The subject of this memoir had inherited the Cornish love of story-telling, and the power of telling stories with dramatic force. But he had not the skill of Mr. Hicks in telling a long story, and keeping his hearers thrilling throughout the recital, breathless lest they should lose a word. Mr. Hawker contented himself with brief anecdotes, but those he told to perfection.
I shall, in the course of my narrative, give a specimen or two of stories told by common Cornish peasants. Alas, that I cannot reproduce the twinkling eye, the droll working countenances, and the agitated hands, all assistants in the story-telling!
CHAPTER III
Description of Morwenstow—The Anerithmon Gelasma—Source of the Tamar—Tonacombe—Morwenstow Church—Norman Chevron-Moulding—Chancel—Altar—Shooting Rubbish—The Manning Bed—The Yellow Poncho—The Vicarage—Mr. Tom Knight—The Stag, Robin Hood—Visitors—The Silent Tower of Bottreaux—The Pet of Boscastle.
A writer in The Standard gives this description of Morwenstow: “No railway has as yet come near Morwenstow, and none will probably ever approach it nearer than Bude. The coast is iron-bound. Strangely contorted schists and sandstones stretch away northward in an almost unbroken line of rocky wall to the point of Hartland; and to the south-west a bulwark of cliffs, of very similar character, extends to and beyond Tintagel, whose rude walls are sometimes seen projected against the sunset in the far distance. The coast scenery is of the grandest description, with its spires of splintered rock, its ledges of green turf, inaccessible, but tempting from the rare plants which nestle in the crevices, its seal-haunted caverns, its wild birds (among which the red-legged chough can hardly be reckoned any longer, so much has it of late years lessened in numbers),[[13]] the miles of sparkling blue sea over which the eye ranges from the summits ablaze and fragrant with furze and heather; and here and there the little coves of yellow sand, bound in by towering blackened walls, haunts which seem specially designed for the sea-elves—
Who chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back.
“Even in bright weather, and in summer—in spite of the beauty and quiet of the scene, and in spite, too, of the long, deep valleys, filled with wood, which, in the parish of Morwenstow especially, descend quite to the sea, and give an impression of extreme stillness and seclusion—no one can wander along the summit of the cliffs without a consciousness that he is looking on a giant, at rest indeed for a time, but more full of strength and more really terrible than any of the Cormorans or the Goemagots who have left their footprints and their strongholds on the hills of Cornwall. The sea and the coast here are, in truth, pitiless; and, before the construction of the haven at Bude, a vessel had no chance whatever of escape which approached within a certain distance of the rocks. Such a shipwreck as is described in Galt’s story of The Entail—when persons standing on the cliff, without the smallest power to help, could see the vessel driven onward, could watch every motion on its deck, and at last see it dashed to pieces close under their feet—has more than once been observed from the coast of Morwenstow by Mr. Hawker himself. No winter passes without much loss of life. The little churchyards along the coast are filled with sad records; and in that of Morwenstow the crews of many a tall vessel have been laid to rest by the care of the vicar himself, who organised a special band of searchers for employment after a great storm.”[[14]]
The road to Morwenstow from civilisation passes between narrow hedges, every bush on which is bent from the sea. Not a tree is visible. The whole country, doubtless, a century ago was moor and fen. At Chapel is a plantation; but every tree crouches shrivelled, and turns its arms imploringly inland. The leaves are burnt and sear soon after they have expanded.