Nooks and Corners of Cornwall Part 9

One of the two oldest crosses in Cornwall is in the churchyard at G.o.dolphin. In the opinion of stone-masons it has been "bruised out,"

probably with wood, and not cut with a metal tool. It may indeed have come into existence before metal was used.

CHINA CLAY

Tregoning Hill, a little south of G.o.dolphin, was the place where Wm.

Cookworthy, a druggist, discovered in 1745 a clay from which porcelain could be made, and from which Plymouth china resulted. This first discovery of china clay has led to that great development of the industry, of which St. Austell is the centre.

WRECKS: GERMOE AND BREAGE

Before the lighthouse on the Wolf Rock was built (1871) this rocky coast was the scene of many a wreck. In 1873 the Vicar of Mullion wrote: "In six years and a quarter there have been nine wrecks, with a loss of sixty-nine lives, under Mullion Cliffs, on a bit of coast line not more than a mile and a half in length." It must be confessed that the inhabitants of Germoe and Breage had an unenviable reputation as wreckers:

"_G.o.d keep us from rocks and shelving sands And save us from Breage and Germoe men's hands._"

But those days have pa.s.sed away, though Germoe still has a reputation of a kind. It is said that once the men had good singing voices, but were so proud of them that the voices failed; while another distich shows the estimation in which they held themselves:

"_Camborne men are bulldogs, Breage men are brags, Three or four Germoe men 'Ull scat'um all to rags._"

Local jealousies between neighbouring towns are by no means rare in Cornwall. For instance, there is the old enmity between Zennor and St.

Ives. It is said that the fishermen belonging to the latter were greatly annoyed one season by the ravages of the hake among the mackerel. They therefore caught the largest they could, whipped him soundly, and restored him to the water--_pour encourager les autres_.

When a Zennor man wishes to be disagreeable to a native of St. Ives, therefore, he says: "Who whipped the hake?"

But Zennor, one might think, would have hesitated to throw stones, for it is locally known as the place where the cow ate the bellrope, the neighbourhood being so barren and rocky that the straw bellrope was the only provender the poor animal could find--which is suggestive of the Cornish vet. who sent in his bill "to curing your old cow till she died."

PENGERSICK

One more local story before we go on to Helston, and that because the retort is so neat and the lady, as usual, had the last word. Pengersick Castle is a ruin which, when habitable, was occupied by a man and his wife whose early regard had changed to hatred. Their children were grown up and married, and they had nothing to do but brood upon their mutual dislike, until one day it occurred to both that the world would be a brighter and better place if the other were out of it. No sooner said than done. That day at dinner the good man poured his wife a gla.s.s of a rare vintage, and after she had drunken told her with satisfaction that he would now see the last of her--as the wine had been poisoned.

"The wine? Ah, yes, and the soup, too," quoth she, "and as you drank first, my love, the pleasure of seeing the last of you will be mine."

FLORA DAY

Helston, the little bright town built crossways on the side of a hill, is near the spring of the Kelford River and at the head of the Loe Pool.

It had an exciting time in 1548, when the Cornish feeling against the new doctrine of the sacrament found vent in the murder, which took place inside the church, of Wm. Bray, the royal commissioner. In pursuance of his duty he was pulling down images and possibly treating what was sacred in the eyes of the people with only scant reverence. Be that as it may, Wm. Kiltor, a priest of St. Keverne, attacked and slew him, to the secret--not too secret either--joy of the people and the scandal of authority.

The eighth of May in Helston is Flora or Furry Day, and is possibly a relic of the old May Day saturnalia. The young people go (_fadgy_) into the country singing:

"_Robin Hood and Little John, They both are gone to the fair, O!

