the sea. The gorge or valley lies between two vast and precipitous hills, that yawn asunder as though they had been cleft by the spells of some giant warlock[130] of the West, like the Eildon Hill by Michael Scott.[131] As you descend the hill from the north you discover on the opposite side clusters of quaint old-fashioned houses, grotesque and gabled, that appear as though they clung together for mutual support on the slope of that perilous cliff. Between the houses, and sheer down the mountain side, descended, or rather fell, a steep and ugly road; which led, however, to the “safety of the vale,” and landed the traveller at last in a deep cut or gash between the hills, where the creek ebbed and flowed, which was called by strangers in their courtesy, and by the inhabitants, with aboriginal pride, “the Harbour”—Cornice “Hawn.” There “went the ships,” so that they did not exceed sixty tons in freight; and thither arrived, at certain intervals, coals and timber in bulk and quantity, which can be ascertained, no doubt, by the return of imports laid before Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We reached in safety our bourn for the night at the bottom of the hill, and discovered the hostelry by the sign which swung above the door. This appeared to us to represent a man’s shoe; but when we had read the legend, we found that it signified the Ship Inn, and was the “actual effigy” of a vessel which belonged to the port. Here we received a smiling welcome from the hostess, a ruddy-visaged widow,—Joan Treworgy was her Keltic name—fubby and interjectional in figure, and manifestly better adapted for her abode at the foot of the hill than at any mansion further up. She was born, as she afterwards related, two doors off: and, except that she had travelled up the hill to Forraburry church to be married there, it appeared that a diameter of five yards would have defined the total circumference of her wandering life.

As soon as we arrived, she called up from some vasty deep underneath her house a grim and shaggy shape, who answered to the name of Tim, but whom we identified as Caliban on the spot, and charged him to take proper care of the Captains’ horses (for by that title all strangers in sound garments and whole hats are saluted in the land of the quarry and the mine), and to be sure that they had plenty of whuts. She then invited us to enter her “parrolar,” a room rather cosy than magnificent; for when our landlady had followed in her two guests, and stood at the door, no one beside could have forced an entrance any more than a cannon-ball could cleave through a feather-bed. We then proceeded to confer about beds for the night, and, not without misgiving, inquired if she could supply a couple of those indispensable places of repose. A demur ensued. All the gentry in the town, she declared, were accustomed to sleep “two in a bed,” and the officers that travelled the country, and stopped at her house, would mostly do the same; but, however, if we commanded two beds for only two people, two we must have; only, although they were both in the same room, we must certainly pay for two, and sixpence a piece was her regular price. We assented, and then went on to entreat that we might dine. She graciously agreed; but to all questions as to our fare her sole response was, “Meat—meat and taties.” “Some call ’em,” she added, in a scornful tone, “‘purtaties,’ but we always say ‘taties’ here.” The specific differences between beef, mutton, veal, etc., seemed to be utterly or artfully ignored, and to every frenzied inquiry her calm inexorable reply was, “Meat—nice wholesome meat and taties.”

In due time we sat down in that happy ignorance as to the nature of our viands which a French cook is said to desire; and although we both made a not unsatisfactory meal, it is a wretched truth that by no effort could we ascertain what it was that was roasted for us that day by widow Treworgy, hostess of the Ship, and which we consumed. Was it a piece of Boscastle baby? as I suggested to my companion in the midst of his enjoyment; and the question caused him to arise and rush out to inquire once again, and insist on knowing the whole truth; but he soon came back baffled, and shouting, “Meat and taties!” There was not a vestige of bone nor any outline that could identify the joint, and the not unsavoury taste was something like tender veal. It was not until years afterwards that light was thrown on our mysterious dinner that day by a passage which I accidentally turned up in an ancient history of Cornwall. Therein I read “that the sillie people of Bouscastle and Boussiney do catch in the summer seas divers young soyles [seals], which, doubtful if they be fish or flesh, conynge housewives will nevertheless roast, and do make thereof very savoury meat.” “Ay, ay,” said my friend and fellow-traveller, when I had transcribed and sent him this extract—“Ay! clear as day—meat and taties; how I wish I had old mother Treworgy now by the throat! I would make her walk up that hill every day for a month, and stop her meat and taties till she was the size of other people.” When the hour arrived that should have been the time of rest, we mounted a cabin-ladder, which our hostess assured us was “the stairs.” We found the two beds which had been allotted to us, but, as it was foretold, in one small, hot, stuffy room. As we entered the narrow door, a solitary casement twinkled on one side of the opposite wall, flanked by a glazed cupboard door, paned to match, on the other. This latter, the false light, my friend opened by mistake—he was near-sighted, and our single dip was dim—to sniff, as he said, the evening air; but he shut it up again in quick disgust, declaring that the whole atmosphere of the village was impregnated with onions and cheese. To bed, but not to rest. Every cubic inch of ozone was exhausted long before midnight, and, as the small hours struck on the kitchen clock below, we found that “Boscastle had murdered sleep, and therefore Oxford could sleep no more.” With the first faint glimmer of day we arose and stole gently out into the dawn. Before us stood the one-arched bridge spanning the river bed. Lower down the creek the mast and rigging of a sloop at anchor was visible, like network traced upon the morning sky. But the lowly level had no attraction for our path: there lay the sluggish mist of night, and it seemed to our distempered fancy like the dull heavy breath of the snorers in that village glen; but above and upwards stretched the tall ascending road, like Jacob’s ladder resting on the earth and reaching to the sky. Surely on the brow of that mountain top there must be breath and room. We turned, therefore, to climb, and for once “vaulting ambition did not o’erleap itself.” Slow and difficult was the way, but cooler and more bracing the air every yard that we achieved.

