A friend writes to me:--
"It may be foolishness, but to me such a place as the ruined church of Peranzabulo appeals most powerfully. I determined to find it unaided, and when found I spent hours there, sometimes at dark, trying as best I might to recall the place as it once was, and to revivify the bones which were lying in several little heaps where the workmen, who had been railing about the ruin, had collected them.
"It seems to me that one loses a great deal in stifling and choking the imagination.
"In the dusk of evening, with the swallows in vast quantities gathered for their flight to the south, and the white bones lying before me, the wind sighing and piping in the grass, and the sea moaning in the distance, the scene was one that deeply impressed me, and will never be forgotten."
There is now some talk of a very careful and conservative restoration, so as to preserve what yet remains.
The rock and hermitage of Roche, standing up in a district that has been turned over and undermined for tin, and is strewn with ruined engine-houses, deserve to be seen. The rock is a prong shooting up boldly, and a chapel and the cell of an ancient hermit have been constructed on it.
S. Denis is a conical hill with an earthwork round it; in fact, it was an old Dinas, or palace of a chief. The church within was called Lan-dinas. The bishops of Exeter, not understanding the real meaning, concluded that it was the church of S. Denis, and dedicated it to the Bishop-martyr of Paris, a somewhat apocryphal personage. So two fortified headlands were each Lan-an-dinas,[[22]] and they were converted into churches of S. Anthony.
S. Columb Major has a fine church, which unhappily suffered from an explosion of gunpowder in 1676, when three boys carelessly set fire to a barrel of this explosive, which had been placed in the rood-loft staircase. The windows and roof were blown away, and the pillars thrown out of the perpendicular. Happily the fine carved benches were unhurt; they are curious. Apparently a travelling show of wild beasts passed through the town when they were being carved, and the workmen reproduced on them the strange beasts they saw.
There is an interesting and picturesque old slated house at the entrance to the churchyard.
The old custom of hurling is still observed at S. Columb on the feast, which is in November, and the silver ball is thrown in the market-place.