Sir Redvers Buller told me a story. He was on his way with a regiment of soldiers to Canada. Off the entrance to the S. Lawrence the vessel was enveloped in fogs and delayed, so that provisions ran short. Now there was a station on an islet there for shipwrecked mariners, where were supplies. So Sir Redvers went ashore in a boat to visit the store and ask for assistance.
When he applied, he found a woman only in charge.
“No,” said she; “the supplies are for those who be shipwrecked, not for such as you.”
“But this is a Government depôt, and we are servants of the Crown.”
“Can’t help it; you’m not shipwrecked.”
Now there was a very recognisable intonation in the woman’s voice. Sir Redvers at once assumed the Cornish accent, and said, “What! not for dear old One and All, and I a Buller?”
“What! from Cornwall, and a Buller! Take everything there is in the place; you’m heartily welcome.”
Gunwalloe is a chapelry in the parish of Cury. It has a singular tower standing by itself against the sandhill at the back. There is a holy well on the beach, but the tide has filled it with stones. It was formerly cleared out on S. Gunwalloe’s Day, but this, unfortunately, is one of the good old customs that have fallen into neglect.
About Cury a word must be said. It is dedicated to S. Corentine, a saint of Quimper, in Brittany, and this is probably a place where Athelstan placed one of the batches of Bretons who fled to him for protection in 920, but whom he could not have planted in Cornwall till 936. That Cornwall should have received refugees from Brittany was but just, for Brittany had been colonised from Devon and Cornwall to a very considerable extent. As the facts are little known, I will narrate them here.
The advance of the Saxons and the rolling back of the Britons had heaped up crowds of refugees in Wales and in Devon and Cornwall, more in fact than the country could maintain. Accordingly an outlet had to be sought.