The Land's End: A Naturalist's Impressions In West Cornwall, Illustrated

by W. H. Hudson

I take it that two distinct things are meant—one a very black crime indeed, the other nothing worse than a disregard of regulations and petty pilfering. With regard to the first it is believed from certain stories and traditions which have come down to us, the origin of which is lost in the mists of antiquity, that the natives of the dangerous parts of the coast made it a custom to lure vessels on to the rocks to their destruction by displaying false lights. This may be true: we know that the various races and tribes composing the nation—Celts and Saxons, Danes and Normans—vied with each other in every form of atrocity and of cruelty; but no instance of the crime in question can be authenticated as having taken place in recent times. Nevertheless the belief is cherished and kept alive in books, mainly religious tales and novels, that this frightful custom continued down to the middle of the eighteenth century when Wesley appeared to convert the Cornish people from their vicious ways and all kinds of wickedness, including that of deliberately wrecking vessels and murdering the unhappy wretches who succeeded in escaping from the fury of the waves. As the books containing these veracious statements, so flattering to the Cornish, are exceedingly popular in the Duchy and nowhere out of it, the Cornish people are themselves responsible for keeping these fables alive.

As for the other lesser crime or offence, I fancy that it is not one an Englishman can look on as a very serious matter.

I was one day discussing the Sunday observance question with an English clergyman whose parish lies on the Cornish coast, and related the following incident to him. I was lodging with an intelligent and well-to-do artisan and his wife in a Somerset village when one Sunday morning, the weather being very fine, my host, finding that I was not going to church, asked me if I would take a walk with him as he wished to show me some nice spots in the neighbouring woods and copses where he was accustomed to go. The woods were certainly very beautiful, with green open spaces and a fine stream where we watched the trout and saw a kingfisher flash by. We said it was not a bad place to spend a Sunday morning in and then fell into a long talk about Sunday observance, and the fact that village people, the men especially, had lost the habit of going to church but had discovered no way of spending the day pleasantly or profitably. I thought that outdoor games ought to be encouraged as it was plainly beneficial both to mind and body and saved them from tedium and the temptations to drink and smoke more than was good for them. I thought too that when the parson of the parish took this line the effect was entirely good; it taught them to look on him as more human and one of themselves and capable of putting himself in their place.

My companion looked grave and shook his head at this, and when I told him that I knew clergymen who were as good men as could be found in the land who agreed with my view, and were the promoters of Sunday games in their parishes, he answered that if a thing were wrong, even ministers of the Gospel could not make it right. He was in the middle of his argument when we came out from a big copse into a large open space, and created a panic in a multitude of rabbits feeding there. Away they scuttled in every direction—hundreds of rabbits, old and half-grown young. Going a little further we noticed our small spaniel sniffing at a burrow. "He's a clever little dog," said my companion; "he always lets me know when a rabbit is not too far down." With that he got down on the turf, and thrusting his arm in to the shoulder, quickly pulled out a young rabbit, which, after snapping its neck, he thrust into his large coat-tail pocket. Putting his arm down again he pulled out a second one, then a third, and having snapped their necks and pocketed them, he got up and we resumed our walk and our discussion. "No, no," he said. "I'm not a religious man, and don't go to church as a rule, but I draw the line at playing games on a Sunday."

Then he came to a stop beside a close thicket of brambles and thorn, and began pulling the rabbits out of his pocket. "After all I don't want them, and they are a nuisance to carry," he said, and with that he threw them into the thicket.

That was my story.

"We are just as consistent here," said the Cornish clergyman. "The people are religious and strict Sabbatarians; they go regularly to church or chapel, but if a vessel in distress is in sight, and there is a chance of its going on the rocks, they make an exception; they will pace the cliffs all day long in the hope of a bit of flotsam coming in their way."

They may appear equally inconsistent—the Somerset man and the Cornishman—but can we say that one is morally worse than the other? The case of the good artisan who drew the line at cricket on Sunday is not a singular one: one doubts if there is a peasant in England, however truly religious a man he may be, who would not pick up a rabbit or hare if he got the chance on any day of the week. They do not believe it is wrong, consequently it does not hurt their conscience, and the only fear they have is to be found out. And so with the Cornishman; it is ingrained in him, and is like an inherited knowledge, that if the Power that rules the winds and waves, and who holds the lives of all men in the hollow of his hand, sends a ship upon the rocks, it is because he thinks proper to destroy that ship and incidentally to scatter gifts among his people living on the coast. Shall they refuse to take any good thing he chooses to send them? If their minister tells them it is wrong it is because he does not know the rights of it. Their fathers did it, and their forefathers, for generations back and were no worse for it. It would indeed be strange if they did not resent as an injustice, an interference with their natural rights, that so strict a watch is kept on them, and that they are forbidden to take anything the waves may cast up in their way.

Quite recently we had some rather startling manifestations of this feeling and one amusing instance may be given. Just after a big ship had come to grief on the rocks, at the most dangerous point on the coast, another ship was in great peril near the same spot; fortunately, towards evening, the weather moderated a little and it began to look as if there was not going to be a second disaster just then. My informant was standing on the shore with some of the fishermen of the place looking at the sea. The sky was clearing and the sun, near the horizon, came forth a great globe of red fire and threw its light over the tumultuous waters. Then all at once one of the men burst out in a storm of execration, and cursed the sun and wind and sea and pretty well the whole universe. For it seemed so hard just when things were looking so well that the sun should shine and the wind begin to fall and the sea moderate! My informant asked him indignantly how he, a Christian man, could entertain such feelings and how he dared to express them. He answered by putting out his right arm and baring it to the elbow, then, feeling the muscles with the fingers of the left hand, he said with a somewhat rueful expression, "It's in the bone, and we cant help it!"

Yet this very man had been foremost in the work of rescuing the people in the ship that had gone on the rocks.