And we will away to the merry greenwood And see what they do there, O!_"

They return garlanded with flowers and dance through the houses and gardens of the town, singing the Furry Song. The dance follows a set formula, the procession going in at the front door and out at the back, and being supposed to bestow some sort of benefit upon the houses thus visited. The refrain of the song, to the numerous verses of which topical allusions are often added, is as follows:

"_G.o.d bless Aunt Mary Moses[5]

With all her power and might, O, And send us peace in Merry England Both by day and night, O._"

Charles Kingsley was at the Helston Grammar School when the headmaster was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the second master was the Johns who wrote "A Week at the Lizard." It is unlikely the scholars were allowed to take part in the Furry Dance, but he may have watched it time and again, and given his schoolboy contribution.

THE LOE POOL

This is a beautiful stretch of fresh water that winds like a river through the forked and wooded valley and widens as it comes within sight of the sea, from which, like the Swan Pool--a smaller lake on the other side of the promontory--it is separated by a bar of sand and shingle.

Until recently the Mayor of Helston was wont to present two leathern purses containing three half-pence each to the lord of Penrose and ask leave to cut through the bar and release the surplus waters. The old cutting of the Loe Bar used to tinge the sea with yellow as far as the Scilly Isles. Now, however, the quant.i.ty of the water is regulated by sluices and the ceremony has fallen into disuse.

SERPENTINE

After the more exposed northern and western sh.o.r.es of Cornwall, the airs of the south are balmy. There is no fear, as the farmer put it, that "the bullocks will be blown off the cliff pasture into the sea, the wheat off the land, and the turnips out of their sockets." In the Morrab Gardens at Penzance palms grow in the open, while in Falmouth strange spiky, spiney plants, whose home is in desert sands far south of Britain, are to be seen. But the Meneage (stone), as the Lizard district is called, though mild, is exhilarating, and on Goonhilly Downs the wind can be sufficiently keen. This district is of a peculiar geological structure, consisting of a moderately elevated tableland, deeply carved at the edges by valleys and richly wooded except at the southern extremity. The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine, and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. It causes a sensation of vast wealth to go on to the beaches and from the scattered millions select your own pebbles for the polisher. The more red in your chosen fragments, the more iron, and the harder they will be to polish; while a handsome piece of entirely red ore may be altogether beyond their powers, for serpentine is a rock not a pebble, and the local appliances are crude. The Lizard is also the paradise of the botanist, for the Cornish heath (_erica vagans_), the sea asparagus, the henbane, and many other plants grow abundantly in this district. From Helston to the Lizard is a pleasant scrambling walk along the fine black cliffs. At Gunwalloe the church rises from the edge of the cliff, its belfry being built into the solid rock about 14 ft. away. In Mullion Church is some admirable wood-carving, and on the west face of the tower a well-cut crucifixion, and at Kynance are some curious rocks known as "The Bellows" and "The Post Office," which are as interesting to the geologist as they are wonderful to the ordinary visitor.

GUNWALLOE AND MULLION

A curious story is told of a wreck at Gunwalloe, where the St. Andrew, a treasure-ship belonging to the King of Portugal, was driven ash.o.r.e. The Portuguese had entered into an agreement with the local notabilities for the disposal of their goods, when down rode three Cornish gentlemen at the head of their retainers and carried off the spoil. Unfortunately for them the Portuguese had an Englishman on board, and he promptly brought the matter before the courts and caused an inquiry to be made. But the treasure, as then enumerated, must have been enough to make the mouths water not only of the local authorities, but of any starveling gentleman to whom news of its arrival had come; for it consisted of 8000 cakes of copper, eighteen blocks of silver, and a chest containing 6000, besides pearls, precious stones, chains, brooches, jewels, tapestry, rich hangings, satins, velvets, and four sets of armour.

Just below Gunwalloe are the fine Halzaphron Cliffs. A ship was wrecked here about a hundred years ago, and the bodies from it were said to have been the last which were refused sepulchre in consecrated ground. It makes one's blood boil to think of the barbarities that from the beginning have been perpetrated in the name of religion. There was actually a law on the Statute Book which refused such burial to strangers, on the score that they might not have been Christians.

Christians forsooth--pretty Christians they who framed that law!

