[12] The water for baptisms at Morwenstow is always drawn from this well, which Hawker won for the glebe by a law-suit soon after his appointment to the living.
[14] In Blight’s book on “Ancient Cornish Crosses,” etc., there is an engraving of the Morwenstow Piscina and a Hebrew altar, with a note by Hawker.
[15] Among some unpublished MSS. of Hawker’s is the following verse, dated 1840:—
“Thus said the pious Pelican unto her thirsty Young,
‘Drink, drink! my desert children: be beautiful and strong.
What tho’ it be the lifeblood from my veins ye drain away;
Ye will grow and glide in glory, and for me, O let me die.’”
[16] Hawker had a seal engraved with this pentacle. Compare the lines in his poem “Baal-Zephon.”
“Oh for the Sigil! or the chanted spell!
The pentacle that Demons know and dread.”
In a letter to Miss Louisa Twining, Hawker writes: “The pentacle of Solomon, or five-pointed figure, was derived from his seal wherewith he ruled the genii. It was a sapphire, and it contained a hand alive which grasped a small serpent, also alive. Through the bright gem both were visible, the hand and the ‘worm’ as of old they called it. When invoked by the king, the fingers moved and the serpent writhed and miracles were wrought by spirits which were vassals of the gem.... Because of this mystic Hand the pentacle or five-pointed (fingered) figure became the Sigil of Signomancy in the early ages.”
[17] For an instance of its use in exorcism, see the “Botathen Ghost” story, p. [158].
[18] “And Solomon built ... Baalath, and Tadmor in the Wilderness” (1 Kings ix. 17-18).