The finest is that of S. Burian, about whom first of all a word or two.
Buriena was an Irish damsel, noted for being both slender and beautiful. In fact, her willowy form obtained for her the nickname of Caol, or "the Slim." She was a daughter of one Crimthan, "the Fox," a Munster chieftain, a granddaughter of Aengus, King of Munster, who was baptised by S. Patrick, on which occasion the apostle ran the spike at the end of the pastoral staff into the foot of the king. Afterwards, when S. Patrick saw the wound and the blood, he was shocked, and said, "Why the dickens did you not tell me of it?" "I thought it was part of the ceremony," replied Aengus.
However, to return to Buriena, his granddaughter. She was so pretty and so graceful, that although she was at school with Liadhain, the mother of S. Piran, as her spiritual child, a chieftain named Dimma carried her off to his own castle. Liadhain came in a fume to S. Piran and told him of the outrage. At once the old man seized his staff and went after Dimma, who was head of the clan Hy Fiachta. It was midwinter, and the snow was on the ground. When Piran arrived at the gates of the cashel he was refused admittance. He would not return, but maintained his place, and next morning there he was still. He had stood there all night in the snow, waiting to insist on the restoration of the girl. Dimma now was alarmed. He saw that the saint was determined to "fast against him," a legal process, as has been described already, and he returned the damsel.
However, some days afterwards, feeling his passion still strong, he went at the head of a body of men to reclaim her. Buriena fainted when she saw his approach; but Piran had time to call out all his ecclesiastical tribe, and they surrounded the place where Liadhain and Buriena were, and he had sent a detachment to make a circuit and set fire to Dimma's cashel, so that the chief was compelled to beat a precipitate retreat. It was probably in consequence of this that Piran left Ireland and came to Cornwall.
S. Burian Church does not stand on the site of the old settlement of Buriena; that is about a mile south-east, at Bosliven, where the "sanctuary" remains about some mounds and ruins. It was destroyed by Shrubsall, one of Cromwell's miserable instruments of sacrilege. When Athelstan traversed Cornwall from east to west he made a vow that if he reached the Scilly Isles and returned in safety he would endow a collegiate church where was the oratory in which he made the vow. This he did, and the date of the foundation is supposed to have been 936.
The church had a superb screen, probably the finest in Cornwall, but it was taken down and destroyed in 1814. Some fragments have been preserved sufficient to admit of its complete reconstruction at some future day. Many of the bench-ends remain, and are fine. The church has been illtreated in that fashion which is in bitter mockery called "restoration." The new woodwork is a fair example of what woodwork never should be. It is treated like cheese.
S. Levan has fine old bench-ends and exquisitely bad modern woodwork, and in the neighbourhood is the Logan Rock and some of the finest coast scenery of the Land's End. S. Levan was priest and metal-worker in S. Patrick's company, and some of his bells and book-covers remained long preserved as treasures in Ireland.
S. Senan has been gutted by the restorer, and has in it no longer anything of interest except a mutilated statue of the Virgin and Child.
Madron has not much of interest, except the oft-quoted epitaph on George Daniel:--
"Belgia me Birth, Britain me Breeding gave,