We stood at last on the brow of the vast gorge, and full five hundred feet above the sea, where church and tower crowned the cliff like a crest. The scene we looked upon was indeed exhilarating, stately, and grand. On the right hand, and to the west, arose and stood the craggy heights of Dundagel, island and main, ennobled by the legends of old historic time. To the left, a boundless reach of granite-sprinkled moor, where barrow, logan rock, and cromlech stood, the mute memorials of Keltic antiquity.[132] Beneath, and afar off, the sea, at that silent hour, like some boundless lake, “its glad waves murmuring all around the soul;” near, and at our feet, the jumbled village, crouching on either side of the steepy road, and clinging to its banks as if the inhabitants sought to secure access for escape when the earthquake should rend or the volcano pour. We prepared to return and descend; but this was by no means an easy feat, from the extreme angle at which the roadway fell. At the first look on the inclined plane it seemed easier to sit down and slide; but on the whole we thought it better to walk, and pause, and creep.

Another and a new feature in the scene now met our gaze. Annexed to every human abode a small hut had been stuck on to the walls for the home of the “gentleman” that, in Cornwall as in Ireland, pays the rent—Keltice, the pig. The hovels of these bristly vassals, like the castles of their lords, were cabined and circumscribed in the extreme. There was just room enough to breathe, but not to snore without impediment of tone. A sudden inspiration awoke in our minds. Surely it would be an act of humanity and kindness to enable these poor suffocating creatures once in their lives to taste the balmy breath of a summer morning. It will be to us, we said and thought, a personal delight to see them emerge from their close and festering abodes and rush out in the free, soft radiance of the dawn! Action followed close on thought. Hastily, busily, every rude rough bar was drawn back, door and substitute for door unclosed; and a general jail-delivery of imprisoned swine was ruled and accomplished on the spot. Undetected by a single human witness, without interruption from slumbering master or lazy hind, the total deed was done. Gradually descending the hill, and scattering, like ancient heroes and modern patriots, freedom and deliverance as we went, never did the children of liberty so exult in their unshackled deliverance as these Boscastle hordes. There was one result, however, which we had not foreseen, and its perilous consequences had quite escaped anticipation. The inmates of every sty, as soon as their opportunities of egress had been ascertained by marching out of their prison-doors and arriving unchecked at the roadside—when they looked upward and surveyed the steep and difficult ascent, and counted mentally the cost of attempting to surmount the steep, they all, as with one hoof and mind, turned down the hill. Sire and dam, lean and corpulent, farrow and suckling, all uno impetu, selected and rushed down the facilis descensus Averni; and although, in all likelihood, they had never pondered the contrast of the Roman poet, yet they spontaneously moved and seconded, and carried the unanimous resolution that revocare gradum, his labor, hoc opus est. The consequence of this choice of way was too soon apparent. Just as we had drawn the last bar, and were approaching the bottom of the steep, we looked back and saw that we were pursued, and should speedily be surrounded, by a mixed multitude of porcine advocates for free discussion in the open air, such as might have gladdened the heart of any critic on the original and cultivated breeds of the west of England. Prominent among them the old Cornish razor-back asserted its pre-eminence of height and bone, nor were punchy representatives of the Berkshire[133] and Suffolk genealogies absent on this festive occasion. Growing now apprehensive of the consequences of discovery, if an early rising owner should ascertain the authors of this daring effort to “deliver their dungeons from the captive,” we hastened to secure ourselves in the shelter of our hostelry of the Ship, and fortunately found, on reaching our “little chamber on the wall,” that the widow and her household were still fast asleep. We fastened the door and listened for results. The outcries and yells were fearful. By-and-by human voices began to mingle with the tumult; there were shouts of inquiry and surprise, then sounds of apparent expostulation and entreaty, and again a “storm of hate and wrath and wakening fear.” Many a battle of soldiers must have fought and ended with less uproar. At last the tumult pierced even the ears of our hostess Joan Treworgy. We heard her puff and blow, and call for Tim. At last, after waiting a prudent time, we thought it best to call aloud for shaving-water, and to inquire with astonishment into the cause of that horrible disturbance which had roused us from our morning sleep. This brought the widow in hot haste to our door.