By the way, the idea that Scilly represents the peaks of a submerged realm of Lyonesse is altogether baseless. Lyonesse is the realm of Leon in Brittany, so-called because founded by colonists from Caerleon, who fled from the swords of the Saxons. It remained a little independent principality till at the close of the sixth century it became incorporated with the principality of Domnonia, in Brittany.
"Everywhere in Scilly there are the same features: here a hill strewn with boulders; there a little down with fern and gorse and heath; here a bay in which the water, on such days as it can be approached, peacefully laps a smooth white beach; here dark caves and holes in which the water always, even in the calmest days of summer, grumbles and groans, and, when the least sea rises, begins to roar and bellow--in time of storm it shrieks and howls.... All round the rocks at low tide hangs the long seaweed, undisturbed since the days when they manufactured kelp, like the rank growth of a tropical creeper: at high tide it stands up erect, rocking to and fro in the wash and sway of the water like the tree-tops of the forest in the breeze. Everywhere, except in the rare places where men come and go, the wild sea-birds make their nests; the shags stand on the ledges of the highest rocks in silent rows gazing upon the water below; the sea-gulls fly, shrieking in sea-gullic rapture--there is surely no life quite so joyous as the seagull's; the curlews call; the herons sail across the sky; and in spring millions of puffins swim and dive and fly about the rocks and lay their eggs in the hollow places of these wild and lonely islands."
Is not that beautiful writing? But it is not fanciful; it is beautiful because true, absolutely true. Go and see if it be not so.
Have you ever made acquaintance with the horrors of Lowestoft, a flat insipid shore, where the sea is always charged with mud and no breakers thunder, where the land scene is as dull and insipid as is the sea-scape? I was there last summer. It was a dismal place, made the more dismal by being invaded and pervaded, spread out, exposed, devoted to the "tripper." And I fled to the west coast to see the Atlantic, with the water crystal clear, through which you look down into infinity, and to the glorious cliffs about which that transparent water tosses, shakes its silver mane, curls its waves blue and iridescent as a peacock's neck, and I wondered that any should ever visit the east coast of England.
"All the islands, except the bare rocks, are covered with down and moorland, bounded in every direction by rocky headlands and slopes covered with granite boulders. And always, day after day, they came continually upon unexpected places: strange places, beautiful places: beaches of dazzling white; wildly-heaped carns; here a cromlech, a logan stone, a barrow; a new view of sea and sky and white-footed rock. I believe that there does not live any single man who has actually explored all the isles of Scilly, stood upon every rock, climbed every hill, and searched on every island for its treasures of ancient barrows, plants, birds, carns, and headlands. Once there was a worthy person who came here as chaplain to S. Martin's. He started with the excellent intention of seeing everything. Alas! he never saw a single island properly: he never walked round one exhaustively. He wrote a book about them, to be sure; but he saw only half."
There are numerous cairns, barrows, kistvaens, and circles of stones in the islands, and Giant's Castle, in S. Mary's, is a good example of a cliff-camp of the Irish Firbolg type. A local guide attributes it to the Danes, but that is nonsense.
In Porth Hellick Bay Sir Cloudesley Shovel was washed ashore and buried.
In 1707 Sir Cloudesley in the Association, Captain Hancock in the Eagle, Sir George Byng in the Royal Anne, Captain Coney in the Romney, Lord Dudley in the St. George, Captain Piercy in the Firebrand, and a captured fireship, the Phœnix, were returning from Toulon after the capture of Gibraltar. On the morning of the 22nd October, the weather being thick and dirty, they came into soundings of nineteen fathoms. There is a tradition that a seaman on the admiral's ship warned the officer of the watch that unless the ship's course were altered they would soon be on the rocks of Scilly. This was reported to Sir Cloudesley, who was very angry. He had the man brought before him, and attempted to browbeat him, but the man stuck to his opinion. The admiral lost his temper, as he considered it a breach of decorum for a common mariner to dictate the course of the vessel to a superior officer, and he ordered the man to be hanged at the yard-arm. One request was granted to the sailor--that he should be allowed to read aloud a psalm to the assembled crew. This was permitted, and he read out Psalm cix.:--
"Hold not Thy tongue, O God of my praise: for the mouth of the ungodly, yea, the mouth of the deceitful, is opened upon us."
That night the ship was lost. At six in the evening the admiral, who had brought the fleet to during the afternoon, made sail again, and stood away under canvas. Directly after he made signals of distress, which were returned by several of the fleet. Sir George Byng in the Royal Anne, who was a mile to windward of him, saw the breakers, and saved his vessel with difficulty.