But this is not a guide-book, and such details must be passed over.
On no account should Pentyre Point be missed. It is a grand and glorious cliff, and a projection called the Rumps is occupied by a well-preserved cliff-castle. Porth Gaverne, Porth Isaac, Porthquin, Polzeath are all delightful little bays. The pilchard cellars cut in the rocks should be noticed. Porthquin was once a flourishing little place, but in a terrible storm nearly every man connected with the place, being out fishing, was lost, and it has never recovered.
Porth Isaac—let not those amiable faddists who hold that we are Anglo-Israelites fasten on the name—means the Corn Port, Porthquin the White Port, from the spar in the rock, and Porth Gaverne the Goat Port. A curious fact, to be noted, is that there exists an extensive ancient cemetery close to where is now rising a cluster of new houses at Trevose. Bones are continually turned up by the sea as it encroaches, but all record of a church with burial-ground there is lost. There is a ruined chapel of S. Cadoc, but that is half a mile distant. Cadoc was an elder brother or cousin—it is not certain which—of S. Petrock of Padstow. He must have come here to visit his kinsman.
The story goes that he had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and he brought back with him some of the water of Jordan, and this he poured into a well at this place, which thenceforth possessed marvellous powers. The well is not now easily traced, but bits of carved stone of the chapel lie strewn around. Cadoc was for a while in an island of the lagoon d’Elet, near Belz, in the Morbihan, where he constructed a causeway to the mainland, of which traces remain. He was one of the most restless beings conceivable, and no sooner had he established a monastic centre in one place than he tired of it, and started off to found another somewhere else. He played a scurvy trick once on a South Welsh chief, who with a large party came down on him and imperiously demanded meat and drink. They took all they could get, and got drunk and incapable on the spot. Cado shaved half of their heads and beards as they thus lay, but, worse than this, cut off the lips of their horses. He was a violent-tempered man, of tremendous energy in all he did. According to one account he fell a victim to his rashness or enthusiasm; he tried to carry the Gospel to the Saxons, but was cut down by their axes at the foot of the altar.
CHAPTER XII.
THE TWO LOOES
East Looe—Church—Narrow and picturesque streets—A fair—A strolling company—West Looe—Looe Island—The Fyns—Smuggling—The East Looe river—Duloe—S. Keyne’s Well—Liskeard—Menheniot—The West Looe river—Trelawne—The Trelawny ballad—Polperro—Privateers—Robert Jeffrey—Tom Potter—Lanreath.
East and West Looe, separated by a tidal stream, the Looe (the same as Liffey from Welsh llifo to flow, llif a flood[16]), and united by a long bridge, at one time returned four members to Parliament.
East Looe is the more considerable place of the two, and possesses a new and respectable Guildhall, and some quaint old houses and an ancient picturesque market-house. The church is modern and poor of its kind—one of those structures that do not convey an idea to the mind of either beauty or of ugliness, but are mediocre in conception and execution. It occupies the site of an earlier church dedicated to S. Keyne, but it is now dedicated to S. Anne, who formerly had a chapel on the bridge.
The streets are narrow and full of quaint bits. As I first saw Looe it struck me as one of the oddest old-world places in England. A man had been there selling paper flags and coloured streamers also of paper, and the children in the narrow alleys were fluttering these, and had hung them from the windows, and were dancing with coloured paper caps on their heads or harlequin sashes about their bodies, whilst an Italian organ-grinder played to them. From the narrow casements leaned their mothers, watching, laughing, and encouraging the dancers. A little way back was a booth theatre, hardly up to the level of that of Mr. Vincent Crummel’s, enclosed in dingy green canvas. Reserved seats, 6d.; back seats, 3d. and 1d. The répertoire comprised blood-curdling tragedies. I went in and saw “The Midnight Assassin; or, The Dumb Witness.”