CHAPTER VIII
ON THE EDGE OF LYONNESSE
We had meant, when Helen's mother should come from Paris, to go back to Glastonbury and begin our journey again where we had left off. But when she came we thought better of it. We decided that, since we were going to the Southwest of England again, we might as well go all the way and see the Land's End. Then, we thought, we could go to Glastonbury just as well on the way back.
So it happened that when Helen's mother was with us again, we took the longest railway ride that we had taken yet, and at the end of it we found ourselves in Penzance. Penzance is the place where the pirates were, you know. We had always supposed that that was a made-up story and that there never were really any pirates of Penzance. But we found that the pirates were there still. Only now they do not scuttle ships any more, if they ever did; they keep hotels. But that is an unpleasant subject.
We set off the next morning for a long drive—which was to be partly a walk—to the Land's End. There were many things that were worth seeing before we got to the Land's End, or anywhere near it. First there was the harbor of Penzance, one of the prettiest that I ever looked out upon. And over on the other side of it, stately and beautiful against the summer morning sky, stood St. Michael's Mount. St. Michael's Mount is a cone-shaped hill, rising high out of the water, with a castle on the top of it. It is one of those things that are so picturesque that they surprise you when you see them in a real scene, because they look too perfect to belong outside a painted picture.
"And who do you suppose used to live on the top of that hill?" I said. "Why, the old giant Cormoran, the one whom Jack the Giant-Killer knocked on the head with his pickaxe, the very first giant whom he killed. Of course I should not think of telling you that story, at your time of life; I only tell you that there is the place. But I might tell you about another giant, and let you try to straighten out his story, if you like, better than I can. Over across the channel from here, in France, there is another St. Michael's Mount. I have never seen it, but the picture of it looks as much like this one as if it were its own brother. I think that I have told you before that the people of old days used to think that high hills belonged somehow to St. Michael. Well, over there on the other St. Michael's Mount lived another giant with whom King Arthur himself once had a little tussle. The giant's name was Ryence, and he had a mantle trimmed with kings' beards. You remember something, perhaps, that I told you once about a King named Ryence, who had a mantle trimmed with kings' beards. It is rather curious that there should be two of them.
"It was when King Arthur went over to France on his way to fight the Emperor of Rome that he heard of this giant. He was a terror to the whole country, for he killed hundreds of people and spoiled crops, and his favorite food was little boys. I don't know why he liked little boys so much better than little girls, but I suppose he knew more about which were the better to eat than I do.
"When Arthur heard about the giant he took Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere with him and went to the foot of the hill. There he told them to wait for him, and went up the hill alone. He found the giant sitting before a fire cooking a man for his supper. Arthur got close to him and wounded him with his sword before the giant knew that he was there. Then he sprang up and caught hold of Arthur, and they both fell and rolled over and over each other clear to the bottom of the hill, and Arthur managed to give the giant two or three more wounds on the way. Kay and Bedivere ran to see if the King was killed, and they found that he was scarcely hurt at all and that the giant was dead.
"I don't say that there is anything so very remarkable about that. It is just a plain sort of every-day giant story. But here are the strange points, I think. Here were two hills looking wonderfully alike and with the same name, and a giant lived and was killed on each of them. And here were two giants, both named Ryence, for King Ryence was a giant, too, and they both had mantles trimmed with kings' beards, and Arthur killed one and beat the other. It looks to me as if two stories, at least, had got a little mixed, or else one story twisted in two. How does it look to you?"
There is no reason, that I can see, why I should try to tell you all about the way from Penzance to the Land's End. It will not do you much good to know that it was grand and beautiful, as long as you were not there to see its grandeur and its beauty. We stopped at St. Buryan, and a very old woman showed us the church. It is a curious old place, and it has some fine carvings. But the old woman, who showed us everything and explained it to us, could not understand what there was about it that we found interesting. She had been showing this church to people, she said, for more than fifty years, and she had never been able to make out yet why they wanted to see it.