Petrock landed, and inquired whether any religious man lived in the neighbourhood, and was told that Samson was there. This was Samson who afterwards became Bishop of Dol. His chapel was demolished when Place House, above Padstow, was built. At Padstow, Petrock remained for thirty years with his disciples, one of whom was Dagan, who disputed with Laurence, Archbishop of Canterbury (597-604) and other Roman missionaries. He refused not only to eat with them, Bede tells us, but even to be under the same roof with them. The story of Petrock's pilgrimage to the East is full of myth, but the account of the reason why he undertook it is probably true.
There had been a rainy season. One day Petrock assured his disciples that next day the rain would cease, and it would be fine. But on the morrow the rain came down in streams. Petrock was so disgusted at his prophecy having failed, that he left the place, and resolved on visiting the East.
The rest is mere romance.
He went to India. There he saw a silver bowl floating on the sea. He stepped into it, whereupon the silver bowl carried him far away to a certain island in which he spent seven years, living on a single fish that he caught daily, and which, however often eaten, always returned sound to be eaten again next day.
At the end of the seven years the shining bowl reappeared. He stepped into it again, and was conveyed back to the coast whence he had started. There he found a wolf that had kept guard over his sheepskin and staff which he had left on the shore seven years before.
Clearly we have here ingrafted into the history a Cornish myth relative to the man in the moon; for the silver bowl cannot be mistaken--it is the latter--and for the dog of the modern version, we here have a wolf.
Through the rest of his journeyings the wolf attended Petrock. On his return to Cornwall he had some unpleasantness with Tewdrig, the king, who had opposed the landing of the Irish at St. Ives, and had killed some of them. He remonstrated with him for some of his barbarities, and Tewdrig had sufficient grace to make him grants of land.
Petrock now moved to Bodmin, and thence he made many excursions through Devon, founding churches and monasteries. The date of his death was about A.D. 575.
A curious circumstance occurred relative to his relics. In 1177 a canon of Bodmin, named Martin, made a clean bolt with the shrine of the saint, an ivory box that contained his bones, and carried them to S. Maen, in Brittany. There were "ructions." The Prior of Bodmin appealed to Henry II., who sent orders to the Justiciary of Brittany to insist on their surrender. Accordingly the prior and this officer went to S. Maen, but when required to give up the holy bones the abbot demurred. However, the justiciary would stand no nonsense, and threatened to use such severe measures that the abbot was forced to give way, and Prior Roger, of Bodmin, marched away with the recovered ivory box and its contents.
Curiously enough this identical box, quaintly ornamented with paintings, still exists, and belongs to the municipality: the contents have, of course, disappeared.