Peale, a spire, lies to the north of Tolpenwith a mile, and it is the true Land’s-end. This spire, called the Pele, stood on a little island; between it and the shore there is room for a boat to pass with oars; the spire was ten fathom or more above the ordinary flux of the sea, very narrow on the top, hardly room for a man to sit on it; in the floor it was and is fourteen feet square. In the year before King Charles the First was beheaded, it was prodigiously cut off in the floor by a storm, and falling broke in three pieces.
Herles, truly interpreted Hercules’ Pillars, are a ridge of rocks a quarter of a mile in length, standing like pillars divided into small islands, and distant from the Pele a mile. From these by the north coast we come to St. Ives, in Cornish Port Eer of Geer, a port with a pool. Paddestow, so called by Saxon Angles, being Patherickstow. Another place near by, called Little Petherick, which partakes not of the Cornish at all; for in the Cornish it is Lethanneck, a place of much sea-sand, which agrees well with the site, much sea and much sand there is driven. A little above which is the house of Edmund Prideaux, esq. my kinsman, now called Place, formerly Guarandre, or Warthantre, i. e. above the town or above the sand; but that we may do right to latter times also, we find much mention to be made also of Patrickstow, and that St. Patrick, after much time spent in Ireland, and endowments of learning by long study were obtained, he came into Cornwall, and built a monastery there not far from the river of Severn, which comes home to that which is said by Archbishop Usher, as also to the name of the place. Locus ubi Petrocus consedit in Cornubia, Petrocstow, hodie Padstow nominatur, prius Laffeneck. Antiq. p. 292; and after thirty years went to Rome, &c. By other
authors it is said, that at Bodmyn his body was buried but stolen from thence, and carried by one Martinus to the abbey of Menevy or Mein, in Little Britany; but upon complaint to the king it was restored, and brought back undiminished to the Prior of Bodmyn. b. §. p. 293. But whether this were to be understood of St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, it is altogether to be doubted, since as to the burial of his body there hath been so much contention that that should be at Glastonbury; but another Patrick there was, perhaps a third, and one of note too, stiled Sænor Sæenex Patricius, as appears by the learned primate. He is said to be at the same time, and that he was Domesticus Sancti Patricii. Another there was also at some hundred years distance. With one of these it may better accord than with the great Patricius, who it may be said, had his name Dignitatis causa, as was usual with the Romans and Athenians, his parental name being Moun or Muun.
The town of Stratton, in Cornish Straneton, a green dispersed with houses. Near this town is the place where the Cornish forces, on behalf of King Charles the Second, obtained the glorious victory over the rebellious army, anno 1643. In memory of which battle Sir Ralph Hopton was created Baron of Stratton, who afterwards dying without issue, the same title was conferred upon Sir John Berkley, both which lords were commanders in the Cornish army at that time.
There is a pretty vulgar fiction that Tamar, Tamara, being a subterraneous nymph, was courted and sought after by Tavy and Tawrage, who found her sitting under a bush at Morewinstow, the furthest part of Cornwall in the north. They being weary in searching after her, sat down by her and slept; she perceiving them to be fallen asleep, steals away from them suddenly and goes directly to the south. Tavy being first awakened, goes away silently after her, not acquainting his co-rival therewith. Tawrage that awakened last, finding them both gone, in haste rusheth out, and angrily runs away towards the north, foaming and fretting all along as he goes, till he loses himself in the Sabrina; whilst Tavy, on the Devon side, sends out some of his small streams to visit and court her, and to observe which way the nymph went, but she having got the start of him, leaves not of her speed till she comes into the Sound.
The causes of the Cornish Speech’s Decay.
1. The first and great cause of the decay of the Cornish speech was their want of a character, which not only contributed to the decay of the tongue, but to the vanquishing of the nation of the Britons, they being thereby disabled upon emergent occasions to write or communicate with one another against their invaders, and so “dum pugnabant singuli vincuntur universi,” as Tacitus says; and he also observes, “non aliud adversus validissimas gentes pro Romanis utilius quàm quod in commune non consulebant.”
What would have become of the Roman tongue, when the Goths and Vandals broke in upon Rome and all Italy, mixing the Roman tongue with their Runa-Gothica, if there had not been learned men (amounting to 160 elegant classical authors in Augustus his time) who preserved the tongue in their works?
I know it hath been and yet is the judgment of learned men, that the old Britons never had any character, yet I hope they will give me the liberty of declaring the reasons of my dissenting. I. It hath always been supposed that Ireland had a character; now Ireland was always accounted a British Island, however; yet I cannot positively affirm that the character which the Bishop of Tuam sets forth as British be really so, there seeming to be little difference between that and the old Saxon; neither can I consent to what he saith, that the Saxons, whom he calls their neighbours, learned their very characters from Ireland.