So help you God.
Sacramentum superscriptum præstabat Clericus prædictus
GEORGIUS DAVIES de Parochia Sancti Perrani
de Uthno in Diaconatu Penwith Rector.
Tertio die mensis Decembris, Anno 1730.
Coram me Ricardo W—[The name is defaced.]
Near the church used to flow a well, which, in addition to supplying ample quantities of excellent water, gave responses to the most interesting questions respecting life, deaths, marriages, &c. under the superintendence of a Pythian hierophant (since peeth, pythe, is Cornish for a well); but this oracle has ceased within the last twenty years, after a manner fairly appropriate to the county; the working of a mine having taken away all the water.
There are several good farm houses in the parish, formerly the residences of gentlemen; but, excepting the church town, only one place deserving the name of a village, which is Goldsithney, commonly pronounced Gulzinney, lying on the road from Redruth to Marazion. In this village was formerly a chapel dedicated to St.
James, as Doctor Borlase has ascertained from documents in the cathedral at Exeter. No memory remains of this chapel having ever been used for divine service; but within the editor’s recollection a small image might be seen over the door, said by the inhabitants to be St. Perran; but if the records consulted by Doctor Borlase are correct, more probably of St. James.
Mr. Lysons mentions the fair which is annually holden here on the fifth of August, St. James’s day, by the old style; and he also takes notice of a tale, which the editor has heard a thousand times, of the fair having been originally kept in the church town of Sithney, near Helston, by virtue of a glove, which was annually displayed there, till the men of Perran, by force or cunning, or by proposing to exchange new gloves for old ones, bore off the talisman, and have by its authority held the fair at Goldsithney ever since, paying one shilling every year as a poor compensation to the party bereaved.
It is needless to add that this tale, as it is related, cannot be true; but the names Sithney and Goldsithney, with the payment to the churchwardens of the parish, seem to indicate some relation between the parish and this village. The displaying of a glove at fairs is an ancient and widely extended custom. Mr. Lysons says it is continued at Chester. The editor has seen a large ornamented glove displayed on a lofty pole over the Guild Hall at Exeter, during the fairs. Was the glove used to receive the tolls, as shillings are still collected in some courts of justice; or had it any reference to hand payments on delivery, as is usual in fairs; or has it a more noble origin in chivalry?
A cove is pointed out in Perran, where the ancestor of the Trevelyans is said to have been borne on shore by the strength of his horse, from the destruction of the Lionesse country, west of the Land’s End. The Trevelyan family are too old, too honourable, and now too much distinguished by science, for them to covet any addition of honour through the medium of fabulous history.
It is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle, that in the year
1099, on St. Martin’s day, there was so very high a tide, and the damage so great in consequence, that men remembered not the like to have ever happened before, and the same day was the first of the new moon.