Another lingering superst.i.tion is connected with the Rev. Thomas Flavel, who was buried at Mullion 1682. The man was a noted ghost-layer, and was said to charge five guineas every time he officiated in this way. He was also an enthusiastic Royalist, and Walker thus describes him: "A venerable old gentleman; and lookt the more so in those Times for that he had vowed never to cut off his Beard till the Return of his Majesty to his Kingdom, by which time he had gotten a very long one." His epitaph is curious:

"_Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet, The World my goods; my Soul, my G.o.d who gavet; For from these four--Earth, Satan, World, and G.o.d, My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul I had._"

On the cliffs by Mullion and above Poldhu (black pool) is the earliest of the permanent wireless stations in England. It forms a prominent, strange but not altogether ugly feature of the landscape--the people think it brings bad weather--and is at any rate in strong contrast to the deep and glorious coves by which in switchback fashion, now cliff, now coombe, the barren dusty headland of the Lizard (chief's high dwelling) is reached.

THE LIZARD

This is the southernmost point of England, a blunt rounded headland, lying crouched over the deep water, eternally--by day and by night--on the look-out. When the first lighthouse was built here, at the charges of Sir John Killigrew in 1619--note that G.o.dolphin land has given place to the country of the Killigrews--it was disapproved of by the Trinity House. They thought it would serve to light pirates and foreign enemies to a safe landing-place!

To the east of Penolver Point the coast curves sharply in towards the north and is honeycombed with curious caves and blow-holes, Dolor Hugo (from fogou--a subterranean pa.s.sage), the Devil's Frying Pan by Cadgwith, Raven's Hugo, and others. Here are bays, picturesque with rocks and far from the madding crowd, far also from a railway station, Helston being the nearest; but that is no matter, the ten-mile drive over Goonhilly Downs being well worth the extra weariness and cost.

MEDIaeVAL BELLS

Cornwall has about fifty bells, dating from before the Reformation. As they had been used to summon the people to rebellion, orders came from London that all bells except "the least of the ring" were to be removed from the churches. This, however, was a command that the recipients thought would be more honoured in the breach than the observance; which is why there are so many good examples, as for instance, at Landewednack, of mediaeval bells. This the most southern parish in England has a curious church tower, the admixture of light granite and dark serpentine giving it a chequer-board appearance. It was visited by the plague in 1645, and a hundred years later the burials were disturbed in order to make room for some shipwrecked sailors--whose Christianity one supposes to be vouched for--when to the horror of the inhabitants the plague at once reappeared. Since then they have let sleeping dogs lie.

Landewednack claims to be the last place at which a sermon was preached in Cornish (1678), the inc.u.mbent being the Rev. Thos. Cole, who lived to the great age of 120. This fine old gentleman is said to have not long before his death walked to Penryn and back, a distance of thirty miles!

Past Cadgwith, Kennack, Coverack, Porthoustock, and Porthalla, well-known fishing villages, and all romantically situated, but not otherwise interesting, the wanderer comes by way of St. Keverne, a big church with a fresco unique in Cornwall as giving the Greek form of the St. Christopher legend, to Nare Point and the mouth of the Helford River. It is a question which is the more beautiful, this ten-mile long creek with its bold scenery or the softer, more feminine Fal. It rises a little above Helston, at b.u.t.tris, flows down to Gweek, where it broadens into an estuary and applies its waters to the nourishing of many oysters--which oysters were unkindly described by Lord Byron, when he stayed at Falmouth, as tasting of copper!

About a mile from Gweek is the "Tolvan," a large irregular slab of granite, near the centre of which is a hole. Weakly children were formerly brought to the "crickstone" and pa.s.sed at sunrise, nine times, through this hole. The custom having fallen into disrepute, however, the Tolvan now forms part of a cottage fence.

MAWGAN

Mawgan Church, which lies between Gweek and Trelowarren, the seat of the Vyvyans, has a bra.s.s to one of the Ba.s.sets inscribed: