\r 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Vi 
 
 \ -V'
 
 THE PROSE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 REV. R. S. HAWKER
 
 THE PEOSE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 EEV. E. S. HAWKEm 
 
 VICAR OF MORWENSTOW 
 
 INCLUDING FOOTPRINTS OF FOBMER MEN 
 IN FAR CORNWALL 
 
 CAREFULLY RE-EDITED 
 
 WITH SKETCHES NEYEE BEFORE PUBLISHED 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCIII
 
 4-7 ,^ ''^ 
 1093 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The following papers are, in the main, a reprint ot 
 Mr Hawker's contributions to ' Notes and Queries,' 
 ' Household Words,' ' All the Year Eound,' &c., col- 
 lected and published by the author in 1870. 
 
 To some readers acquainted with Morwenstow and 
 its church (vide p. 7), it may be of interest to know 
 that a few years since a mural painting was dis- 
 covered on the chancel wall representing St Bernard 
 deriving nourishment from the breast of the Blessed 
 Virgin,^ 
 
 We are indebted to Miss Thorn, photographic artist, 
 Bude, for kindly permitting us to copy her photograph 
 depicting Morwenstow Church and Vicarage, which 
 forms the frontispiece to this volume. 
 
 J. G. GODWIN. 
 
 ' Vide Mrs Jameson's ' Legends of the Monastic Orders,' third 
 edition, 1863, p. 145. 
 
 1C293 " '
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 MORWENSTOW, 
 
 THE FIRST CORNISH MOLE, 
 
 THE GAUGER's pocket, .... 
 
 THE LIGHT OP OTHER DAYS, . . . 
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OP A CORNISH VICAR, 
 
 BLACK JOHN, .... 
 
 DANIEL GUMB's ROCK, 
 
 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT, 
 
 CRUEL COPPINGER, . 
 
 lUOMASINE BONAVENTURE, 
 
 THE BOTATHEN GHOST, 
 
 A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS, 
 
 HOLACOMBE, 
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN, . 
 
 OLD TREVARTEN : A TALE OP THE PIXIES, 
 
 PACIE 
 1 
 
 20 
 
 25 
 
 32 
 
 3G 
 
 62 
 
 71 
 
 85 
 
 1)5 
 
 108 
 
 123 
 
 137 
 
 155 
 
 168 
 
 182
 
 MOE WENSTOAV/ 
 
 rPHERE cannot be a scene more graphic in itself, or 
 -L more illustrative in its history of the gradual growth 
 and striking development of the Church in Keltic and 
 "Western England, than the parish of St Morvvenna. It 
 occupies the upper and northern nook of the county of 
 Cornwall ; shut in and bounded on the one hand by the 
 Severn Sea, and on the other by the offspring of its own 
 bosom, the Tamar river, which gushes, with its sister 
 stream the Torridge, from a rushy knoll on the eastern 
 wilds of Morwenstow.2 Once, and in the first period of 
 our history, it was one wide wild stretch of rocky moor- 
 land, broken with masses of dunstono and the sullen 
 curve of the warrior's barrow, and flashing here and 
 
 ^ The foundations of this article first appeared in Mr Bliglit's 
 'Ancient Cornish Crosses,' Penzance, 1850; in an article entitled 
 "A Cornish Churchyard," iu 'Chambers's Journal,' 1852; also, as 
 the "Legend of Morwenstow," in 'Willis's Current Notes,' 1856; 
 and in its pjresent extended form, in ' Footprints of Former Men in 
 Far-Comwall,' 1870, embodying the author's latest con-ectious and 
 impressions. 
 
 2 Willey Moor. 
 
 A
 
 2 MORWENSTOW. 
 
 tlicrc with a bright rill ul' water or a solitary well. 
 Neither landmarks nor fences nor walls bounded or 
 severed the bold, free, untravelled Cornish domain. 
 Wheel-tracks in old Cornwall there were none; but 
 strange and narrow paths gleamed across the moorlands, 
 which the forefathers said, in their simplicity, were first 
 traced by angels' feet. These, in truth, were trodden 
 and worn by religious men — by the pilgrim as he paced 
 his way toward his chosen and votive bourn, or by 
 the palmer, whose listless footsteps had neither a fixed 
 keblah nor a future abode. Dimly visible by the darker 
 hue of the crushed grass, these straight and narrow 
 roads led the traveller along from chapclry to cell, or 
 to some distant and solitary cave. On the one hand, 
 in this scenery of the past, they would guide us to the 
 " Chapel-piece of St Morwenna," a grassy glade along 
 the gorse-clad cliff, where to this very day neither will 
 bramble cling nor heather grow ; and, on the other, to 
 the walls and roof and the grooved stone for the water- 
 flow, which still survive, half-way down a headlong 
 precipice, as the relics of St Morwenna's Well. But 
 what was the wanderer's guidance along the bleak, 
 unpeopled surface of these Cornish moors ? The way- 
 side cross. Such were the crosses of St James and St 
 John, which even yet give name to their ancient sites 
 in Morwenstow, and proclaim to the traveller that, or 
 ever a church was reared or an altar hallowed here, the 
 trophy of old Syria stood in solemn stone, a beacon to 
 the wayfaring man, and that the soldiers of God's army 
 had won their honours among the unbaptised and bar- 
 barous people ! 
 
 Here, then, let us stand and survey the earliest 
 scenery of pagan Morwenstow. Before us lies a 
 breadth of wild and rocky land ; it is bounded by the
 
 MOKWENSTOW. 3 
 
 billowy Atlantic, with its arm of waters, and by the 
 slow lapse of that gliding stream of which the Keltic 
 proverb said, before King Arthur's day, — 
 
 "Let Uter Pendmgon do what he can, 
 The Taiiiar water will run as it ran." 
 
 Barrows curve above the dead ; a stony cross stands 
 by a mossed and lichened well ; here and there glides 
 a shorn and vested monk, whose function it was, often 
 at peril of life and limb, to sprinkle the brow of some 
 hard-won votary, and to breathe the Gospel of the 
 Trinity on the startled ear of the Keltic barbarian. 
 Let us close this theme of thought with a few faint 
 echoes from the Eiver of the West : — 
 
 "Fount of a rushing river ! wiki flowers wreathe 
 The home where thy first waters sunlight claim, 
 The lark sits hushed beside thee while I breatke, 
 Sweet Tamar spring, the music of thy name ! 
 
 On ! through thy goodly channel, to the sea : 
 Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, fair bough. 
 
 But never more with footstep pure and free, 
 Or face so meek with happiness as now ! 
 
 Fair is the future scenery of thy days, 
 
 Tliy course domestic, and thy paths of pride ; 
 
 Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet's gaze — 
 Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide ! 
 
 Thine, leafy Tetcott, and those neighbouring walls, 
 Noble Northumberland's embowered domain : 
 
 Thine, Cartha Martha, Morwell's rocky falls. 
 Storied Cotehele, and ocean's loveliest plain. 
 
 Yet false the vision, and untrue the dream. 
 That lures thee from our native wilds to stray : 
 
 A thousand griefs will mingle with that stream, 
 Unnumljered hearts shall sigh those waves away.
 
 4 MORWENSTOW. 
 
 Scenes, fierce with men, thy seaward current hives, 
 Harsh nuiltituiles will throng thy gentle brink ; 
 
 Back ! witli tlie grieving concourse of thy waves ; 
 Home ! to the waters of thy childhood slirink ! 
 
 Thou heedest not ! thy dream is of tlie shore ; 
 
 Thy heart is quick with life, — on ! to the sea ! 
 How will tlie voice of thy far streams implore 
 
 Again, amid those peaceful weeds to be ! 
 
 My soul ! my soul ! a happier choice be thine ; 
 
 Thine the hushed valley and the lonely sod — 
 False dream, far vision, hollow hope resign, 
 
 Fast by our Tamar spring — alone with God ! " 
 
 Then arrived, to people tliis bleak and lonely boun- 
 dary with the thoughts and doctrines of the Cross, the 
 piety and the legend of St Morwenna. This was the 
 origin of her name and place. 
 
 There dwelt in Wales in the ninth century a Keltic 
 king, Breachan by name — it was from him that the 
 words " Brecon " and " Brecknock " received origin ; and 
 Gladwys was his wife and queen. They had, according 
 to the record of Leland, the scribe, children twenty-and- 
 four. Now either these were their own daughters and 
 sons, or they were, according to the usage of those days, 
 the offspring of the nobles of their land, placed for loyal 
 and learned nurture in the palace of the king, and so 
 called the children of his house. 
 
 Of these Morwenna was one. She grew up wise, 
 learned, and holy above her generation ; and it was 
 evermore the strong desire of her soul to bring the bar- 
 barous and pagan people among whom she dwelt to 
 the Christian font. Now so it was that when Morwenna 
 was grown up to saintly womanhood there was a king 
 of Saxon England, and Ethelwolf was his noble name. 
 This was he who laid the endowment of his realm of
 
 MORWEXSTOW. 5 
 
 England on the altar of the Apostles at Eome, the first 
 and eldest Church-king of the islands who occupied the 
 English throne. He, Ethelwolf, had likewise many 
 children ; and while he intrusted to the famous St 
 Swithun tlie guidance of his sons, he besought Kincj 
 Breachan to send to his court Morwenna, that she 
 might become the teacher of the Princess Edith and the 
 other daughters of his royal house. She came. She 
 sojourned in his palace long and patiently ; and she so 
 gladdened King Ethelwolf by her goodness and her 
 grace, that at last he was fain to give her whatsoever 
 she sought. 
 
 Now the piece of ground, or the acre of God, which 
 in those old days was wont to be set apart or hallowed 
 for the site of a future shrine and church, was called 
 the " station," or in native speech the " stowe," of the 
 martyr or saint whose name was given to the altar- 
 stone. So, on a certain day thus came and so said 
 Morwenna to tlie king : " Largess, my lord the king, 
 largess, for God's sake ! " " Largess, my daughter ? " 
 answered Ethelwolf the king ; " largess ! be it what- 
 soever it may." Then said Morwenna: "Sir, there is 
 a stern and stately headland in thy appanage of the 
 Tamar-land, it is a boundary nigged and tall, and it 
 looks along the Severn Sea ; they call it in that Keltic 
 region Hennacliff — that is to say, the Eaven's Crag — 
 because it hath ever been for long ages the haunt and 
 the home of tlie birds of Elias. Very often, from my 
 abode in wild Wales, have I watched across the waves 
 until the westering sun fell red upon that Cornish rock, 
 and I have said in my maiden vows, ' Alas ! and would 
 to God a font might be hewn and an altar built amona 
 the stones by yonder barbarous hill' Give me, then, 
 as I beseech thee, my lord the king, a station for a mes-
 
 6 MOKWENSTOW. 
 
 senger and a priest in lliat scenery of my early 
 prayer, that so and tlironiili me the saying of Esaias 
 tlie seer may come to pass, ' Tn tlio pLace of dragons, 
 where each lay, there may he grass with reeds and 
 rushes.' " 
 
 Her voice was heard ; her entreaty was fulfilled. 
 Tliey came at the cost and impulse of ]\Iorwenna ; they 
 brought and they set np yonder font, with the carved 
 cable coiled around it in stone, in memory of the vessel 
 of the fishermen of the East anchored in the Galilrean 
 Sea. They built there altar and arcli, aisle and device 
 in stone. They linked their earliest structure with 
 Morwenna's name, the tender and the true ; and so it is 
 that notwithstanding the lapse of ten whole centuries 
 of English time, at this very day the bourn of many a 
 pilgrim to the West is the Station of Morwenna, or, in 
 simple and Saxon phrase, Morwenstow. So runs the 
 quaint and simple legend of our Tamar-side ; and so 
 ascend into the undated era of the ninth or tenth aQ;e 
 the early Norman arches, font, porch, and piscina of 
 Morwenstow Church. 
 
 The endowment, in abbreviated Latin, still exists in 
 the registry of the diocese. It records that the monks 
 of St John at Bridgewater, in whom the total tithes and 
 glebe-lands of this parish were then vested, had agreed, 
 at the request of Walter Brentingham, the Bishop of 
 Exeter, to endow an altar -priest with certain lands, 
 bounded on the one hand by the sea, and on the other 
 by the Well of St John of the Wilderness, near the 
 church. They surrendered, also, for this endowment 
 the garbse of two bartons of vills, Tidnacomb and Stan- 
 bury, the altarage, and the small tithes of the parish. 
 But the striking point in this ancient document is that, 
 whereas the date of the endowment is a.d. 1296, the
 
 MOKWEXSTOW, 7 
 
 church is therem referred to by name as an old and 
 well-known structure. To such a remote era, therefore, 
 we must assign the Norman relics of antiquity which 
 still survive, and which, although enclosed within the 
 walls and outline of an edifice enlarged and extended at 
 two subsequent periods, have to this day undergone no 
 material change. 
 
 "We proceed to enumerate and describe these features 
 of the first foundation of St Morwenna, and to which 
 I am not disposed to assign a later origin than from 
 A.D. 875 to A.D. 1000. 
 
 First among these is a fine Norman doorway at the 
 southern entrance of the present church. The arch- 
 head is semicircular, and it is sustained on either side 
 by half-piers built in stone, with capitals adorned with 
 different devices ; and the curve is crowned with the 
 zigzag and chevron mouldings. This moulding is sur- 
 mounted by a range of grotesque faces— the mermaid 
 and the dolphin, the whale, and other fellow-creatures 
 of the deep ; for the earliest imagery of the primeval 
 hewers of stone was taken from the sea, in unison with 
 the great sources of the Gospel, — the Sea of Galilee, 
 the fishing men who were to haul the net, and the 
 " catchers of men." The crown of the arch is adorned 
 with a richly carved, and even eloquent, device : two 
 dragons are crouching in the presence of a lamb, 
 and underneath his conquering feet lies their passive 
 chain. 
 
 But it is time for us to unclose the door and enter in. 
 There stands the font in all its emphatic simplicity. 
 A moulded cable girds it on to the mother church ; and 
 the uncouth lip of its circular rim attests its origin in 
 times of a rude taste and unadorned symbolism. For 
 wellnigh ten centuries the Gospel of the Trinity has
 
 8 MOinVENSTOW. 
 
 sounded over tliis silent cell of stone, and from the 
 AVell of St John the stream has glided in, and the water 
 gushed withal, while another son or daughter has hcen 
 added to the Christian family. Before us stand the 
 three oldest arches of the Church in ancient Cornwall. 
 They curve upon piers built in channelled masonry, a 
 feature of Norman days which presents a strong con- 
 trast with the grooved pillars of solid or of a single 
 stone in succeeding styles of architecture. The west- 
 ern arch is a simple semicircle of dunstone from the 
 shore, so utterly unadorned and so severe in its design 
 that it might be deemed of Saxon origin, were it not 
 for its alliance with the elaborate Norman decoration 
 of the other two. These embrace again, and embody 
 the ripple of the sea and the monsters that take their 
 pastime in the deep waters. But there is one very 
 graphic " sermon in stone " twice repeated on the curve 
 and on the shoulder of the arch. Our forefathers called 
 it (and our people inherit their phraseology) "The 
 Grin of Arius." The origin of the name is this. It is 
 said that the final development of every strong and 
 baleful passion in the human countenance is a fierce 
 and angry laugh. In a picture of the Council of 
 Nicrea, which is said still to exist, the balllcd Arius is 
 shown among the doctors with his features convulsed 
 into a strong and demoniac spasm of malignant mirth. 
 Hence it became one of the usages among the graphic 
 imagery of interior decoration to depict the heretic as 
 mocking the mysteries with that glare of derision and 
 gesture of disdain, which admonish and instruct, by the 
 very name of " The Grin of Arius." Thence were de- 
 rived the lolling tongue and the mocking mouth whicli 
 are still preserved on the two corbels of stone in tliis 
 early Norman work. To this period we must also allot
 
 MOKWENSTOAV. 9 
 
 the piscina, wliicli was discovered aud rescued from 
 desecration l)y the present vicar. 
 
 The chancel wall one day sounded hollow when 
 struck ; the mortar was removed, and underneath there 
 appeared an arched aperture, which had been filled up 
 with jumbled carved work and a crushed drain. It 
 was cleared out, and so rebuilt as to occupy the exact 
 site of its former existence. It is of the very earliest 
 type of Christian architecture, and, for aught we know, it 
 may be the oldest piscina in all the land. At all events, 
 it can scarcely have seen less than a thousand years. 
 It perpetuates the original form of this appanage of the 
 chancel ; for the horn of the Hebrew altar, as is well 
 known to architectural students, was in shape and in 
 usage the primary type of the Christian piscina. These 
 horns were four, one at each corner, and in outline like 
 the crest of a dwarf pillar, with a cup-shaped mouth 
 and a grooved throat, to receive and to carry down the 
 superfluous blood and water of tlie sacrifices into a 
 cistern or channel underneath. Hence was derived 
 the ecclesiastical custom that, whenever the chalice or 
 other vessel had been rinsed, the water was reverently 
 poured into the piscina, which was usually built into a 
 carved niche of the southward chancel wall. Such is 
 the remarkable relic of former times which still exists 
 in Morwenstow Church, verifying, by the unique and 
 remote antiquity of its pillared form, its own primeval 
 origin. 
 
 But among the features of this sanctuary none exceed 
 in singular and eloquent symbolism the bosses of tlie 
 chancel roof. Every one of these is a doctrine or a dis- 
 cipline engraven in the wood by some Bezaleel or Aho- 
 liab of early Christian days. Among these the Norman 
 rose and the fieiii'-de-lis have frequent pre-eminence.
 
 10 MORWENSTOW. 
 
 The diu', from llic rose of Sliaroii downward, is tlio 
 pictured typo of our Lord; tlic oilier, whether as tlic 
 lotus of the Nile or tlie lily of tlie vale, is the type of 
 His Virgin Mother; and liotli of these iioral decorations 
 were eni})loyed as ecclesiastical emblems centuries be- 
 fore they were assumed into the shields of Normandy 
 or England. Another is the double-necked eaule, the 
 bird of the Holy Ghost in the patriarchal and Mosaic 
 periods of revelation, just as the dove afterwards be- 
 came in the dnys of the Gospel ; and mythic writers 
 having asserted that when Elisha sought and obtained 
 from liis master " a double portion of Elijah's spirit," 
 this miracle was portrayed and perpetuated in architec- 
 tural symbolism by the two necks of the eagle of Elisha. 
 Four faces cluster on another boss, — three with mascu- 
 line features, and one with the softer impress of a female 
 countenance, a typical assemblage of the Trinity and the 
 Mother of God. Again we mark the tracery of that 
 "]3iety of the birds," as devout writers have named the 
 fabled usage of the pelican. She is shown baring and 
 rending her own veins to nourish with her blood her 
 thirsty offspring, — a group which so graphically inter- 
 prets itself to the eye and mind of a Christian man 
 that it needs no interpretation. 
 
 But very remarkable, in the mid-roof, is the boss of 
 the pentacle of Solomon. This was the five-angled 
 figure which was engraven on an emerald, and where- 
 with he ruled the demons ; for they were the vassals of 
 his mighty seal, the five angles in their original myth- 
 icism, embracing as they did the unutterable name, 
 meant, it may be, the fingers of Omnipotence as the 
 symbolic Hand subsequently came forth in shadows on 
 Lelshazzar's wall. Be this as it may, it was the con- 
 current belief of the Eastern nations that the sigil of
 
 MOKWENSTOW. 1 1 
 
 the "Wise King was the source and instrument of his 
 supernatural power. So Heber writes in his " Pales- 
 tine "— 
 
 " To him Avere known, so Hagar's offspring tell, 
 The powerful sigil and the starry spell : 
 Hence all his might, for who could these oppose 1 
 And Tadmor thus and Syrian Balbec rose." 
 
 Hence it is that w'e find this mythic figure, in deco- 
 rated delineation, as the signal of tlie boundless might 
 of llim whose Church bends over all, the pentacle of 
 Omnipotence ! Akin to this graphic imagery is the 
 shield of David, the tlieme of another of our chancel- 
 bosses. Here the outline is six-angled: Solomon's 
 device with one angle more, which, I would submit, 
 was added in order to suggest another doctrine — the 
 manliood taken into God, and so to become a typical 
 prophecy of the Incarnation. The framework of these 
 bosses is a cornice of vines. The root of the vines on 
 each w^all grows from the altar-side ; the stem travels 
 outward across the screen towards the nave. There 
 tendrils cling and clusters bend, while angels sustain 
 the entire tree. 
 
 " Hearken ! there is in Old Morwenna's shrine, 
 A lonely sanctuary of the Saxon days, 
 Reared by the Severn Sea for prayer and praise,^ 
 
 Amid the carved work of tlie roof a vine. 
 Its root is where the eastern sunbeams fall 
 First in the chancel, then along the wall, 
 
 Slowly it travels on — a leafy line, 
 
 With here and there a cluster ; and anon 
 
 ]\Iore and more grapes, until the growth hath gone 
 
 Through arch and aisle. Hearken ! and heed the sign ; 
 See at tlie altar-side the steadfast root, 
 Mark well the branches, count the summer Iruit. 
 
 So let a meek and faithful heart be thine. 
 
 And gather I'rom that tree a parable divine !"
 
 12 MORWENSTOW. 
 
 A screen divides the deep find narrow chancel from the 
 nave. A scroll of ricli device runs across it, wherein 
 deer and oxen browse on the leaves of a hudding vine. 
 Both of these animals are the well-known emblems of 
 the baptised, and the sacramental tree is the type of the 
 Church grafted into God. 
 
 A strange and striking acoustic result is accomplished 
 by this and by similar chancel-screens : they act as the 
 tympanum of the structure, and increase and reverber- 
 ate the volume of sound. The voice uttered at the 
 altar-side smites the hollow work of the screen, and is 
 carried onward, as by some echoing instrument, into the 
 nave and aisles ; so that the lattice-work of the chancel, 
 whicli at first thought miglit appear to impede the 
 transit of the voice, does in reality grasp and deliver 
 into stronger echo the ministry of tone. 
 
 Just outside the screen, and at the step of the nave, 
 is the grave of a priest. It is identified by the reversed 
 position of the carved cross on the stone, which also 
 indicates the self-same attitude in tlie corpse. The 
 head is laid down toward the east, while in all secular 
 interment the head is turned to the west. Until the 
 era of the Reformation, or possibly to a later date, the 
 head of the priest upon the bier for burial, and after- 
 wards in the grave, was always placed " versus altare " ; 
 and, according to all ecclesiastical usage, the discipline 
 was doctrinal also. The following is the reason as laid 
 down by Durandus and other .writers. Because the 
 east, " the gate of the morning," is the keblah of Chris- 
 tian hope, inasmuch as the Messiah, whose symbolic 
 name was "The Orient," thence arrived, and thence, 
 also, will return on the chariots of cloud for the Judg- 
 ment : we therefore place our departed ones with their 
 heads westward, and their feet and faces towards the
 
 MORWENSTOW. 1 3 
 
 eastern sky, that at the outshine of the Last Day, and 
 the sound of the archangel, they may start from their 
 dust, like soldiers from their sleep, and stand up before 
 the Son of man suddenly ! But the apostles were to 
 sit on future thrones and to assist at the Judoment : 
 the Master was to arrive for doom amid His ancients 
 gloriously, and the saints were to judge the world. 
 These prophecies were symbolised by the burial of the 
 clergy, and thence, in contrast with other dead, their 
 posture in the grave. It was to signify that it would 
 be their ' office to arise and to " follow the Lord in the 
 air," when He shall arrive from the east and pass on- 
 ward, gathering up His witnesses toward the west. 
 Thus, in the posture of the departed multitudes, the 
 sign is, " "We look for the Son of man : ad Orientem 
 Judah." And in the attitude of His appointed minis- 
 ters, thus saith the legend on the tombs of His priests, 
 " They arose and followed Him." 
 
 The eastern window of the chancel, as its legend 
 records, is the pious and dutiful oblation of Iludolph, 
 Baron Clinton, and Georgiana Elizabeth his wife. The 
 central figure embodies the legend of St Morwenna, 
 who stands in the attitude of the teacher of the Prin- 
 cess Edith, daughter of Ethel wolf the Founder King; 
 on the one side is shown St Peter, and on the other 
 St Paul. The upper spandrels are filled with a Syrian 
 lamb, a pelican with her brood, and the three first 
 letters of the Saviour's name. The window itself is the 
 recent offering of two noble minds ; and while on this 
 theme we may be pardoned for the natural boast that 
 tlie patrons of this chancel have called by the name 
 of Morwenna one of the fair and graceful daui>hters 
 
 o o 
 
 of their house. *' Nomen, omen," was the Eoman say- 
 ing, — "Xomen, numen," be our proverb now! But
 
 14 MORWKNSTOW. 
 
 before we proceed to descend tlic three steps of the 
 chancel floor, so obviously typical of Faith, nope, and 
 Charity, let us look westward through the tower-arch; 
 and as we look we discover tliat the builders, either 
 by chance or by design, liave turned aside or set out 
 of proportional place the western window of the tower. 
 Is this really so, or does the wall of tlie cliancel 
 swerve ? The deviation was intended, nor without 
 an error could we render the crooked straight. And 
 the reason is said to be this: when our Eedeenier 
 died, at the utterance of the word TeTeXearai, "It is 
 done ! " His head declined towards His rioht shoulder, 
 and in that attitude He chose to die. Now it was to 
 commemorate this drooping of the Saviour's head, to 
 record in stone this eloquent gesture of our Lord, that 
 the "wise in heart," wlio traced this church in the 
 actual outline of a cross, departed from the precise 
 rules of architect and carpenter. 
 
 The southern aisle, dedicated to St John the Baptist, 
 with its granite and dunstone pillars, is of the later 
 Decorated order, and is remarkable for its sinoular 
 variety of material in stone. Granite pillars are sur- 
 mounted by arches of dunstone ; and, vice versd, dun- 
 stone arches by pillared granite. This is again a 
 striking example of doctrine proclaimed in structure, 
 and is symbolic of the fact that the Spiritual Church 
 gathered into one body every hue and kind of belief ; 
 whereas "Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, 
 bond and free," were to be all one in Christ Jesus : so 
 the material building personified, in its various and 
 visible embrace, one Church to grasp, and a single roof 
 to bend over all. This, the last addition to the ancient 
 sanctuary of St Morwenna, bears on the capital of a 
 pillar the date a.d. 1475, and thus the total structure
 
 MOmVENSTOW. 1 5 
 
 stands a graphic mouument of the growth and stature 
 of a scene of ancient worship, which had been embodied 
 and completed before the invention of printing and 
 other modern arts had worked their revolution upon 
 Western Europe. 
 
 The worshipper must descend three steps of stone as 
 he enters into this aisle of St John ; and this gradation 
 is intended to recall the time and the place where the 
 multitude went down into the river of Dan " at Beth- 
 abara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptising." 
 
 The churchyard of Morwenstow is the scene of other 
 features of a remote antiquity. The roof of the total 
 church — chancel, nave, northern and southern aisles — 
 is of wood. Shingles of rended oak occupy the place of 
 the usual, but far more recent, tiles which cover other 
 churches; and it is not a little illustrative of the 
 antique usages of this remote and lonely sanctuary, 
 that no change has been wrought, in the long lapse of 
 ages, in this unique and costly, but fit and durable, 
 roofing. It supplies a singular illustration of the Syriac 
 version of the 90th Psalm, wherein, with prophetic ref- 
 erence to these commemorations of the deathbed of the 
 Messias, it is written, " Lord, Thou hast been our roof 
 from generation to generation." 
 
 The northern side of the churchyard is, according to 
 ancient usage, devoid of graves. This is the common 
 result of an unconscious sense among the people of the 
 doctrine of regions — a thought coeval with the inspira- 
 tion of the Christian era. This is their division. The 
 east was held to be the realm of the oracles, the especial 
 gate of the throne of God ; the west was the domain of 
 the peoyjle — the Galilee of all nations was there ; the 
 south, the land of the mid-day, was sacred to tilings 
 heavenly and divine; but the north was the devoted
 
 1 6 MORWENSTOW. 
 
 region of Satan and his hosts, the lair of the demon and 
 his haunt. In some of our ancient churches, and in 
 the churcli of Wellcombe, a hamlet bordering on Mor- 
 wenstow, over against the font, and in the northern 
 wall, tliere is an entrance named the Devil's door : it 
 was thrown open at every baptism, at the Eenunciation, 
 for the escape of the fiend ; while at every other time 
 it was carefully closed. Hence, and because of the 
 doctrinal suggestion of the ill-omened scenery of the 
 northern grave-ground, came the old dislike to sepul- 
 ture on the north side, so strikingly visible around this 
 church. The events of the last twenty years have 
 added fresh interest to God's acre, for such is th^e%»t 
 measure of the grave-ground of St Morwenna. Along 
 and beneath the southern trees, side by side, are the 
 graves of between thirty and forty seamen, hurled by 
 the sea, in shipwreck, on the neighbouring rocks, and 
 gathered up and buried there by the present vicar and 
 his people. The crews of three lost vessels, cast away 
 upon the rocks of the glebe and elsewhere, are laid at 
 rest in this safe and silent ground. A legend for one 
 recording-stone thus commemorates a singular scene. 
 The figurehead of the brig Caledonia, of Arbroath, in 
 Scotland, stands at the graves of her crew, in the church- 
 yard of Morwenstow : — 
 
 " We laid them in their lowly rest, 
 
 The strangers of a distant shore ; 
 We smoothed the green turf on their breast, 
 
 'Mid balHed ocean's angry roar ! 
 And there — the relique of the storm — 
 We fixed fair Scotland's figured form. 
 
 She watclies by her bold — her brave — 
 Her shield towards the fatal sea ;
 
 MORWENSTOW, 17 
 
 Their cherished lady of the wave 
 Is guardian of their memor}^ ! 
 Stern is her look, but calm, for there 
 No gale can rend, or billow bear. 
 
 Stand, silent image, stately stand ! 
 
 Where sighs shall breathe and tears be shed ; 
 And many a heart of Cornish land 
 
 Will soften for the stranijer-dead. 
 They came in paths of storm — they found 
 This quiet home in Christian ground." 
 
 Half-way clown the principal pathway of the church- 
 yard is a granite altar-tomb. It was raised, in all like- 
 lihood, for the old " month's mind," or " year's mind," 
 of the dead : and it records a sad parochial history of 
 the former time. It was about the middle of the six- 
 teenth century that John Manning, a large landowner 
 of Morwenstow, wooed and won Christiana Kempthorne, 
 the vicar's daughter. Her father was also a wealthy 
 landlord of the parish in that day. Their marriage 
 united in their own hands a broad estate, and in the 
 midst of it the brideo'room built for his bride the manor- 
 house of Stanbury, and labelled the door-heads and the 
 hearths with the blended initials of the married pair. ' 
 It was a great and a joyous day when they were wed, 
 and the bride was led home amid all the solemn and 
 festal observances of the time. There were liturgical 
 benedictions of the mansion-house, the hearth, and tlie 
 marriage-bed ; for a large estate and a high place for 
 their future lineage had been blended in the twain. 
 Five montlis afterwards, on his homeward way from the 
 hunting-field, John IManning was assailed by a mad 
 bull, and gored to death not far from his home. His 
 bride, maddened at the siglit of her husband's corpse, 
 became prematurely a mother and died ! They were 
 
 B
 
 18 MOUWENSTOW. 
 
 laid, side by side, ^itli their Innied joys and blighted 
 hopes, underneath this altar-tomb — whereon the simple 
 legend records that there lie "John Manning and 
 Christiana his wife, wlio died a.d. 1546, without 
 living issue." 
 
 AVhen the vicar of the parish arrived, in the year 
 1836, he brought witli him, among other carved oak 
 furniture, a bedstead of Spanish chestnut, inlaid and 
 adorned with ancient veneer : and it was set up, un- 
 wittingly, in a room of the vicarage which looked out 
 upon the tombs. In the right-hand panel of the frame- 
 work, at the head, was grooved in the name of John 
 Manning ; and in the place of the wife, the left hand, 
 Christiana Manning, with their marriage date between. 
 Nor w^as it discovered until afterwards that this was the 
 very couch of wedded benediction, a relic of the great 
 Stanbury marriage, which had been brought back and 
 set up within sight of the unconscious grave ; and thus 
 that the sole surviving records of the bridegroom and 
 the bride stood side by side, the bedstead and the tomb, 
 the first and the last scene of their early hope and their 
 final rest. 
 
 Another and a lowlier grave l^ears on its recording- 
 stone a broken snatch of antique rhythm, interwoven 
 with modern verse. A young man of this rural people, 
 when he lay a-dying, found solace in his intervals of 
 pain in the remembered echo of, it may be, some long- 
 forgotten dirge ; and he desired that the words which 
 so haunted his memory might somehow or other be en- 
 graved on his stone. He died, and his parish priest 
 fulfilled his desire by causing the following death-verse 
 to be set up where he lies. We shall close our legends 
 of INIorwenstow with these simple lines. The fragment
 
 MOKWENSTOW. 19 
 
 which dung to the dying man's memory was the first 
 only of these lines : — 
 
 " ' Sing ! from the chamber to the grave !' 
 Thus did the dead man say, — 
 ' A sound of melody I crave 
 Upon my burial -day. 
 
 ' Bring forth some tuneful instrument, 
 
 And let your voices rise : 
 My spirit listened as it went 
 
 To music of the skies ! 
 
 ' Sing sweetly while you travel on, 
 
 And keep the funeral slow : 
 The angels sing where I am gone ; 
 
 And you should sing below ! 
 
 ' Sing from the threshold to the porch. 
 
 Until you hear the bell ; 
 And sing you loudly in the church 
 
 The Psalms I love so well. 
 
 ' Then bear me gently to my grave : 
 
 And as you pass along, 
 Kemember, 'twas my wish to have 
 
 A pleasant funeral-song ! 
 
 ' So eartli to earth — and dust to dust — 
 
 And though my bones decay. 
 My soul shall sing among the just, 
 
 Until the Judgment-day ! ' "
 
 THE FIRST COENISII MOLE.^ 
 
 A MORALITY FROM THE ROdKY LAND. 
 
 A LONELY life for the dark and silent mole ! Day is 
 to her night. She glides along her narrow vaults, 
 unconscious of the glad and glorious scenes of earth and 
 air and sea. She was born, as it were, in a grave ; and 
 in one long, living sepulchre she dwells and dies. Is 
 not existence to her a kind of doom ? Wherefore is 
 she thus a dark, sad exile from the blessed light of day ? 
 Hearken ! 
 
 Here, in our bleak old Cornwall, the first mole was 
 once a lady of the land. Her abode was in the far west, 
 among the hills of Morwenna, beside the Severn Sea. 
 She was the daughter of a lordly race, the only child of 
 her mother ; and the father of the house was dead : her 
 name was Alice of the Combe. Fair was she and 
 comely, tender and tall; and she stood upon the 
 threshold of her youth. But most of all did men mar- 
 vel at the glory of her large blue eyes. They were, to 
 
 1 From ' Notes aud Queries,' First Series, voL ii. p. 225. 1850.
 
 THE FIEST CORNISH MOLE. 21 
 
 look upon, like the summer waters, when the sea is soft 
 with light. They were to her motlier a joy, and to the 
 maiden lierself, ah ! hcnedicite, a pride. She trusted in 
 the loveliness of those eyes, and in her face and features 
 and form ; and so it was that the damsel was wont to 
 pass the whole summer day in the choice of rich apparel 
 and precious stones and gold. Howbeit this was one of 
 the ancient and common usages of those old departed 
 days. Now, in the fashion of her stateliness and in the 
 hue and texture of her garments, there was none among 
 the maidens of old Cornwall like Alice of the Combe. 
 Men sought her far and near, but she was to them all, 
 like a form of graven stone, careless and cold. Her soul 
 was set upon a Granville's love, fair Sir Beville of Stowe 
 — the flower of the Cornish chivalry — that noble gentle- 
 man ! That valorous knight ! he was her star. And 
 well might she wait upon his eyes ; for he was the gar- 
 land of the west. The loyal soldier of a Stuart king — 
 he was that stately Granville who lived a hero's life 
 and died a warrior's death ! He was her star. Now 
 there was signal made of banquet in the halls of Stowe, 
 of wassail and dance. The messenger had sped, and 
 Alice of the Combe would be there. Eobes, precious 
 and many, were unfolded from their rest, and the casket 
 poured forth jewel and gem, that the maiden might 
 stand before the knight victorious. It was the day — 
 the hour — the time — her mother sate at her wheel by 
 the hearth — the page waited in the hall — she came 
 down in her loveliness, into the old oak room, and stood 
 before the mirrored glass — her robe was of woven velvet, 
 rich and glossy and soft ; jewels shone like stars in the 
 midnight of her raven hair, and on her hand there 
 gleamed afar off a bright and glorious ring ! She stood 
 — she gazed upon her own fair countenance and form,
 
 22 THE FIRST GORNISU MOLE. 
 
 and worslii])i)i'(l ! Now all good angels succour thee, 
 my Alice, and Ix'nd Sir Beville's soul ! Fain am I to 
 greet thee wedded wife before I die! I do yearn to 
 hold thy children on my knee ! Often shall T pray to- 
 night that the Granville heart may yield ! Ay, thy 
 victory shall be thy mother's prayer, " Prayer ! " was 
 the haughty answer : " now, with the eyes that I see in 
 that glass, and with this vesture meet for a queen, I 
 lack no trusting prayer ! " Saint Juliot shield us ! Ah ! 
 words of fatal sound — there was a sudden shriek, a sob, 
 a cry, and where was Alice of the Combe ? Vanished, 
 silent, gone ! They had heard wild tones of mystic 
 music in the air, there was a rush, a beam of light, and 
 she was gone, and that for ever ! East sought they her, 
 and west, in northern paths and south ; but she was 
 never more seen in the lands. Her mother wept till 
 she had not a tear left; none sought to comfort her, for 
 it was vain. Moons waxed and waned, and the crones 
 by the cottage hearth had whiled away many a shadowy 
 nidit with tales of Alice of the Combe. But at the 
 last, as the gardener in the pleasaunce leaned one day on 
 his spade, he saw among the roses a small round hillock 
 of earth, such as he had never seen before, and upon it 
 something which shone. It was her ring ! It was the 
 very jewel she had worn the day she vanished out of 
 sight ! They looked earnestly upon it, and they saw 
 within the border, for it was wide, the tracery of certain 
 small fine runes in the ancient Cornish tongue, which 
 said — 
 
 " Beryan erde 
 Oyn imd perde ! " 
 
 Then came the priest of the place of Morwenna, a 
 grey and silent man ! He had served long years at his
 
 THE FIKST COENISH MOLE. 23 
 
 lonely altar, a M'orn and solitary form. But he had 
 been wise in language in his youth, and men said that 
 he heard and understood voices in the air when spirits 
 speak and glide. He read and he interpreted thus the 
 legend on the ring, — 
 
 " The earth must hide 
 Both eyes and Pride ! " 
 
 Xow as on a day he uttered these words, in the pleas- 
 aunce, by the mound, on a sudden there was among the 
 grass a low faint cry. They beheld, and oh, wondrous 
 and strange ! There was a small dark creature, clothed 
 in a soft velvet skin in texture and in hue like the Lady 
 Alice her robe, and they saw, as it groped into the earth, 
 that it moved along without eyes, in everlasting night ! 
 Then the ancient man wept, for he called to mind many 
 things and saw what they meant ; and he showed them 
 how that this was the maiden, who had been visited 
 with a doom for her Pride ! Therefore her rich array 
 had been changed into the skin of a creeping thing ; 
 and her large proud eyes were sealed up, and she her- 
 self had become 
 
 The Fikst Mole of the hillocks of Cornwall ! 
 
 Ah, woe is me and well-a-day ! that damsel so stately 
 and fair, sweet Lady Alice of the Combe, should become, 
 for a judgment, the dark mother of tlie Moles ! Now 
 take ye good heed, Cornish maidens, how ye put on vain 
 apparel to win love ! And cast down your eyes, all ye 
 damsels of the west, and look meekly on the ground ! 
 Be ye ever good and gentle, tender and true ; and when 
 ye see your own image in the glass, and ye begin to be 
 lifted up witli the loveliness of that shadowy thing, call
 
 24 THE FIRST CORNISH MOLE. 
 
 to iiiind Llie iiKiideii of the xale of Morweiina, her noble 
 eyes and comely countenance, her vesture of price, and 
 the glittering ring ! Set ye by the wheel as of old they 
 sate, and when ye draw forth the lengthening wool, sing 
 ye evermore and say 
 
 " Beryan eide 
 Oyn luul pei'de ! "
 
 THE GAUGEE'S POCKET. 
 
 'r 1 
 
 POOE old Tristram Pentire ! How he comes np 
 before me as I pronounce Lis name ! That light, 
 active, half-stooping form, bent as though he had a 
 brace of kegs upon his shoulders still ; those thin, grey, 
 rusty locks that fell upon a forehead seamed with 
 the wrinkles of threescore years and five ; the cunning 
 glance that questioned in his eye, and that nose carried 
 always at half-cock, with a red blaze along its ridge, 
 scorched by the departing footstep of the fierce fiend 
 Alcohol, when he fled before the reinforcements of the 
 coast-guard. 
 
 He was the last of the smugglers ; and when I took 
 possession of my glebe, I hired him as my servant-of- 
 all-work, or rather no-work, about ihe house, and there 
 he rollicked away the last few years of his careless 
 existence, in all the pomp and idleness of " The parson's 
 man," He had taken a bold part in every landing on 
 the coast, man and boy, full forty years; throughout 
 which time all kinds of men had largely trusted him 
 
 1 From ' Household Words,' vol. vi. pp. 515 517. 1853.
 
 26 THE GAUGKR'S rOCKKT. 
 
 with tlieir brandy and their lives, and true and faithful 
 had ho been to tlieni, as sheath to steel. 
 
 Gradually he grew attached to me, and I could but 
 take an interest in him. I endeavoured to work some 
 softening change in him, and to awaken a certain sense 
 of the errors of his former life. Sometimes, as a sort of 
 condescension on his part, he brought himself to con- 
 cede and to acknowledge, in his own quaint, rambling 
 way— 
 
 " Well, sir, I do think, when I come to look back, 
 and to consider what lives we nsed to live, — drunk all 
 night and idle abed all day, cursing, swearing, fighting, 
 gambling, lying, and always prepared to shet [shoot] the 
 ganger, — T do really believe, sir, we surely was in sin ! " 
 
 But, whatever contrite admissions to this extent were 
 extorted from old Tristram by misty glimpses of a moral 
 sense and by his desire to gratify his master, there were 
 two points on which he was inexorably firm. The one 
 was, that it was a very guilty practice in the authorities 
 to demand taxes for what he called run goods ; and 
 the otlier settled dogma of his creed was, that it never 
 could be a sin to make away with an exciseman. Battles 
 between Tristram and myself on these themes were 
 frequent and fierce ; but I am bound to confess that he 
 always managed, somehow or other, to remain master 
 of the field. Indeed, what Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 could be prepared to encounter the triumphant demand 
 with which Tristram smashed to atoms my suggestions 
 of morality, political economy, and finance ? He would 
 listen with apparent patience to all my solemn and 
 secular pleas for the revenue, and then down he came 
 upon me with the unanswerable argument — 
 
 " But why should the king tax good liquor ? If they 
 must have taxes, why can't they tax something else ? "
 
 THE GAUCtER'S pocket. 27 
 
 My efforts, however, to soften and remove his doc- 
 ■trinal prejudice as to the unimportance, in a moral 
 point of view, of putting the officers of his Majesty's 
 revenue to death, were equally unavailing. Indeed, to 
 my infinite chagrin, I found that I had lowered myself 
 exceedingly in his estimation by what he called stand- 
 ing up for the exciseman. 
 
 " There had been divers passons," he assured me, " in 
 his time in the parish, and very learned clergy they 
 were, and some very strict ; and some would preach 
 one doctrine and some another ; and there was one that 
 had very mean notions about running goods, and said 
 'twas a wrong thing to do ; but even he, and the 
 rest, never took part witli the gauger — never ! And 
 besides," said old Trim, with another demolishing 
 appeal, " wasn't the exciseman always ready to put its 
 to death when he could ? " 
 
 With such a theory it was not very astonishing — 
 although it startled me at the time — that I was once 
 suddenly assailed, in a pause of his spade, with the 
 puzzling inquiry, " Can you tell me the reason, sir, that 
 no grass will ever grow upon the grave of a man that 
 is hanged unjustly ? " 
 
 " Xo, indeed, Tristram. I never heard of the fact 
 before." 
 
 " "Well, I thought every man know'd that from the 
 Scripture : why, you can see it, sir, every Sabbath-day. 
 That grave on the right hand of the path, as you go 
 down to the porch-door, that heap of airth with no 
 growth, not one blade of grass on it — that's Will Pooly's 
 grave that was hanged unjustly." 
 
 "Indeed! but how came such a si locking deed to be 
 done ? " 
 
 "Why, you see, sir, they got poor Will down to
 
 28 'II IK CAUOKIi's POCKET. 
 
 J'xidniin, all among strangers, and tliere was bribery, 
 and false swearing; and an unjust judge came down — 
 and the jury all bad rascals, tin-and-copper-men — and 
 so they all agreed together, and they hanged poor Will. 
 lUit his friends begged the body and brought the corpse 
 home here to his own parish ; and they turfed the grave, 
 and they sowed the grass twenty times over, but 'twas 
 all no use, nothing would ever grow — he was hanged 
 unjustly." 
 
 " Well but, Tristram, you have not told me all this 
 while what this man Pooley was accused of : what had 
 ■ he done ? " 
 
 " Done, sir ! Done ? Nothing whatever but killed 
 the exciseman !" 
 
 The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance, were inimi- 
 tably characteristic of the hardened old smuggler ; and 
 then down went the spade with a plunge of defiance, 
 and as I turned away, a snatch of his favourite song 
 came carolling after me like the ballad of a victory: — 
 
 " On, through the ground-sea, shove ! 
 Light on the larboard bow ! 
 There's a nine-knot breeze above. 
 And a sucking tide below ! 
 
 Hush ! for the beacon fails : 
 
 The skulking gauger's by. 
 Down with your studding-sails, 
 
 Let jib and foresail fly ! 
 
 Hurrah for the light once more ! 
 
 Point her for Shark's-Nose Head ; 
 Our friends can keep the shore, 
 
 Or the skulking gauger's dead. 
 
 On, through the ground-sea, shove ! 
 
 Light on the larboard bow ! 
 There's a nine-knot breeze above, 
 
 And a sucking tide below ! "
 
 THE GAUGER'S pocket. 29 
 
 AmoiiG: the " kinsf's men," whose achievements 
 haunted the old man's memory witli a sense of mingled 
 terror and dislike, a certain Parminter and his dog 
 occupied a principal place. This officer appeared to 
 have been a kind of Frank Kennedy in his way, and 
 to have chosen for his watchword the old Irish signal 
 " Dare ! " 
 
 " Sir," said old Tristram once, with a burst of indig- 
 nant wrath — " Sir, that villain Parminter and his dog 
 murdered with their shetting-irons no less than seven 
 of our people at divers times, and they peacefully at 
 work in their calling all the while ! " 
 
 I found on further inquiry that this man Parminter 
 was a bold and determined officer, whom no threats 
 could deter and no money bribe. He always went 
 armed to the teeth, and was followed by a large, fierce, 
 and dauntless dog, which he had thought fit to call 
 Satan. This animal he had trained to carry in his 
 mouth a carbine or a loaded club, which, at a signal 
 from his master, Satan brought to the rescue. " Ay, 
 they was bold audacious rascals — that Parminter and 
 his dog — but he went rather too far one day, as I sup- 
 pose," was old Tristram's chuckling remark, as he 
 leaned on his spade, and I stood by. 
 
 " Did he, Trim ; in what way ? " 
 
 "Why, sir, the case was this. Our people had a 
 landing down at Melluach, in Johnnie Mathey's hole, 
 and Parminter and his dog found it out. So they got 
 into the cave at ebb tide, and laid in wait, and when 
 the first boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took 
 the ground, down storms Parminter, shouting for Satan 
 to follow. The dog knew better, and held back, they 
 said, for the first time in all liis life: so in leaps Par- 
 minter smash into the boat alone, with his cutlass
 
 30 THE G auger's POCKET. 
 
 drawn ; l)ut " (wilh ;i kind of inward ecstasy) " he didn't 
 du much harm to the boat's crew " 
 
 " Because," as I interposed, " they took him off to 
 their ship ? " 
 
 " No, not they ; not a bit of it. Their blood was up, 
 poor fellows ; so they just pulled Parminter down in 
 the boat, and chopped off his head on the gunwale ! " 
 
 The exclamation of horror with which I received this 
 recital elicited no kind of sympathy from Tristram. He 
 went on quietly with his work, merely moralising thus 
 — " Ay, better Parminter and his dog had gone now and 
 then to the Gauger's Pocket at Tidnacombe Cross, and 
 held their peace — better far." 
 
 The term " The Gauger's Pocket," in old Tristram's 
 phraseology, had no kind of reference to any place of 
 deposit in the apparel of the exciseman, but to a certain 
 large grey rock, which stands upon a neighbouring 
 moorland, not far from the cliffs which overhang the 
 sea. It bears to this day, among the parish people, the 
 name of the Witan-stone — that is to say, in the lan- 
 guage of our forefathers, the Eock of Wisdom ; because 
 it was one of the places of usual assemblage for the 
 Grey Eldermen of British or of Saxon times — a sort of 
 speaker's chair or woolsack in the local parliaments. It 
 was, moreover, there is no doubt, one of the natural 
 altars of the old religion ; and, as such, it is greeted 
 with a fond and legendary reverence still. Hither Trim 
 guided me one day, to show, as he told me, " the great 
 rock set up by the giants, so they said — long, long ago, 
 before there was any bad laws such as they make now." 
 It was indeed a wild, strange, striking scene ; and one 
 to lift and fill, and, moreover, to subdue the tliought- 
 ful mind. Around was the wild, half-cultured moor ; 
 yonder, within reach of sight and ear, that boundless,
 
 THE G auger's POCKET. 31 
 
 breathing sea, with that shout of waters which came 
 up ever aucl anon to recall the strong metre of the 
 Greek — 
 
 " Hark ! how old ocean laudis Avitli all his waves ! " 
 
 And there, before me, stood the tall, vast, solemn stone : 
 grey and awful with the myriad memorials of ancient 
 ages, when the white fathers bowed around the rocks 
 and worshipped ! 
 
 "And now, sir," clashed in a shrill, sharp voice, "let 
 me show you the wonderfullest thing in all the place, 
 and that is, the Ganger's Pocket." 
 
 Accordingly I followed my guide, for it seems " I 
 had a dream that was not all a dream," as he led the 
 way to the back of the Witan-stone ; and there, grown 
 over with moss and lichen, with a movable slice of 
 rock to conceal its mouth, old Tristram pointed out, 
 triumphantly, a dry and secret crevice, almost an arm's- 
 length deep. " There, sir," said he, with a joyous 
 twinkle in his eye, — " there have I dropped a little bag 
 of gold, many and many a time, when our people 
 wanted to have the shore quiet and to keep the ex- 
 ciseman out of the way of trouble ; and there he 
 would go, if so be he was a reasonable officer, and the 
 byword used to be, when 'twas all right, one of us 
 would go and meet him, and then say, ' Sir, your 
 pocket is unbuttoned ; ' and he would smile and answer, 
 ' Ay, ay ! but never mind, my man, my money's safe 
 enough;' and thereby we knew that he was a just 
 man, and satisfied, and that the boats could take the 
 roller in peace; and Lliat was tlie very way, sir, it came 
 to pass that this crack in the stone was called for ever- 
 more ' The Ganger's Pocket.' "
 
 THE LTOnT OF OTIfEPt DAYS.^ 
 
 rpHE life and adventures of the Cornish clergy during 
 J- the eighteenth century would form a graphic volume 
 of ecclesiastical lore. Afar off from the din of the noisy 
 world, almost unconscious of the badge-words High 
 Church and Low Church, they dwelt in their quaint 
 grey vicarages by the churchyard wall, the saddened 
 and unsympathising witnesses of those wild, fierce 
 usages of the west which they were utterly powerless 
 to control. The glebe whereon I write has been the 
 scene of many an- unavailing contest in the cause of 
 morality between the clergyman and his flock. One 
 aged parishioner recalls and relates the run — that is, 
 the rescue — of a cargo of kegs underneath the benches 
 and in the tower- stairs of the church. "We bribed 
 Tom Hockaday, the sexton," so the legend ran, "and 
 we had the goods safe in the seats by Saturday night. 
 The parson did wonder at the large congregation, for 
 divers of them were not refijular church-goers at other 
 times ; and if he had known what was going on he 
 
 1 From ' Household ^Vords,' vol. viii. pp. 305, 306. 1853.
 
 THE LIGHT OF OTHEE DAYS. 33 
 
 could not have preached a more suitable discourse, 
 for it was, ' Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.' 
 One of his best sermons ; but there it did not touch us, 
 you see, for we never tasted anything but brandy or 
 gin. Ah ! he was a dear old man our parson, mild as 
 milk; nothing ever put him out. Once I mind, in the 
 middle of morning prayer, there was a buzz down by 
 the porch, and the folks began to get up and go out of 
 church one by one. At last there was hardly three 
 left. So the parson shut the book and took off his sur- 
 plice, and he said to the clerk, ' There is surely some- 
 thing amiss.' And so there certainly was ; for when we 
 came out on the cliff' there was a king's cutter in chase 
 of our vessel, the Black Prince, close under the land, 
 and there was our departed congregation looking on. 
 Well, at last Whorwell, who commanded our trader, ran 
 for the Gullrock (where it was certain death for any- 
 thing to follow him), and the revenue commander 
 sheered away to save his ship. Then off went our hats, 
 and we gave "Whorwell three cheers. So, when there 
 was a little peace, the parson said to us all, 'And now, 
 my friends, let us return and proceed with divine ser- 
 vice.' We did return ; and it was surprising, after all 
 that bustle and uproar, to hear how Parson Trenowth 
 went on, just as nothing had come to pass : ' Here be- 
 ginneth the Second Lesson.' " But on another occasion, 
 the equanimity and forbearance of the parson were 
 sorely tried. He presided, as the custom was, at a parish 
 feast, in cassock and bands, and had, with his white 
 hair and venerable countenance, quite an apostolic 
 aspect and mien. On a sudden, a busy whisper among 
 the farmers at the lower end of the table attracted his 
 notice, interspersed as it was by sundry nods and glances 
 towards himself. At last one bolder than the rest ad- 
 
 c
 
 34 THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. 
 
 dressed him, and said that they had a great wish to ask 
 his reverence a question if he would kindly grant them 
 a reply : it was on a religious subject that they had dis- 
 pute, he said. Tlie bland old man assured them of his 
 readiness to yield them any information or answer in 
 his power. 
 
 " But what was the point in debate ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, we wish to be informed if there were not 
 sins which God Almighty would never forgive ? " 
 
 Surprised and somewhat shocked, he told them " that 
 he trusted there were no transgressions, common to 
 themselves, but, if repented of and abjured, they might 
 clearly hope to be forgiven." But, with a natural curi- 
 osity, he inquired what kind of iniquities they had dis- 
 cussed as too vile to look for pardon. " Why, sir," 
 replied their spokesman, " we thought that if a man 
 should find out where run goods was deposited and 
 should inform the ganger, that such a villain was too 
 bad for mercy." 
 
 How widely the doctrinal discussions of those days 
 differed from our own ! Let us not, however, suppose 
 that all the clergy were as gentle and unobtrusive as 
 Parson Trenowth. A tale is told of an adjacent parish, 
 situate also on the sea-shore, of a more stirring kind. 
 It was full sea in the evening of an autumn day when 
 a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy 
 beach, just above high-water mark. The stranger, who 
 was a native of some inland town, and utterly unac- 
 quainted with Cornwall and its ways, had reached the 
 brink of the tide just as a " landing " was coming off. 
 It was a scene not only to instruct a townsman but also 
 to dazzle and surprise. At sea, just beyond the billows, 
 lay the vessel well moored with anchors at stem and 
 stern. Between the ship and the shore boats laden to
 
 THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. 35 
 
 the ,quuwale passed to and fro. Crowds assembled on 
 the beach to help the cargo ashore. On the one hand 
 a boisterous group surrounded a keg with the head 
 knocked in, for simplicity of access to the good cognac, 
 into which they dipped whatsoever vessel came first to 
 hand : one man had filled his shoe. On the other side 
 they fought and wrestled, cursed and swore. Horrified 
 at what he saw, the stranger lost all self-command, and, 
 oblivious of personal danger, he began to shout, " What 
 a horrible sight ! Have you no shame ? Is there no 
 magistrate at hand ? Cannot any justice of the peace 
 be found in this fearful country ? " 
 
 " No — thanks be to God," answered a hoarse, gruff 
 voice ; " none within eight miles." 
 
 " "Well, then," screamed tlie stranger, " is there no 
 clergyman hereabout ? Does no minister of the parish 
 live among you on this coast ? " 
 
 " Ay ! to be sure there is," said the same deep voice. 
 
 " Well, how far off does he live ? Where is he ? " 
 
 " That's he yonder, sir, with the lanthorn." And sure 
 enough there he stood, on a rock, and poured, with pas- 
 toral diligence, the light of other days on a busy con- 
 cremation.
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OE A CORNISH YICAR.^ 
 
 IT has frequently occurred to my thouglits that the 
 events which have befallen me since my collation 
 to this wild and remote vicarage, on the shore of the 
 billowy Atlantic sea, might not be without interest to 
 the reader of a more refined and civilised region. 
 When I was collated to the incumbency in 18 — , I 
 found myself the first resident vicar for more than a 
 century. My parish was a domain of about seven 
 thousand acres, bounded on the landward border by 
 the course of a curving river, which had its source 
 with a sister stream in a moorland spring within my 
 territory, and, flowing southward, divided two counties 
 in its descent to the sea. My seaward boundary was 
 a stretch of bold and rocky shore, an interchange of 
 lofty headland and deep and sudden gorge, the clifls 
 varying from three hundred to four hundred and fifty 
 feet of perpendicular or gradual height, and the valleys 
 gushing with torrents, which bounded rejoicingly to- 
 wards the sea, and leaped at last, amid a cloud of spray, 
 
 >■ From ' All the Year Round,' vol. xiii. yqx 153-156. 1865.
 
 THE EEMEMBEANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 37 
 
 iuto the waters. So stern and pitiless is this iron- 
 bound coast, that within the memory of one man up- 
 wards of eighty wrecks have been counted within a 
 reach of fifteen miles, with only here and there the 
 rescue of a living man. My people were a mixed 
 multitude of smugglers, wreckers, and dissenters of 
 various hue. A few simple-hearted farmers had clung 
 to the grey old sanctuary of the church and the tower 
 that looked along the sea ; but the bulk of the people, 
 in the absence of a resident vicar, had become the 
 followers of the great preacher of the last century 
 who came down into Cornwall and persuaded the people 
 to alter their sins. I was assured, soon after my arrival, 
 by one of his disciples, wdio led the foray among my 
 flock, that my "parish was so rich in resources for his 
 benefit, that he called it, sir, the garden of our circuit." 
 The church stood on the glebe, and close by the sea. 
 It was an old Saxon station, with additions of Norman 
 structure, and the total building, although of gradual 
 erection, had been completed and consecrated before 
 the middle of the fifteenth century. The vicarage, 
 built by myself, stood, as it were, beneath the sheltering 
 shadow of the walls and tower. My land extended 
 thence to the shore. Here, like the Kenite, I had 
 " built my nest upon the rock," and here my days were 
 to glide away, afar from the noise and bustle of the 
 world, in that which is perhaps the most thankless 
 ofiice in every generation, the effort to do good against 
 their will to our fellow-men. ]\Iine was a perilous 
 warfare. If I had not, like the apostle, to " fight with 
 wild beasts at Ephesus," I had to soothe the wrecker, 
 to persuade the smuggler, and to "handle serpents," 
 in my intercourse with adversaries of many a kind. 
 Thank God! tlie promises which the clergy inherit
 
 38 Tin; remembrances of a coknisii vicar. 
 
 I'rom their Founder cannot fail to be fulfilled. It was 
 never prophesied that they should Ije popular, or 
 wealthy, or successful anidii^- men ; but only that they 
 " should endure to the end," that " their generation 
 should never pass away." Well has this word been 
 kept ! 
 
 Among ray parishioners there were certain individuals 
 who might be termed representative men, — quaint and 
 original characters, who embodied in their own lives 
 the traditions and the usages of the parish. One of 
 these had been for full forty years a wrecker — that 
 is to say, a watcher of the sea and rocks for flotsam 
 and jetsam, and other unconsidered trifles which the 
 waves might turn up to reward the zeal and vigilance 
 of a patient man. His name was Peter Burrow, a man 
 of harmless and desultory life, and by no means identi- 
 fied with the cruel and covetous natives of the strand, 
 with whom it was a matter of pastime to lure a vessel 
 ashore by a treacherous light, or to withhold succour 
 from the seaman struggling with the sea. He was the 
 companion of many of my walks, and the witness with 
 myself of more than one thrilling and perilous scene. 
 Another of my parish notorieties, the hero of contra- 
 band adventure, and agent for sale of smuggled cargoes 
 in bygone times, was Tristam Pentire,i a name known 
 to the readers of these pages. With a merry twinkle 
 of the eye, and in a sharp and ringing tone, it was old 
 Tristam's usage to recount for my instruction such tales 
 of wild adventure and of " derring-do " as would make 
 the foot of an exciseman falter and his cheek turn pale. 
 But both these cronies of mine were men devoid of "uile, 
 and in their most reckless of escapades innocent of mis- 
 chievous harm. It was not long after my arrival in my 
 
 ^ Vide ji. 25 ct seri.
 
 THE KEMEMBEANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 39 
 
 new abode that I was plunged all at once into the midst 
 of a fearful scene of the terrors of the sea. About 
 daybreak of an autumn day I was aroused by a knock 
 at my bedroom-door ; it was followed by the agitated 
 voice of a boy, a member of my household, " Oh, sir, 
 there are dead men on vicarage rocks ! " 
 
 In a momenb I was up, and in my dressing-gown and 
 slippers rushed out. There stood my lad, weeping bit- 
 terly, and holding out to me in his trembling hands a 
 tortoise alive. I found afterwards that he had grasped 
 it on the beach, and brought it in his hand as a strange 
 and marvellous arrival from the waves, but in utter 
 ignorance of what it might be. I ran across my glebe, 
 a quarter of a mile, to the cliffs, and down a frightful 
 descent of three hundred feet to the beach. It was 
 indeed a scene to be looked on once only in a human 
 life. On a ridge of rock, just left bare by the falling 
 tide, stood a man, my own servant ; he had come out to 
 see my flock of ewes, and had found the awful wreck. 
 There he stood, with two dead sailors at his feet, whom 
 he had just drawn out of the water stiff and stark. 
 The bay was tossing and seething with a tangled mass 
 of rigging, sails, and broken fragments of a ship ; the 
 billows rolled up yellow with corn, for the cargo of the 
 vessel had been foreign wheat ; and ever and anon 
 there came up out of the water, as though stretched 
 out with life, a human hand and arm. It was the 
 corpse of another sailor drifting out to sea. " Is there 
 no one alive ? " was my first question to my man. " I 
 thiidv there is, sir," he said, "for just now I thought I 
 heard a cry." I made haste in the direction he pointed 
 out, and on turning a rock, just where a brook of fresh 
 water fell towards the sea, there lay the body of a man 
 in a seaman's garb. He had reached the water faint
 
 40 THE IlEMEMintANCES OF A COIINISII VICAli. 
 
 with thirst, but was too much exhausted to swallow or 
 drink. He opened his eyes at our voices, and as he 
 saw me leaning over him in my cassock-shaped dressing- 
 gown, he sobbed, with a piteous cry, " mon -phe, mon 
 p^rc!" Gradually he revived, and when he had fully 
 come to himself with the help of cordials and food, we 
 gathered from him the mournful tale of his vessel and 
 her wreck. He was a Jersey man by birth, and had 
 been shipped at Malta, on the homeward voyage of the 
 vessel from tlie port of Odessa with corn. I had sent in 
 for brandy, and was pouring it down his throat, when 
 my parishioner, Peter Burrow, arrived. He assisted, 
 at my request, in the charitable office of restoring the 
 exhausted stranger; but when he was refreshed and 
 could stand upon his feet, I remarked tliat Peter did 
 not seem so elated as in common decency I expected 
 he would be. The reason soon transpired. Taking me 
 aside, he whispered in my ear, " Now, sir, I beg your 
 pardon, but if you'll take my advice, now that man 
 is come to himself, if I were you I would let him go 
 his way wherever he will. H you take him into your 
 house, he'll surely do you some harm." Seeing my sur- 
 prise, he went on to explain. " You don't know, sir," 
 he said, " the saying on our coast — 
 
 * Save a stranger from the sea, 
 And he'll turn your enemy.' 
 
 There was one Coppinger cast ashore from a brig that 
 struck up at Hartland, on the Point. Parmer Hamlyn 
 dragged him out of the water and took him home, and 
 was very kind to him. Lord, sir ! he never would leave 
 the house again ! He lived upon the folks a whole year, 
 and at last, lo and behold ! he married the farmer's 
 daughter Elizabeth, and spent all her fortin rollicking
 
 THE KEMEMBEANCES OF A COENISH VICAE. 41 
 
 and racketing, till at last he would tie her to the bed- 
 post and flog her till her father would come down with 
 more money. The old man used to say he wished he'd 
 let Coppiuger lie where he was in the waves, and never 
 laid a finger on him to save his life. Ay, and divers 
 more I've heerd of that never brought no good to they 
 that saved them." 
 
 " And did you ever yourself, Peter," said I, " being, 
 as you have told me, a wrecker so many years — did 
 you ever see a poor fellow clambering up the rock 
 where you stood, and just able to reach your foot or 
 hand, did you ever shove him back into the sea to be 
 drowned ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I declare I never did. And I do believe, 
 sir, if I ever had done such a thing, and given so much 
 as one push to a man in such a case, I think verily that 
 afterwards I should have been troubled and uncomfort- 
 able in my mind." 
 
 " "Well, notwithstanding your doctrine, Peter," said I, 
 " we will take charge of this poor fellow ; so do you lead 
 him into the vicarage and order a bed for him, and wait 
 till I come in." 
 
 I returned to the scene of death and danger, where 
 my man awaited me. He had found, in addition to the 
 two corpses, another dead body jammed under a rock. 
 By this time a crowd of people had arrived from the 
 land, and at my request they began to search anxiously 
 for the dead. It was, indeed, a terrible scene. The 
 vessel, a brig of five hundred tons, had struck, as we 
 afterwards found, at three o'clock that morning, and 
 by the time the wreck was discovered she had been 
 shattered into broken pieces by the fury of the sea. 
 The rocks and the water bristled with fragments of 
 mast and spar and rent timbers; the cordage lay about
 
 42 THE llEMEMBEANCES OF A CORNISH VICAIi. 
 
 in tangled masses. The rollers tumbled in volumes of 
 corn, the wheaten can>;o ; and amidst it all the bodies 
 of tlie helpless dead — that a few brief hours before had 
 walked the deck the stalwart masters of their ship — 
 turned their poor disfigured faces toward the sky, 
 pleading for sepulture. We made a temporary bier of 
 the broken planks, and laid thereon the corpses, de- 
 cently arranged. As the vicar, I led the way, and my 
 people followed with ready zeal as bearers, and in sad 
 procession we carried our dead up the steep cliff, by a 
 difficult path, to await, in a room at my vicarage which 
 I allotted them, the inquest. The ship and her cargo 
 were, as to any tangible value, utterly lost. 
 
 The people of the shore, after having done their best 
 to search for survivors and to discover the lost bodies, 
 gathered up fragments of the wreck for fuel, and shoul- 
 dered them away, — not perhaps a lawful spoil, but a 
 venal transgression when compared with the remem- 
 bered cruelties of Cornish wreckers. Then ensued my 
 interview with the rescued man. His name was Le 
 Daine. I found him refreshed, and collected, and grate- 
 ful. He told me his Tale of the Sea. The captain and 
 all the crew but himself were from Arbroath, in Scot- 
 land. To that harbour also the vessel belonged. She 
 had been away on a two years' voyage, employed in the 
 Mediterranean trade. She had loaded last at Odessa. 
 She touched at Malta, and there Le Daine, who had 
 been sick in the hospital, but recovered, had joined her. 
 There also the captain had engaged a Portuguese cook, 
 and to this man, as one link in a chain of causes, the 
 loss of the vessel might be ascribed. He had been 
 wounded in a street-quarrel the night before the vessel 
 sailed from Malta, and lay disabled and useless in his 
 cabin throughout the homeward voyage. At Falmouth,
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A COENISH VICAR. 43 
 
 whither they were bound for orders, the cook died. 
 The captain and all the crew, except the cabin-boy, 
 went ashore to attend the funeral. During their ab- 
 sence the boy, handling in his curiosity the barometer, 
 had broken the tube, and the whole of the quicksilver 
 had run out. Had this instrument, the pulse of the 
 storm, been preserved, the crew would have received 
 warning of the sudden and unexpected hurricane, and 
 might have stood out to sea. AVhereas they were 
 caught in the chops of the Channel, and thus, by this 
 small incident, the vessel and the mariners found their 
 fate on the rocks of a remote headland in my lonely 
 parish. I caused Le Daine to relate in detail the clos- 
 ing events. 
 
 '•' We received orders," he said, " at Falmouth to make 
 for Gloucester to discharge. The captain, and mate, 
 and another of the crew, were to be married on their 
 return to their native town. They wrote, therefore, to 
 Arbroath from Falmouth, to announce their safe arrival 
 there from their two years' voyage, their intended course 
 to Gloucester, and their hope in about a week to arrive 
 at Arbroath for welcome there." 
 
 But in a day or two after this joyful letter, there 
 arrived in Arbroath a leaf torn out of my pocket-book, 
 and addressed " To the Owners of the Vessel," the Cale- 
 donia of Arbroath, with the brief and thrilling tidings, 
 written by myself in pencil, that I wrote among the 
 fragments of their wrecked vessel, and that the whole 
 crew, except one man, were lost " upon my rocks." My 
 note spread a general dismay in Arbroath, for the crew, 
 from tlie clannish relationship among the Scots, were 
 connected witli a large numl)er of I lie inhabitants. But 
 to return to the touching details of Le Daine. 
 
 "We rounded the Land's End," he said, "that night
 
 44 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR, 
 
 all well, and came up Cliaiinel with a fair wind. The 
 captain turned in. It was my watch. All at once, 
 about nine at night, it began to blow in one moment as 
 if the stoiiii liurst out by signal; the wind went mad; 
 our canvas burst in l)its. We reeved fresh sails ; they 
 went also. At last we were under bare poles. The 
 captain had turned out when the storm began. He sent 
 me forward to look out for Lundy Light. I saw your 
 cliff." (This was a bluff and broken headland just by 
 the southern boundary of my own glebe.) " I sung out, 
 ' Land ! ' I had hardly done so when she struck with a 
 blow, and stuck fast. Then the captain sung out, ' All 
 hands to the maintop ! ' and we all went up. The cap- 
 tain folded his arms, and stood by, silent." 
 
 Here I asked him, anxious to know how they ex- 
 pressed themselves at such a time, " But what was said 
 afterwards, Le Daine ? " 
 
 " Not one word, sir ; only once, when the long-boat 
 went over, I said to the skipper, ' Sir, the boat is gone !' 
 But he made no answer." 
 
 How accurate was Byron's painting — 
 
 " Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave" ! 
 
 "At last there came on a dreadful wave, mast-top 
 high, and away went the mast by the board, and we 
 with it, into the sea. I gave myself up. I was the 
 only man on the ship that could not swim, so where I 
 fell in the water there I lay, I felt the waves beat me 
 and send me on. At last there was a rock under my 
 hand. I clung on. Just then I saw Alick Kant, one 
 of our crew, swimming past. I saw him lay his hand 
 on a rock, and I sung out, ' Hold on, Alick ! ' but a wave 
 rolled and swept him away, and I never saw his face 
 more. I was beaten onward and onward among the
 
 THE REMEMBEANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 45 
 
 rocks and the tide, and at last I felt the ground with 
 my feet. I scrambled on. I saw the cliff, steep and 
 dark, above my head. I climbed up until I reached a 
 kind of platform with grass, and there I fell down flat 
 upon my face, and either I fainted away or I fell asleep. 
 There I lay a long time, and when I awoke it was just 
 the break of day. There was a little yellow flower just 
 under my head, and when I saw that I knew I was on 
 dry laud." This was a plant of the bird's-foot clover, 
 called in old times Our Lady's Finger. He went on : 
 " I could see no house or sign of people, and the country 
 looked to me like some wild and desert island. At last 
 I felt very thirsty, and I tried to get down towards a 
 valley where I thought I should find water ; but before 
 I could reach it I fell and grew faint again, and there, 
 thank God, sir, you found me." 
 
 Such was Le Daine's sad and simple story, and no 
 one could listen unmoved or without a strong feeling 
 of interest and compassion for the poor solitary sur- 
 vivor of his shipmates and crew. The coroner arrived 
 held his 'quest, and the usual verdict of "Wrecked' 
 and cast ashore " empowered me to inter the dead 
 sailors, found and future, from the same vessel, witli 
 the service in the Prayer-book for the Burial of tiie 
 Dead. This decency of sepulture is the result of a 
 somewhat recent statute, passed in the reign of George 
 III. Before that time it was the common usage of 
 the coast to dig, just above high- water mark, a pit on 
 the shore, and therein to cast, without inquest or 
 religious rite, the carcasses of shipwrecked men. My 
 first funeral of these lost mariners was a touching and 
 striking scene. The tliree bodies first found were 
 buried at the same time, liehind the coffins, as they 
 were solemnly borne along the aisle, walked the soli-
 
 46 THE REMEMBKANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 tary mourner, Le Daine, weeping bitterly and aloud. 
 Other eyes were moist, for who could hear unsoftened 
 the ffreetinfi; of the Church to these strantrers from 
 the sea, and tlie " touch that makes the whole earth 
 kin," in the hope we breathed that we, too, might one 
 day " rest as these our brethren did " ? It was well 
 nigli too much for those who served that day. Nor 
 was the interest subdued when, on tlie Sunday after 
 the wreck, at the appointed place in the service, just 
 before the General Thanksgiving, Le Daine rose up 
 from his place, approached the altar, and uttered, 
 in an audible but broken voice, his thanksgiving for 
 his singular and safe deliverance from the perils of 
 the sea. 
 
 The text of the sermon that day demands its history. 
 Some time before, a vessel, the Hero of Liverpool, was 
 seen in distress, in the offing of a neighbouring har- 
 bour, during a storm. The crew, mistaking a signal 
 from the beach, betook themselves to their boat. It 
 foundered, and the whole ship's company, twelve in 
 number, were drowned in sight of the shore. But the 
 stout ship held together, and drifted on to the land so 
 unshattered by the sea that the coast-guard, who went 
 immediately on board, found the fire burning in the 
 cabin. When the vessel came to be examined, they 
 found in one of the berths a Bible, and between its 
 leaves a sheet of paper, whereon some recent hand had 
 transcribed verses the twenty-first, twenty-second, and 
 twenty -third of the thirty -third chapter of Isaiah. 
 The same hand had also marked the passage with a 
 line of ink along the margin. The name of the owner 
 of the book was also found inscribed on tlie fly-leaf. 
 He was a youth of eighteen years of age, the son of 
 a widow, and a statement under his name recorded
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH YICAR, 47 
 
 that the Bible was " a reward for his good conduct in 
 a Sunday-school." This text, so identified and enforced 
 by a hand that soon after grew cold, appeared strangely 
 and strikingly adapted to the funeral of shipwrecked 
 men ; and it was therefore chosen as the theme for our 
 solemn day. The very hearts of the people seemed 
 hushed to hear it, and every eye was turned towards 
 Le Daine, who bowed his head upon his hands and 
 wept. These are the words : " But there the glorious 
 Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and 
 streams ; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither 
 shall gallant ship pass thereby. For the Lord is our 
 judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king ; 
 He will save us. Thy tacklings are loosed ; they could 
 not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread 
 the sail : then is the prey of a great spoil divided ; the 
 lame take the prey." Shall I be forgiven for the 
 vaunt, if I declare that there was not literally a single 
 face that day unmoistened and unmoved ? Few, in- 
 deed, could have borne, without deep emotion, to see 
 and hear Le Daine. He remained as my guest six 
 weeks, and during the whole of this time we sought 
 diligently, and at last we found the whole crew, nine 
 in number. They were discovered, some under rocks, 
 jammed in by the force of the water, so that it took 
 sometimes several ebb-tides, and the strength of many 
 hands, to extricate the corpses. The captain I came 
 upon myself lying placidly upon his back, with his 
 arms folded in the very gesture which Le Daine had 
 described as he stood amid the crew on the maintop. 
 The hand of the spoiler was about to assail him when 
 I suddenly appeared, so tliat I rescued him untouched. 
 Each hand grasped a small poucli or bag. One con- 
 tained his pistols ; tlie other held two little log-reckoners
 
 48 'I'lIF, UEMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 of brass; so that his last thoughts were full of duty to 
 his owners and his ship, and his latest efforts for rescue 
 and defence. He had been manifestly lifted by a billow 
 and hurled against a rock, and so slain; for the victims 
 of our cruel sea are seldom drowned, l)ut beaten to 
 death by violence and the wrath of the billows. We 
 gathered together one poor fellow in five parts ; his 
 limbs had been wrenched off, and his body rent. Dur- 
 ing our search for his remains, a man came up to me 
 with something in his hand, inquiring, " Can you tell 
 me, sir, what is this ? Is it a part of a man ? " It was 
 the mangled seaman's heart, and we restored it rever- 
 ently to its place, where it had once beat high with 
 life and courage, with thrilling hope and sickening fear. 
 Two or three of the dead were not discovered for four 
 or five weeks after the wreck, and these had become 
 so loathsome from decay, that it was at peril of health 
 and life to perform the last duties we owe to our 
 brother -men. But hearts and hands were found for 
 the work, and at last the good ship's company — captain, 
 mate, and crew — were laid at rest, side by side, beneath 
 our churchyard trees. Groups of grateful letters from 
 Arbroath are to this day among the most cherished 
 memorials of my escritoire. Some, written by the 
 friends of the dead, are marvellous proofs of the good 
 feeling and educated ability of the Scottish people. 
 One from a father breaks off in irrepressible pathos, 
 with a burst of " my son ! my son ! " We placed at 
 the foot of the captain's grave the figurehead of his 
 vessel. It is a carved image, life-size, of his native 
 Caledonia, in the garb of her country, with sword and 
 shield. 
 
 At the end of al)Out six weeks Le Daine left my
 
 THE REMEMBEANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 49 
 
 house on liis homeward way, a sadder and a richer man. 
 Gifts had been proffered from many a hand, so that 
 he was able to return to Jersey, with happy and grate- 
 ful mien, well clothed, and with £30 in his purse. 
 His recollections of our scenery were not such as were 
 in former times associated with the Cornish shore ; for 
 three years afterward he returned to the place of his 
 disaster accompanied by his uncle, sister, and affianced 
 wife, and he had brought them that, in his own joyous 
 words, "they might see the very spot of his great 
 deliverance : " and there, one summer day, they stood, 
 a group of happy faces, gazing with wonder and grati- 
 tude on our rugged cliffs, that were then clad in that 
 gorgeous vesture of purple and gold which the heather 
 and gorse wind and weave along the heights ; and the 
 soft blue wave lapping the sand in gentle cadence, as 
 though the sea had never wreaked an impulse of 
 ferocity, or rent a helpless prey. Nor was the thank- 
 fulness of the sailor a barren feeling. Whensoever 
 afterward the vicar sought to purchase for his dairy 
 a Jersey cow, the family and friends of Le Daine re- 
 joiced to ransack the island until they had found the 
 sleekiest, loveliest, best of that beautiful breed ; and it 
 is to the gratitude of that poor seaman and stranger 
 from a distant abode that the herd of the glebe has 
 long been famous in the land, and hence, as Homer 
 would have sung — hence came 
 
 " Bleehtah, ami LiHth, Neelah, Evan Neelah, and Katy." 
 
 Strange to say, Le Daine has been twice shipwrecked 
 since his first peril — with similar loss of property, but 
 escape of life ; and lie is now tlie master of a vessel 
 in the trade of the Levant. 
 
 In tlie following year a new and another wreck was 
 
 D
 
 50 THE REMEMRrvANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 annoimced in the gloom of night. A schooner under 
 liaro poles had been watched for many hours from the 
 cliiis, with the steersman fastened at the wheel. All at 
 once she tacked and made for the shore, and just as she 
 had reached a creek between two reefs of rock, she foun- 
 dered and went down. At break of day only her vane 
 was visible to mark her billowy grave. Not a vestige 
 could be seen of her crew. But in the course of the 
 day her boat was drifted ashore, and we found from the 
 name on the stern that the vessel was the Phoenix of St 
 Ives. A letter from myself by immediate post brought 
 up next day from that place a sailor who introduced 
 himself as the brother of a young man who had sailed 
 as mate in the wrecked ship. He was a rough plain- 
 spoken man, of simple religious cast, without guile or 
 pretence : one of the good old seafaring sort, — the men 
 who "go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their 
 business in great waters : " these, as the Psalmist 
 chants, " see the wonders of the Lord, and His glories in 
 the deep." At my side he paced the shore day after 
 day in weary quest of the dead. " If I could but get 
 my poor brother's bones," he cried out yearningly 
 again and again, " if I could but lay him in the earth, 
 how it would comfort dear mother at home!" We 
 searched every cranny in the rocks, and we watched 
 every surging wave, until hope was exchanged for 
 despair. A reward of meagre import, it is true, offered 
 by the Seaman's Burial Act, to which I have referred, 
 and within my own domain doubled always by myself, 
 brought us many a comrade in this sickening scrutiny, 
 but for long it was in vain. At last one day while we 
 were scattered over a broken stretch of jumbled rocks 
 that lay in huddled masses along the base of the cliffs, 
 a loud and sudden shout called me where the seaman
 
 THE KEMEMBRAKCES OF A CORNISH VICAR, 51 
 
 of St Ives stood. He was gazing down into the broken 
 sea — it was on a spot near low-water mark — and there, 
 just visible from underneath a mighty fragment of rock, 
 was seen the ankle of a man and a foot still wearing; a 
 shoe ! " It is my brother ! " yelled the sailor, bitterly ; 
 " it is our own dear Jem — I can swear to that shoe ! " 
 We gathered around ; the tide ebbed a very little 
 after this discovery, and only just enough to leave 
 dry the surface of the rock under which the body lay. 
 Soon the sea began again to flow, and very quickly we 
 were driven by the rising surges from the spot. The 
 anguish of the mourner for his dead was thrilling to 
 behold and terrible to hear. my brother ! my 
 brother ! " was his sob again and again ; " what a burial- 
 place for our own dear merry boy ! " I tried to soothe 
 him, but in vain : the only theme to which he could be 
 brought to listen was the chance — and I confess it 
 seemed to my own secret mind a hopeless thought — 
 that it might be possible at the next ebb-tide, by skill 
 and strength combined, to move, if ever so little, the 
 monstrous rock, and so recover the corpse. It was low 
 water at evening tide, and there was a bright Novem- 
 ber moon. "We gathered in numbers, for among my 
 parishioners there were kind and gentle-hearted men, 
 such as had " pity, tenderness, and tears," and all were 
 moved l)y the tale of the sailor, hurled and buried be- 
 neath a rock, by the strong and cruel sea. The scene 
 of our first nightly assemblage was a weird and striking 
 siglit. Far, far above loomed the tall and gloomy head- 
 lands of the coast : around us foamed and raged the 
 boiling waves : the moon cast her massive lowering 
 shadows on rock and sea, — 
 
 "Ami lliu loiij,^ luoonbeaiii on llie cold wet sand 
 Lay, like a jasper column, half upreared."
 
 r^•'y 
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A COllNISII VICAR. 
 
 kSLout and stalwart forms surrounded mo, wioldiug 
 their iron bars, pickaxes, and ropes. Their efforts were 
 strenuous but unavaiHnc;. The tide soon returned in 
 its strength, and drove us, bafUed, from the spot before 
 we liad been able to grasp or shake the ponderous mass. 
 It was calculated by competent judges that its weight 
 was full fifteen tons : neitlier could there be a more 
 graphic image of the resistless strength of the wrathful 
 sea than the aspect of this and similar blocks of rifted 
 stone, that were raised and rolled perpetually, by the 
 power of the billows, and hurled, as in some pastime of 
 the giants, along the shuddering shore ! Deep and bit- 
 ter was the grief of the sailor at our failure and retreat. 
 His piteous wail over the dead recalled the agony of 
 those who are recorded in Holy Writ, they who grieved 
 for their lost ones, " and would not be comforted because 
 they were not " ! That night an inspiration visited me 
 in my wakeful bed. At a neighbouring harbour dwelt 
 a relative of mine, who was an engineer, in charge of 
 the machinery on a breakwater and canal. To him at 
 morning light I sent an appeal for succour, and he im- 
 mediately responded with aidance and advice. Two 
 strong windlasses, worked by iron chains, and three or 
 four skilful men, were sent up by him next day with in- 
 structions for their work. Again at evening ebb we 
 were all on the spot. One of our new assistants, a very 
 Tubal-Cain in aspect and stature, and of the same craft 
 with that smith before the Flood, plunged upon the rock 
 as the water reluctantly revealed its upper side, and 
 drilled a couple of holes in the surface with rapid 
 energy to receive, each of them, that which he called a 
 Lewis-wedge and a ring. To these the chains of the 
 windlasses were fastened on. They then looped a rope 
 around the ankle of the corpse and gave it as the post
 
 THE KEMEMBRANCES OF A COENISH VICAR. 53 
 
 of honour to me to hold. It was on the evening of 
 Sunday that all this was done, and I had deemed it a 
 venial breach of discipline to omit the nightly service 
 of the Church in order to suit the tide. A Puseyite 
 bishop might have condemned my breach of Rubric and 
 Ritual, but I exercise episcopal authority in my own 
 parish, and accordingly I absolved myself. Forty strong 
 parishioners, all absentees from evening prayer, manned 
 the double windlass power ; I intoned the pull ; and by 
 a strong and blended effort the rocky mass was slowly, 
 silently, and gently upheaved : a slight haul at the rope, 
 and up to our startled view, and to the sudden lights, 
 came forth the altered, ghastly, flattened semblance of 
 a man ! " My brother ! my brother ! " shrieked a well- 
 known voice at my side, and tears of gratitude and 
 sufferincr "ushed in mingled torrent over his ruoired 
 cheek. A coffin had been made ready, under the hope 
 of final success, and therein we reverently laid the poor 
 disfigured carcass of one who a little while before had 
 been the young and joyous inmate of a fond and happy 
 home. "We had to clamber up a steep and difficult 
 pathway along the cliff with the body, which was car- 
 ried by the bearers in a kind of funeral train. The vicar 
 of course led the way. When we were about half-way 
 up a singular and striking event occurred, which moved 
 us all exceedingly. Unobserved — for all were intent 
 on tlieir solemn task — a vessel had neared the shore ; 
 she lay to, and, as it seemed, liad watched us with night- 
 alasses from the deck, or had discerned us from the 
 torches and lanterns in our hands. For all at once 
 there sounded along the air three deep and thrilling 
 cheers ! And we could see that the crew on board had 
 manned their yards. It was manifest that their loyal 
 and hearty voices and gestures were intended to greet
 
 54 Till', EEMEMBRA.NCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 and graiulalu our i'ullilmciiL ui' iluty to a broLlicr mari- 
 ner's remains. The burial-place of the dead sailors in 
 this churchyard is a fair and fitting scene for their quiet 
 rest. Full in view and audible in sound for ever rolls 
 the sea. Is it not to them a soothing requiem that 
 
 " Old OcLUii, with its everlasting voice, 
 As in perpetual Jubilee, proclaims 
 The praises of the Almighty " ? 
 
 Trees stand, like warders, beside their graves ; and the 
 Saxon and shingled church, " the mother of us all," 
 dwells in silence by, to watch and wail over her safe 
 and slumbering dead. It recalls the imagery of the 
 Holy Book wherein we read of the gathered relics of 
 the ancient slain : " And Eizpah the daughter of Aiah 
 took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from 
 the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them 
 out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air 
 to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by 
 night." In such a shelter we laid our brother at rest, 
 rescued from the unhallowed sepulture of the rock ; and 
 there the faithful voice of the mourner breathed a last 
 farewell. " Good-bye," he said, " good-bye ! Safe and 
 quiet in the ground ! " 
 
 A year had passed away when the return of tlie 
 equinox admonished us again to listen for storms and 
 wrecks. There are men in this district whose usage it 
 is at every outbreak of a gale of wind to watch and 
 ward the cliffs from rise to set of sun. Of these my 
 quaint old parishioner, Peter Burrow, was one. On a 
 wild and dreary winter day I found myself seated on 
 a rock with Peter standing by, at a point that over- 
 hung the sea. We were both gazing with anxious 
 dismay at a ship which was beating to and fro in
 
 THE REMEMBKAlfCES OF A COKNISII VICAR. 55 
 
 the Channel, and bad now drifted much too near to the 
 surf?es and the shore. She had come into siu-ht some 
 hours before struggling with Harty Race, the local 
 name of a narrow and boisterous run of sea between 
 Lundy and the land, and she was now within three or 
 four miles of our rocks. " Ah, sir," said Peter, " the 
 coastmen say, 
 
 ' From PacLstow Point to Lundy Light, 
 Is a watery grave, by clay or uiglit.' 
 
 And I think the poor fellows off there will find it so." 
 All at once, as we still watched the vessel labouring 
 on the sea, a boat was launched over her side, and 
 several men plunged into it one by one. With strained 
 and anxious eyes we searched the billows for the 
 course of the boat. Sometimes we caught a glimpse 
 as it rode upon some surging wave ; then it dis- 
 appeared a while, and no trace was visible for long. 
 At last we could see it no more. Meanwhile the 
 vessel held down Channel, tacked and steered as if 
 still beneath the guidance of some of her crew, although 
 it must have been in sheer desperation that they still 
 hugged the shore. What was to be done ? If she 
 struck, the men still on board must perish without 
 help, for nightfall drew on ; if the boat reappeared, 
 Peter could make a signal where to land. In hot 
 haste, then, I made for the vicarage, ordered my horse, 
 and returned towards the cliffs. The ship rode on, and 
 I accompanied her way along the shore. She reached 
 the offing of a neighbouring haven and there grounded 
 on the sand. No boatman could be induced to put off, 
 and thick darkness soon after fell. I returned worn, 
 heart-sick, and weary on my homeward way ; there 
 strange tidings greeted me, — the boat which we had
 
 56 THE KEMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 watclied so long had been rolled ashor(> by the billows 
 empty. Peter Burrow had hauled her above high- 
 water mark, and had found a name, " The Alonzo, of 
 Stockton-on-Tees," on lier stern. That night I wrote 
 as usual to the owner, with news of the wreck, and the 
 next day we were able to guess at the misfortunes of 
 the stranded ship : a boat had visited the vessel, and 
 found her freighted witli iron from Gloucester for a 
 Queen's yard round the Land's End. Her papers in 
 the cabin showed that her crew of nine men had been 
 reported all sound and well three days before. The 
 owner's agent arrived, and he stated that her captain 
 was a brave and trusty officer, and that he must have 
 been compelled by his men to join them when they 
 deserted the ship. They must all have been swamped 
 and lost not long after the launch of the boat, and 
 while we watched for them in vain amid the waves. 
 Then ensued what has long been with me the saddest 
 and most painful duty of the shore : w^e sought and 
 waited for the dead. Now there is a folk-lore of the 
 beach that no corpse will float or be found until the 
 ninth day after death. The truth is, that about that 
 time the body proceeds to decompose, and as a natural 
 result it ascends to the surface of the current, is brouo-ht 
 into the shallows of the tide, and is there found. The 
 owner's representative was my guest for ten days, and 
 with the help of the ship's papers and his own per- 
 sonal knowledge we were able to identify the dead. 
 First of all the body of the captain came in ; he was 
 a fine, stalwart, and resolute-lookino- man. His coun- 
 tenance, however, had a grim and angry aspect, and 
 his features wore somewhat of a fierce and reproach- 
 ful look — just such an expression as would verify the 
 truth of our suspicion that he had been driven by the
 
 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAl!. 57 
 
 violence of others to forsake his deck. The face of the 
 dead man was as graphic a record of his living char- 
 acter as a physiognomist conld portray. Then arrived 
 the mate and three other men of the crew. None were 
 placid of featnre or calm and pleasant in look, as those 
 usually are who are accidentally drowned or who die 
 in their beds. But many of them had that awful 
 expression of countenance which reminded me of a 
 picture once described to me as the result of an ex- 
 periment by certain artists in France. It was during 
 the Eevolution, and amid the anarchy of those times, 
 that they bought a criminal who had been condemned 
 to die, fastened him to a cross, and painted him for 
 a crucifixion ; but his face wore the aspect, not of the 
 patient suffering which they intended to portray, but a 
 strong expression of reluctant agony. Such has been 
 the look that I myself have witnessed in many a 
 poor disfigured corpse. The death - struggle of the 
 conscious victim in the strong and cruel grasp of 
 the remorseless sea was depicted in harsh and vivid 
 lines on the brow of the dead. 
 
 But one day my strange old man, Peter Burrow, came 
 to me in triumjjhant haste with the loud greeting, 
 " Sir, we have got a noble corpse down on your beach ! 
 We have just laid him down above high-water mark, 
 and he is as comely a body as a man shall see ! " I 
 made haste to the spot, and there lay, with the light of a 
 calm and wintry day falling on his manly form, a fine and 
 stately example of a man : he was six feet two inches 
 in heiglit, of firm and accurate proportion throughout ; 
 and he must have been, indeed, in life a shape of 
 noble symmetry and grace. On his broad smooth chest 
 was tattooed a rood — that is to say, in artist phrase, our 
 blessed Saviour on His cross, with, on tlie one hand,
 
 58 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAR. 
 
 His mother, and on the otiier St Jolni the evangelist : 
 underneath were the initial letters of a name, V. 13. 
 His arms also were marked with tracery in the same 
 blue lines. On his right arm was engraved P. B. again, 
 and E. M., the letters linked with a wreath ; and on his 
 left arm was an anchor, as I imagined the symbol of 
 hope, and the small blue forget-me-not flower. The 
 greater number of my dead sailors — and I have myself 
 said the burial service over forty-two such men rescued 
 from the sea — were so decorated with some distinctive 
 emblem and name ; and it is their object and intent, 
 when they assume these pictured signs, to secure 
 identity for their bodies if their lives are lost at sea, 
 and then, for the solace of their friends, should they be 
 cast on the shore and taken up for burial in the earth. 
 "What a volume of heroism and resignation to a mourn- 
 ful probability in this calm foresight and deliberate 
 choice, to wear always on their living flesh, as it were, 
 the signature of a sepulchral name ! The symbolic 
 figures and the letters which were supposed to desig- 
 nate our dead were all faithfully transcribed and duly 
 entered in the vicar's book. We carried the strangely 
 decorated man to his comrades of the deck, and grad- 
 ually in the course of one month we discovered and 
 carefully buried the total crew of nine strong men. 
 These gathered strangers, the united assemblage from 
 many a distant and diverse abode, now calmly slept 
 among our rural and homely graves, the stout seamen 
 of the ship Alonzo, of Stockton-on-Tees ! The boat 
 which had foundered with them we brought also to the 
 churchyard, and there, just by their place of rest, we 
 placed her beside them keel upward to the sky, in token 
 that her work too was over and her voyage done. There 
 her timbers slowly moulder still, and by-and-by her
 
 THE REMEMBKAXCES OF A COENISH VICAR. 59 
 
 dust will mingle in the scenery of death with the ashes 
 of those living liearts and hands that manned her, in 
 their last unavailin<2[ launch and fruitless struc^ole for 
 ■the mastery of life! But the history of the Alonzo is 
 not yet closed. Three years afterwards a letter arrived 
 from the Danish consul at a neighbouring seaport 
 town, addressed to myself as the vicar of the parish ; 
 and the hope of the writer was that he might be able 
 to ascertain through myself, for two anxious and griev- 
 ing parents in Denmark, tidings of their lost son. His 
 name, he said, was Philip Bengstein, and it was in the 
 correspondence that this strange and touching history 
 transpired. The father, who immediately afterward 
 wrote to my address, told me in tearful words that his 
 son, bearing that name, had gone away from his native 
 home because his parents had resisted a marriage which 
 he was desirous to contract. They found that he had 
 gone to sea before the mast, a position much below his 
 station in life ; and they had traced him from ship to 
 ship, until at last they found him on the papers of the 
 Alonzo, of Stockton-on-Tees. Then their inquiry as to 
 the fate of that vessel had led them to the knowledge 
 through the owners that the vicar of a parish on the 
 seaboard of IsTorth Cornwall could in all likelihood 
 convey to them some tidings of their long-lost son. I 
 related in reply the history of the death, discovery, and 
 burial of the unfortunate young man. I was enabled 
 to verify and to understand the initial letters of his own 
 name, and of her who was not to become his bride — 
 although she still clung to his memory in loving loneli- 
 ness in that foreign land ! Ample evidence, therefore, 
 verified his corpse, and I was proudly enabled to certify 
 to his parents the reverent burial of their child. A 
 letter is treasured among my papers filled to overilow-
 
 60 THE REMEMBRANCES OF A CORNISH VICAl!. 
 
 iii'4 witli tlic stroll" and earnest liralitude of a slraniiur 
 and a Dane for the kindness we had rendered to one 
 who loved " not wisely," perchance, " Ijut too well," to 
 that son who had been lost ;iiid was found too late: 
 one, too, "whose course of true love" liad brought him 
 from distant Denmark to a green hillock among the 
 dead, beneath a lonely tower among the trees, by the 
 Cornish sea ! AVhat a picture was that which we saw 
 painted upon the bosom and the limbs of a dead man, 
 of fond and faithful love, of severed and broken hearts, 
 of disappointed hope, of a vacant chair and a hushed 
 voice in a far-away Danish home ! Linked with such 
 themes as these which I have related in this Remem- 
 brance are the subjoined verses which were written on 
 a rock by the shore. 
 
 The Stokji. 
 
 War ! 'mid the ocean ami tliu land ! 
 The battle-field Morvvenna's strand, 
 Where rock and ridge tlie bulwark keep, 
 The giant Avarders of the deep ! 
 
 They come ! and shall they not prevail, 
 The seething surge, the gathering gale 1 
 They iling their wild flag to the breeze, 
 The banner of a thousand seas ! 
 
 They come, they mount, they charge in vain, 
 Thus far, incalculable main ! 
 No more ! thine hosts have not o'erthrown 
 The lichen on the barrier stone ! 
 
 Have the rocks faith, that thus they stand 
 Unmoved, a grim and stately band, 
 And look, like warriors tried and brave, 
 Stern, silent, reckless, o'er the wave ?
 
 THE RE.MEMBKANCES OF A COENISH VICAR. Gl 
 
 Have the proud Lillows thought and life 
 To feel the glory of the strife, 
 And trust one day, in battle bold, 
 To win the foeman's haughty hold ? 
 
 Mark, ^vhere they writhe with pride and shame, 
 Fierce yalour, and the zeal of fame ; 
 Hear how their din of madness raves, 
 Tlie baffled army of the waves ! 
 
 Thy way, God I is in the sea ; 
 Thy patlis where awful waters be : 
 Thy Spirit thrills the conscious stone ; 
 Lord ! Thy footsteps are not hnown.
 
 BLACK JOHN.^ 
 
 A 
 
 PICTUEE hangs in ray library — and it is one of 
 my most treasured relics of old Cornwall — the 
 full-length and " counterfeit presentment," in oil, of a 
 quaint and singular dwarf. It exhibits a squat figure, 
 uncouth and original, just such a one as Frederick 
 Taylor would delight to introduce in one of his out-of- 
 door pieces of Elizabethan days, as an appendage to the 
 rural lady's state when she rode afield with her hawk 
 on her wrist. His height is under four feet, hump- 
 backed and misshapen ; his head, with tangled elfy hair 
 falling wildly on his shoulders, droops upon his chest. 
 Negro features and a dark skin surround a loose and 
 flabby mouth, which teeth have long ceased to har- 
 monise and fill out. He is clad in a loose antique 
 russet gaberdine, the fashion of a past century: one 
 hand leans on a gnarled staff, and the other holds a 
 wide-brimmed felt hat, with humble gesture and look, 
 as though his master stood by. 
 
 The traditionary name of this well-remembered char- 
 
 1 From ' All the Year Round,' vol. xiii. pp. 454-4.56. 1865.
 
 BLACK JOHN. 63 
 
 acter on the Tamar-side is Black John. He lived from 
 the commencement to the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury in the household of an honoured name, Arscott of 
 Tetcott, an ancestor of one of the distinguished families 
 of Cornwall; and as his master was wellnigh the last of 
 the jovial open-housed squires of the West of England, 
 so was Black John the last of the jesters or makers of 
 mirth. When the feast was over, and the " wratli of 
 hunger " had heen assuaged, while the hare's or fox's 
 head, the festive drinking-cup of silver, went round 
 with the nectar of the Georgian era, " strong punch for 
 strong heads," the jester was called in to contribute by 
 merry antic and jocose saying to the loud enjoyment of 
 the guests. Such were the functions sustained by my 
 pictured and storied dwarf, and many an anecdote still 
 survives around us in hearth and hall of the feats and 
 stories of the " Tetcott merry-man." Two of his usual 
 after-dinner achievements were better suited to the 
 rude jollity and coarse mirth of our forefathers than to 
 the refinements of our own time ; although they are 
 said to exist here and there, among the " underground 
 men " and miners of Western Cornwall, even to this 
 day. These were " sparrow-mumbling " and swallowing 
 living mice, which were tethered to a string to ensure 
 their safe return to light and life. In the first of these 
 accomplishments, a sparrow, alive, was fastened to tlic 
 teeth of the artist with a cord, and he was expected to 
 mumljle off the feathers from the flutterino; and aston- 
 islied bird, with his lips alone, until he was plucked 
 quite bare without the assistance or touch of finger or 
 hand. A couple of projecting tusks or fangs, such as 
 are called by the Italians Bourbon teeth, were of sin- 
 gular value as sparrow-holders to Black John ; but these 
 were one day drawn by violence from his mouth by an
 
 64 BLACK JOHN. 
 
 exasperated blacksiniili, whose kilteu liad l)een slain, 
 and who had been persuaded by a wretch, who was 
 himself the actual assassin, that it was the jester who 
 luul guillotined the poor creature with his formidable 
 jaws. The passage of ilie mouse was accomplished very 
 often, amid roars of rude applause, down and up the 
 gullet of the dwarf. 
 
 A tale is told of him, that one day, after he had for 
 some time amused the guests, and had drank his full 
 share of the ale, he fell, or seemed to fall, asleep. On 
 a sudden he started up with a loud and terrilied cry. 
 Questioned as to the cause of his alarm, he answered, 
 " sir," to his master, " I was in a sog [sleep], and I 
 had such a dreadful dream ! I thought I was dead, and 
 I went where the wicked people go ! " 
 
 " Ha, John," said Arscott of Tetcott, in his grim 
 voice, wide awake for a jest or a tale, " then tell us all 
 about what you heard and saw." 
 
 " Well, master, nothing particular," 
 
 " Indeed, John ! " 
 
 "No, sir; things was going on just as they do upon 
 airth — here in Tetcott Hall — the gentlefolks nearest 
 the fire." 
 
 His master's house was surrounded with all kinds of 
 tame animals and birds so bold and confiding, from 
 long safety and intercourse, that the rooks would 
 come down at a call and pick up food like pigeons 
 at the very feet of a man. Among the familiar crea- 
 tures of the Hall were two enormous toads : these were 
 especial favourites with jNIr Arscott, who was a very 
 Chinese in his fondness for the bat and the toad, 
 and who used to feed them very often with his own 
 hands. One morning the family were aroused by 
 sounds near the porch of battle and fight. A guest
 
 BLACK JOHN. G5 
 
 from a distant town, who had arrived the night before 
 on a visit, was discovered prone upon the grass, and 
 over him stood as conqueror Black John, belabouring 
 him with his staff". His story was, when rescued and 
 set upon his feet, that on going out to breathe the 
 morning air he had encountered and slain a fierce and 
 venomous reptile — a big bloated creature that came 
 towards him with open mouth. It turned out to be 
 one of the enormous toads, an old and especial pet of 
 master and man, who had heard a sound of feet, and 
 came as usual to be fed, and was ruthlessly put to 
 death ; not, however, unavenged, for a wild man of the 
 woods (so the townsman averred) had rushed upon him 
 and knocked him down. When JMr Arscott had heard 
 the story, he turned on his heel, and never greeted his 
 guest with one farewell word. Black John sobbed 
 and muttered vengeance in his den for many a day for 
 the death of " Old Dawty " — the household name of 
 the toad. 
 
 Black John's lair was a rude hut, which he had 
 wattled for a snug abode, close to the kennel. He 
 loved to retire to it, and sleep near his chosen com- 
 panions, the hounds. When they were unkennelled, 
 he accompanied and ran with them afoot, and so 
 sinewy and so swift was his stunted form that he was 
 very often in their midst at the death. Then, with 
 the brush of the fox elaborately disposed as the crest 
 of his felt hat, John would make his appearance on 
 the following Sunday at church, where it was displayed, 
 and pompously hung up above his accustomed seat, 
 to his own great delight and the envy of many among 
 the congregation; When the pack found the fox, and 
 the huntsman's ear was gladdened by their shrill and 
 sudden burst into full cry, Black John's shout would 
 
 E
 
 GG BLACK JOHN. 
 
 be heard in the fiehl, with his standing jest, " There 
 they go ! there they go ! like our missus at home in 
 one of her storms ! " As he grew older, and less equal 
 to the exertion of his strong and youthful days, John 
 took to wandering, gipsy-fashion, about the country- 
 side ; and he found food and welcome at every cottage 
 and farmhouse. His usual couch was among the reeds 
 or fern of some sheltering brake or wood, and he slept, 
 as he himself used to express it, " rolled up, as warm as 
 a hedgeboar, round his own nose." One day, in bitter 
 snowy weather, he was found wanting from his accus- 
 tomed haunts — " one morn they missed him on the 
 usual hill " — and after long search he was discovered 
 shrouded in snow, cold, stiffened, and to all outward 
 appearance dead. He was carried home, and in due 
 course was coffined and borne towards the grave. But 
 there, just as the clergyman who read the service had 
 reached the solemn words which commit the body to 
 the ground, a loud thumping noise was heard within 
 the coffin. The bystanders rent open the lid in hot 
 haste, and up started Black John alive, in amazement, 
 and in furious wrath. He had been in a long dc- 
 liquium, or death-trance, from cold, and had been re- 
 stored to life by the motion and warmth of his own 
 funeral ride. As he told the astonished mourners, 
 " He heard the words ' dust to dust,' and then," said he, 
 " I thought it was high time to bumpy." His words 
 passed into a proverb ; and to this very day, when 
 Cornish men in these parts are placed in some sudden 
 extremity, and it becomes necessary to take strong and 
 immediate measures for extrication, the saying is, " It 
 is time to bumpy, as Black John said." In his anger 
 and mental confusion, Black John ever after attributed 
 his attempted burial to the conspiracy and ill-will
 
 BLACK JOHN. G7 
 
 of the clergyman, whose words he had interrupted 
 by his sudden resurrection. More than once the 
 reverend gentleman was suddenly assaulted in his 
 walks by a stone hurled at him from a hedge, followed 
 by an angry outcry, in a well-known voice, of " Ha ! 
 old Dust-to-dust ; here I be, alive and kicking ! " 
 
 It may be easily believed that Black John was a 
 very refractory subject for clerical interference and 
 admonition. The result of frequent clerical attempts 
 to reform his habits, was a rooted dislike on his part of 
 the black coat and white neckcloth in all its shades 
 and denominations. The visit of the first field-preacher 
 to the precincts of the Hall was signalised by an 
 exhibition of this feeling. John waylaid the poor 
 unsuspecting man, and offered to guide him on his 
 road by a short cut across the park, which, John alleged, 
 would save him a "considerable bit of way." The 
 treacherous guide led him along a narrow path into a 
 paddock, wherein was shut up for safety Mr Arscott's 
 perilous favourite bull. This animal had grown up 
 from calf -hood the wanton but docile companion of 
 Black John, whose wonderful skill in taniina- all 
 manner of wild animals had made the "sire of the 
 herd" so familiar with his strange warder, that he 
 would follow him and obey his signals and voice like 
 a dog. What took place between the bull and the 
 preacher could only be guessed at. A rush was heard 
 by a passer-by, and a yell ; then the rustling of the 
 branches of a tree, and finally a dead thud upon the 
 grass. Troni tlie paddock -gate some little time after 
 emerged Black John with a fragment of a white 
 cravat in his liand, and this was all, so he steadfastly 
 averred, that ever he could find of " the preacher's 
 body." Actually, it was the sole relic of his arrival
 
 G8 BLACK JOHN. 
 
 and existence that survived in those wild parts. He 
 was never heard of more in that region. And akhough 
 tliere were rural sceptics who doubted that the bull 
 could have made such quick work of a full-grown 
 man, the story was fearful enough to scare away all 
 wandering preachers from that district while the dwarf 
 lived. On the Sunday following the terrific interview 
 between the preacher and the bull, John took his usual 
 place in church, but, to the astonishment of those who 
 were not in the secret, instead of the nsual fox's 
 brush, a jaunty pennon of white rag floated as the 
 crest of the well-known felt hat. 
 
 Black John was long and fondly cherished by his 
 generous master. Mr Arscott lived like Adam in the 
 garden, surrounded by his animals and pets, each with 
 its familiar and household name ; and no man ever 
 more fully realised the truth of the saying that " love 
 makes love," and that the surest way to kindle kind- 
 ness is to be kind. Accurately has it been said of 
 him — 
 
 " Oh, for the Sq^uire ! that shook at break of morn 
 Dew from the trees with echo of his horn ! 
 The gathering scene, where Arscott's lightest word 
 AVent, Hke a trumjiet, to the hearts that heard ; 
 The dogs, that knew the meaning of liis voice, 
 From tlie grim foxhound to my hidy's choice : 
 The steed that waited till his hand caressed: 
 And old Black John that gave and bare the jest ! " 
 
 None, high or low, during the lifetime of the squire, 
 were allowed with impunity to injure or harass his 
 cross-grained jester, and many a mischievous escapade 
 was hushed up, and the sufferer soothed or pacified by 
 money or influence. When gout and old age had im- 
 prisoned Mr Arscott in his easy- chair. Black John
 
 BLACK JOHN. G9 
 
 snoozed amoiifr the ashes of the A'ast wood-fires of the 
 hearth, or lay coiled upon his rug like some faithful 
 mastift', watching every look and gesture of his master ; 
 starting up to fill the pipe or the tankard of old ale, 
 and then crouchino' a^ain. 
 
 " Til is lasted long ; it fain would last 
 Till autumn rustled on the blast." 
 
 And the good old squire in the language of the 
 Tamar-side, "passed out of it." At his death and 
 funeral, the agony of his misshapen retainer was un- 
 appeasable. He had to be removed by force from the 
 door of the vault, and then he utterly refused to depart 
 from the neighbonrhood of the grave. He made him- 
 self another lair, near the churchyard wall, and there 
 he sobbed away the brief remnant of his days, in 
 honest and unavailing grief for the protector whom he 
 had so loved in life, and from whom in death he would 
 not be divided. Thus and there, not long after, he 
 died, as the old men of the parish used to relate, for 
 the " second and last time." He had what is called in 
 those parts a decent funeral, for his master had be- 
 queathed to him an ample allowance for life and death 
 in his last will. The mourners ate of the fat and 
 drank of the strong, as their Celtic impulses would 
 suggest ; and although some among them, who remem- 
 bered John's former funeral, may have listened again 
 for a token or sign, poor Black John, alas for him ! 
 had no master to come back to now, and declined " to 
 bumpy " any more. 
 
 A singular and striking circumstance attended the 
 final funeral of Black John. An aged crone, bent and 
 tottering, " worn Nature's mournful monument," was 
 observ^ed following the bier, and the people heard lier
 
 70 BLACK JOHN. 
 
 muttering ever and anon, " OIi, is he really dead ? He 
 came to life again once you know, and lived long after." 
 When assured that all indeed was over, even her wild 
 hope, she cried with a great sob, " poor dear Johnny ! 
 he was so good-looking and so steady till they spoilt 
 him up at the Hall!" Her words recalled her to the 
 memory of some old men who were there, and they 
 knew her as a certain Aunty Bridget, who had been 
 teased and worried, long years agone, at markets and 
 fairs, as " Black John's sweetheart."
 
 DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK.' 
 
 THERE is no part of our native country of England 
 so little known, no region so seldom trodden by 
 the feet of the tourist or the traveller, as the middle 
 moorland of old Cornwall, A stretch of w^ld heath 
 and stunted gorse, dotted with swelling hills, and in- 
 terspersed with rugged rocks, either of native granite 
 or rough -hewn pillar, the rude memorial of ancient 
 art, spreads from the Severn Sea on the west to the 
 tall ridge of Carradon on the east, and from Warbstow 
 Barrow on the north to the southern civilisation of 
 Bodmin and Liskeard. Throughout this district there 
 is, even in these days, but very scanty sign of settled 
 habitation. Two or three recent and solitary roads 
 traverse the boundaries ; here and there the shafts and 
 machinery of a mine announce the existence of under- 
 ground life ; a few clustered cottages, or huts, for the 
 shepherds, are sprinkled along the waste ; but the vast 
 and uncultured surface of the soil is suggestive of the 
 bleak steppes of Tartary or the far wilds of Australia, 
 and that in the very heart of modern England. Yet 
 
 ' From '^Ul the Year Round,' vol. xv. pp. 206-210. 18G6.
 
 72 DANIEL GUMB'S HOCK. 
 
 is there no scenery tliat can be sought by the anti- 
 quary or the artist that will so kindle the imagination 
 or requite the eye or the mind of the wanderer as this 
 Cornish solitude. If he travel from our storied Dun- 
 dagel, eastward, Eowter, the Ecd Tor, so named from 
 its i)urple tapestry of heather and heath, and Brun- 
 guillie, the Golden Hill, crested with yellow gorse like 
 a crown, will win his approach and reward, with their 
 majestic horizon, the first efforts of his pilgrimage. 
 The summits and sides of these mountains of the west 
 are studded with many a logan-rock or shuddering- 
 stone of the old superstition. This was the pillar of 
 ordeal in Druid times, so poised that while it shook at 
 the slight faint touch of the innocent finger, it firmly 
 withstood the assailing strength of the guilty man. 
 
 Passing onward, the traveller will pause amid a 
 winding outline of unhewn granite pillars, and he will 
 gradually discover that these are set up to represent 
 the coils of a gigantic serpent, traced, as it were, in 
 stone. This is a memorial of the dragon-crest of a 
 Viking, or the. demon-idol and shrine of an older an- 
 tiquity. Not far off there gleams a moorland lake or 
 mimic sea, with its rippling laugh of waters — the 
 Dozmere Pool of many an antique legend and tale, 
 the mystic scene of the shadowy vessel and the Mort 
 d'Arthur of our living bard.^ A sheep-track — for no 
 other visible path will render guidance along the moor 
 — leads on to Kilmarth Tor, from the brow of which 
 lofty crag the eye can embrace the expanse of the two 
 seas which are the boundaries of Cornwall on the 
 right and left. There, too, looms in the distance 
 rocky Carradon, with the valley of the Hurlers at its 
 foot. These tall shapes of granite, grim and gro- 
 
 ' The late Lord Tenuyson.
 
 DANIEL GUMB'S EOCK. 73 
 
 tesque, were once, as local legends say, nine bold up- 
 standing Cornish men who disdained the Sabbath-day ; 
 and as they pursued their daring pastime and " put the 
 stone " in spite of the warning of the priest, they were 
 changed, by a sudden doom, where they stood up to 
 play, and so were fixed for ever in monumental rock. 
 Above them lowers the Devil's Wring, a pile of granite 
 masses, lifted, as though by giant or demon strength, 
 one upon another; but the upper rocks vast and un- 
 wieldy, and the lower gradually lessening downward, 
 until they rest, poised, on a pivot of stone so slender 
 and small that it seems as though the wind sweeping 
 over the moor would overtopple it with a breath ; and 
 yet centuries many and long have rolled over the 
 heath, and still it stands unshaken and unswerved. 
 Its name is derived from the similitude of the rocky 
 structure to the press wherein the ancient housewives 
 of rude Cornwall were accustomed to " wring " out the 
 milk from their cheese. Not far off from this singular 
 monument of " ages long ago " there is found to tliis 
 day a rough and rude assemblage of moorstone slabs, 
 some cast down and others erect, but manifestly 
 brought together and arranged by human hands and 
 skill. There is still traceable amid the fragments the 
 outline of a human habitation, once divided into cells, 
 and this was the origin and purpose of this solitary 
 abode. It was the work and the home of a remarkable 
 man — an eccentric and original cliaracter among the 
 worthies of the west — and the place has borne ever 
 since the early years of tlie last century the name of 
 Daniel Gumb's Eock. He was a native Cornishman, 
 born in a cottage that bordered on the moor, and in 
 the lowlier ranks of labouring life. In liis father's 
 household he was always accounted a strange and
 
 74 DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK. 
 
 unsocial boy. In his childhood he kept aloof from all 
 pastime and play, and while liis companions resorted 
 to their youthful amusements and sports, Daniel was 
 usually seen alone with a book or a slate whereon he 
 worked, at a very early age, the axioms of algebra or 
 the diagrams of Euclid. He had mastered with mar- 
 vellous rapidity all the books of the country-side, and 
 he had even exhausted the instructions of the school- 
 master of the neighbouring town. Then it became his 
 chosen deliglit to wander on the moors with some 
 favourite volume in his hand, and a crust from his 
 mother's loaf in his bag; with his inseparable tools, 
 also, the chisel and the mallet, wherewithal to chip and 
 gather the geological specimens of his own district. 
 Often he would be absent whole nights, and when he 
 was questioned as to his place of shelter, he would 
 reply, "Where John the Baptist slept," or "At Eoche, 
 in the hermit's bed ; " for the ruined cell of a Christian 
 anchorite stood, and yet stands, above the scenery of 
 the wanderings of that solitary boy. 
 
 But Daniel's principal ambition was to know and 
 name the planets and the stars. It was at the time 
 when the discoveries of foreign astronomers had peopled 
 the heavens with fresh imagery, and our own Newton 
 had given to the ethereal phenomena of the sky a " local 
 habitation and a name." It is very striking to discover 
 when the minds of any nation are Hooded with new 
 ideas and original trains of thought, how soon the 
 strange tidings will reach the very skirts of the popu- 
 lation, and borne, how we know not, will thrill the 
 hamlet and the village with the wonders that have 
 roused and instructed the far-off and civilised city. 
 Thus even Daniel's distant district became aware of 
 the novel science of the stars, and this intelligence
 
 DANIEL GUMB'S EOCK. 75 
 
 failed not to excite and foster the faculties of his orig- 
 inal mind. Local legends still record and identify the 
 tall and craggy places where the youthful "scholar" 
 was wont to ascend and to rest all night with his face 
 turned upward to the sky, " learning the customs of 
 the stars," and " finding out by the planets things to 
 come," ISTor were his studies unassisted and alone. A 
 master-mind of those days, Cookworthy of Plymouth, 
 a learned and scientific man, still famous in the west, 
 found out and fostered the genius of the intelligent 
 youth. He gave him access to his library, and allowed 
 him to visit his orrery and other scientific instruments ; 
 and the result of this kindness was shown in the tastes 
 and future peculiarities of the mind of Gumb. The 
 stern necessities of life demanded, in the course of 
 time, that Daniel should fulfil the destiny of his birth, 
 and win his bread by the sweat of his brow ; for the 
 meagre resources of his cottage-home had to be aug- 
 mented by his youthful labour. In the choice of an 
 occupation his early habits were not without their 
 infiuence. He selected the craft of a hewer of stone, 
 a very common calling on the surrounding moors ; and 
 there he toiled for several years of his succeeding life, 
 amid the cyclopean models of the early ages. The 
 pillared rocks of that wild domain were the monoliths 
 of Celtic history, and the vast piles of the native moor 
 were the heaped and unhewn pyramids of an ancient 
 and nameless people. All these surrounding scenes 
 acted on his tastes and impulses. " So the foundations 
 of his mind were laid ! " His father died, and Daniel 
 became his own master, and had to hew his way 
 through the rugged world Ijy what the Cornish call 
 "the pith of his bones." That he did so his future 
 history will attest; but it was not unsoothed nor
 
 7G DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK. 
 
 alone ; nor was it without the usual incident of liunian 
 existence. No man ever yet became happily great or 
 joyfully distinguished witliout tliat kindling strength, 
 the affectionate presence of a woman. 
 
 " He -who Joy would win, 
 Must shaic it : Happiness was born a twin." 
 
 Such was the solace tliat arrived to soothe the dreary 
 path of Daniel CJumb. He wooed and won a maiden 
 of his native village, who, amid the rugged rocks and 
 appellatives of Cornwall, had the soft Italian name of 
 Florence. But where, amid the utter poverty of his 
 position and prospects, could he find the peaceful and 
 happy wedding-roof that should bend over him and his 
 bride ? His friends were few, and they too poor and 
 lowly to aid his start in life. He himself had inherited 
 nothing save a strong head and heart, and two stalwart 
 hands. He looked around him and afar off, and there 
 was no avenue for house or home. Suddenly he recalled 
 to mind his wandering clays and his houseless nights, 
 the scanty food, the absorbing meditation, and the 
 kindly shelter of many a nook in the hollow places of 
 the granite rock. He formed his plan, and made it 
 known to his future and faithful bride ; she assented 
 with the full-hearted strength and trusting sacrifice of 
 a woman's love. Then he went forth in the miuht of 
 his simple and strong resolve, — his tools in his scrip, 
 and a loaf or two of his accustomed household bread. 
 He sought the well-known slope under Carradon, 
 searched many a mass of Druid rock, and paced around 
 cromlech and pillared stone of old memorial, until he 
 discovered a primeval assemblage of granite slabs suited 
 to his toil. One of these, grounded upon several others, 
 the vast boulders of some diluvian flood, had the rude
 
 DANIEL GUMB'S ROCK. 77 
 
 semblance of a roof. Underneath this shelvmg rock he 
 scooped away the soil, finding, as he dug on, more than 
 one upriglit slice of moorstone, which he left to stand 
 as an inner and natural wall. At last, at the end of 
 a few laborious days, Daniel stood before a large cav- 
 ern of the rocks, divided into chambers by upstanding 
 granite, and sheltered at a steep angle by a mountain- 
 ous masef of stone. Nerved and sustained by the hope- 
 ful visions wdiicli crowded on his mind, and of which 
 he firmly trusted that this place would be the future 
 scene, he toiled on until he had finally framed a giant 
 abode such as that wherein Cyclops shut in Ulysses 
 and his companions, and promised to " devour No-man 
 the last." Materials for the pavement and for closing 
 up the inner walls were scattered abundantly around 
 — nay, the very furniture for that mountain-home was 
 at once ready for his hand ; for as Agag, king of the 
 Amalekites, had his vaunted iron bed, so did Gumb 
 frame and hew for himself and Florence, his wife, table 
 and seat and a bedstead of native stone. Then he 
 smoothed out and shot into a groove a thick and heavy 
 door, so that, closed like an Eastern sepulchre, it de- 
 manded no common strength to roll away the stone. 
 When all had been prepared, the bridegroom and the 
 bride met at a distant church; the simple wedding- 
 feast was held at her father's house ; and that night the 
 husband led the maiden of his vows, the bride of his 
 youth, to their wedding-rock ! If he had known the ode, 
 he might have chanted, in Horatian verse, that day — 
 
 " Nunc scio quid sit tamor, duris in cotibus ilhim." 
 " Now know I wliat true love is ; in rugged dens he dwells." 
 
 Here the wedded pair dwelt in peace long and happy 
 years, mingling the imagery of old romance with the
 
 78 DANIEL GUMB's ROCK. 
 
 sterner duties of practical life. As a far-famed hewer 
 of stone, the skill and energy of this singular man never 
 lacked employ, nor failed to supply the necessities of 
 his moorland abode. Like a patriarch in his tent amid 
 the solitudes of Syria, he was his own king, prophet, 
 and priest. He paid neither rent, nor taxes, nor tithe. 
 When children were horn to him, he exercised unwit- 
 tingly the power of lay-baptism which was granted in 
 the primitive Church to the inhaliitants of a wilderness, 
 afar from the ministry of the priesthood, and his wife 
 was content to be " churched " by her own cherished 
 husband, among the altars of unhewn stone that sur- 
 rounded their solitary cell. AVho shall say that this 
 simple worship of the father and the mother with their 
 household, amid the paradise of hills, was not as sweet, 
 with the balsam of the soul, as the incense-breathing 
 psalm of the cathedral choir ? Rightly or wrongly, it 
 is known that Daniel entertained an infinite contempt 
 for " the parsons " whose territories bordered on the 
 moor. Not one of them, it was his wont to aver, could 
 cross the Asses' Bridge of his favourite Euclid, a feat 
 he had himself accomplished in very early youth ; nor 
 could the most learned among them all unravel the 
 mysteries of his chosen companions, the wandering 
 stars that travelled over Carradon every night. Long 
 and frequent were his vigils for astronomical researches 
 and delight. To this day the traveller will encounter 
 on the face of some solitary rock a mathematical dia- 
 gram carefully carved by some chisel and hand un- 
 known ; and while speculation has often been rife as to 
 the Druidical origin of the mystic figure, or the scien- 
 tific knowledge of the early Kelts, the local antiquary is 
 aware that these are the simple records of the patient 
 studies of Daniel Gumb.
 
 DANIEL GUMBS ROCK. 79 
 
 WJien the writer of this article visited the neich- 
 bourhood in 183-, there still survived relics and re- 
 membrances of this sinoular man. There were a few 
 written fragments of his thoughts and studies still 
 treasured up in the existing families of himself and 
 his wife. Here is a transcript : " Mr Cookworthy told 
 me, when I saw him last, that astronomers in foreign 
 parts, and our great man Sir Isaac here at home, had 
 thought that the planets were so vast, and so like our 
 earth in their ways, that they might have been in- 
 habited by men ; but he said, ' their elements and 
 atmosphere are thought to be unfit for human life and 
 breath.' But surely God would not have so wasted 
 His worlds as to have made such great bright masses 
 of His creation to roll along all barren, as it were, like 
 desert places of light in the sky. There must be 
 people of some kind there : how I should like to see 
 them, and to go there when I die ! " 
 
 Another entry on the same leaf : " Florence asked 
 me to-day if I thought that our souls, after w^e are 
 dead, would know the stars and other wise thinc;s 
 better than we can now. And I answered her, Yes ; 
 and if I could — that is, if I was allowed to — the first 
 thing I would try should be to square the circle true, 
 and then, if I could, I would mark it and work it out 
 somewhere hereabouts on a flat rock, tliat my son 
 might find it there, and so make his fortune and be 
 a great man. N.B. — Florence asked me to write this 
 down." 
 
 On a tliick sheet of pasteboard, with a ground-plan 
 of a building on the otlier side, he had written : 
 "January IG, 1760. — A terrible storm last niglit. 
 Thunder and liglitning and liail, with a tempest of 
 wind. Saw several dead sheep on the moor. Ship-
 
 80 DANIEL GUMh'S ROCK. 
 
 wrecks, no doubt, at sea. A thought came into my 
 mind, Wliy should such harm be allowed to be done ? 
 I read some reasons once in a book that Mr Cook- 
 worthy lent me, called ' The Origin of Evil ' ; but I 
 could not understand a word of it. My notion is, that 
 when evil somehow came into the world, God did not 
 destroy it at once, because He is so almighty that He 
 let it go on, to make manifest His power and majesty ; 
 and so He rules over all evil things, and turns them 
 into good at the last. N.B. — The devil is called in the 
 Bible the Prince of the Powers of the Air : so he may 
 be, but he must obey his Master. The poor wretch is 
 but a slave after all ! " 
 
 On the fly-leaves of an old account-book the follow- 
 ing strange statement appears : " June 23, 1761^.. — To- 
 day, at briglit noon, as I was at my work upon the 
 moor, I looked up, and saw all at once a stranger 
 standing on the turf, just above my block. He was 
 dressed like an old picture I remember in the windows 
 of St Neot's Church, in a long brown garment, with a 
 girdle ; and his head was uncovered and grizzled with 
 long hair. He spoke to me, and he said, in a low clear 
 voice, ' Daniel, that work is hard ! ' I wondered that 
 he should know my name, and I answered, ' Yes, sir ; 
 but I am used to it, and don't mind it, for the sake of 
 the faces at home.' Then he said, sounding his words 
 like a psalm, ' Man goeth forth to his work and to his 
 labour until the evening; when will it be night with 
 Daniel Gumb ? ' I began to feel queer ; it seemed to 
 me that there was something awful about the unknown 
 man. I even shook. Then he said again, ' Pear 
 nothing. The happiest man in all the earth is he that 
 wins his daily bread by his daily sweat, if he will but 
 fear God and do man no wrong.' I bent down my
 
 DANIEL GUMB'S EOCK. 81 
 
 head like any one confounded, and I greatly wondered 
 ^vllo this strange appearance could be. He was not 
 like a preacher, for he looked me full in the face ; nor 
 a bit like a parson, for he seemed very meek and kind. 
 I began to think it was a spirit, only such ones always 
 come by night, and here was I at noonday, and at 
 work. So I made up my mind to drop my hammer 
 and step up and ask his name right out. But when I 
 looked up he was gone, and that clear out of my sight, 
 on the bare wide moor suddenly. I only wish that I 
 had gone forward at once and felt him with my hand, 
 and found out if he was a real man or only a resem- 
 blance. What could it mean ? Mem. to ask Mr C." 
 
 This event is recorded in a more formal and pain- 
 ful handwriting than the other MSS. which survive. 
 Nothing could be further removed from superstition 
 or fear than this man's whole character and mind. 
 Hard as one of his native rocks, and accurate as a 
 diagram, yet here is a tinge of that large and artless 
 belief which is so inseparable from a Keltic origin, and 
 which is so often manifested by the strongest and 
 loftiest minds. Another paragraph, written on the 
 blank page of an almanac, runs thus : " Found to-day, 
 in tlie very heart of a slab rock that came out below 
 the granite, the bony skeleton of a strange animal, or 
 rather some kind of fish. The stone had never been 
 broken into before, and looked ages older than the 
 rocks above. Now, how came this creature to get in, 
 and to die and harden there ? Was it before Adam's 
 time, or since ? What date was it ? But what can we 
 tell about dates after all ? Time is nothing but Adam's 
 clock — a measurement that men invented to reckon by. 
 This very rock with the creature in it was made, per- 
 haps, before there was any such thing as time. In 
 
 F
 
 82 DANIEL GUMB'S EOCK. 
 
 eternity may be — that is, before there were any dates 
 begun. At all events, when God did make the rock, 
 He must have put the creature there." This appears 
 to be a singular and rude anticipation of modern dis- 
 covery, and a simple solution of a question of science 
 in our own and later time. It is to be lamented that 
 these surviving details of a thoughtful and original life 
 are so few and far between. 
 
 Gumb appears to have united in his native char- 
 acter the simplicity of an ancient hermit and the 
 stern contempt of the solitary student for the busy 
 hum of men, with the brave resolution and indepen- 
 dent energy of mind which have won success and fame 
 for some of our self-made sons of science and skill. 
 But his opportunities were few, and the severance of 
 his life and abode from contact with his fellow-men 
 forbade that access to the discoveries and researches 
 of his kind which might have rendered him, in other 
 days, the Hugh Miller of the rocks, or the Stephenson 
 or Watt of a scientific solitude. He and his wife 
 inhabited their wedded cell for many years and long. 
 The mother on her stony couch gladdened her anxious 
 husband with sons and daughters ; but she had the 
 courage to brave her woman's trials alone, for neither 
 midwife nor doctor were ever summoned to " the rock." 
 These, as may well be imagined, were all literally 
 educated at home ; but only one of their children — 
 his name was John — appears to have inherited his 
 father's habits or energy. He succeeded to the cav- 
 erned home after Daniel's deatli, and when his mother 
 had returned to her native village to die also, the 
 existence of John Gumb is casually seen recorded as 
 one of the skilful hewers of stone at the foot of 
 Carradon. But Daniel died " an old man full of
 
 DANIEL GUMB's ROCK. 83 
 
 days," and he was carried after all ad plurcs, and to 
 the silent society of men, in the churchyard of the 
 parish wherein stood afar off his rocky home. He won 
 and he still deserves a nook of remembrance amonsj 
 the legendary sons of the west, " the giants " of Keltic 
 race, " the mighty men that were of old, the men of re- 
 nown." His mind, though rough-hewn, like a block of 
 his native granite, must have been well balanced : res- 
 olute and firm reliance on a man's own resources, and 
 disdain of external succour, have ever been a signal of 
 native genius. To be able to live alone, according to 
 the adage of an ancient sage, a man must be either an 
 angel or a demon. Gunib was neither, but a simple, 
 strong -hearted, and intellectual man. He had the 
 "mens sana in corpore sano " of the poet's aspiration. 
 A scenic taste and a mind "to enjoy the universe" he 
 revealed in the very choice of his abode. In utter 
 scorn of the pent-up city, and dislike for the reek of 
 the multitude, he built like "the Keuite, his nest in 
 the rock " ; nor did he pitch his stony tent by chance, 
 or in a casual place in the wild. He chose and he 
 fixed his home where his eye could command and exult 
 in a stretch of circumferent scenery a hundred and 
 fifty miles in surrounding extent. In the east, he 
 greeted the morning sun, as he mounted the rugged 
 saddle of Dartmoor and Exmoor for his daily career. 
 To the west, Koche, the rock of the ruined hermitage, 
 lifted a bold and craggy crest to the sky, where long 
 centuries before another solitary of more ascetic mind 
 lay, like the patriarch on his pillow of granite, and 
 reared a ladder to heaven by the energy of nightly 
 prayer. Far, far away to the westward the haughty 
 sun of England went into the storied Sea of Arthur 
 and his knights, and touched caressingly the heights of
 
 84 DANIEL GUMB's KOCK. 
 
 grim Duiiiln^L'l witli a lini^cvin,^ lialo of light. These 
 were the visions that soothed and surrounded the 
 worker at his daily toil, and roused and strengthened 
 the energies of the self-sustaining man. The lessons of 
 the legend of Daniel Gumb are simple and earnest and 
 strong. The words of supernatural wisdom might be 
 graven as an added superscription on his rock, " What- 
 soever thou doest, do it with all thine heart." If thou 
 be a man friendless and alone, the slave of the hammer 
 or the axe, and doomed to the sweat of labour day by 
 day till the night shall come that no man can work, 
 "aide-toi et Dieu t'aidera" — aid thyself and God will 
 succour thee.
 
 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT.^ 
 
 AX the brow of a lofty hill, crested with stag-horned 
 ^ trees, commanding a deep and woodland gorge 
 wherein " the Crooks of Combe " (the curves of a wind- 
 ing river) urge onward to the " Severn Sea," still sur- 
 vive the remains of famous old Stowe, — that historic 
 abode of the loyal and glorious Sir Beville, the Bayard 
 of old Cornwall, " sans peur et sans reproche," in the 
 thrilling Stuart wars. No mansion on the Tamar- 
 side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store of 
 association and event. Thither the sons of the Cornish 
 gentry were accustomed to resort, to be nurtured and 
 brought up with the children of Sir Beville Granville 
 and Lady Grace ; for the noble knight was literally the 
 " glass wherein " the youth of those ancient times " did 
 dress themselves." There their graver studies were 
 relieved by manly pastime and athletic exercise. Like 
 the children of the Persians, they were taught " to ride, 
 to bend the bow, and to speak the truth." At hearth 
 and hull every time-honoured usage and festive celebra- 
 
 1 From ' All the Year Round,' vol. xvi. pp. 2 17-249. 1866.
 
 8G ANTONY TAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 
 
 tion was carefully and reverently preserved. Around 
 the walls branched the massive antlers of the red deer 
 of the moors, the trophies of many a bold achievement 
 with horse and hound. At the buttery-hatch hung a 
 tankard marked with tlie guests' and the travellers' 
 peg, and a manchet, flanked with native cheese, stood 
 ready on a trencher for any sudden visitant who might 
 choose to lift the latch ; for the Granville motto was, 
 " An open door and a greeting hand." A troop of 
 retainers, servants, grooms, and varlets of the yard, 
 stood each in his place, and under orders to receive 
 with a welcome the unknown stranger, as well as their 
 master's kinsman and friend. 
 
 Among these, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century, appeared a remarkable personage. He was 
 the son of an old tenant on the estate, who occupied 
 the manor - house of Stratton, a neighbouring town. 
 His parents were of the yeoman rank in life, and pos- 
 sessed no singularity of personal aspect or frame, al- 
 though both were comely. But Antony, their son, was 
 from his earliest years a wonderful boy. He shot up 
 into preternatural stature and strength. His propor- 
 tions were so vast that, when he was a mere lad, his 
 schoolmates were accustomed to " borrow his back," 
 and, for sport, to work out their geography lessons or 
 arithmetic on that broad disc in chalk ; so that, to his 
 mother's amazement and dismay, he more than once 
 brought home, like Atlas, the world on his shoulders, 
 for her to rub out. His strength and skill in every 
 boyish game were marvellous, and, unlike many other 
 large men, his mental and intellectual faculties in- 
 creased with his amazing growth. 
 
 It was Antony Payne's delight to select two of his 
 stoutest companions, whom he termed " his kittens,"
 
 ANTONY PAYXE, A CORNISH GIANT. 87 
 
 and, with one under each arm, to climb some perilous 
 crag or cliff in the neighbourhood of the sea, " to show 
 them the world," as he said. He was called in the 
 school " Uncle Tony/' for the Cornish to this day em- 
 ploy the names " uncle and aunt " as titles of endear- 
 ment and respect. Another relic of his boyhood is 
 extant still : the country lads, when they describe any- 
 thing of excessive dimensions, call it, "As long as 
 Tony Payne's foot." 
 
 He grew on gradually, and in accurate proportion of 
 sinews and thews, until, at the age of twenty-one, he 
 was taken into the establishment at Stowe. He then 
 measured seven feet two inches without his shoes, and 
 he afterwards added a couple of inches more to his 
 stately growth. Wide-chested, full-armed, and pillared 
 like a rock on lower limbs of ample and exact sym- 
 metry, he would have gladdened the critical eyes of 
 Queen Elizabeth, whose Tudor taste led her to exult in 
 " looking on a man." If his lot had fallen in later days, 
 he might have been hired by some wonder-monger to 
 astonish the provincial mind, or the intellect of cities, 
 as the Cornish Chang. But in good, old, honest, simple- 
 hearted England, they utilised their giants, and deemed 
 that when a cubit was added to the stature of a man, 
 it was for some wise good end, and they looked upon 
 their loftier brother with added honour and respect. 
 
 So for many years Payne continued to fulfil his 
 various duties as Sir Beville's chief retainer at Stowe. 
 He it was who was the leader and tlie authority in 
 every masculine sport. He embowelled and flayed 
 the hunted deer, and carried the carcass on his own 
 shoulders to the Hall, where he received as his guerdon 
 the horns and the hide. The antlers, cleansed and 
 polished, were hoisted as a trophy on the panelled
 
 88 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 
 
 wall ; and the skins, dressed and prepared, were shaped 
 into a jerkin for his goodly chest. It took the spoils 
 of three full-grown red deer to make the garment com- 
 plete. His master's sons and their companions, the 
 very pride of the West, who were housed and instructed 
 at Stowe, when released from their graver studies, were 
 under his especial charge. lie taught them to slioot, 
 and fish, and to handle arms. Tilt-yard and bowlhig- 
 green, and the hurler's ground, can still be identified at 
 Stowe. In the latter, the poising-place and the mark 
 survive, and a rough block of graywacke is called to 
 this day " Payne's cast " ; it lies full ten paces beyond 
 the reach whereat the ordinary players could " put the 
 stone." 
 
 It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire languished 
 in the Hall. A boy with an ass had been sent to the 
 woodland for logs, and the driver loitered on his home- 
 ward way. Lady Grace lost patience, and was dis- 
 pleased. All at once a sudden outcry was heard at the 
 gate, and Sir Beville's Giant appeared with the loaded 
 animal on his mighty back. He threw down his burden 
 in triumph at the hearth-side, shouting merrily, " Ass 
 and fardel ! ass and fardel for my lady's Yule ! " 
 Another time he strode along the path from Kilk- 
 hampton village to Stowe with a bacon-hog of three 
 hundredweight thrown across his shoulders, and merely 
 because a taunting butcher had doubted his strength 
 for the feat. Among the excellences of Sir Beville's 
 Giant, it is told of him that he was by no means 
 clumsy or uncouth, as men of unusual size sometimes 
 are, but as nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift 
 and dexterous movement, as a light and muscular man. 
 Added to this, his was a strong and acute intellect ; so 
 happy also in his language, and of such a ready wit.
 
 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 89 
 
 that he was called by a writer of the last century, 
 from his resemblance, in these points only, to Shake- 
 speare's knight, " the Falstaff of the West." 
 
 But a great and sudden change was about to come 
 over the happy halls of Stowe. The king and his Par- 
 liament were at fatal strife ; and there could be but 
 one place in the land for the true-hearted and chival- 
 rous Sir Beville, and that was at his royal master's side. 
 The well-known rallying cry went through the hills 
 and valleys of Cornwall, " Granville's up ! " and the 
 hearts and hands of many a noble knight and man-at- 
 arms turned towards old Stowe. Mounted messengers 
 rode to and fro. Strange and stalwart forms arrived to 
 claim a place in the ranks. Eetainers were enrolled 
 day and night ; and the smooth sward of the bowling- 
 green and the Fawn's Paddock were dinted by the hoofs 
 of horses and the tread of serried men. Foremost 
 among these scenes we find, as body-guard of his 
 master, the bulky form of Antony Payne. He mar- 
 shalled and manoeuvred the rude levies from the 
 western mines, " the underground men." He served 
 out arms and rations, and established order, by the 
 mere terror of his presence and strength, among the 
 wild and mixed multitude that gathered " for the king 
 and land," 
 
 Instead of the glad and hospitable scenery of former 
 times, Stowe became in those days like a garrison sur- 
 rounded by a camp. At last, one day tidings arrived 
 that the battalions of the Parliament, led by Lord 
 Stamford, were on their way northwards, and not many 
 miles off. A picked and goodly company marched forth 
 from the avenue of Stowe, and among them Payne, on 
 his Cornish cob Samson, of pure Guinhilly breed. The 
 next day, eight miles toward the south, the battle of
 
 90 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 
 
 Stratton Hill was fought and won hy the royal troops. 
 The Earl of Stamford was repulsed, and fled, bequeath- 
 ing, by a strange mischance, his own name, though the 
 defeated commander, to the field of battle. It is called 
 to this day Stamford Hill. Sir Beville returned that 
 night to Stowe, but his Giant remained with some other 
 soldiers to bury the dead. He had caused certain large 
 trenches to be laid open, each to hold ten bodies side 
 by side. There he and his followers carried in the slain. 
 On one occasion they had laid down nine corpses, and 
 Payne was bringing in another, tucked under his arm, 
 like one of " the kittens " of his schoolboy days, when 
 all at once the supposed dead man was heard pleading 
 earnestly with him, and expostulating, " Surely you 
 wouldn't bury me, Mr Payne, before I am dead ? " "I 
 tell thee, man," was the grim reply, " our trench was 
 dug for ten, and there's nine in already ; you must take 
 your place." "But I bean't dead, I say; I haven't 
 done living yet ; be massyful, Mr Payne — don't ye 
 hurry a poor fellow into the earth before his time." 
 " I won't hurry thee : I mean to put thee down quietly 
 and cover thee up, and then thee canst die at thy 
 leisure." Payne's purpose, however, was kinder than 
 his speech. He carried his suppliant carefully to his 
 own cottage, not far off, and charged his wife to stanch, 
 if possible, her husband's rebellious blood. The man 
 lived, and his descendants are among the principal 
 inhabitants of the town of Stratton to this day. 
 
 That same year the battle of Lansdown, near Bath, 
 was fought. The forces -of the Parliament prevailed, 
 and Sir Beville nobly died. Payne was still at his 
 side, and when his master fell, he mounted young John 
 Granville, a youth of sixteen, whom he had always in 
 charge, on his father's horse, and he led the Granville
 
 ANTONY PAYNE, A COENISH GIANT. 91 
 
 troop into the fight. A letter which the faitliful re- 
 tainer wrote to his hidy at Stowe still survives. It 
 breathes in the quaint language of the clay a noble 
 strain of sympathy and homage. Thus it ran : — 
 
 " Honoured Madam, — Til news flieth apace. The 
 
 heavy tidings no doubt hath already travelled to Stowe 
 
 that we have lost our blessed master by the enemy's 
 
 advantage. You must not, dear lady, grieve too much 
 
 for your noble spouse. You know, as we all believe, 
 
 that his soul was in heaven before his bones were cold. 
 
 He fell, as he did often tell us he wished to die, in the 
 
 great Stuart cause, for his country and his king. He 
 
 delivered to me his last commands, and with such 
 
 tender words for you and for his children as are not to 
 
 be set down with my poor pen, but must come to your 
 
 ears upon my best heart's breath. Master John, when 
 
 I mounted him on his father's horse, rode him into the 
 
 war like a young prince, as he is, and our men followed 
 
 him with their swords drawn and with tears in their 
 
 eyes. They did say they would kill a rebel for every 
 
 hair of Sir Beville's beard. But I bade them remember 
 
 their good master's word, when he wiped his sword 
 
 after Stamford fight ; how he said, when their cry was, 
 
 ' Stab and slay ! ' ' Halt, men ! God will avenge.' I am 
 
 coming down with mournfullest load that ever a poor 
 
 servant did bear, to bring the great heart that is cold to 
 
 Kilkhampton vault. Oh, my lady, how shall I ever 
 
 brook your weeping face ? But I will be trothful to the 
 
 living and to the dead, 
 
 " These, honoured madam, from thy saddest, truest 
 servant, Antony Payne." 
 
 At the Restoration the Stowe Giant reappears upon
 
 92 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 
 
 the scene, in attendance on liis young master, John 
 Granville. Sir Beville's son liacl been instrumental in 
 the return of the king, and liad received from Charles 
 II. largess of money, great offices, and the earldom of 
 Bath. Among other places of trust, he was appointed 
 Governor of the Garrison at Plymouth. There Payne 
 received the appointment of Halberdier of the Guns, 
 and the king, who held him in singular favour, com- 
 manded his portrait to be painted by the Court artist, 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller. The fate of this picture was one 
 of great vicissitude. It hung in state for some years in 
 the great gallery at Stowe ; thence, when that mansion 
 was dismantled at the death of the Earl of Bath, it 
 was removed to Penheale, another manor-house of the 
 Granvilles, in Cornwall ; but it ceased to be highly 
 esteemed, from the ignorance of the people and the 
 oblivion of years, insomuch so that when Gilbert, the 
 Cornish historian, travelled through the county to 
 collect materials for his work, he discovered the por- 
 trait rolled up in an empty room, and described by the 
 farmer's wife as " a carpet with the effigy of a large 
 man upon it." It was a gift to her husband, she said, 
 from the landlord's steward, and she was- glad to sell it 
 as she did for £8 ! When Gilbert died his collection of 
 antique curiosities was sold by auction at Devonport, 
 where he lived, and this portrait of Payne, which had 
 been engraved as the frontispiece to the second volume 
 of his ' History of Cornwall,' was bought by a stranger 
 who was passing through the town, and who had strolled 
 in to look at the sale, at the price of forty guineas. The 
 value had been apparently enhanced by. oil, and varnish, 
 and frame. This stranger proved to be a connoisseur 
 in paintings : he conveyed it to London, and there it 
 was ascertained to be one of the masterpieces of Kneller;
 
 ANTONY PAYNE, A COENISH GIANT. 93 
 
 it was resold for the enormous sum of £800. This 
 picture, or even the engraving in Gilbert's work, reveals 
 still to the eye the Giant of Old Stowe, " in his natural 
 presentment " as he lived. There he stands before the 
 eye, a stalwart soldier of the guard. One hand is 
 placed upon a cannon, and the other wields the tall 
 halberd of his rank and office as yeoman of the guns. 
 By a strange accident this very w^eapon and a large 
 flask or flagon, sheathed in wicker-work, which is said 
 to have held " Antony's allowance," a gallon of wine, 
 and which is placed in the picture on the ground at his 
 feet — both these relics of the time and the man are 
 now in the possession of the writer of this article, in 
 the Vicarage House, near Stowe. It was in Plymouth 
 garrison, and in his later days, that an event is re- 
 corded of Payne which testifies that even after long 
 years "his eye had not grown dim, neither was his 
 natural force abated." The Ptevolution had come and 
 gone, and William and Mary had been enthroned. At 
 the mess - table of the regiment in garrison, on the 
 anniversary of the day when Charles I. had been be- 
 headed, a sub-officer of Payne's own rank had ordered 
 a calf's head to be served up in a " "Willi am-and-Mary 
 dish." This, in those days of new devotion to the 
 house of Hanover, was a coarse and common annual 
 mockery of the beheaded king ; and delf, with the faces 
 of these two sovereigns for ornament, was a valued 
 ware (the writer has one large dish). When I'ayne 
 entered the room, his comrades pointed out to him the 
 insulting and practical jest — to him, too, most offensive, 
 for he was a Stuart man. With a ready and indig- 
 nant gesture he threw out of the window the symbolic 
 platter and its contents. 
 
 A fierce quarrel ensued and a challenge, and at break
 
 94 ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT. 
 
 of day Payne and his antagonist fought with swords 
 on the ramparts. After a strong contest — for the 
 offender was a master of his weapon — Payne ran his 
 adversary tlirough the sword-arm and disabled him. 
 He is said to have accompanied the successful thrust 
 witli the taunting shout, "There's sauce for thy calf's 
 head!" When the strong man at last began to bow 
 himself down at the approach of one stronger than he, 
 the Giant of Stowe obtained leave to retire. He re- 
 turned to Stratton, his native place, and found shelter 
 and repose in the very house and chamber wherein he 
 was born. 
 
 After his death, neither the door nor the stairs would 
 afibrd egress for the large and coffined corpse. The 
 joists had to be sawn through, and the floor lowered 
 with rope and pulley, to enable the Giant to pass out 
 towards his mighty grave. Ptelays of strong bier-men 
 carried him to his rest, and the bells of the tower, by 
 his own express desire, " chimed him home." He was 
 buried outside the southern wall of Stratton church. 
 When the writer was a boy, the sexton one day broke, 
 by accident, through the side wall of a vast but empty 
 sepulchre. Many went to see the sight, and there, 
 marked by a stone in the wall, was a vault, like the 
 tomb of the Anakim, large enough in these days for 
 the interment of three or four of our degenerate dead. 
 But it was empty, desolate, and bare. No mammoth 
 bones nor mysterious relics of the unknown dead. A 
 massive heap of silent dust !
 
 CEUEL COPPINGEE/ 
 
 AriECORD of the wild, strange, lawless characters 
 that roamed along the north coast of Cornwall 
 during the middle and latter years of the last century 
 would he a volume full of interest for the student of 
 local history and semi-barbarous life. Therein would 
 be found depicted the rough sea-captain, half smuggler, 
 half pirate, who ran his lugger by beacon-light into 
 some rui][CTed cove amons; the massive headlands of the 
 sliore, and was relieved of his freight by the active and 
 diligent "country-side." This was the name allotted 
 to that chosen troop of native sympathisers who were 
 always ready to rescue and conceal the stores that liad 
 escaped the degradation of the ganger's brand. Men 
 yet alive relate with glee how they used to rush at 
 some well-known signal to the strand, their small 
 active horses shaved from forelock to tail, smoother 
 than any modern clip, well soaped or greased from 
 head to foot, so as to slip easily out of any hostile 
 grasp ; and tlicn, with a double keg or pack slung on 
 
 From 'AH Llie Year Round," vul. xvi. pp. 537-540. 1866.
 
 96 CRUEL COPPINGER. 
 
 to every nag by a «iiiglo girth, away went the whole 
 herd, led by some swift well-trained mare, to the inland 
 cave or rocky hold, the shelter of their spoil. There 
 was a famous dun mare — she lived to the age of thirty- 
 seven, and died within legal mem'ory— almost human 
 in her craft and fidelity, who is said to have led a bevy 
 of loaded pack-horses, unassisted by driver or guide, 
 from Bossinney Haun to Roughtor Point. But beside 
 these travellers by sea, there would be found ever and 
 anon, in some solitary farmhouse inaccessible by wheels, 
 and only to be approached by some treacherous foot- 
 path along bog and mire, a strange and nameless guest 
 — often a foreigner in language and apparel — who had 
 sought refuge with the native family, and who paid in 
 strange but golden coins for his shelter and food ; some 
 political or private adventurer, perchance, to whom 
 secrecy and concealment were safety and life, and who 
 more than once lived and died in his solitary hiding- 
 place on the moor. 
 
 There is a bedstead of carved oak still in existence at 
 Trevotter — a farm among the midland hills— whereon 
 for long years an unknown stranger slept. None ever 
 knew his nation or name. He occupied a solitary room, 
 and only emerged now and then for a walk in the even- 
 ing; air. An oaken chest of small size contained his per- 
 sonal possessions and gold of foreign coinage, which he 
 paid into the hands of his host with the solemn charge 
 to conceal it until he was gone thence or dead — a request 
 which the simple-hearted people faithfully fulfilled. 
 His linen was beautifully fine, and his garments richly 
 embroidered. After some time he sickened and died, 
 refusing firmly the visits of the local clergyman, and 
 bequeathing to the farmer the contents of his chest. 
 He wrote some words, they said, for his own tombstone,
 
 CRUEL COPPINGER. 97 
 
 which, however, were not allowed to be engraved, but 
 they were simply these — " H. De E. Equees & Ecsul." 
 The same sentence was found, after his death, carved 
 on the ledge of his bed, and the letters are, or lately 
 were, still traceable on the mouldering wood. 
 
 But among the legends of local renown a prominent 
 place has always been allotted to a personage whose 
 name has descended to our times linked to a weird 
 and graphic epithet — " Cruel Coppinger." There was a 
 ballad in existence within human memory which was 
 founded on the history of this singular man, but of 
 which the first verse only can now be recovered. It 
 runs — 
 
 " Will you hear of tlie Cruel Copx^inger ? 
 He came from a foreign kind : 
 He was broiTght to us by the salt-water, 
 He was carried away by the wind." 
 
 His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was 
 signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up 
 Channel from the south-west. The shore and the 
 heiuhts were dotted with watchers for wreck — those 
 daring gleaners of the harvest of the sea. It was just 
 such a scene as is sought for in the proverb of the 
 West— 
 
 " A savage sea and a shattering wind, 
 The cliffs before, and the gale behind." 
 
 As suddenly as if a phantom ship had loomed in the 
 distance, a strange vessel of foreign rig was discovered 
 in fierce struggle with the waves of Harty Eace. She 
 was deeply laden or water-logged, and rolled heavily 
 in the trough of the sea, nearing the shore as she felt 
 the tide. Gradually the pale and dismayed faces of 
 the crew ])ecamc visible, and among them one num of 
 
 (J,
 
 98 CRUEL COPPINGEH. 
 
 herculean lieiglit and mould, \vlio stood near the wheel 
 with a speaking-trumpet in his hand. The sails were 
 blown to rags, and the rudder was apparently lashed 
 for running ashore. ]>ut the suck of the current and 
 tlie set of the wind were too strong for the vessel, 
 and she appeared to have lost her chance of reaching 
 Harty Pool. It was seen that the tall seaman, who 
 was manifestly the skipper of the boat, had cast off 
 his garments, and stood prepared upon the deck to 
 encounter a battle with the surges for life and rescue. 
 He plunged over the bulwarks, and arose to sight 
 buffeting the seas. With stalwart arm and powerful 
 chest he made his way through the surf, rode manfully 
 from billow to billow, until with a bound he stood at 
 last upright upon the sand, a fine stately semblance of 
 one of the old Vikings of the northern seas. A crowd 
 of people had gathered from the land, on horseback and 
 on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the 
 tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst, and to 
 their astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger : 
 he snatched from a terrified old dame her red Welsh 
 cloak, cast it loosely around him, and bounded suddenly 
 upon the crupper of a young damsel, who had ridden 
 her father's horse down to the beach to see the sight. 
 He grasped her bridle, and, shouting aloud in some 
 foreign language, urged on the double-laden animal 
 into full speed, and the horse naturally took his home- 
 ward way. Strange and wild were the outcries that 
 greeted the rider. Miss Dinah Hamlyn, when, thus 
 escorted, she reached her father's door in the very 
 embrace of a wild, rough, tall man, who announced 
 himself by a name — never afterwards forgotten in 
 those parts — as Coppinger, a Dane. He arrayed him- 
 self without the smallest scruple in the Sunday suit of
 
 CRUEL COPPINGER. 99 
 
 his host. The long-skirted coat of purple velveteen 
 with large buttons, the embroidered vest, and nether 
 garments to match, became him well. So thought the 
 lady of his sudden choice. She, no doubt, forgave his 
 onslaught on her and on her horse for the compliment 
 it conveyed. He took his immediate place at the 
 family board, and on the settle by the hearth, as though 
 he had been the most welcome and long-invited guest 
 in the land. Strange to say, the vessel disappeared 
 immediately he had left her deck, nor was she ever 
 after traced by land or sea. At first the stranger 
 subdued all the fierce phases of his savage character, 
 and appeared deeply grateful for all the kindness he 
 received at the hands of his simple - hearted host. 
 Certain letters which he addressed to persons of high 
 name in Denmark were, or were alleged to be, duly 
 answered, and remittances from his friends were 
 supposed to be received. He announced himself as 
 of a wealthy family and superior rank in his native 
 country, and gave out that it was to avoid a marriage 
 with a titled lady that he had left his father's house 
 and gone to sea. All this recommended him to the 
 unsuspecting Dinah, whose affections he completely 
 won. Her father's sudden illness postponed their 
 marriage. The good old man died to be spared much 
 evil to come. 
 
 The Dane succeeded almost naturally to the manage- 
 ment and control of the house, and the widow held 
 only an apparent influence in domestic affairs. He 
 soon persuaded the daughter to become his wife, 
 and immediately afterwards Ids evil nature, so long 
 smouldering, broke out like a wild beast uncaged. All 
 at once the house became the den and refuge of every 
 lawless character on tlie coast. All kinds of wild
 
 100 CKUEL COPPINGER. 
 
 uproar and reckless revelry appalled the iieig'hbour- 
 hood day and night. It was discovered that an 
 organised l)an(l of desperadoes, smugglers, wreckers, 
 and poachers were embarked in a system of bold 
 adventure, and tliat "Cruel Coppinger" was their 
 captain. In those days, and in that unknown and 
 far-away region, the peaceable inhabitants were totally 
 unprotected. There was not a single resident gentle- 
 man of property or weight in the entire district ; and 
 the clergyman, quite insulated from associates of his 
 own standing, was cowed into silence and submission. 
 No revenue officer durst exercise vigilance west of the 
 Tamar ; and to put an end to all such surveillance at 
 once, it was well known that one of the " Cruel " gang 
 had chopped off a ganger's head on the gunwale of a 
 boat, and carried the body off to sea. 
 
 Amid such scenes Coppinger pursued his unlawful 
 impulses without check or restraint. Strange vessels 
 began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and 
 signals were duly flashed from the headlands to lead 
 them into the safest creek or cove. If the ground-sea 
 were too strong to allow them to run in, they anchored 
 outside the surf, and boats prepared for that service 
 were rowed or hauled to and fro, freighted with illegal 
 spoil. Amongst these vessels, one. a full-rigged schooner, 
 soon became ominously conspicuous. She bore the 
 name of the Black Prince, and was the private property 
 of the Dane, built to his own order in a dockyard of 
 Denmark. She was for a long time the chief terror of 
 the Cornish Channel. Once with Coppinger on board, 
 when under chase, she led a revenue cutter into an in- 
 tricate channel near the Gull Eock, where, from know- 
 ledge of the bearings, the Black Prince escaped scath- 
 less, while the king's vessel perished with all on board.
 
 CRUEL COPPINGER. 101 
 
 lu those times, if any landsman became obnoxious to 
 Coppinger's men, he was either seized by violence or by 
 craft, and borne away handcuffed to the deck of the 
 Black Prince ; where, to save his life, he had to enrol 
 himself, under fearful oaths, as one of the crew. In 
 1835, an old man of the age of ninety-seven related to 
 the writer that, when a youth, he had been so abducted, 
 and after two years' service had been ransomed by his 
 friends with a large sum. " And all," said the old man, 
 very simply, " because I happened to see one man kill 
 another, and they thought I should mention it." 
 
 Amid such practices ill-gotten gold began to flow and 
 ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he chanced 
 to hold enough money to purchase a freehold farm bor- 
 dering on the sea. When the day of transfer arrived, 
 he and one of his followers appeared before the aston- 
 ished lawyer with bags filled with various kinds of 
 foreign coin. Dollars and ducats, doubloons and pis- 
 toles, guineas — the coinage of every foreign country 
 with a seaboard — were displayed on the table. The 
 man of law at first demurred to such purchase-money ; 
 but after some controversy, and an ominous oath or 
 two of " that or none," the lawyer agreed to take it by 
 weight. The document bearing Coppinger's name is 
 still extant. His signature is traced in stern, bold, 
 fierce characters, as if every letter had been stabbed 
 upon the parchment with the point of a dirk. Under- 
 neath his autograph, also in his own writing, is the word 
 " Thuro." 
 
 Long impunity increased Coppinger's daring. There 
 were certain byways and bridle-roads along the fields 
 over which he exercised exclusive control. Although 
 every one had a perfect right by law to use tliese ways, 
 he issued orders that no man was to pass over them by
 
 102 CRUEL COPPINGER. 
 
 iii,L;lil, and accor(liiifi;ly from that liuur ikhu; ovci- did. 
 Tlu^y were called " Coppinger's Tracks." They all con- 
 verged at a headland which had the name of Steeple 
 Brink. Here the cliff sheered off, and stood three hun- 
 dred feet of perpendicular height, a precipice of smooth 
 rock toward the beach, with an overhanging face one 
 hundred feet down from the brow. There was a hollow 
 entrance into tlie cliff, like a huge cathedral - door, 
 crowned and surrounded with natural Saxon arches, 
 curved by the strata of native stone. Within was an 
 arched and vaulted cave, vast and gloomy ; it ran a 
 long way into the heart . of the land, and was as large 
 and tall — so the country-people said — as Kilkhampton 
 church. This stronghold was inaccessible by natural 
 means, and could only be approached by a cable-ladder 
 lowered from above and nuide fast below on a project- 
 ing crag. It received the name of " Coppinger's Cave," 
 and was long the scene of fierce and secret revelry that 
 would be utterly inconceivable to the educated mind of 
 the nineteenth century. Here sheep were tethered to 
 the rock, and fed on stolen hay and corn till their Hesh 
 was required for a feast : kegs of brandy and hollands 
 were piled around ; chests of tea ; and iron-bound sea- 
 chests contained the chattels and the revenues of the 
 Coppinger royalty of the sea. No man ever essayed 
 the perilous descent into the cavern except the captain's 
 own troop, and their loyalty was secured not only by 
 their participation in his crimes but by a terrible oath. 
 The terror linked with Coppinger's name throughout 
 the coast was so extreme that the people themselves, 
 wild and lawless as they were, submitted to his sway 
 as though he had been the lord of the soil and they his 
 vassals. Such a household as Coppinger's was of course 
 far from hap];)y or calm. Although when his wife's
 
 CRUEL COPPINGER. 103 
 
 father died he had insensibly acquired possession of the 
 stock and farm, there remained in the hands of the 
 widow a considerable amount of money as her dower. 
 This he obtained from the poor helpless woman by in- 
 stalments ; and when pretext and entreaty alike failed, 
 he resorted to a novel mode of levy. He fastened his 
 wife to the pillar of her oak bedstead, and called her 
 mother into the room. He then explained that it was 
 his purpose to flog Dinah with the sea-cat, which he 
 flourished in his hand, until her mother had transferred 
 to him such an amount as he required of her reserved 
 property. This deed of atrocity he repeated until he 
 had utterly exhausted the widow's store. He had a 
 favourite mare, so fierce and indomitable that none but 
 Coppinger himself could venture on her back, and so 
 fleet and strong that he owed his escape from more than 
 one menacing peril by her speed and endurance. The 
 clergyman had spoken above his breath of the evil 
 doings in the cave, and had thus aroused his wrath and 
 vengeance. On a certain day he was jogging homeward 
 on his parish cob, and had reached the middle of a wide 
 and desolate heath. All at once he heard behind him 
 the clattering of horse-hoofs and a yell such as might 
 have buVst from the throat of the visible demon when 
 he hurled the battle on the ancient saint. It was Cruel 
 Coppinger with his double-thonged whip, mounted on 
 his terrible mare. Down came the fearful scourge on 
 his victim's shuddering shoulders. Escape was impos- 
 sible. The poor parson knew too well the difference 
 between his own ambling galloway, that never essayed 
 any swifter pace than a jog-trot, and that awful steed 
 behind him with footsteps like the storm. Circling, 
 doubling like a hare, twisting aside, crying aloud for 
 mercy, — all was vain. Ho arrived at last at his own
 
 1 I CRUEL COPPINGER. 
 
 house, striped like a zebra, and as he ruslied in at the 
 gate he heard the parting scoff of his assailant, " There, 
 parson, I have paid my tithe in full ; never mind the 
 receipt ! " 
 
 It was on the self-same animal that Coppinger per- 
 formed another freak. He had passed a festive evening 
 at a farmhouse, and was about to take his departure, 
 when he spied at the corner of the hearth a little old 
 tailor of the country-side, who went from house to 
 house to exercise his calling. He was a half-witted, 
 harmless old fellow, and answered to the name of Uncle 
 Tom Tape. 
 
 " Ha, Uncle Tom ! " cried Coppinger; " we both travel 
 the same road, and I don't mind giving thee a hoist 1)0- 
 hind me on the mare." 
 
 The old man cowered in the settle. He would not 
 encumber the gentleman, — was unaccustomed to ride 
 such a spirited horse. But all his excuses were over- 
 borne. The other guests, entering into the joke, assisted 
 the trembling old man to mount the crupper of the 
 capering mare. Off she bounded, and Uncle Tom, with 
 his arms cast with the strong gripe of terror around his 
 bulky companion, held on like grim death. Unbuckling 
 his belt, Coppinger passed it around Uncle Toiii's thin 
 haggard body, and buckled it on his own front. When 
 he had firmly secured his victim, he loosened his reins, 
 and urged the mare with thong and spur into a furious 
 gallop. Onward they rushed till they fled past the 
 tailor's own door at the roadside, where his startled 
 wife, who was on the watch, afterwards declared " she 
 caught sight of her husband clinging on to a rainbow." 
 Loud and piteous were the outcries of Tailor Tom, and 
 earnest his shrieks of entreaty that he might be told 
 where he was to be carried that night, and for what
 
 CEUEL COPPINGER. 105 
 
 doom he had been buckled on. At hist, in a relaxation 
 of their pace going np a steep hill, Coppinger made 
 him a confidential communication. 
 
 " I have, been," he said, " under a long promise to the 
 devil that I would bring him a tailor to make and 
 mend for him, poor man ; and as sure as I breathe, 
 Uncle Tom, I mean to keep my word to-night ! " 
 
 The agony of terror produced by this revelation pro- 
 duced such convulsive spasms, that at last the belt gave 
 way, and the tailor fell off like a log among the gorse 
 at the roadside. There he was found next morning in 
 a semi-delirious state, muttering at intervals, " No, no ; 
 I never will. Let him mend his breeches with his own 
 drag-chain, as the saying is. I will never so much as 
 thread a needle for Coppinger nor his friend." 
 
 One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah's marriage 
 with the Dane. But his birth brought neither gladness 
 nor solace to his mother's miserable hearth. He was 
 fair and golden-haired, and had his father's fierce, flash- 
 ing eyes. But though perfectly well formed and health- 
 ful, he was born deaf and dumb. He was mischievous 
 and ungovernable from his birth. His cruelty to ani- 
 mals, birds, and to other children was intense. Any 
 living thing that he could torture appeared to yield 
 him delight. With savage gestures and jabbering 
 moans he haunted the rocks along the shore, and seemed 
 like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When 
 he was only six years old he was found one day upon 
 the brink of a tall cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing 
 downward towards the beach with convulsions of de- 
 light. There, mangled by the fall and dead, they found 
 the body of a neighbour's child of his own age, who was 
 his frequent companion, and whom, as it was inferred, 
 he had drawn towards the steep precipice, and urged
 
 106 CKUEL COrPINGER. 
 
 over by stratagem uv force. The spot wlicrc tliis oc- 
 curred was ever afterwards liis favourite Imuiit. He 
 would draw tlu' notice of any passer-by to tlie place, and 
 then point downward where the murdered child was 
 found witli fierce exultant mockery. It was a saying 
 evermore in the district, that, as a judgment on his 
 father's cruelty, his child had been born without a 
 human soul. ][e lived to be the pestilent scourge of 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 But the end arrived. Money had become scarce, and 
 the resources of the cave began to fail. More than one 
 armed king's cutter were seen day and night hovering 
 off the land. Foreigners visited the house with tidino;s 
 of peril. So he " who came with the water went with 
 the wind." His disappearance, like his arrival, was 
 commemorated by a turbulent storm. A wrecker, who 
 had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun went down, 
 a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. By-and-by a 
 rocket hissed up from the Gull Eock, a small islet with 
 a creek on the landward side which had been the scene 
 of many a run of smuggled cargo. A gun from the ship 
 answered it, and again both signals were exchanged. 
 At last a well-known and burly form stood on the top- 
 most crag of the island rock. He waved his sword, and 
 the light flashed back from the steel. A boat put off 
 from the vessel with two hands at every oar — for the 
 tide runs with double violence through Harty Eace. 
 They neared the rocks, rowed daringly through the surf, 
 and were steered by some practised coxswain into the 
 Gull Creek. There they found their man. Coppinger 
 leaped on board the boat, and assumed the command. 
 They made with strong efforts for their ship. It was a 
 path of peril through that boiling surf. Still, bending 
 at the oar like chained giants, the man watched them
 
 CRUEL COPPINGEE. 107 
 
 till they forced their way through the battling waters. 
 Once, as they drew off the shore, one of the rowers, 
 either from ebbing strength or loss of courage, drooped 
 at his oar. Tn a moment a cutlass gleamed over his 
 head, and a fierce stern stroke cut him down. It was 
 the last blow of Cruel Coppinger. He and his boat's 
 crew boarded the vessel, and she was out of sight in a 
 moment, like a spectre or a ghost. Thunder, lightning, 
 and hail ensued. Trees were rent up by the roots 
 around the pirate's abode. Poor Dinah watched, and 
 held in her shuddering arms her idiot-boy, and, strange 
 to say, a meteoric stone, called in that country a storm- 
 bolt, fell through the roof into the room at the very feet 
 of Cruel Coppinger's vacant chair.
 
 TIIOMASINE BONAYENTUEE. 
 
 rpHE aspect of rural England during the fifteenth and 
 -L sixteenth centuries must have presented a strange 
 and striking contrast, in the eye of a traveller, to the 
 agricultural scenery of our own time. Thinly peopled 
 — for the three millions of our chief city nowadays are 
 in excess of the total population of the whole land of 
 the Edwards and the Henrys — the inhabitants occupied 
 hamlets few and far between, and a farm or grange 
 signified usually a moated house amid a cluster of 
 cultivated fields, gathered within fences from the sur- 
 rounding forest or wold, and gleaming in the dis- 
 tance with rich or green enclosures, rescued from the 
 wilderness, to give " fodder to the cattle, and bread to 
 strengthen the heart of man." But the great domains 
 of the land for the most part expanded into woodland 
 and marsh and moor, with glades or grassy avenues 
 here and there for access to the lair of the red deer or 
 the wild boar, or other native game, which afforded in 
 that day a principal supply of human food. Yonder in 
 
 1 From 'AH the Year Round,' vol. xvii. pp. 27G-2S0. 1SG7.
 
 THOMASINE BONAVENTUKE. 109 
 
 the distance appeared ever and anon a beacon-tower, 
 which marked the place and ward for the warning of 
 hostile advances by night, and for the gathering rest of 
 the hobbelars or horsemen, whose ofhce it was to scour 
 the country and to keep in awe the enemies of God and 
 the king. Wheel-roads, except in the neighbourhood 
 of cities or on the line of a royal progress, there were 
 none; and among the bridle-paths men urged their 
 dithcult path in companies, for it was seldom safe for 
 an honest or well-to-do man to travel alone. Elvers 
 glided in silence to the sea without a sail or an oar to 
 ruftie their waters ; and there were wdiole regions, that 
 now are loud with populous life, that might then have 
 been called void places of the uninliabited earth. But 
 more especially did this character of uncultured desola- 
 tion pervade the extreme borders of the west of Eng- 
 land, the country between the Tamar and the sea. 
 There dwelt in scattered villages, or town-places as 
 they are called to this day, the bold and hardy Keltic 
 people, few in number, but, like the race of the Eastern 
 wild man, never taught to bear the yoke. Long after 
 other parts of England had settled into an improved 
 agriculture, and submitted to the discipline of more 
 civilised life, the Cornish were wont to hew their re- 
 sources out of the bowels of their mother earth, or to 
 haul into their nets the native harvest of the sea. 
 Thus the merchandise of fish, tin, and copper became 
 the vaunted staple of their land. These, the rich pro- 
 ductions of their native county, were, even in remote 
 periods of our history, in perpetual request, and formed, 
 together with the wool of- their moorland Hocks, the 
 great trade of the Cornish people. From all parts, and 
 especially from that storied city whose merchants were 
 then, as now, princes of tlie land, men were wont to
 
 110 TFIOMASINE F.ONAVKNTUltE. 
 
 encounter the perilous journey from the Thames to the 
 Tamar, to pursue their trafhc with the " underground 
 folk," as they termed the inhabitants of Cornwall, that 
 rocky land of strangers, as, when literally interpreted, 
 is the exact meaning of its name. 
 
 It was in the year 1463, when Edward IV. occupied 
 the English throne, that a tall and portly merchant, 
 in the distinctive apparel of the times, rode along tlie 
 wilds of a Cornish moor. He sat high and firm upon 
 his horse, a bony gelding, with demipique saddle. A 
 broad beaver, or, as it was then called, a Flanders hat, 
 shaded a grave and thoughtful countenance, wherein 
 shrewdness and good-humour struggled for the mastery 
 and the latter prevailed, and his full brown beard was 
 forked — a happy omen, as it was always held, of pros- 
 perous life. His riding garb displayed that contrast of 
 colours which was then so valued by native taste, in- 
 somuch that the phrase " motley " had in its origin a 
 complimentary and not an invidious sound. Behind 
 him and near rode his servant, a stout and active- 
 looking knave, armed to the teeth. 
 
 The traveller had crossed the ford of a moorland 
 stream, when he halted and reined up at a scene that 
 greeted him on the bank. There, on a green and rushy 
 knoll and underneath a gnarled and wind-swept tree, 
 a damsel in the blossom of youth stood leaning on her 
 shepherd-staff: her companion, a peasant boy, drew 
 back, half shaded by a rock. Sheep of the native breed, 
 the long-forgotten Cornish Knott, gathered around. As 
 he drew nigh, the stranger discovered that the maiden 
 was tall and well formed, and that her rounded limbs 
 had the mould and movement of a natural grace that 
 only health and exercise could develop or bestow. The 
 sure evidence of her Keltic origin was testified by her
 
 THOMASINE BOKAVENTUEE. Ill 
 
 eyes of violet-blue and abundant hair of rich and radiant 
 brown — the hue that Italian poets delight to describe 
 as the colour of the ripe chestnut, or the stalks and 
 fibres of the maidenhair fern. She had also the bashful 
 nose that appears to retreat from the lip with the un- 
 mistakable curve of the Kelt. She was clad in a grey 
 kirtle of native wool, and her bodice also was knitted 
 at the hearth by homely hands. The merchant was 
 first to speak. 
 
 " Be not scared," said he, " fair damsel, by a stranger's 
 voice. My name is John Bunsby, of the city of London, 
 and I am bound for the hostel of Wike St Marie, which 
 must be somewhere nigh this moor. What did thy 
 gossips call thee, maiden, at the font ? " 
 
 " My name, kind sir," she answered, modestly, " is 
 Thomasine Bonaventure, and my father's house is hard 
 by at Wike. These are my master's sheep." 
 
 " The evening falls fast," said the traveller ; " I would 
 fain hire safe guidance to yonder inn." 
 
 She beckoned to the youth and whispered a word in 
 his car, to which, however, he seemed to listen witli 
 reluctance or dislike, and then, with her crook still in 
 her hand, she herself went on to guide the stranger on 
 his way. They arrived in due course at the hostel- 
 door, at the sign of the Eose : but it was the Eose, 
 mere, and without an epithet ; for mine host had wisely 
 omitted, in those dangerous days, to designate the liuc 
 of that symbolic flower. The traveller dismounted at 
 the door, thanked and requited his gentle guide, and 
 signified that as soon as his leisure allowed he would 
 find the way to her father's house. After a strict com- 
 mand U) his own servant and the varlet of the stable 
 that his horses should receive due vigilance and abun- 
 dant food, Master Bunsby at la-^t entered the inn. A
 
 112 TIIOMASINE BONAVENTURE. 
 
 lu'catiiiiib of \V(i()(I blazed on the licaitli, shedding light 
 as well as heat around the panelled room — for in those 
 times of old simplicity a single apartment was allotted 
 for household purposes and for the entertainment of 
 guests. The traveller took an offered seat on the carved 
 oak settle, in the place of honour by the fire, and looked 
 on with interest at the homely but original scene. At 
 his right hand a vast oven, with an entrance not unlike 
 a church-door, was about to disgorge its manifold con- 
 tents. Eye-loaves led the way, sweet and tasty to the 
 liiial crust (wheat was in those days a luxury unknown 
 in Cornwall) ; barley-bread and oaten cakes came forth 
 in due procession from the steaming cave ; and, last of 
 all, the merchant's sight and nostrils were greeted by 
 the arrival of a huge and mysterious pie from its depths. 
 The achievements of the dame, who was both cook and 
 hostess in her own person, were duly and triumphantly 
 arrayed upon the board, and the stranger-guest took 
 the accustomed seat at the right hand of " mine host." 
 His eyes were fixed with curiosity and interest on the 
 hillock of brown dough which stood before him, and 
 reeked like a small volcano with steaming puffs of 
 savoury vapour. At last, when the massive crust which 
 lay like a tombstone over the mighty dish had been 
 broken up, the pie revealed its strange contents. 
 Conger-eels, pilchards, and oysters were mingled piece- 
 meal in the mass beneath, their intervals slushed with 
 melted better and clotted cream, and the whole well 
 seasoned, not without a savour of garlic, with spices, 
 pepper, and salt. The stranger's astonishment was 
 manifest in gesture and look, although he by no means 
 repulsed the trencher which came towards him loaded 
 with his bountiful share. 
 
 " Sir guest," said the host, " you doubtless know the
 
 THOMASINE BONAYENTUEE. 113 
 
 byword — ' The Cornish cooks make everything into 
 a pie.' Our grandames say that the devil never dared 
 cross the Tamar, or he would have been verily put 
 under a crust." 
 
 Satisfied with his fare, the merchant now inquired 
 for the dwelling-place of his guide. It was not far off. 
 The parents of the shepherdess inhabited a thatched 
 hut in the village, with the usual walls of beaten cob, 
 moulded of native clay : all within and without bespoke 
 extreme poverty and want, but there Master John 
 Bunsby soon found himself an honoured visitor seated 
 by the hearth, with a blazing fire of dry gorse gathered 
 from the moor to greet his arrival. There, while the 
 mother stood by her turn or wheel and span, and the 
 maiden's nimble fingers flashed her knitting-needles to 
 and fro by the fitful light of the fire, the old man her 
 father and the merchant conversed in a low voice far 
 into the night, on a theme of deep interest to both. 
 The talk was of Thomasine, the child of the house. 
 The merchant related his own prosperous affairs, and 
 spake of his goodly house in London, governed by a 
 thrifty and diligent wife : the household was one of 
 grave and decent demeanour, with good repute in the 
 vast city wherein dwelt the king. He had taken an 
 immediate interest, he declared, in the old man's 
 daughter, and desired to rescue her from the life she 
 led on the bleak unsheltered moor. He pledged him- 
 self, if they should consent, to convey her in safety to 
 London, and to place her in especial attendance on his 
 wife ; and there, if her conduct were in unison with 
 her looks, he doubted not she would win many friends, 
 and secure a happy livelihood for tlie rest of her days. 
 He would await their decision at the inn, where he 
 should Ijc detained liy business two or three days. 
 
 II
 
 lU TIIOMASINE BONAVENTUltE. 
 
 Earnest and anxious were their thoughts and their 
 language in the cottage that night and the next day. 
 The aspect and speech of the rich patron were such 
 as invited confidence and trust; but there were the 
 love and fear of two aged hearts to satisfy and sub- 
 due. There was the fierce and stubborn repugnance 
 also of the youth, the companion of the maid, who stood 
 with her under the tree upon the moor. He was her 
 cousin, John Dincham, of Swannacote, and they had 
 grown up together from childhood, till, unconsciously 
 to themselves, the tenderness of kindred had strength- 
 ened into love. The damsel herself could not conceal 
 a natural longing to visit tlie great city, where they 
 said, but it might be untrue, "that the houses were 
 stuck as close together as Wike St Marie church and 
 tower ; " but she would at all events behold for once 
 in her life the dwelling-place of the king. " She would 
 store up every coin, and come back with money enow 
 to buy a flock of sheep of her own, which she and John 
 would tend together, as aforetime, on the moor." All 
 this shook the scale. 
 
 When the merchant arrived to seek their decision, 
 it was made, and in favour of his wish. A pillion or 
 padded seat was obtained from some neiglibouring 
 farm, and belted behind the saddle of the mercliant's 
 man. Thereon, with a small fardel in her hand, which 
 held all her worldly goods and gear, mounted Thomas- 
 ine Bonaventure, while all the villagers came around 
 to bid her farewell — all but one, and it was her cousin 
 John. He had gone, as he had told her, to the moor, 
 and there among the branches of the tree which 
 marked the greeting-place of Master Bunsby the youth 
 waited to watch her out of sight. He lifted up his 
 hand and waved it as she passed on with a gesture of
 
 THOMASINE BONAVENTUEE. 115 
 
 warniug, but which she interpreted and returned as a 
 silent caress. 
 
 The travellers arrived at their journey's end after 
 being only a fortnight on the road — a speed so satis- 
 factory and unusual, that it was Dame Bunsby's em- 
 phatic remark that she verily thought they must 
 have flown. 
 
 Her mistress received Thomasiue with a kind and 
 hearty welcome, and ratified, by her everyday ap- 
 proval, her husband's choice . of the Cornish maid. 
 When she was first told that her name was Bonaven- 
 ture, and her husband explained that it signified good 
 luck, she said, " Well, sweetheart, when I was a girl 
 they used to say that the name was a fore-sign of the 
 life, and God grant that thine may turn out [so] to be." 
 
 Time passed on, and in a year or two the wild Cor- 
 nisli lass had grown into a frame of thorougli symme- 
 try, firmness, and health. Her strong thews, of country 
 origin, rendered lier capable of long and active labour, 
 and she liad acquired with gradual ease the habits 
 and appliances of city life. She was very soon the 
 favoured and the favourite manager of the household. 
 Her mistress, born and reared in a town, had been 
 long a frail and delicate woman ; and life in London in 
 those days, as now, was fraught with the manifold 
 perils of pestilent disease. To one of those ancient 
 scourges of the population, the sweating - sickness, 
 Dame Bunsby succumbed. Her death drew nigh, and, 
 with the touching simplicity of the times, she told her 
 true and tender husband, with smiling tears, that she 
 thoutrht he could not do better than, if tliev so aiireed 
 to put Thomasiue in her place when she was gone 
 "Tell her it was my last wish." 
 
 This gentle desire so uttered — her strong and jjiateful
 
 IIG TIIOMASINE BONAVENTURE. 
 
 feelings towards the master who liad taken her, as slie 
 expressed it in her rural speech, lean from tlie moor, 
 and fed her, so that lier very bones belonged to him — 
 her happy home, and the power she would acquire to 
 make the latter days in the cottage at Wike St Marie 
 prosperous and calm, — all these impulses flocked into 
 Thomasine's heart, and controlled for the time even 
 the remembrance of Cousin John. That poor young 
 man, when the tidings came that she was about to 
 become her master's wedded wife, suddenly disap- 
 peared, and for a while the place of his retreat was 
 unknown ; but it afterwards transpired that he had 
 crossed the moor to a " house of religious men " called 
 the White Monks of St Cleer, and pleaded for recep- 
 tion there as a needy novice of the gate. His earnest 
 entreaties had prevailed ; and six months after his first 
 love, and his last, had put on her silks as a city dame, 
 and begun her rule as the mistress of a goodly house 
 in London, her cousin had taken the vows of his novi- 
 tiate, and received the first tonsure of St John. 
 
 Her married life did not, however, long endure. 
 Three years after the master became the husband, he 
 took the " plague sore," and died. They were childless ; 
 but he bequeathed " all his goods and chattel property, 
 and his well - furnished mansion, to his dear wife 
 Thomasine Bonaveuture, now Bunsby ; " and the maid 
 of the moor became one of the wealthy widows of 
 London city. Among the MSS. which still survive, 
 there is a letter which announces the event of her 
 husband's death and bequest, and then proceeds to 
 notify her solemn donation, as a year's-mind of Master 
 Bunsby, of ten marks to the Eeeve of Wike St Marie, 
 " to the intent that he shall cause skeelf ul masons to 
 build a bridge at the Ford of Grcen-a-Moor ; yea, and
 
 THOMASINE BONAVENTUEE. 117 
 
 with stout stonework well laid ; and see," she wrote, 
 " that they do no harm to that tree which standeth fast 
 by the brook, neither dispoyle they the rushes and 
 plants that grow thereby ; for there did I passe many 
 goodly hours when I was a simple mayde, and there 
 did I first see the kind face of a fathful frend." But 
 in anothe]' missive to her mother, about the same date, 
 there is a touch of tenderness which shows that her 
 woman's nature survived all changes, and was strong 
 within her still. She writes : " I know that Cousin 
 John is en2;aaed to the monks of St Cleer. Hath he 
 been shorn, as they do call it, for the second time ? 
 Inquire, I beseech, if he seeketh to dispart from that 
 cell? And will red gold help him away? I am pros- 
 pered in pouch and coffer, and he need not shame 
 to be indebted unto me, that owe so much to him." 
 But this frank and kindly effort — "the late remorse 
 of love" — did not avail. John had broken the last 
 link that bound liim to the world, and was lost to 
 love and her. Eeckless thenceforward therefore, if 
 not fancy-free, and it may be somewhat schooled by 
 the habits and associations of city life, she did not wear 
 the widow's wimple long. After an interval of years, 
 we find her the honoured wife " of that worshipful 
 merchant-adventurer. Master John Gall of St Law- 
 rence, Milk Street." 
 
 Gall was very rich, and he appears to have emptied 
 his money-bags into his wife's lap, as the gossip of the 
 city ran, for it is on record tliat soon after her second 
 marriage she manifested her prosperity like a true- 
 hearted Cornish woman by ample " gifts " and largess 
 to the borough of St Marie, "my native place." 
 Twenty acres of woodland copse in the neighbourhood 
 were bought and conveyed by that kind and gracious
 
 118 TIIOMASINK r.ONAVENTUllE. 
 
 lady, Dame Tlioniasinc Gall, to feoffees and trust-men 
 for the perpetual use of the poor of the parochc, " for 
 fewel to be hewn in parcels once a-year, and justly 
 and equally divided for evermore on the vigil of St 
 Thomas the twin." To her mother she sends by " a 
 waggon which has gone on an enterprise into Cornwall 
 for woollen merchandise, a chest with array of clothing, 
 fair weather and foul, head-gear and body raiment to 
 boot, all the choice and costly gifts to my loving pa- 
 rents of my goodman Gall, and in remembrance, as 
 he chargeth me to say, that ye have reared for him a 
 kindly and loving wife." But the graphic and touch- 
 ing passage in this letter is the message which suc- 
 ceeds : " Lo ! I do send you also herewithal in the 
 coffer a litel boke : it is for a gift to my Cousin John. 
 Tell him it is not written as the whilom usage was 
 and he was wont to teach me my Christ Cross Ehime ; 
 but it is what they do call emprinted with a strange 
 device of an iron engin brought from forrin parts. 
 Bid him not despise it, for although it is so small that 
 it will lie on the palm of your hand, yet it did cost me 
 full five marks in exchange." But her marriage life 
 was doomed to bring her only brief and transitory in- 
 tervals of wedded happiness. Five years after the 
 date of her letter above quoted, she was again alone 
 in the house. Master Gall died, but not until he had 
 endowed his " tender wife with all and singular his 
 moneys and plate, bills, bonds, and ventures now at 
 sea," &c., with a long inventory of the " precious things 
 beneath the moon," too long to rehearse, but each and 
 all to the sole use, enjoyment, and behoof of Dame 
 Thomasine, whose maiden name of Bonaventure was 
 literally interpreted and fulfilled in every successive 
 change of station.
 
 THOMASINE BONAYENTURE. 119 
 
 We srreet her then once more as a rich and buxom 
 widow of city fame. Her wealth, added to her come- 
 liness — for she was still in the prime of life — brought 
 many " a potent, grave, and reverend seignor " to her 
 feet, and to sue for her hand. Nor did she long linger 
 in her choice. The favoured suitor now was Sir John 
 Perceval, goldsmith and usurer — that is to say, banker, 
 in the plirase of that day ; very wealthy, of high repute, 
 alderman of his ward, and in such a position of civic 
 advancement that he would have been described in 
 modern language as next the chair. He wooed and won 
 the " Golden Widow " — for so, because of her double 
 inheritance of the wealth of two rich husbands, she 
 was merrily named. Their wedding was a kind of 
 public festival, and the bride, in acknowledgment of 
 her own large possessions, was invested with a stately 
 dower at the church -door. One year after their mar- 
 riage her husband. Sir John, was elected to that hon- 
 ourable office which is still supposed by foreign nations 
 to be only second in rank to that of the monarch on 
 tlie throne. Lord Mayor of the city of London. 
 
 Thus, by a strange succession of singular events, the 
 barefooted shepherdess of a Cornish moorland became 
 the Lady Mayoress of metropolitan fame; and the 
 legend of Thomasine Bonaventure — for it was now well 
 known — was the popular theme of royal and noble 
 interest among the lords and ladies of the Court. She 
 demeaned herself bravely and decorously in her ascent 
 among the great and lofty ones of the land. Like all 
 noble natures, her spirit rose with her personal eleva- 
 tion, and took equal place with her compeers of each 
 superior rank. Nor did her true and simple woman's 
 nature undergo any depreciation or change. It breathes 
 and survives in every sentence of her family letters,
 
 120 TIIOMASINE BONAVENTUKE. 
 
 transcripts of which have been perpetuated and pre- 
 served to our own times. One part of her personal 
 history is illustrative of a scene of life and manners 
 when Henry VII. was king. 
 
 "Sweet mother," she wrote, "thy daughter hath seen 
 the face of the king. "VVe were Ijidden to a banket at 
 the royal palace, and Sir John and I dared not choose 
 but go. There was such a blaze of lords and ladies in 
 silks and samite, and jewels and gold, that it was like 
 the city of New Jerusalem in the Scriptures ; and I, 
 thy maid Thomasine, was arrayed so fine, that they 
 brought up the saying that I was dressed like an altar. 
 When we were led into the chamber of dais, where his 
 highness stood, the king did kiss me on the cheek, as 
 the manner is, and he seemed gentle and kind. But 
 then did he turn to my good lord and husband, and 
 say, with a look stark and stern enow, ' Ha, Sir John ! 
 see to it that thy fair dame be liege and true, for she 
 comes of the burly Cornish kind, and they be ever 
 rebels in blood and bone. Even now they be one and 
 all for that knave Warbeck, who is among them in the 
 West.' You will gesse, dear mother, how my heart 
 did beat. But withal the king did drink to me at 
 the banket, and did merrily call, ' Health to our 
 Lady Mayoress, Dame Thomasine Perceval, which now 
 feedeth her flock in the rich pastures of our city of 
 London.' And thereat they did laugh, and fleer, and 
 shout, and there was flashing of tankards and jingling 
 of cups all down the hall." 
 
 With increase of wealth came also many a renewed 
 token of affectionate regard and sterling bounty to her 
 old and well-beloved dwelling-place of Wike St Marie. 
 As her wedding-gift of remembrance she directed that 
 " a firm and steadfast road should be laid down with
 
 THOMASINE BONAYEXTURE, 121 
 
 stones," at her whole cost, along the midst of Green-a- 
 Moor, and fit for man and beast to travel on, with their 
 lawful occasions, from Lanstaphadon to the sea. At 
 another time, and for a New Year's gift, she gave the 
 sum of forty marks towards the building of a tower for 
 St Stephen's church, above the causeway of Dunheved ; 
 and it was her desire that they should carry their 
 pinnacles so tall that " they might be seen from Swan- 
 nacote Cross, by the moor, to the intent that they who 
 do behold it from the Burgage Mound may remember 
 the poor maid which is now a wedded dame of London 
 citie." 
 
 During her three marriages she had no children, and 
 it was her singular lot to survive her third husband, 
 Sir John : it was in long widowhood after him that she 
 lived and died. Her will, bearing date the vigil of the 
 Feast of Christmas, a.d. 1510, is a singular document, 
 for therein the memory and the impulses of her early 
 life are recalled and condensed. She bequeaths large 
 sums of money to be laid out and invested in land for 
 the welfare of the village borough, whereto, amid all 
 the strange vicissitudes of her existence, her heart had 
 always clung with fond and lingering regret. She 
 directs that a chantry with cloisters was to be built 
 near the church of Wike St Marie, at the discretion 
 and under the control of her executor and cousin, John 
 Dineham, tlie unforgotten priest. She endows it with 
 thirty marks by the year, and provides that there shall 
 be established therein "a schole for young children 
 born in the paroche of Wike St Marie ; and such to be 
 always preferred as are friendless and poor." They are 
 to be " taught to read with their fescue from a boke of 
 horn, and also to write, and both as the manner was in 
 that country when I was young." The well-remem-
 
 122 TIIOMASINE BONAVENTUllE. 
 
 bered days of her girlhood appear to tinge every line 
 of her last will. Her very codicil is softened with a 
 touch of her first and fondest love. In it she gives to 
 the priest of the cliurch, where she well knew that her 
 cousin Jolin would serve and sing, " the silver chalice 
 gilt, which good Master Maskelyne the goldsmith had 
 devised for her behoof, with a leetle blue flower which 
 they do call a forget-me-not wrought in Turkess at the 
 bottom of the bowl, to the intent that whensoever it is 
 used the minister may remember her who was once a 
 simple shepherd-maid by the wayside of Wike St Marie, 
 and who was so wonderfully brought by many great 
 changes to be tlie Mayoress of London citie before she 
 died."
 
 THE BOTATIIEN GllOSr 
 
 THERE was something very painful and peculiar in 
 the position of the clergy in the west of England 
 throughout the seventeenth century. The Church of 
 those days was in a transitory state, and her ministers, 
 like her formularies, embodied a strange mixture of the 
 old belief with the new interpretation. Their wide 
 severance also from the great metropolis of life and 
 manners, the city of London (which in those times was 
 civilised England, much as the Paris of our own day is 
 France), divested the Cornish clergy in particular of all 
 personal access to the master-minds of their age and 
 body. Then, too, the barrier interposed by the rude 
 rough roads of their country, and by their abode in wilds 
 that were almost inaccessible, rendered the existence of 
 a bishop rather a doctrine suggested to their belief than 
 a fact revealed to the actual vision of each in his gener- 
 ation. Hence it came to pass that the Cornish clergy- 
 man, insulated within his own limited sphere, often 
 without even the presence of a country squire (and un- 
 
 ' From 'AH tlie Year Round,' vol. xvii. ])p. 501-504. 18G7.
 
 124 THE IJOTATUEN GHOST. 
 
 checked by the influence of the roiirth Estate — for until 
 the beginning of this nineteenth century, ' Flindell's 
 Weekly Miscellany,' distributed from house to house 
 from the pannier of a mule, was the only light of the 
 West), became developed about middle life into an orig- 
 inal mind and man, sole and absolute within liis parish 
 boundary, eccentric when compared with his brethren 
 in civilised regions, and yet, in German phrase, " a 
 whole and seldom man " in his dominion of souls. • He 
 was " the parson," in canonical phrase — that is to say. 
 The Person, the somebody of consequence among his 
 own people. These men were not, however, smoothed 
 down into a monotonous aspect of life and manners by 
 this remote and secluded existence. They imbibed, 
 each in his own peculiar circle, the hue of surrounding 
 objects, and were tinged into distinctive colouring and 
 character by many a contrast of scenery and people. 
 There was " the light of other days," the curate by the 
 sea-shore, who professed to check the turbulence of the 
 " smugglers' landing " by his presence on the sands, and 
 who " held the lantern " for the guidance of his flock 
 when the nights were dark, as the only proper ecclesi- 
 astical part he could take in the proceedings. He was 
 soothed and silenced by the gift of a keg of hollands or 
 a chest of tea. There was the merry minister of the 
 mines, whose cure was honeycombed by the under- 
 o-round men. He must needs have been artist and poet 
 in his way, for he had to enliven his people three or 
 four times a-year by mastering the arrangements of a 
 "guary," or religious mystery, which was duly performed 
 in the topmost hollow of a green barrow or hill, of 
 which many survive, scooped out into vast am[)hi- 
 theatres and surrounded by benches of turf, which held 
 two thousand spectators. Such were the historic plays,
 
 THE BOTATHEN GHOST. 125 
 
 "The Creation" and " Noe's Flood," wliich still exist in 
 the original Celtic as well as the English text, and sug- 
 gest what critics and antiquaries Cornish curates, mas- 
 ters of such revels, must have been, — for the native 
 language of Cornwall did not lapse into silence until 
 the end of the seventeenth century. Then, moreover, 
 here and there would be one parson more learned than 
 his kind in the mysteries of a deep and thrilling lore of 
 peculiar fascination. He was a man so highly honoured 
 at college for natural gifts and knowledge of learned 
 books which nobody else could read, that when he " took 
 his second orders " the bishop gave him a mantle of 
 scarlet silk to wear upon his shoulders in church, and 
 his lordship had put such power into it that when the 
 parson had it rightly on, he could " govern any ghost or 
 evil spirit," and even " stop an earthquake." 
 
 Such a powerful minister, in combat with super- 
 natural visitations, was one Parson Eudall, of Launces- 
 ton, whose existence and exploits we gather from the 
 local tradition of his time, from surviving letters and 
 other memoranda, and indeed from liis own " Diurnal," 
 which fell by chance into the hands of the present 
 writer. Indeed the legend of Parson Eudall and the 
 Ijotathen Ghost will be recognised by many Cornish 
 people as a local remembrance of their boyhood. 
 
 It appears, then, from the diary of this learned 
 master of the grammar-school — for such was his office 
 as well as perpetual curate of the parish — " that a 
 pestilential disease did break forth in our town in the 
 beginning of the year a.d. 1GG5 ; yea, and it likewise 
 invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain 
 of the chief scholars sickened and died." "Amono- 
 others who yielded to the malign influence was Master 
 John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir of
 
 12G THE HOTATIIKN GHOST. 
 
 Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of six- 
 teen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful 
 ingenuity. At his own especial motion and earnest 
 desire I did consent to preach his funeral sermon." It 
 should be remembered here that, howsoever strange 
 and singular it may sound to us that a mere lad should 
 formally solicit such a performance at the hands of his 
 master, it was in consonance with the habitual usage of 
 those times. The old services for the dead had been 
 abolished by law, and in the stead of sacrament and 
 ceremony, month's mind and year's mind, the sole sub- 
 stitute which survived was the general desire " to par- 
 take," as they called it, of a posthumous discourse, 
 replete with lofty eulogy and flattering remembrance 
 of the living and the dead. The diary proceeds : — 
 
 " I fulfilled my undertaking, and preached over the 
 coffin in the presence of a full assemblage of mourners 
 and lachrymose friends. An ancient gentleman, who 
 was then and there in the church, a Mr Bligh of 
 Botathen, was much affected with my discourse, and 
 he w\as heard to repeat to himself certain parentheses 
 therefrom, especially a phrase from Maro Virgilius, 
 which I had applied to the deceased youth, ' Et })ucr 
 ipse fuit cantari dignus.' 
 
 " The cause wherefore this old gentleman was thus 
 moved by my applications was this : He had a first- 
 born and only son — a child who, but a very few months 
 before, had been not unworthy the character I drew of 
 young Master Eliot, but who, by some strange accident, 
 liad of late quite fallen away from his parent's hopes, 
 and become moody, and sullen, and distraught. When 
 the funeral obsequies were over, I had no sooner come 
 out of church than I was accosted by this aged parent, 
 and he besought me incontinently, with a singular
 
 THE BOTATIIEN GHOST. 127 
 
 energy, that I would resort with him forthwith to his 
 abode at Botatlieii that very night ; nor could I have 
 delivered myself from his importunity, had not Mr 
 Eliot urged his claim to enjoy my company at his own 
 house. Hereupon I got loose, but not until I had 
 pledged a fast assurance that I M'ould pay him, faith- 
 fully, an early visit the next day." 
 
 "The Place," as it was called, of Botathen, where old 
 Mr Bligh resided, was a low-roofed gabled manor-house 
 of the fifteenth century, walled and mullioned, and 
 with clustered chimneys of dark-grey stone from the 
 neighbouring quarries of Ventor-gan. The mansion 
 was flanked by a pleasaunce or enclosure in one space, 
 of garden and lawn, and it was surrounded by a solemn 
 grove of stag-horned trees. It had the sombre aspect 
 of age and of solitude, and looked the very scene of 
 strange and supernatural events. A legend miglit well 
 belong to every gloomy glade around, and there must 
 surely be a haunted room somewhere within its walls. 
 Hither, according to his appointment, on the morrow, 
 Parson Eudall betook himself. Another clergyman, as 
 it appeared, had been invited to meet him, who, very 
 soon after his arrival, proposed a walk together in the 
 pleasaunce, on the pretext of showing him, as a stranger, 
 the walks and trees, until the dinner-bell should strike. 
 There, with much prolixity, and with many a solemn 
 pause, his brother minister proceeded to " unfold tlie 
 mystery." 
 
 "A singular infelicity," lie declared, "had befallen 
 young Master Bligh, once the hopeful heir of his parents 
 and of the lands of Botathen. Whereas he had been 
 from childhood a blithe and merry boy, ' the gladness,' 
 like Isaac of old, of his father's age, he liad suddenly, 
 and of late, become morose and silent — nav, even
 
 128 THE iiuTATllEN GHOST. 
 
 austere and stern — dwelling apart, always solemn, often 
 in tears. The lad had at first repulsed all questions as 
 to the origin of this great change, but of late he had 
 yielded to the importunate researches of his parents, 
 and had disclosed the secret cause. It appeared that 
 he resorted, every day, by a pathway across the fields, 
 to this very clergyman's house, who had charge of his 
 education, and grounded him in the studies suitable to 
 his age. In the course of his daily walk he had to pass 
 a certain heath or down where the road wound along 
 through tall blocks of granite with open spaces of 
 grassy sward between. There in a certain spot, and 
 always in one and the same place, the lad declared that 
 he encountered, every day, a woman with a pale and 
 troubled face, clothed in a long loose garment of frieze, 
 with one hand always stretched forth, and the other 
 pressed against her side. Her name, he said, was 
 Dorothy Dinglet, for he had known her well from his 
 childhood, and she often used to come to his parents' 
 house; but that which troubled him was, that she had 
 now been dead three years, and he himself had been 
 with the neighbours at her burial ; so that, as the 
 youth alleged, with great simplicity, since he had seen 
 her body laid in the grave, this that he saw every day 
 must needs be her soul or ghost. ' Questioned again 
 and again,' said the clergyman, ' he never contradicts 
 himself ; but he relates the same and the simple tale 
 as a thing that cannot be gainsaid. Indeed the lad's 
 observance is keen and calm for a bov of his age. 
 The hair of the appearance, sayeth he, is not like any- 
 thing alive, but it is so soft and light that it seemeth 
 to melt away while you look ; but her eyes are set, and 
 never blink — no, not when the sun shineth full upon 
 her face. She maketh no steps, but seemeth to swim
 
 THE BOTATIIEN GHOST. 129 
 
 along the top of the grass ; and her hand, which is 
 stretched out alvvay, seemeth to point at something far 
 away, out of sight. It is lier continual coming ; for 
 she never faileth to meet him, and to pass on, that hath 
 quenched his spirits ; and although he never seeth her 
 by night, yet cannot he get his natural rest.' 
 
 " Thus far the clergyman ; whereupon the dinner 
 clock did sound, and we went into the house. After 
 dinner, when young Master Bligh had withdrawn with 
 his tutor, under excuse of their books, the parents did 
 forthwith beset me as to my thoughts about their son. 
 Said I, warily, ' The case is strange, Ijut by no means 
 impossible. It is one that I will study, and fear not 
 to handle, if the lad will be free with me, and fulfil all 
 tliat I desire.' The mother was overjoyed, but I per- 
 ceived that old Mr Bligh turned pale, and was downcast 
 with some thought which, however, he did not express. 
 Then they bade that Master Bligh should be called to 
 meet me in the pleasaunce forthwith. The boy came, 
 and ho rehearsed to me his tale with an open counte- 
 nance, and, withal, a modesty of speech. Verily he 
 seemed ' ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris.' Then 
 I signified to him my purpose. ' To-morrow,' said I, 
 ' we will go together to the place ; and if, as I doubt 
 not, the woman shall appear, it will be for me to pro- 
 ceed according to knowledge, and by rules laid down in 
 my books.' " 
 
 The unaltered scenery of the legend still survives, 
 and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another 
 history, the place is still visited by those who take 
 interest in the supernatural talcs of old. The pathway 
 leads along a moorland waste, where large masses of 
 rock stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and 
 clumps of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden 
 
 I
 
 130 THE IJOTATIIEN GHOST. 
 
 and purple garniture on every side. Amidst all these, 
 and windinii,' along between the rocks, is a natural foot- 
 way worn by the scant, rare tread of the village traveller. 
 Just midway, a somewhat larger stretch than usual of 
 green sod expands, which is skirted by the path, and 
 which is still identified as the legendary haunt of the 
 phantom, by the name of Parson lludall's Ghost. 
 
 But we must draw the record of the first interview 
 between the minister and Dorothy from his own words. 
 " We met," thus he writes, " in the pleasaunce very early, 
 and before any others in tlie house were awake ; and 
 together the lad and myself proceeded towards the field. 
 The youth was quite composed, and carried his Bible 
 under his arm, from whence he read to me verses, which 
 he said he had lately picked out, to have always in his 
 mind. These were Job vii. 14, ' Thou scarest me with 
 dreams, and terrifiest me through visions ; ' and Deuter- 
 onomy xxviii. 67, ' In the morning thou shalt say, Would 
 to God it were evening, and in the evening thou shalt 
 say. Would to God it were morning ; for the fear of 
 thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight 
 of thine eyes which thou shalt see.' 
 
 " I was much pleased with the lad's ingenuity in 
 tliese pious applications, but for mine own part I was 
 somewhat anxious and out of cheer. For aught I knew 
 this might be a dcemonium meridianum, the most stub- 
 born spirit to govern and guide that any man can meet, 
 and the most perilous withal. We had hardly reached 
 the accustomed spot, when we both saw her at once 
 gliding towards us ; punctually as the ancient writers 
 describe the motion of their ' lemures, which swoon 
 along the ground, neither marking the sand nor bend- 
 ing the herbage.' The aspect of the woman was exactly 
 that which had been related by the lad. There was the
 
 THE BOTATHEN GHOST. 131 
 
 pale aud stony face, the strange and misty hair, the 
 eyes firm and fixed, that gazed, yet not on ns, but on 
 something that they saw far, far away ; one hand and 
 arm stretched out, and the other grasping the girdle of 
 her waist. She floated along the field like a sail upon 
 a stream, and glided past the spot where we stood, 
 pausingly. But so deep was the awe that overcame me, 
 as I stood there in the light of day, face to face with a 
 human soul separate from her bones and flesli, that my 
 heart and purpose both failed me. I had resolved to 
 speak to the spectre in the appointed form of words, 
 but I did not. I stood like one amazed and speechless, 
 until she had passed clean out of sight. One thing re- 
 markable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the favourite 
 of young Master Bligh, liad followed us, and lo ! when 
 the woman drew nigh, the poor creature began to yell 
 and bark piteously, and ran backward and away, like 
 a thing dismayed and appalled. We returned to the 
 house, and after I had said all that I could to pacify 
 the lad, and to soothe the aged people, I took my leave 
 for that time, with a promise that when I had fulfilled 
 certain business elsewhere, which I then alleged, I 
 would return and take orders to assuage tliese disturb- 
 ances and their cause. 
 
 " January 7, 1665. — At my own house, I find, by my 
 books, what is expedient to be done ; and then, Apage, 
 Sathanas ! 
 
 " January 9, 1665. — This day I took leave of my wife 
 and family, under pretext of engagements elsewhere, 
 and made my secret journey to our diocesan city, 
 wlierein the good and venerable bishop then abode. 
 
 " January 10. — Deo rjratias, in safe arrival at Exeter ; 
 craved and obtained immediate audience of his lord- 
 ship ; pleading it was for counsel and admonition on a
 
 132 THK liOTATIIEN GHOST. 
 
 \v(ji-lily and }»iv,s.siii_i^- cause; called to the presence; 
 made obeisance ; and then by command stated my case 
 —the Botathen perplexity— which I moved with strong 
 and earnest instances and solemn asseverations of that 
 which I had myself seen and heard. Demanded by his 
 lordship, what was the succour that I had come to en- 
 treat at his hands ? lieplied, licence for my exorcism, 
 that so I might, ministerially, allay this spiritual visi- 
 tant, and thus render to the living and the dead release 
 from this surprise. 'But,' said our bishop, 'on what 
 authority do you allege that I am intrusted with faculty 
 so to do ? Our Church, as is well known, hath abjured 
 certain branches of her ancient power, on grounds of 
 perversion and abuse.' ' Nay, my lord,' T humbly an- 
 swered, ' under favour, the seventy -second of the canons 
 ratified and enjoined on us, the clergy, anno Domino 
 1604, doth expressly provide, that " no minister, unless 
 he hath the licence of his diocesan bishop, shall essay to 
 exorcise a spirit, evil or good." Therefore it was,' I did 
 here mildly allege, ' that I did not presume to enter on 
 such a work without lawful privilege under your lord- 
 ship's hand and seal.' Hereupon did our wise and 
 learned bishop, sitting in his chair, condescend upon the 
 theme at some length with many gracious interpreta- 
 tions from ancient writers and from Holy Scripture, 
 and I did humbly rejoin and reply, till the upshot was 
 that he did call in his secretary and command him to 
 draw the aforesaid faculty, forthwith and without fur- 
 ther delay, assigning him a form, insomuch that the 
 matter was incontinently done ; and after I had dis- 
 bursed into the secretary's hands certain moneys for 
 signitary purposes, as the manner of such officers hath 
 always been, the bishop did himself affix his signature 
 under the sirjilliini of his see, and deliver the document
 
 THE BOTATHEN GHOST. 133 
 
 into my hands. When I knelt down to receive his 
 benediction, he softly said, ' Let it be secret, Mr E. 
 "Weak brethren ! weak brethren ! ' " 
 
 This interview with the bishop, and the success with 
 which he vanquished his lordship's scruples, would 
 seem to have confirmed Parson Eudall very strongly in 
 his own esteem, and to have invested him with that 
 courage which he evidently lacked at his first encounter 
 with the ghost. 
 
 The entries proceed : " Januarij 11, 1G65. — There- 
 withal did I hasten home and prepare my instruments, 
 and cast my figures for the onset of the next day. 
 Took out my ring of brass, and put it on the index- 
 finger of my right hand, with the scutmn Davidis traced 
 thereon. 
 
 "January 12, 1665. — Eode into the gateway at Bota- 
 then, armed at all points, but not with Saul's armour, 
 and ready. There is danger from the demons, but so 
 there is in the surrounding air every day. At early 
 morning then, and alone, — for so the usage ordains, — I 
 betook me towards the field. It was void, and I had 
 thereby due time to prepare. First, I paced and meas- 
 ured out my circle on the grass. Then did I mark my 
 pentacle in the very midst, and at the intersection of 
 the five angles I did set up and fix my crutch of raun 
 [rowan]. Lastly, I took my station south, at the true 
 line of the meridian, and stood facing due north. I 
 waited and watched for a long time. At last there 
 was a kind of trouble in the air, a soft and rippling 
 sound, and all at once the shape appeared, and came 
 on towards me gradually. I opened my parchment- 
 scroll, and read aloud the command. She paused, and 
 seemed to waver and doubt ; stood still ; then I re- 
 hearsed the sentence again, sounding out every syllable
 
 134 TIIK r.OTATHEN GHOST. 
 
 like a chant. Slio drew near my ring, but lialted at 
 first outside, on tlie brinlc. I sounded again, and now 
 at tlio third time I gave tlie signal in Syriac — the 
 speech which is used, they say, where such ones dwell 
 and converse in thouglits that glide. 
 
 " She was at last obedient, and swam into the midst 
 of the circle, and there stood still, suddenly. I saw, 
 moreover, that she drew back her pointing hand. All 
 this while I do confess that my knees shook under me, 
 and the drops of sweat ran down my flesh like rain. 
 But now, although face to face with the spirit, my 
 heart grew calm, and my mind was composed. I knew 
 that the pentacle would govern her, and the ring must 
 bind, until I gave the word. Then I called to mind the 
 rule laid down of old, that no angel or fiend, no spirit, 
 good or evil, will ever speak until they have been first 
 spoken to. N.B. — Tliis is the great law of prayer. God 
 Himself will not yield reply until man hath made vocal 
 entreaty, once and again. So I went on to demand, as 
 the books advise ; and the phantom made answer, will- 
 ingly. Questioned wherefore not at rest ? Unquiet, 
 because of a certain sin. Asked what, and by whom ? 
 Eevealed it ; but it is sub sir/illo, and therefore 7iefas 
 dictu ; more anon. Inquired, what sign she could give 
 that she was a true spirit and not a false fiend ? 
 Stated, before next Yule-tide a fearful pestilence would 
 lay waste the land and myriads of souls would be 
 loosened from their flesh, until, as she piteously said, 
 ' our valleys will be full.' Asked again, why she so 
 terrified the lad ? Replied : ' It is the law : we must 
 seek a youth or a maiden of clean life, and under age, 
 to receive messages and admonitions.' "VVe conversed 
 with many more words, but it is not lawful for me to 
 set them down. Pen and ink would degrade and defile
 
 THE BOTATIIEX GHOST. 135 
 
 the thoughts she uttered, and whicli my mind received 
 that day. I broke the ring, and slie passed, but to 
 return once more next day. At even-song, a long dis- 
 course with that ancient transgressor, Mr B. Great 
 horror and remorse ; entire atonement and penance ; 
 whatsoever I enjoin ; full acknowledgment before 
 pardon. 
 
 " January 13, 1665. — At sunrise I was again in the 
 field. She came in at once, and, as it seemed, with 
 freedom. Inquired if she knew my thoughts, and 
 what I was going to relate ? Answered, ' Nay, we 
 only know what we perceive and hear ; we cannot see 
 the heart.' Then I rehearsed the penitent words of 
 the man she had come up to denounce, and the satis- 
 faction he would perform. Then said she, ' Peace in 
 our midst.' I went through the proper forms of dis- 
 missal, and fultilled all as it was set down and written 
 in my memoranda ; and then, with certain fixed rites, 
 I did dismiss that troubled ghost, until she peacefully 
 withdrew, gliding towards the west. Neither did she 
 ever afterward appear, but was allayed until she shall 
 come in her second flesh to the valley of Armageddon 
 on the last day." 
 
 These quaint and curious details from the " diurnal " 
 of a simple-hearted clergyman of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury appear to betoken his personal persuasion of the 
 truth of what he saw and said, although the statements 
 are strongly tinged with what some may term the 
 superstition, and others the excessive belief, of those 
 times. It is a singular fact, however, that the canon 
 wliich authorises exorcism under episcopal licence, is 
 still a part of the ecclesiastical law of the Anglican 
 Church, although it might have a singular effect on 
 the nerves of certain of our bishops if their clergy were
 
 13G TIIK r.OTATIIEN oiinsT. 
 
 to resort to tliem for the faculty which Parson liiulall 
 obtained. The general facts stated in his diary are to 
 this day matters of belief in that neighbourhood ; and 
 it has been always accounted a strong proof of the 
 veracity of the Parson and the Ghost, that the plague, 
 fatal to so many thousands, did break out in London 
 at the close of that very year. We may well excuse 
 a triumphant entry, on a subsequent page of the 
 "diurnal," with the date of July 10, 1G65 : "How 
 sorely must the infidels and heretics of this generation 
 be dismayed when they know that this black death, 
 which is now swallowing its thousands in the streets 
 of the great city, was foretold six months agone, under 
 the exorcisms of a country minister, by a visible and 
 suppliant ghost ! And what pleasures and improve- 
 ments do such deny themselves who scorn and avoid 
 all opportunity of intercourse with souls separate, and 
 the spirits, glad and sorrowful, which inhabit the un- 
 seen world ! "
 
 A EIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS.^ 
 
 BY TWO OXFOED MEN. 2 
 
 DEAK old Oxford ! amid the brawl and uproar of the 
 latter days, and with many a frailty in the cur- 
 tains of the Ark which the weapons of the Philistines 
 have found and pierced, yet alma mater, mother mild, 
 like our native England, "with all thy faults I love 
 thee still." And when I recall my own undergraduate 
 life of thirty years and upwards agone, I feel, not- 
 withstanding modern vaunt, the laudator tcmporis acti 
 earnest within me yet and strong. Nowadays, as it 
 seems to me, there is but little originality of character 
 in the still famous University ; a dread of eccentric 
 reputation appears to pervade College and Hall ; every 
 " Oxford man," to adopt the well-known name, is sub- 
 dued into sameness within and without, controlled as 
 it were into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing- 
 
 1 From 'Belgravia,' vol. iii. pp. 328-337. 1867. 
 
 2 Tlic author in company with Rev. Dr Jeuno, afterwards Bishop of 
 Peterborough.
 
 138 A "niDK FIIOM P.TTDF, TO ROSS. 
 
 iron of the nineteenth century. Whereas in my time, 
 and before it, tlierc were distinguished names, famous 
 in every month for original achievements and "deeds 
 of daring-do." There were giants in those days — men 
 of varied renown — and they arose and won for them- 
 selves in strange fields of fame, record and place. 
 Each became in his day a hero of the ' Iliad ' or 
 'Odyssey' of Oxford life — a kind of Homeric man. 
 Once and again in the course of every term, the whole 
 University would ring with some fearless and practical 
 jest, conceived and executed with a dash of original 
 wenius which betokened future victories in the war of 
 wit and the world of men. How well do I remember 
 a bold travesty of discipline which once set the com- 
 mon-rooms in a roar, and even among " mine ancients," 
 made it 
 
 '' merry in liall 
 Where beards wauLied all " ! 
 
 'oo"- 
 
 A decree had been issued by the " authorities " of a 
 well-known College (it was in the pre-ritual days) that 
 no undergraduate should present himself at morning 
 chapel service with his scarlet hunting-coat underneath 
 his surplice — a costume neither utterly secular nor 
 completely ecclesiastical, and therefore a motley garb 
 which it did not seem unjust or unreasonable to forbid 
 in a sacred place. However, the order was implicitly 
 obeyed at the ensuing matins, with solemn and suspi- 
 cious exactitude. Alas ! it was " the torrent's smooth- 
 ness ere it dash below"; for on the third morning, 
 when the College servants arrived to take down the 
 shutters and to light the fires, they discovered that 
 "a change had come over the spirit of their dream." 
 Every one of the panelled doors throughout the Quad-
 
 A HIDE FliOM BUDE TO BOSS. 139 
 
 rangle of the Canons, the very seat of hoar and re\'er- 
 end authority, had been artistically painted during the 
 night with the hue of Nimrod, a glowing hunter's red ! 
 The gates were immediately closed and barred, and 
 every member of the College convened before a grand 
 divan of the Dons, to undergo immediate scrutiny on 
 the origin of that which some of the undergraduates 
 irreverently termed this ultra-observance of the rubric 
 (their wit would be obscure to those who are unaware 
 that ruhrica, the etymon of our Cliurch rules, signifies 
 ruddy or red). The authors of this outrage escaped 
 detection, although every painter in Oxford was sum- 
 moned for examination, and all the dealers in colours 
 and oils. It was subsequently whispered among the 
 initiated that the artist, with his brushes and materials, 
 had been brought down from London in a post- 
 chaise -and -four, secretly introduced through an un- 
 noted postern, and when his work was done, hospitably 
 feasted and paid, and then sent back at full speed 
 through the night to town. 
 
 Anotlier " merrie jest," but with a lowlier scene and 
 an humbler dramatis personm, raised the laugh of many 
 a common-room and wine-party about the same period 
 of my own undergraduate recollections. There was 
 an ancient woman, blear-eyed and dim-sighted, " worn 
 nature's mournful monument," who had the far and 
 wide repute of witchcraft among the College servants 
 and the " baser sort" in tlie suburbs of the town; but 
 in reality she was a mere " wreck of eld," a harmless 
 and helpless old creature, who stood at more than one 
 college - gate for alms. Her well - known name was 
 Nanny Heale. Her cottage, or rather decayed old hut, 
 leaned against a steep mound by the castle-wall, and 
 was so hugged in by the ground that, from a path
 
 1 10 A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 
 
 iiloiig the ramparts a passer-l>y might cast a bird's- 
 eye look down Nanny's cliimnoy, and watch well her 
 hearth and home. One winter evening certain frolic- 
 some wights, out of College in search of a channel for 
 the exuberant spirits of their age, were pacing, like 
 Hardicanute, the wall east and west, when a glance 
 down the witch's chimney revealed a quaint and simple 
 scene of humble life. There she crouched, close by the 
 smoking embers, peering into the fire ; and before her 
 very nose there hung, just over the fire, a round iron 
 vessel, called in the western counties a crock, filled to 
 the brim with potatoes, and without a cover or lid. 
 This utensil was suspended by its swing-handle to an 
 iron bar, which went from side to side of the chimney- 
 wall. To see and to assail the weak point in a field of 
 battle is evermore the signal of a great captain. The 
 onslaught was instantly planned. A rope, with a hook 
 of iron at the end, was slowly and noiselessly lowered 
 down the chimney, and, unnoted by poor Nanny's blink- 
 ing sight, the handle of the iron pot was softly grasped 
 by the crook, and the vessel with its mealy contents 
 began to ascend in silent majesty towards the upper 
 air. Thoroughly roused by this unnatural and ungrate- 
 ful demeanour of her lifelong companion of the hearth, 
 old Nanny arose from her stool, peered anxiously up- 
 ward to watch the ascent, and shouted at the top of her 
 voice : — 
 
 " Massy 'pon my sinful soul ! art gwain off — taties 
 and all ? " 
 
 The vessel was quietly grasped, carried down in hot 
 haste, and planted upright outside the cottage-door. A 
 knock, given for the purpose, summoned the inmate, 
 who hurried out and stumbled over, as she afterwards 
 interpreted tlie event, her penitent crock.
 
 A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS, 141 
 
 " So then," was her joyful greeting — " so then ! 
 theer't come back to holt, then ! Ay, 'tis a cold out 
 o' doors." 
 
 Good came out of evil ; for her story, which she 
 rehearsed again and again, with all the energy and 
 firm persuasion of truth, at last reached the ears of 
 the parish authorities, and tliey, on inquiry into the 
 evidence, forthwith decreed the addition of a shilling 
 a-week to poor old Nanny's allowance, on the plea that 
 her faculties had quite failed her, and that she required 
 greater charity because of her wandering mind. Yet 
 the fact which she testified met the criterion of evidence 
 demanded by Hume, for the event occurred within the 
 experience of the witness herself. 
 
 It was by outbreaks of animal spirits such as these 
 that the monotony of collegiate life in those days was 
 relieved, for the University supplied but little excite- 
 ment of mental kind. The battle-cries of High Church 
 and Low Church — " that bleating of the sheep and that 
 lowing of the oxen " which nowadays we hear — had not 
 yet begun to rouse the Oxford mind ; and the only war 
 about vestments that I recollect was our hot fierce 
 struggle after a festive assembly to get first out into 
 the lobby, and to grasp as a spoil the best caps and 
 gowns one by one, until the unhappy freshman who 
 arrived last had to put up with such ragged specimens 
 of University costume as would hardly have satisfied the 
 veriest Puritan for the performance of divine service. 
 
 Well, for us two — the subjects of this paper — the life 
 of Oxford, with its freaks and its discipline, for a tinu; 
 was over ; we had each passed the final examination so 
 graphically named " the Great Go " ; and that so as to 
 be, wliat man so seldom is in this world, satisfied, in 
 high heart, and witli spirits running over, my friend
 
 1-12 A KIDK FROM liUDE TO F.OSS. 
 
 and I iippointed a tryst in a small watering-place on 
 the noiLli coast of Cornwall as the starting-point for a 
 ride " all down the thundering shores of Bude and Boss." 
 In due time, and on a glorious summer day, we mounted 
 our "(Uilloway nags," and, like the knights of ancient 
 ballad, " we laughed as we rode away." The start was 
 from Bude, and we made our first halt at a place twelve 
 miles towards the south-west ; a scene of general local 
 renown, and which hears the parochial name of Warb- 
 stow Barrow. It stands upon a lofty hill that soars and 
 swells upward into a vast circular mound, enthroned, as 
 it were, amid a wild and boundless stretch of heathy 
 and gorsy moorland. It was soothing to the sight to 
 look down and around on the tapestry of purple and 
 gold intermingled in natural woof, and flowing away 
 in free undulation on every side. The view from this 
 mountain-top was of wonderful extent, but wild, deso- 
 late, and bare. Beneath, on three sides, spread the 
 moor, dotted here and there with a grey old church, 
 that crouched toward the shadow of its low Saxon 
 battlemented tower, as if it still sought shelter, after so 
 many ages, from the perils of surrounding barbarism. 
 On the fourth side swelled the sea. But the brow of 
 this hill, like that of many others in the west, dropped 
 into the shape of a mighty circular bowl — a kind of 
 hollow valley turfed with grass, and surrounded by a 
 rim ; an amphitheatre, however, large enough to hold 
 five thousand people at once. On the fiat level floor of 
 this round crater, and in the exact midst, still swells up 
 uninjured the outline of a viking's grave, unlike other 
 burial-mounds so common in Cornwall and elsewhere, 
 " where the brown barrow curves its sullen breast above 
 the bones of some dead gentile's soul," and that on 
 every hillside and plain. The shape of the great hillock
 
 A EIDE FliOM BUDE TO BOSS. 143 
 
 at Warbstow is neither oval nor round, but survives 
 the exact image of the dragon-ship of northern piracy 
 and war. Moreover, not the shape only, Ijut the size 
 of the ancient vessel of the dead, is perpetuated here. 
 Measured and graduated by scale, this oblong, curved, 
 and narrow grave would yield the dimensions of a boat 
 of fifty tons, which would be about the weight of a 
 Scandinavian serpent of tlie sea. 
 
 "VYe saw that an effort had been made to open this 
 barrow at one of the ends ; but an old woman, whom 
 we found at a cottage not far off, assured us " that they 
 that tried it were soon forced to liive up their di^ifina; 
 and flee, for the thunders came for 'em, and the light- 
 niuGfS also." 
 
 We endeavoured to sound the local mind of our in- 
 formant as to the history of the place and origin of the 
 grave ; but all we could drag out of her, after questions 
 again and again, was " great warriors, supposing, in old 
 times." Such was the dirge of the mighty dead, and 
 their requiem, at Warbstow Barrow. But the sun had 
 begun to lean, and we were bound for Boscastle, the 
 breviate of Bottreau Castle, and the abode of the earls 
 of that name. 
 
 Strange, striking, and utterly unique is the first 
 aspect of this village by the sea. The gorge or valley 
 lies between two vast and precipitous hills, that yawn 
 asunder as though they had been cleft by the spells of 
 some giant warlock of the West, like the Eildon Hill 
 by Michael Scott. As you descend the hill from the 
 north you discover on the opposite side clusters of 
 quaint old-fashioned houses, grotesque and gabled, that 
 appear as though they clung together for mutual sup- 
 port on the slope of that perilous clifl". Between the 
 houses, and sheer down the mountain-side, descended,
 
 Ml A 1!IDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 
 
 or mtlior fell, a steep iuul iiL;Iy loiul ; which led, how- 
 ever, to the " safety of the vale," and landed the trav- 
 eller at last in a deep cut or gash between the hills, 
 where the creek ebl)ed and llowed, which was called by 
 strangers in their courtesy, and by the inhabitants, with 
 aboriginal pride, "the Harbour" — Cornice "Hawn." 
 There " went the ships," so that they did not exceed 
 sixty tons in freight ; and thitlier arrived, at certain 
 intervals, coals and timber in bulk and quantity, 
 which can be ascertained, no doubt, by the return of 
 imports laid before Parliament by the Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer. 
 
 We reached in safety our bourn for the night at the 
 bottom of the hill, and discovered the hostelry by the 
 sign which swung above the door. This appeared to us 
 to represent a man's shoe ; but when we had read the 
 legend, we found that it signified the Ship Inn, and 
 was the " actual effigy " of a vessel which belonged to 
 the port. Here we received a smiling welcome from 
 the hostess, a ruddy-visaged widow, — Joan Treworgy 
 was her Keltic name — f ubby and interjectional in figure, 
 and manifestly better adapted for her abode at the foot 
 of the hill than at any mansion farther up. She was 
 born, as she afterwards related, two doors off; and, 
 except that she had travelled up the hill to Forraburry 
 church to be married there, it appeared that a diameter 
 of five yards would have defined the total circumference 
 of her wandering life. 
 
 As soon as we arrived, she called up from some vasty 
 deep underneath her house a grim and shaggy shape, 
 who answered to the name of Tim, but whom we iden- 
 tified as Caliban on the spot, and charged him to take 
 proper care of the Captains' horses (for by that title all 
 strangers in sound garments and whole hats are saluted
 
 A EIDE FEOM BUDE TO BOSS. 145 
 
 ill the laud of the quarry and the mine), and to be sure 
 that they had plenty of whuts. She then invited us to 
 enter her " parrolar," a room rather cosy than magnifi- 
 cent ; for when our landlady had followed in her two 
 guests, and stood at the door, no one beside could have 
 forced an entrance, any more than a cannon-ball could 
 cleave through a feather-bed. We then proceeded to 
 confer about beds for the night, and, not without mis- 
 giving, inquired if she could supply a couple of those 
 indispensable places of repose. A demur ensued. All 
 the gentry in the town, she declared, were accustomed 
 to sleep " two in a bed," and the officers that travelled 
 the country, and stopped at her house, would mostly 
 do the same ; but, however, if we commanded two beds 
 for only two people, tv/o we must have ; only, although 
 they were both in the same room, we must certainly 
 pay for two, and sixpence apiece was her regular price. 
 We assented, and then went on to entreat that we 
 might dine. She graciously agreed ; but to all ques- 
 tions as to our fare her sole response was, "Meat — 
 meat and taties." " Some call 'em," she added, in a 
 scornful tone, " ' purtaties,' but we always say ' taties ' 
 here." The specific differences between beef, mutton, 
 veal, &c., seemed to be utterly or artfully ignored, and 
 to every frenzied inquiry her calm inexorable reply 
 was, " Meat — nice wholesome meat and taties." 
 
 In due time we sat down in that happy ignorance 
 as to the nature of our viands which a French cook is 
 said to desire ; and although we both made a not un- 
 satisfactory meal, it is a wretched truth that by no effort 
 could we ascertain what it was that was roasted for us 
 that day by widow Treworgy, hostess of the Ship, and 
 which we consumed. Was it a piece of Boscastle baby ? 
 as I suggested to my companion in the midst of his 
 
 K
 
 146 A ■RTDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 
 
 enjoyment ; and the (juestion caused liini to arise and 
 rusli out to inquire once again, and insist on knowing 
 the wliole truth; l)ut lie soon came hack bafiied, and 
 shouting, " Meat and taties ! " There was not a vestige 
 of bone nor any outline that could identify the joint, 
 and the not unsavoury taste was something like tender 
 veal. It was not until years afterwards that light was 
 tlirown on our mysterious dinner that day by a passage 
 which I accidentally turned up in an ancient history of 
 Cornwall. Therein I read "that the sillie people of 
 Bouscastle and Boussiney do catch in the summer seas 
 divers young soyles [seals], which, doubtful if they be 
 fish or flesh, conynge housewives will nevertheless roast, 
 and do make thereof very savoury meat." " Ay, ay," 
 said my friend and fellow-traveller, when I had tran- 
 scribed and sent him this extract — " Ay ! clear as day 
 — meat and taties ; how I wish I had old mother Tre- 
 worgy now by the throat ! I would make her walk 
 up that hill every day for a montli, and stop her meat 
 and taties till she was the size of other people." 
 When the hour arrived that should have been the 
 time of rest, we mounted a cabin-ladder, which our 
 hostess assured us was " the stairs." We found the 
 two beds which had been allotted to us, but, as it was 
 foretold, in one small, hot, stuffy room. As we entered 
 the narrow door, a solitary casement twinkled on one 
 side of the opposite wall, flanked by a glazed cupboard- 
 door, paned to match, on the other. This latter, the 
 false light, my friend opened by mistake — he was near- 
 sighted, and our single dip was dim — to sniff, as he 
 said, the evening air ; but he shut it up again in quick 
 disgust, declaring that the whole atmosphere of the 
 village was impregnated with onions and cheese. To 
 bed, but not to rest. Every cubic inch of ozone was
 
 A HIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 14:7 
 
 exhausted long before midnight, and, as the small hours 
 struck on the kitchen -clock below, we found that 
 " Boscastle had murdered sleep, and therefore Oxford 
 could sleep no more." "With the first faint glinnner 
 of day we arose and stole gently out into the dawn. 
 Before us stood the one-arched bridge spanning the 
 river-bed. Lower down the creek the mast and rigging 
 of a sloop at anchor was visible, like network traced 
 upon the morning sky. But the lowly level had no 
 attraction for our path : there lay the sluggish mist of 
 night, and it seemed to our distempered fancy like the 
 dull heavy breath of the snorers in that village glen ; 
 but above and upwards stretched the tall ascending 
 road, like Jacob's ladder resting on the earth and 
 reaching to the sky. Surely on the brow of that 
 mountain-top there must be breath and room. We 
 turned, therefore, to climb, and for once "vaulting 
 ambition did not o'erleap itself." Slow and diiScult 
 was the way, but cooler and more bracing the air every 
 yard that we achieved. 
 
 We stood at last on the brow of the vast gorge, and 
 full five hundred feet above the sea, where church and 
 tower crowned the cliff like a crest. The scene we 
 looked upon was indeed exhilarating, stately, and 
 grand. On the right hand, and to the west, arose 
 and stood the craggy heights of Dundagel, island and 
 main, ennobled by the legends of old historic time. 
 To the left, a boundless reach of granite -sprinkled 
 moor, where barrow, logan rock, and cromlech stood, 
 the mute memorials of Keltic antiquity. Beneath, 
 and afar off, the sea, at that silent hour, like some 
 boundless lake, " its glad waves murmuring all around 
 the soul;" near, and at our feet, tlie jumbled village, 
 crouching on eitlier side of the steepy road, and cling-
 
 1-48 A RIDE Fi:OM r.UDE TO BOSS. 
 
 iiig to its banks as if tlio inhabitants sought to secure 
 access for escape when the earthquake should rend or 
 the volcano ])()ur. AVu prepared to return and de- 
 scend; but this was by no means an easy feat, from 
 the extreme angle at which the roadway fell. At the 
 first look on the inclined plane it seemed easier to sit 
 down and slide ; but on the whole we tliought it 
 better to walk and pause and creep. 
 
 Another and a new feature in the scene now met 
 our gaze. Annexed to every human abode a small hut 
 had been stuck on to the walls for the home of the 
 " gentleman " that, in Cornwall as in Ireland, pays the 
 rent — Kdticc, the pig. The hovels of these bristly 
 vassals, like the castles of their lords, were cabined 
 and circumscribed in the extreme. There was just 
 room enough to breathe, but not to snore witliout 
 impediment of tone. A sudden inspiration awoke in 
 our minds. Surely it would be an act of humanity 
 and kindness to enable these poor suffocating crea- 
 tures once in their lives to taste the balmy breath of 
 a summer morning. It will be to us, we said and 
 thought, a personal delight to see them emerge from 
 their close and festering abodes and rush out in the 
 free, soft radiance of the dawn ! Action followed 
 close on thought. Hastily, busily, every rude rough 
 bar was drawn back, door and substitute for door un- 
 closed ; and a general jail-delivery of imprisoned swine 
 was ruled and accomplished on the spot. Undetected 
 by a single human witness, without interruption from 
 slumbering master or lazy hind, the total deed was 
 done. Gradually descending the hill, and scatteriug, 
 like ancient heroes and modern patriots, freedom and 
 deliverance as we WT.nt, never did tlie children of 
 liberty so exult in their unshackled deliverance as
 
 A RIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 149 
 
 these Boscastle hordes. There was one result, how- 
 ever, which we had not foreseen, and its perilous con- 
 sequences had quite escaped anticipation. The in- 
 mates of every sty, as soon as their opportunities of 
 egress had been ascertained by marching out of their 
 prison-doors and arriving unchecked at the roadside — 
 when they looked upward and surveyed the steep and 
 difficult ascent, and counted mentally the cost of 
 attempting to surmount the steep, they all, as with 
 one hoof and mind, turned down the hill. Sire and 
 dam, lean and corpulent, farrow and suckling, all uno 
 imijctu, selected and rushed down the facilis descensus 
 Averni; and although, in all likelihood, they had never 
 pondered the contrast of the Koman poet, yet they 
 spontaneously moved and seconded, and carried the 
 unanimous resolution that revocare gradum, liic lahor, 
 hoc opus est. The consequence of this choice of way 
 was too soon apparent. Just as we had drawn the 
 last bar, and were approaching the bottom of the 
 steep, we looked back and saw that we were pursued, 
 and should speedily be surrounded, by a mixed mul- 
 titude of porcine advocates for free discussion in the 
 open air, such as might have gladdened the heart of 
 any critic on the original and cultivated breeds of the 
 west of England. Prominent among them the old 
 Cornish razor-back asserted its pre-eminence of height 
 and bone, nor were punchy representatives of the 
 Berkshire and Suffolk genealogies absent on this 
 festive occasion. Growing now apprehensive of the 
 consequences of discovery, if an early rising owner 
 should ascertain the autliors of this daring effort to 
 " deliver their dungeons from the captive," we hastened 
 to secure ourselves in the shelter of our hostelry of 
 the Ship, and fortunately found, on reaching our "little
 
 150 A TIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 
 
 chamber on tlie wall," that the widow and her house- 
 hold were still fast asleep. We fastened the door and 
 listened for results. The outcries and yells were fear- 
 ful. By-and-by human voices began to mingle with 
 the tumult; there were shouts of inquiry and surprise, 
 then sounds of apparent expostulation and entreaty, 
 and again a " storm of hate and wrath and wakenhig 
 fear." Many a battle of soldiers nmst have fought and 
 ended with less uj^roar. At last the tunnilt pierced 
 even the ears of our hostess Joan Treworgy. We 
 heard her puff and blow, and call for Tim. At last, 
 after waiting a prudent time, we thought it best to 
 call aloud for shaving-water, and to inquire with 
 astonishment into the cause of that horrible disturb- 
 ance which had roused us from our morning sleep. 
 This brought the widow in hot haste to our door. 
 
 "Why, they do say, Captain," was her doleful re- 
 sponse, " that all the pegs up-town have a-rebelled, and 
 they've a-be, and let one the wother out, and they be 
 all a-gwain to sea huz-a-muz, bang ! " 
 
 Although this statement was somewhat obscure in 
 its phraseology, and the Keltic byword at the close, 
 wherein the " sense is kindred to the sound," yet we 
 understood too well that the main facts of the history 
 were as true as if Macaulay had recorded them ; so we 
 pretended to dress in great haste, and hurried down to 
 see the war. It was indeed an original scene ; 
 
 " For cliief intent on deeds of strife, 
 Or bard of martial lay, 
 'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, 
 One glance at their array ! " 
 
 Here a decently dressed woman made many fruitless 
 endeavours to coax out of the brawl five or six squeal-
 
 A rJDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 151 
 
 ing farrows, the offspring of a gaunt old dam that, like 
 the felon sow of Eokeby, was " so distraught with 
 noise " that " her own children she mought clean de- 
 vour." There a stalwart quarryman, finding all other 
 efforts fruitless, had seized his full-grown porker by 
 the lecjs and hoisted him on his shoulders to ride home 
 pickaback, uttering all the while yells of fierce expos- 
 tulation and defiance. One hot little man, with a red 
 face and gesticulating hands, had grasped a long pole, 
 and laid about him in mad fury, promiscuously, until 
 a tall and bristly hog rushed at him from behind, and 
 carried him off down the hill seated at full charge like 
 a knight of King Arthur's Court, with " semblance of 
 a spear," and tilted him at last head over heels in the 
 bed of the stream. But some way up the hill we came 
 suddenly upon a scene which demanded all our sym- 
 pathy; help there was none. A panting old woman 
 had singled out her hog and separated him from the 
 crowTl ; and a fine fat animal he was — four hundred- 
 weight at least — and so unfitted for the slightest exer- 
 tion, that unless he had resorted to sliding and rolling, 
 it was difficult to conceive how he had accomplished 
 even his down-hill journey from the sty. But up hill 
 — as his obdurate mistress appeared to propose, — no, 
 no. There was a look in his eye, as he glanced back 
 at his despairing owner, that seemed to suggest a grunt 
 in strong German emphasis, das geht nicht. He had 
 thrust his snout and half his nose through the bars of 
 a gate ; and there he stuck, and manifestly meant to 
 stick fast, while she belaboured him with strokes like 
 a flail. She paused as we approached the spot, and 
 with an appealing look for our assent, she piteously 
 exclaimed, "My peg's surely mazed, maistcr, or he's 
 ill - wished ; some ennemie hath a-dond it!" My
 
 152 A rJDK FROM TiUDE TO BOSS. 
 
 thought responded to her charge; it was certainljMio 
 enemy of the pig tliat " dond it," whatsoever he might 
 be to his owner. 
 
 "We left " her alone in her glory," and returned to 
 the inn, communing as we went on the store of legend, 
 tale, and history we had laid up for future generations 
 in thus opening a field of achievement for the Boscastle 
 swine. What themes of marvel would travel down by 
 the cottage hearth, there to he rehearsed by wrinkled 
 eld ! — the wondrous things always the more believed 
 as they became more incredible. Doubtless the local 
 event would very soon be resolved into demoniac 
 agency, because, ever since the miracle of Gadara, the 
 people have always linked the association of demons 
 and swine ; and they refer to the five small dark punc- 
 tures always visible on the hoof of the hog as the points 
 of entrance and departure for the fiend. 
 
 Once in after-life did this fitful freak recur to our 
 minds. We separated, my companion of this ride and 
 myself — I to a country cure, and my friend back to 
 Oxford, " to climb the steep where fame's proud temple 
 shines afar." He ascended step by step until he lic- 
 came Dean of the College to which we both belonged. 
 In course of time, after the usual interval, I went up 
 to take my M.A. degree. Now the custom was, and is, 
 that the Dean takes the candidate by the hand, leads 
 him up to the chair of the Vice-Chancellor, and pre- 
 sents him for his degree in a Latin speech. We were all 
 assembled in the appointed place, the Dean, my friend, 
 taking us up in turn one by one. Among the group 
 was a stout burly man, a gentleman commoner, sleek 
 and fat, and manifestly well-to-do in life. With him 
 the Dean had trouble ; unwieldy and confused and 
 slow, it was difficult to get him through the crowd
 
 A KIDE FROM BUDE TO BOSS. 153 
 
 and up to his place in time. They passed me in a 
 kind of struggle, — the Dean leading and endeavour- 
 ing to guide, the candidate hanging l)ack and getting 
 pitched in the throng. Just then I managed to 
 whisper — 
 
 " Why, your peg's surely mazed, maister ! " 
 I ^Yas hardly prepared for the result when I " struck 
 the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound." 
 The association came back ; the words called up the 
 scene among the swine ; and when the crowd gave way, 
 there stood the Dean before the Vice-Chancellor's chair, 
 greeting him, not with a Latin form, but in spasms of 
 uncontrollable laughter ! 
 
 To return to the original scene. We ordered Caliban 
 with our ponies to be ready at the door, and we in the 
 meanwhile called on our hostess to produce her bill. 
 She hum'd and ha'd and hesitated, and seemed at a loss 
 to produce the " little dockyment," which is usually 
 supposed to be a matter of very fluent composition at 
 an inn. It was not until we had ag-ain and amxin ex- 
 plained that we desired her to state in writing what 
 we had to pay, that she seemed at last to comprehend. 
 A deal of scuffling about the kitchen ensued. There 
 was quick passing to and fro, in and out ; there were 
 several muttered discussions of tlie lower house ; a 
 neighbour, who appeared to be a glazier, was sent for; 
 and at last the door opened, and our red pursy little 
 hostess bustled in, bobbed a curtsey, and presented for 
 our perusal her small account, chalked upon the upper 
 lid of the kitchen bellows, which she gracefully held 
 towards us by the snout. Poor old Joan Treworgy ! 
 how utterly did thy rough simplicity put to shame 
 the vaunting tariff and tlie " establishment charges " 
 of tin's nineteenth century of Messrs Brag and Sham!
 
 154: A lUDE ri;oM bude to boss. 
 
 The bill, which we duly transcribed, and which was 
 then paid and rubbed out, thus ran : — 
 
 Captens. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Tfor2 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Sleep for 2 .... 
 Meat and Tatics and Bier . 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 Bresks 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 Four shillings and sixpence for bed and board for two 
 wolfish appetites for a night and a day, to say nothing 
 of the pantomime performed gratuitously for our be- 
 hoof, at a very early hour, by Boscastle amateurs ! 
 Good day, Mrs Treworgy ! good day ! " To-morrow to 
 fresh woods and pastures new."
 
 IIOLACOMBE.^ 
 
 THEEE is a small outlying hamlet in my parochial 
 charge, about two miles fiiom my vicarage, with a 
 population of about two hundred souls, inhabiting a 
 kind of plateau shut in by lofty hills and skirted 
 by the sea. These rural and simple-hearted people, 
 secluded by their remote place of abode from the 
 access of the surrounding world, present a striking 
 picture of old and Celtic England such as it existed 
 two or three hundred years ago. A notion of their 
 solitude and simplicity may be gathered from the fact 
 that, whereas they have no village postman or office, 
 their only mode of intercourse with the outer life of 
 their kind is accomplished througli the weekly or other 
 visit of their clergyman. He carries their letters, which 
 contain short but simple annals of the poor, and he 
 receives and returns their weekly and laborious literary 
 compositions to edify and instruct their distant and 
 more civilised correspondents. The address on each 
 
 ^ Welcombe, to which Jlr Hawker became curate in 1850, and which 
 he continued to serve until his death. — Ed.
 
 ISG TTOLACOMBE. 
 
 letter is often .sueli as to liallle all ordinary curiosity, 
 and unless deciphered by the skill of the experts of the 
 post-office, must often furnish liieroglyphics for the 
 study of the Postmaster-General as obscure, if not so 
 antique, as the legends on a pyramid oi' llosetta stone. 
 A visit to a distant market-town is an achievement to 
 render a man an authority or an oracle among his 
 brethren; and one who has accomplished that journey 
 twice or thrice is ever regarded as a daring traveller, 
 and consulted about foreign countries with a feeling of 
 habitual respect. 
 
 They liave amongst them no farrier for their cattle, 
 no medical man for themselves, no beerhouse, no sho}) ; 
 a man who travels for a distant town supplies them 
 with tea by the ounce, or sugar in smaller quantities 
 still. Not a newspaper is taken in throughout the 
 hamlet, although they are occasionally astonished and 
 delighted by the arrival from some almost forgotten 
 friend in Canada of an ancient copy of the ' Toronto 
 Gazette.' This publication they pore over to weariness, 
 and on Sunday they will worry the clergyman with 
 questions about Transatlantic places and names of 
 which he is obliged to confess himself utterly ignorant, 
 a confession which consciously lowers him in their 
 veneration and respect. An ancient dame once ex- 
 hibited her prayer-book, very nearly worn out, printed 
 in the reign of George II., and very much thumbed at 
 the page from which she assiduously prayed for the 
 welfare of Prince Frederick, without one misgiving that 
 she violated the article of our Church which forbids 
 prayer for the dead. 
 
 Among the singular traits of character which are 
 developed amid these, whom I may designate in the 
 German phrase as my mossy parishioners, there is one
 
 HOLACOIMBE. lo? 
 
 Mliieb I .sliuuld define, iu their extreme simplicity, as 
 exuberant belief, or rather faith in excess. I do not, 
 however, intend by this term any kind of religious 
 peculiarity of tenet or creed, but only a prostration of 
 the intellect before certain old traditionary and in- 
 herited impulses of the human mind. They share and 
 they embrace those instinctive tendencies of their 
 Celtic nature which in all ages have led their race to 
 cherish a credence in the existence and power of 
 witches, fairies, and the force of charms and spells. It 
 is well known that all such supernatural influences on 
 ordinary life are singularly congenial to the ancient 
 and the modern Cornish mind. I do not exaggerate 
 when I affirm at all events my own persuasion, that 
 two - thirds of the total inhabitants of Tamar - side 
 implicitly believe in the power of the 3Ial Occhio, as 
 the Italians name it, or the Evil Eye. Is this incredible 
 in a day when the spasms and raps and bad spelling of 
 a familiar spirit are received with acquiescent belief in 
 polished communities, and even in intellectual London ? 
 The old notion that a wizard or a witch so became by 
 a nefarious bargain with the enemy of man, and l:)y a 
 surrender of his soul to his ultimate grasp, although 
 still held in many a nook of our western valleys, and 
 by the crooning dame at her solitary hearth, appears to 
 have been exchanged in my hamlet of Holacombe (for 
 such is its name) for a persuasion that these choosers 
 of the slain inherit their faculty from their birth. 
 Whispers of forbidden ties between their parents, and 
 of monstrous and unhallowed alliances of which these 
 children are the issue, largely prevail in this village. 
 There it is held that the witch, like the poet, is so 
 Ijorii. T have been gravely assured that there are well- 
 known marks which distinguish tlie ill-\vishers from
 
 158 irOLACOMBE, 
 
 all beside. These art' Mack spots under the tongue; in 
 number five, diagonally placed : " Like those, sir, which 
 are always found in the feet of swine," and which, 
 according to the belief of my poor people, and which, 
 as a Scriptural authority, I was supposed unable to 
 deny, were first made in the unclean animals by the 
 entrance of the demons into the ancestral herd at 
 Gadara. A peculiar kind of eyeball, sometimes bright 
 and clear, and at otliers covered with a filmy gauze, 
 like a gipsy's eye, as it is said, by night ; or a double 
 pupil, ringed twice ; or a larger eye on the left than on 
 the right side ; these are held to be tokens of evil omen, 
 and accounted to indicate demoniac power, and certain 
 it is that a peculiar glare or a glance of the eye does 
 exist in those persons who are pointed out as in posses- 
 sion of the craft of the wizard or witch. But an ancient 
 man, who lived in a lone house in a gorge near the 
 church, once actually disclosed to me in mysterious 
 whispers, and with many a gesture of alarm and dread, 
 a plan which he had heard from his grandfather, and 
 by which a person evilly inclined, and anxious for more 
 power than men ought to possess, might at any time 
 become a master of the Evil Eye. 
 
 " Let him go to chancel," said he, " to sacrament, and 
 let him hide and bring away the bread from the hands 
 of the priest ; then, next midnight let him take it and 
 carry it round the church, widdershins — that is, from 
 south to north, crossing by east three times : the third 
 time there will meet him a big, ugly, venomous toad, 
 gaping and gasping with his mouth opened wide, let 
 Inni put the bread between the lips of the ghastly 
 creature, and as soon as ever it is swallowed down his 
 throat he will breathe three times upon the man, and he 
 will be made a strong witch for evermore."
 
 HOLACOMBE. 159 
 
 I did not fail to express the liorror and disgust with 
 which I had listened to this grandsire's tale, and to 
 assure him that any man capable of performing such 
 an atrocious ceremony for such a purpose, must l>e by 
 his very nature fit for every evil desire, and prepared, 
 of his own mere impulse, to form the most unhallowed 
 wishes for the harm of his fellow-creatures, such as 
 a demon only could delight to fulfil. I)ut the feats 
 which are supposed to be achieved by the witch — for 
 the question proposed by the sapient King Jamie has 
 been solved by the Cornish people, whether the Devil 
 doth not oftener dally with ancient women than men 
 — are invariably deeds of loss and harm : Some felon 
 sow like her of Eokeby, becomes the grunting mother 
 of a large family of farrows ; all at once, like Medea, 
 she hates her own offspring with a fiendish hatred, and 
 spurns them all away from her milk. They pine and 
 squeal, and at last sit upright on their hinder parts 
 like pleading children, put their little paws together in 
 piteous fashion, and die one hj one. All this would 
 never have come to pass had not the dame, the day 
 before, refused a bottle of milk to one who " should 
 have been a woman," " but that her beard forbade them 
 to interpret that such she were." What graphic tales 
 of " things ill-wished " have I not heard around and 
 within this wild and lonely hamlet ! All at once a 
 flock or herd would begin to pine away with some 
 strange and nameless disease, tlie shepherd's ewes 
 yeaned dead lambs, and were found standing over 
 their lost offspring aghast. Or his cows, " the milky 
 mothers of the lierd," would rush from field to field, 
 " quite mad," with their tails erect towards the sky, 
 like the bare poles of a ship in distress scudding before 
 the gale ; oi- tlie brown mare would refuse to l)e liar-
 
 IGO IIOLACOMBE. 
 
 nessc'd, and signify liur intention to remain in the stall 
 on a l)usy day, to her master's infinite disgust. In the 
 more civilised part of my parish the well-to-do farmer 
 would have a remedy. He would mount his horse one 
 break of day on some secret expedition, and be absent 
 for another day or two. Then he returns armed with 
 a packet of white powders, which he scatters carefully, 
 one at every gate on his farm, and his men hear him as 
 he goes muttering in solemn fashion some strange set 
 words, which turn out, when the scroll is submitted to 
 the schoolmaster afterwards, to contain the blessings of 
 the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, copied in 
 writing for his use. He has paid a visit, it appears, to 
 a distant town, and been closeted with a well-known 
 public character of the west, popularly called the White 
 Witch, and it is he who has not only exposed the name 
 and arts of the parish practitioner of evil, but has sup- 
 plied an antidote in the shape of baiiling powders and 
 " charms of mioht." 
 
 Some years agonc a violent thunderstorm passed over 
 the hamlet of Holacombe, and wrought great damage in 
 its course. Trees were rooted up, cattle killed, and a 
 rick or two set on fire. It so befell that I visited, the 
 day after, one of the chief agricultural iidiabitants of 
 the village, and I found the farmer and his men stand- 
 ing by a ditch wherein lay, heels upward, a fine young 
 horse quite dead. " Here, sir," he shouted, as I came 
 on, " only please to look ! is not this a sight to see ? " 
 I looked at the poor animal, and uttered my sympathy 
 and regret at the loss. 
 
 " One of the fearful results," I happened to say, " of 
 the storm and lightning yesterday." " There, Jem," 
 said he to one of his men, triumphantly, " didn't I say 
 the parson would find it out ? Yes, sir," he said, " it is
 
 ITOLACOMBE. 161 
 
 as you say : it is all that wretched old Cherry ''■ Par- 
 nell's doing, with her vengeance and her noise ! " I 
 stared with astonishment at this unlooked-for inter- 
 pretation which he had put into my mouth, and waited 
 for him to explain. " You see, sir," he went on to say, 
 " the case was this : old Cherry came up to my place, 
 tottering along and mumbling that she wanted a fagot 
 of wood. I said to her, ' Cherry,' says I, ' I gave you 
 one only two days agone, and another two days before 
 that, and I must say that I didn't make up my wood- 
 rick altogether for you.' So she turned away, looking 
 very grany, and muttering something about ' Hotter for 
 me hereafter.' Well, sir, last night I was in bed, I and 
 my wife, and all to once there bursted a thunderbolt, 
 and shaked the very room and house. Up we started, 
 and my w^ife says, ' father, old Cherry's up ! I wish 
 I had gone after her with that there fagot.' I confess I 
 thought in my mind I wish she had ; but it was too 
 late then, and I would try to hope for the best. But 
 now, sir, you see with your own eyes wdiat that re- 
 vemreful old woman hath been and done. And I do 
 think, sir," he went on to say, changing his tone to a 
 kind of indignant growl — " I do think that when I call 
 to mind how I've paid tithe and rates faithfully all these 
 years, and kept my place in church before your rever- 
 ence every Sabbath-day, and always voted in the vest- 
 ries that what hath a be ought to be, and so on, I do 
 think that such ones as old Cherry Parnell never ought 
 to be allowed to meddle with such things as thunder 
 and lightning." What could I — what could any man 
 in his senses — say to this ? 
 
 The great charmer of charms in this strange corner 
 of the world is a seventh son born in direct succession 
 
 ^ Charity i.s tlic full naino.
 
 1G2 IIOLACOMBE. 
 
 from one father and one mother. Find such a person, 
 and you have "the sayer of good words" always at 
 your command. He is called in our folk-lore the doctor 
 of the district. There is such an old man in my hamlet, 
 ])opularly called Uncle Tony Cleverdon. He was bap- 
 tised Anthony; but this has been changed by kindly vil- 
 lage parlance and the usage of the West. For with us 
 the pet name is generally the short name, and any one 
 venerable from age and amiable in nature is termed, with- 
 out relationship, but merely for endearment, "uncle" 
 and "aunt." Uncle Tony has inherited this endowment 
 in a family of thirteen children, he being the seventh 
 born. He often says that his lucky birth has been as 
 good as "a fortin" to him all his life; for although he 
 is forbidden by usage and tradition to take money for 
 the exercise of his functions, nothing has hindered that 
 he should always be invited to sit as an honoured guest 
 at the table furnished with good things in the houses of 
 his votaries. Uncle Tony allowed me, as a vast favour, 
 to take down from his lips some of his formularies : 
 they had never been committed to writing before, he 
 said ; not, as I believe, for more than three centuries, 
 for they smack of the middle ages. He very much 
 questioned whether their virtue would not be utterly de- 
 stroyed when he was gone, by their being " put into ink." 
 Uncle Tony was like an ancient augur in the science 
 of birds. " Whenever you see one magpie alone by 
 himself," said he, with a look of inimitable sagacity, 
 " that bird is upon no good : spit over your right 
 shoulder three times, and say — 
 
 ' Clean birds by sevens, 
 Unclean by twos, 
 The dove in the heavens 
 Is the one I choose ! ' "
 
 HOLACOMBE. 163 
 
 Among the myriads of sea and land birds that throng 
 this coast, the raven is king of the rock. The headland 
 and bulwark of the slope of Holacombe is a precipice 
 of perpendicular rock. There, undisturbed (for no bribe 
 would induce a villager to slay them, old or young), 
 the ravens dwell, revel, and reign. One day, as we 
 watched them in their flapping flight, said Uncle Tony 
 to me, " Sometimes, sir, these wild creatures will be so 
 merciful that they will even save a man's life." " In- 
 deed ! how ? " " Why, sir, it came to pass on this wise. 
 There was once a noted old wrecker called Kinsman : 
 he lived in my father's time ; and when no wreck was 
 onward, he would get his wages by raising stone in a 
 quarry by the sea-shore. Well, he was to work one 
 day over yonder, half way down Tower Cliff, and all at 
 once he heard a buzz above him in the air, and he 
 looked up, and there were two old ravens flying round 
 and round very near his head. They kept whirling and 
 whirling and coming so nigh, and they seemed so know- 
 ing, that the old man thought verily they were trying 
 to speak, as they made a strange croak ; but after some 
 time they went away, and old Kinsman went on with his 
 w^ork. Well, sir, by-and-by they both came back again, 
 flying above and round as before ; and then at last, lo 
 and behold ! the birds dropped right down into the 
 quarry two pieces of wreck-candle just at the old man's 
 feet." (Very often the wreckers pick up Neapolitan 
 wax-candles from vessels in the Mediterranean trade 
 that have been lost in the Channel.) " So when Kins- 
 man saw the candles, he thouglit in his mind, ' There is 
 surely wreck coming in upon the beach : ' so he packed 
 his tools together and left them just where he stood, 
 and went his way wrecking. He could find no jetsam, 
 however, tliough lie searched far and wide, and he used
 
 164 IIOLACOMBE. 
 
 to say he verily believed tliat the ravens must have had 
 till' candles at liand in llu'ir holt, to be so ready with 
 them as they were. Next day he went back to quarry 
 to his work, and ho always used to say it was as true 
 as a proverb : tliere the tools were all Imried deep 
 out of sight, for the craig above had given way and 
 fallen down, and if he had tarried only one hour longer 
 he must have been crushed to death ! So you see, sir, 
 what knowledge those ravens must have had ; how well 
 they knew the old man, and how fond he was of wreck ; 
 how crafty they were to hit upon the only plan that 
 would ever have slocked him away : and the birds, 
 moreover, must have been kind creatures, and willing 
 to save a poor fellow's life. There is nothing on airth 
 so knowing as a bird is, unless it may be a snake. Did 
 you ever hear, sir, how I heal an adder's bite ? You 
 cut a piece of hazelwood, sir, and you fasten a long bit 
 and a short one together into the form of a cross ; then 
 you lay it softly upon the wound, and you say, thrice, 
 blowing out the words aloud like one of the commandi- 
 ments — 
 
 ' Underneath this hazelin mote 
 There's a Braggoty worm with a speckled throat, 
 
 Nine douLle is lie : 
 Now from nine double to eight double, 
 And from eight double to seven double, 
 And from seven double to six double, 
 And I'rom six double to five double. 
 And from live double to four double. 
 And from foiir double to three double, 
 And from three double to two double, 
 And from two double to one double, 
 And from one double to no double. 
 
 No double hath he ! ' 
 
 "There, sir," said Uncle Tony, "if David had known
 
 HOLACOMBE. 165 
 
 that charm ho never wouhl liave wrote the verse in the 
 Psahns about the adder that was so deaf that she would 
 not hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so 
 wisely. I never knew that charm fail in all my life ! " 
 Tony added, after a pause — " Fail ! of course, sometimes 
 a body may fail, but then 'tis always from people's 
 obstinacy and ignorance. I daresay, sir, you've heard 
 the story of Farmer Colly's mare, how she bled herself 
 to death ; and they say he puts the blame on me. But 
 what's the true case ? His man came rapping at my 
 door after I was in bed. I got up and opened the case- 
 ment and looked out, and I asked what was amiss ? 
 ' Tony,' says he, ' master's mare is blooding streams, 
 and I be sent over to you to beg you to stop it.' ' Very 
 well,' I said, ' I can do it just as well here as if I came 
 down and opened the door : only just tell me the name 
 of the beast, and I'll proceed.' ' Name,' says he, ' why, 
 there's no name that I know by ; we alius call her the 
 black mare.' ' No name ? ' says I ; ' then how ever can I 
 charm her ? Why, the name's the principal thing ! 
 Fools ! never to give her a iiame to rule the charm by. 
 Be off ! be off ! I can't save her.' So the poor old thing 
 died in course." " And what may your charm be, Tony ? " 
 said T. " Just one verse in Ezekiel, sir, beginning, ' I 
 said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.' 
 And so on. I say it only twice, witli an outblow 
 between each time. But the finest by-word that I 
 know, sir, is for the prick of a thorn." And here it 
 follows from my diary in the antique phraseology 
 which Uncle Tony had received from his forefathers 
 through descending generations: — 
 
 "Happy man that Clirist was born ! 
 He was crowned willi a llinni :
 
 IGG IIOLACOMBE. 
 
 He was pierced tliroTi^li iLc skin, 
 For to let tlie poison in ; 
 But His five wounds, so tliey say, 
 Closed before He parsed away. 
 In with healing, out with thorn : 
 Happy man that Christ was born !" 
 
 Another time Uncle Tony said to me, " Sir, there is 
 one thing I want to ask you, if I may be so free, and it 
 is this, Why should a merry-maid " (the local name for 
 mermaid), " that will ride about upon the waters in such 
 terrible storms, and toss from sea to sea in such ruxles 
 as there be upon the coast — why should she never lose 
 her looking-glass and comb ? " " Well, I suppose," said 
 I, " that if there are such creatures, Tony, they nmst 
 wear their looking-glasses and combs fastened on some- 
 how — like fins to a fish." " See ! " said Tony, chuckling 
 with delight; "w hat_a tliij x£C- Jt i sto k now the Scrip - 
 t ures like your reverence . I never should have found 
 it out. But there's another point, sir, I should like to 
 know, if you please ; I've been bothered about it in my 
 mind hundreds of times. Here be I, that have gone 
 up and down Holacombe clilTs and streams fifty years 
 come next Candlemas, and I've gone and watched the 
 water by moonlight and sunlight, days and nights, on 
 purpose, in rough weather and smooth (even Sundays 
 too, saving your presence), and my sight as good as 
 most men's, and yet I never could come to see a merry ^ 
 maid in all my life T How's that, sir < " '' Are yoii sure, 
 
 Tijiiy," I rejoined, " that there are such things in exist- 
 ence at all ? " "Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice ! 
 He was out once by night for wreck (my father watched 
 the coast like most of the old people formerly), and it 
 came to pass that he was down by the duck-pool on 
 the sand at low-water tide, and all at once he heard
 
 nOLACOMBE. 167 
 
 music in the sea. Well, he cropocl o n behind a rock, 
 like a coastguard-man watching a boat, and got very 
 near the noise. He couldn't make out the words, but 
 the sound was exactly like Bill Martin's voice, that 
 singed second counter in church. At last he got very 
 near, and there was the merry-maid very plain to be 
 seen, swimming about upon the waves like a woman 
 bathing — and singing away. But my father said it was 
 very sad and solemn to hear — more like the tune of a 
 funeral hymn than a Christmas carol by far — but it 
 was so sweet that it was as much as he could do to 
 bold back from plunging into the tide after her. And 
 he an old man of sixtv-seven, with a wife and a house- 
 ful of cliiitlren at home ! The second time was down 
 here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking out for 
 spars : there w^as a ship breaking up in the Chan- 
 nel7and he saw some one move just at half-tide mark. 
 So he went on very softly, step and step, till he got 
 nigh the place, and there was the merry-maid sitting 
 on a rock, the bootifullest merry-maid that eye could 
 behold, and she was twisting about her long hair, and 
 dressing it just like one of our girls getting ready for 
 her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day, The old man made 
 sure he should i^reep hold of her before ever she found 
 him out, and he had got so near that a couple of paces 
 more and he would liave cauglit her by the hair as sure 
 as tithe or tax, when, lo and behold ! she looked back 
 and glimpsed him. So in one moment she dived head- 
 foremost off the rock, and then tumbled herself topsy- 
 turvy about in the waters, and cast a look at my poor 
 father, and grinned like a seal ! "
 
 IIUMPIIREY YIVIAK 
 
 A]\IONG the changes that have passed over the face 
 of our hind with such torrent-hke rapidity in 
 this wondrous nineteenth century of marvel and 
 miracle, none are more striking and complete than 
 that which has transformed the torpid clergy of past 
 periods into the active and energetic ministers of our 
 own Church and time. The country incumbent of Mac- 
 aulay's History, the guests at the second talkie of the 
 patron and the squire — the Trullibers and the Parson 
 Adams of Fielding and Smollett — would find no deutero- 
 type in the present day. But in the transition period 
 of our ecclesiastical history there are here and there 
 fossil memorials of the former men that would enable 
 a thoughtful mind to construct singular specimens of 
 character which, while embodying the past, would also 
 indicate the future lineaments of gradual change and 
 improvement. Among these is one, a personal friend 
 of the writer when he first entered the ministry, whose 
 kindliness of heart and originality of character may 
 supply sundry graphic and interesting reminiscences.
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 1G9 
 
 As old Johnson would have said, had he written his 
 life, so let me say of Humphrey Vivian, that he was 
 at once the stately priest, the genial companion, and 
 the faithful, facetious friend. Let me indulge some of 
 these recollections, and gather up some materials of 
 personal history, which are by no means wanting. For 
 it was his great delight, when a guest at my table, 
 after he had done more than justice to the viands set 
 before him, when his gold snuff-box had been produced 
 and ceremoniously offered to all around, and his glass 
 filled with his favourite wine — " sound old Tory port" 
 — to recall in whole volumes the events of his youth 
 and manliood, and to dilate with emphatic gusto on 
 the contrasts of the age and times. 
 
 The personal aspect of my friend presented an im- 
 posing solemnity to the eye. Tall, even to the measure 
 of six feet two inches, but slender withal as the bole 
 of a poplar-tree, with small features and twinkling eye, 
 and a round undersized head, and yet with a demeanour 
 so pompous, such a frequency of condescending bows, 
 and such a roll of words, that he took inmiediate rank 
 as a gentleman of the old school. And as to his mental 
 endowments, be it enough to record that there were 
 few men as wise as he looked. His garb was that of a 
 pluralised clergyman of the days of the Georges, — fine 
 Ijlack broadcloth, that hung around him in festive mo- 
 ments like mourning on a Maypole. His vest was of 
 rich silk with wide pockets, roomy enough to liold the 
 ine\dtable snuff-box, the gold Mid, and the small cock- 
 fighter's saw, which was used to cut away the natural 
 spur of the bird when it was replaced with steel. Tliis 
 last was a conmion equipment of a country gentleman, 
 lay or clerical, in those days. His apparel tcrnhnatcd 
 in black silk stockings and nether garments, buckled
 
 170 IIUMl'IfREY VIVIAN. 
 
 with gold or .silver at tlic knee. Buckles also clasped 
 his shoes. Thus attired, he was no unfit representative 
 of the clergy who ruled and reigned in their parochial 
 domain in the west of England in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century. His conversational powers were 
 ample and annising ; but it was when he could be 
 brought to dilate on his own adventures and history in 
 earlier life that he most surely riveted and requited 
 the attention of his auditors. 
 
 At my table one day the topic of discourse was the 
 marriage of tlie clergy. " The young curates," said he, 
 " should always marry, and that as soon as ever they 
 are ordained. Nothing brightens up a parsonage like 
 the ribbons of a merry wife. I, you know, have buried 
 three Mrs Vivians ; and when I come to look back, I 
 really can hardly decide which it was that made the 
 happiest home. If I had to live my life over again, I 
 should certainly marry all three. And yet I did not 
 win my first love, after all. Her grumpy old father 
 came between us and blighted our days, as the Psalmist 
 puts it. Ah ! the very sound of her name is like a 
 charm to me still. Bridget Morrice ! But ' Biddy ' 
 she was always called at home ; and very soon she 
 was ' Biddy dear ' to me. 
 
 " I was at Oxford then, and when I came down for 
 the ' Long ' I used to be very duly at church, because 
 there I could see Biddy. Her pew was opposite to 
 mine ; and there was I in full rig as we used to dress 
 in those days, — long scarlet coat, silk waistcoat with a 
 figured pattern, and tights. One Sunday after prayers 
 up comes old Morrice, roaring like a bull. ' Mr Vivian,' 
 he growled, ' I'll trouble you to take your eyes off my 
 daughter's face in church. I saw you, sir, when you 
 pretended to be bowing in the Creed. You were bow-
 
 HUMPHEEY VIVIAN. 171 
 
 iug to Biddy, my daughter, sir, across the aisle ; and 
 that you call attending divine service, do you, sir ? ' 
 However, in spite of the old dragon, we used to meet 
 in the garden, and there, in the arbour, what fruit 
 Biddy used to give me ! Such peaches, plums, and 
 sometimes cheesecakes and tarts ! Talk of a sweet 
 tooth ! I think that in those days I had a whole set ; 
 and now I have but one left of any kind, and that is a 
 stump. But Biddy treated me very unkindly after all. 
 There was a regiment of soldiers stationed in the town, 
 and of course lots of gay young officers fluttering about 
 in feathers and lace. Well, one day it was rumoured 
 about that old Morrice and his wife were going to give 
 a spread, and these captain fellows were to be there, 
 head and chief. There were to be dinner and a dance, 
 and I of course thought that, somehow or other, Biddy 
 would manage with her mother to get me a card and a 
 corner. I waited and watched; but no — none came. 
 So at last away I went to the house, angry and fierce, 
 and determined to have matters cleared up. Old Mor- 
 rice, luckily, was out, and his wife with him ; but there 
 was Biddy, up to her elbows in jellies and jams, fussing 
 and fuming like a maid to get things nice and tooth- 
 some for cockering up those red rascals, that I hated 
 like grim death. ' Well, Biddy,' I said, ' do you call 
 this pretty, to serve me so ? Hero you ask everybody 
 to your feasts and your junkets — yes, every one in the 
 town but me ! ' And what with the vexation and the 
 smell of the cookery, I actually burst out sobbing 
 like a boy. This made Biddy cry too, and there was 
 a scene, sure enough. ' It is father's fault, Henry, 
 utterly and entirely : he is so mad against you because 
 he thinks you want me for the sake of his money.' 
 ' Money, Biddy dear ! ' I said — ' money ! Now I do
 
 172 IIUMPIIK'EY VIVIAN. 
 
 tliink that if I bring blood }'tmr father oiiglii to bring 
 groats ! ' 
 
 "Just tlien some one lifted tlie latcli, and poor 
 Biddy began to scream : ' Henry, dear ! what shall I 
 do ? That's father come back. He'll surely kill you 
 or me, or do some rash deed. Wliat can I do ? Here, 
 here,' she said, opening a kind of closet-door, ' step in, 
 that's a dear, and wait till 1 can get you out. Don't 
 cough or sneeze, but keep quiet and still as a mouse 
 till I come to call you.' In I wxmt, and Biddy shut 
 the door. AVell, do you know, I found slie liad put me 
 in a sort of storeroom, where they kept the sweets ; 
 and on a long table there was such a spread : raspberry- 
 creams, ices, jellies, all kinds of flummery, and in the 
 middle a thing I never could resist — a fine sugary cake. 
 Didn't I help myself ! and when I began to think that 
 all these niceties were got up to fill up the waistcoats 
 of those rollicking fellows that had cut me out of my 
 Biddy's heart, it did make me half mad. However, 
 when I thought of that cake, I said to myself, ' Not 
 one crundj of that lovely thing shall go down their 
 horrid throats after all — see if it does ! ' We wore long 
 wide pockets in those days, big enough to hold a 
 Christmas pie. So in went the cake ; and there was 
 room besides for a whole plate of macaroons. Pres- 
 ently Biddy was at the door, and in such a way. 
 ' Make haste, Henry, dear — quick ; and do go straight 
 home ! I would not have you meet father for the 
 world ! ' You may guess how I scudded away through 
 the streets with my skirts bulging out, and the boys 
 shouting after me, ' There goes the Oxford scholar with 
 his humps slipped down ! ' 
 
 " Next time I met Biddy, it was coming ' out of 
 church. She could hardly tell whether to laugh or
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 173 
 
 cry. ' How could you, Henry, dear ? ' she said, — ' how 
 could you carry off our beautiful cake ? ' ' How ? 
 Biddy dear,' said I ; ' wliy, in my pocket, to be sure,' 
 
 " But the worst of all was that Biddy was cold to 
 me from that very time ; and when I came home from 
 college the next year I heard that she was engaged to 
 a Captain Upjohns, and she was married to him not 
 long after. So he had Biddy and I had the cake. But 
 she was my first love ; and I do think, after all, not- 
 withstanding the three Mrs Vivians, she was verily my 
 last love also. People say that Queen Mary declared 
 that if she w^as opened after her death, Calais would 
 be found graven on her heart. And I, too, say often, 
 that if my dead Ijosom were examined, it would be 
 found that Biddy Morrice was carved on mine. 
 
 " Well, well ; time passed away — years upon years. 
 I was ordained, . and served half-a-dozen curacies — 
 three at once for some time ; and then I got, one after 
 another, my two first livings, I was a widower. I 
 had lost the first — no, no, I am sorry to say the second 
 Mrs Vivian, when one day I heard that Biddy Morrice 
 w^as a rich widow. Old Upjohns, it seems, had died 
 and left her no end of money. And then the thought 
 occurred to me that we two might come together after 
 all. ' 'Twould be like a romance,' I said. I found out 
 that she was settled in great style at Bath. So up I 
 went and found, sure enough, she had a splendid house. 
 A fine formal old butler received me, and I sent up my 
 name. I w'as sliown into a splendid drawing-room, 
 with rich furniture, like a bishop's palace, all velvet 
 and gold. I sat down, thinking over old times, when 
 Biddy used to come to meet me witli lier rosy cheeks 
 and her strawberry mouth, and a waist you miglit span 
 with your liand. At last tlic door opened, and in she
 
 171 TIUMPITI^EY VIVIAN. 
 
 came. But alack, alas ! such a cat ! oh dear, oh dear ! 
 and with such ii lidw-wiudow : it was surprising, — more 
 hkc old Mrs Morrice than my Biddy. I was aghast. 
 I never kissed her, as I intended, l)ut I stood staring 
 like a gawky. I remember I offered her a pincli of 
 snuff, which she took. We had a talk, but it was all 
 prisms and prunes with Biddy. However, she invited 
 me to dinner tlie next day, and I went. Everything 
 first-rate, — turbot and haunch, and so on, all upon sil- 
 ver ; fine old Madeira, and glorious port ; and that 
 sleek fellow, the butler, ruling over all ! There was 
 a moderate dessert, and on the middle dish there was 
 such a cake ! ' I rememlier,' said Biddy, but without 
 the shadow of a smile — ' I remember that you are 
 fond of cake.' Well, after the cloth was removed, I 
 felt all the better for my dinner, and it is at that time 
 I always have most courage, particularly after the third 
 glass. As I looked on the sleek butler and his pompous 
 ways, I thought to myself, ' I should like to dethrone 
 that rule, and reign myself over her cellar.' 
 
 " So I broached the subject of my wishes. ' Don't 
 you think, Biddy dear,' said I, ' now that my second 
 Mrs V. has gone, and old Upjohns also out of the way, 
 
 that we two ? ' '0 Henry, Henry,' she broke in ; 
 
 ' the old Adam is still, I see, strong as ever in you. As 
 sweet Mr Cheekey says at our Bethesda, " We are all 
 criminally minded to our dying day." ' Never believe 
 me if Bridget had not turned Methodist, and all that. 
 And so, in short, she cut me dead. However, she sent 
 me this snuff-box, and I had her picture put under the 
 lid. Sweet face, isn't it ? But then it was taken 
 thirty years before that dinner at Bath." 
 
 But it was when the conversation turned upon 
 curacies, and stipends, and the usual topers among
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 175 
 
 clerical guests, that our friend Humphrey's remem- 
 brances became of chief interest and value. " Oh, the 
 changes that I have lived to see ! " was his favourite 
 phrase. " I remember so well when I was ordained 
 deacon, and came down in my brand-new bombasine 
 bachelor's gown, and a hood that made me look behind 
 like a two-year-old goat, and l)ands half-a-yard long, 
 what a swell I used to think myself to be ! Talk of 
 your one good curacy ! why, when I began to work I 
 served four. Ay, and I had £10 apiece for them, and 
 thought myself in paradise. I remember there were 
 three of us. John Braddon — he had two curacies and 
 the evening lecture ; and Millerford we thought very 
 low down — he had two and no more. We all lived, sir, 
 in the town, and boarded and lodged together. £20 
 a-year each we paid the unfortunate fellow that took 
 us in. Our first landlord was old Geake, the grocer. 
 He stood it twelve months, and then broke all to 
 pieces, and was made bankrupt by his creditors. He 
 actually said in court that we had eaten and drunk all 
 his substance. Well, then, a man called Stag under- 
 took us. He was a market-gardener ; and, do you know, 
 after a time he went too ! He said it was not so much 
 the meat we consumed, but he had no more vegetables 
 to sell. So we cut him. At last an old fellow named 
 Brewer came forward, and said he would try his luck 
 with us. He stood it pretty well, but then his wife 
 had private property of her own ; Ijut she used to say 
 it all went under the waistcoats of the young clergy. 
 She had no family ; but she said she would rather have 
 had six cliildren of lier own than keep us three. 
 But, no doubt, she exaggerated. AVomen will do so 
 sometimes." 
 
 " Did you live well, IMr A'ivian ?" we interposed.
 
 17G IIUMPIIKEY VIVIAN. 
 
 " Like fighting-cocks, sir. We insisted on good break- 
 fasts, plain joints and ])lenty for dinner, and nice hot 
 suppers. We didn't care much about tea — nobody did 
 in those days. But then, behind the parlour door tliere 
 was always a keg of brandy on tap, and we had a right 
 to go with our little tin cups and draw the spigot twice 
 a-day." 
 
 " No doubt, Mr Vivian, you worked hard in those 
 days ? " 
 
 " Didn't we ? To be sure it was only on Sundays, 
 but it was enough for all the weelc. We used to start 
 in the morning and travel on foot to all the points of 
 the compass, every man of us with his umbrella. My 
 first service was at nine o'clock in the morning, prayers 
 and sermon. Then on to Tregare at half-past eleven, 
 West Lariston at two o'clock, and Kimovick at four, 
 and home in the evening, pretty well done up. Brad- 
 don and Millerford just the same tramp. But tlien, 
 how we did enjoy our roast goose, sirloin, or leg of 
 mutton afterwards ! We bargained expressly for a hot 
 dinner on Sundays, and we had it too. Then what fun 
 afterwards ! Every man had something to tell about 
 his parish. I remember Millerford had to call and see 
 an old woman, a reputed witch. He was to examine 
 her mouth, and see if the roof had the five black marks 
 that stamped an old woman as a witch. He wished to 
 save her, and he declared that she had l)ut four, and 
 one of them doubtful. One day Braddon had chris- 
 tened a man-child, as he thought, Thomas ; but the 
 next week the father came in great perplexity. ' 'Twas 
 the mistake of the nurse. 'Tis a girl. How shall us 
 do ? Us can never call a maid Tom. You must christen 
 her over again, sir.' As this could not be, we had to 
 put our heads together, and at last we advised Braddon
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 177 
 
 to alter the name to Thomasine (pronounced Tamzine), 
 and so he just saved her sex. 
 
 " One day I had a good story of my own to relate 
 about a pinch of snuff. It was always the custom m 
 those days for the clergyman after the marriage to 
 salute the bride first, before any other person. Well, 
 it w^as so that I had just married a very buxom, rosy 
 young lady, and when it was over I proceeded to ob- 
 serve the usual ceremony. But I had just before taken 
 an enormous finger-and-thumb-ful of snuff; so no 
 sooner had the bride received my kiss — and I gave her 
 a smart kiss for her good looks — than she began to 
 sneeze. The bridegroom kissed her, of course, and he 
 began also. Then the best man advanced to the privi- 
 lege. Better he hadn't, for he began to sneeze awfully ; 
 jaud by-and-by the bridesmaids also, for they were all 
 kissed in turn, till the whole party went sneezing down 
 the aisle, and the last thing I heard outside the church 
 door was 'tchu, 'tchu, Helm, till the noise was drowned 
 by the bells from the tower." 
 
 " But I suppose, ]\Ir Vivian, you did not remain long 
 a curate ; you must have received some of your several 
 livings at an early period of life ? " 
 
 " So I did, sir, sure enough. My text on such sub- 
 jects was, ^Asli not, and you shall never receive.' First 
 of all, I had the vicarage of Percombe, up towards the 
 moors. This came from a private friend. Next, the 
 Duchy gave me the rectory of South Wingley. I had 
 trouble enough to get it. I went up to London, and 
 besieged the Council two or three times a-day. People 
 said they gave me the living to get rid of me from 
 town. But it wasn't so. Next I had Trelegh from the 
 second Mrs Vivian's uncle. Yes, yes, preferment enough 
 for one man. By the by, di<l you ever hear liow near 
 
 M
 
 178 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 
 
 I was onco to llu; l;uvn-slecves ami the bench ? That 
 was a close shave ! I was staying in Bath, at the York 
 House, and there I always dined in the coffee-room. 
 Well, one day a gentleman came in and ordered dinner 
 in the next l)ox to mine — a sole and a chop. I observed 
 a bottle of Madeira wine ; and from liis nicety and 
 parlour ways, I judged him to be some big-wig, and 
 very rich. I saw he looked about for a news ' Gazette,' 
 so I offered him mine, and exchanged a few words by 
 way of getting known to him. He offered me a glass 
 of wine, and of course I took it, and sat down to 
 converse. We grew very friendly, and by-and-by it 
 turned out that his name was Vivian, and spelt exactly 
 like mine. It was growing late, and he took leave, but, 
 to my surprise, invited me to dine with him the next 
 day at Lansdowne Crescent. I was only too glad to go. 
 It was a noble house, with a troop of servants and 
 superb furniture, and, what was most to the purpose, 
 a glorious feed. After dinner, at dessert-time, while 
 we were talking over our w^ine, I saw, over the mantel- 
 piece, a fine picture of Perceval, the Prime Minister at 
 that time. So I ventured to ask, ' Is Mr Perceval, sir, 
 a relative of your family ? ' ' No, sir, no,' he said. ' I 
 have his picture because I like his politics, and respect 
 him as a Minister and as a man. I have been intro- 
 duced to him, however, and I can claim some personal 
 acquaintance with him.' ' Have you, my friend ? ' 
 thought I. 'Then, take my word for it, I will make 
 use of you as a stepping-stone in life.' So, when it was 
 nearly time to wish him good night, I said, ' I have 
 a favour to ask you, sir. I am going to town in a day 
 or two, and I shall be deeply obliged if you will write 
 a letter to Mr Perceval, merely telling him that the 
 bearer is a friend of yours, a clergyman in quest of
 
 HUMPHREY VIVIAN. 179 
 
 some preferment, and that as he is the patron of so 
 many good things in the Church, you will be much 
 obliged to him if he will bestow something valuable on 
 your friend.' He looked rather glum at this, and 
 twirled his fingers a bit, and at length said, ' Why, no, 
 j\Ir Vivian, I can't go so far as that. Consider, I have 
 known you only a few hours, and have never heard you 
 officiate — although, no doubt, you are well qualified to 
 hold preferment in the Church. But I'll tell you what 
 I will do. I have a friend, tlie rector of the parish 
 where jNIr Perceval lives, and I know he always attends 
 liis church. I will give you a letter to him, and he 
 may suggest some opportunity of promoting your plan.' 
 Of course I jumj)ed at this, took my letter, and was off 
 by the mail the very next day. The first man I called 
 on was, of course, the clergyman. It was on a Satur- 
 day, and by good luck he had been taken ill. I was 
 shown in where he lay on a sofa, looking quite ghastly. 
 * Have you got a sermon with you, ]\Ir Vivian ? ' said 
 he ; ' anything will do.' I always took with me, wher- 
 ever I went, some half-dozen, and I said so. ' Because, 
 as you see, I cannot go to church to-morrow, and a 
 friend who was to have taken my duty has disappointed 
 me. I shall be indeed thankful if you will undertake 
 the wctrk.' This was the very thing ; and accordingly 
 I was in the vestry-hall the next morning, an hour 
 before time, rigged out in full canonicals, hired for the 
 day — silk and sarcenet — and my hair well frizzed, as 
 you may suppose. Just before service I said to the 
 clerk, ' I am told that Mr Perceval attends your church ; 
 can you point out to me his pew ? ' ' Tliat I can, sir,' 
 said he, ' in a moment. There it is in full front of the 
 desk and pulpit, the third pew down, with the l»rass 
 rods and silk curtains.' Well, the service began ; but
 
 180 IIUMPIir.EY VIVIAN. 
 
 the said pew was empty till llie end of the Belief, when, 
 lo and behold ! in came the beadle, marching with great 
 pomp, and after him ]\Ir Perceval and some friends. 
 You may guess after that what eyes and ears I had for 
 the rest of the congregation. There was the Piime 
 Minister ; I see him now, in his purple coat and cuffs, 
 silk waistcoat — fine as Sisera's — and with a wig that 
 looked like wisdom itself. He was very attentive. I 
 watched him, and saw how careful he was to keep time 
 with all the service. At length came the last psalm, 
 and up I went. The pulpit fitted me as if it had been 
 made for me ; and the cushion, I remember, was all 
 velvet and gold. My text was, ' Where is the wise 
 man ? where is the scribe ? where is the disputer ? ' 
 &c. I saw that ]\Ir I^erceval never took his eyes off 
 my face all through the discourse. It was one of my 
 very best sermons. I saw that lie was delighted with 
 it ; and when I came to the end, I observed that he 
 turned round and looked up at me, and whispered 
 something to a gentleman who was with him, and then 
 they both looked up at me, and smiled. Said I to 
 myself, ' Humphrey, the golden ball is cast ; thy fortune 
 is made, as sure as rates and taxes. Look out for a 
 bishopric, and that soon ! ' I never was so happy in 
 all my life. I dined that night at the Mitre in Fleet 
 Street, on a rump-steak ; and I often caught myself 
 smiling and slapping my thigh and muttering. I saw 
 the waiter stare when I said to myself, but in an 
 audible voice, ' Done for a guinea ! Make way for my 
 
 lord ! ' Next day I went into the City to meet , 
 
 who was in town on business. After he had settled 
 what he came to do, he walked some way home with 
 me. Well, sir, when we came to the Strand there was 
 a dreadful uproar, people talking very low and seriously.
 
 HUMniREY VIVIAN. 181 
 
 At length a gentlemaii said to iny companion, ' Have 
 you heard the dreadful news ? A rascal called Belling- 
 ham has shot Mr Perceval dead in the lobhy of the 
 House of Commons ! ' It was like a deathblow to me. 
 Poor fellow ! It cut me througli like a knife. I was 
 indeed a crushed man, clean dissolved, as the psalm 
 says. And from that very hour I have been convinced 
 and persuaded — ay, I do believe it like the Creed — tliat 
 the very same ball that shot poor Perceval cut away a 
 mitre from my head as clean as a whistle. Yes, I have 
 never swerved from that belief all these years ; and up 
 to this day, when I say my prayers, as I do after I am 
 in bed, I always begin with tlie Confirmation, from 
 ' Defend, &c., this Thy servant.' "
 
 L T) T Pt E y A IIT E N : 
 
 A TALE OF THE PIXIES. 
 
 JMouiit and follow ! stout ami cripple ! 
 
 Horse and liattock, "but aud bcu" ; 
 Horses for the Pixie peoi^e, 
 
 Hattock for the Browuie men. 
 
 ^11. S. Hawker. 
 
 PEOPLE may talk if they please about the march of 
 agriculture, and they may boast that by the dis- 
 coveries of science a man will soon be able to carry 
 into a large field enough manure for its soil in his coat- 
 pocket, but there has been the ready answer, " Yes, and 
 bring away the produce in his fob." I am half inclined 
 to agree with an old parishioner of mine, who used often 
 to say, " It was an uiducky time for England when the 
 phrase ' gentleman farmer ' came up, and folks began 
 to try their new-fangled plans — such as clover for 
 horses and turnips for sheep." " Eents," he declared, 
 " were never lower than when a tenant would pare
 
 OLD TEEVARTEN. 183 
 
 and burn/ and take their crops out of every field, so 
 as to carry off the land as much as he brought on it " 
 — a theory on which, being a renter himself, he had 
 thriven, and put by money for full fifty years. Equally 
 original, by the way, were the devices cherished by my 
 aged friend for the repair of roads. When Macadam 
 had driven his first turnpike through tlie West, a public 
 dinner was given in honour of the event ; and being 
 presented w^ith a free ticket, and well coaxed into the 
 bargain. Old Trevarten made his appearance as a guest. 
 But it was observed that, amid all the jingling of glasses 
 and cheering of toasts, he sat motionless and mute, if 
 not actually sulky. At length the engineer, somewhat 
 piqued at his silence, said, during a pause, " Why, sir, 
 I am afraid that I have not had the honour of gaining 
 your approval in this undertaking of mine." 
 
 " To tell you the truth, sir," was the slow and 
 sturdy answer, " I don't like your road at all, by no 
 means." 
 
 " Well, but what are your reasons, sir, for disliking 
 what most people are pleased with ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, you have had a brave lot of money out of 
 the country, and there's nothing as I see to show for it 
 — 'tis all gone ! " 
 
 " Gone, sir, gone ! Why, bless me, isn't tliere the 
 road — the fine, wide, level road ? " 
 
 " Well, yes, sartainly ; but wiiere's they matereyals 
 that cost such a sight of taxes ? You've smashed mun 
 to nort : there's })ilm [dust] in the drought, and there's 
 mucks [mud] in the rain, but nowt else that I see. 
 Xow, when i Nvor waywarden of AVide Widger, I let 
 
 ^ A reference to a custom, still followed to some extent in South 
 Devon and Cornwall, of paring the turf of grass-fields and burning the 
 sods.
 
 184 OLD TIlEVAirrKN. 
 
 the fai'iiuTS have something to show for their money. 
 Why, sir, 'tis ten year agone eome Candlemas that 1 
 wor in office for the ways, and I put down stones as 
 big as beehives, and there they be now ! " 
 
 Access to such a living volume of Ijygone usages and 
 notions was an advantage not to be despised, and it 
 was long my custom to resort to " mine ancient " for 
 information difficult to be obtained elsewhere. Once 
 " I do remember me " that I encountered him in the 
 middle of a reedy marsh on his farm. He paused, and 
 awaited my approach, leaning on his staff just where 
 the path crossed a bed of the cotton-rush, then in full 
 bloom. I had gathered a handful of the stalks, each 
 with its pod of fine white gossamer threads, like a 
 bunch of snowy silk. 
 
 " Ha ! " said he, with a kind of half alarm, " you beant 
 afeared to pick that there ? " 
 
 " Afraid ? No ; why should I be ? " 
 
 " Why, some people think it's unlucky to carry off 
 the pisky wool ; but perhaps you know from the Scrip- 
 tures how to keep off any harm." 
 
 I did know better than to reason against such fancies 
 with a Cornish yeoman of threescore and fifteen, and 
 I thought it a good opening for a saw or ancient in- 
 stance. " Pixies ! " was my leading answer ; " and who 
 are they ? " 
 
 "Ancient inhabitants," was the grave reply — "folks 
 that used to live in the land before us Christians 
 corned here. So, at least, I've heerd my mother say. 
 They are a small people." 
 
 " And what about this wool ? What use do they 
 make of it." 
 
 " Why, they spin it for clothing, and to keep 'em 
 warm by night. They'd do a power of work for the
 
 OLD TREVARTEN. 185 
 
 farmers, and for a very small matter to eat and drink, 
 too ; and they would sing, evenings — sing and crowdie 
 like a Christmas choir." 
 
 The solemn tones of his voice, and the grim gravity 
 of visage with which old Trevarten made known these 
 mysteries, attested his own deep belief in their reality 
 and truth. " Had I never seen those rings on the grass 
 upon Hennacleare Hill — circles about a foot wide, of a 
 darker colour than the rest of the turf ? " he inquired, 
 well knowing that I had, but rather rejoicing in an 
 opportunity of enlightening me with scientific revela- 
 tions of his own. " Did I know how they came there, 
 and who made them ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, that was surprising : he thought that the 
 college teached such things, or why did it cost so much 
 money to go there to learn ? Howsomever, he would 
 let me know about they rings. The piskies made mun, 
 dancing hand-in-hand by night. They rise about mid- 
 night, and they put on their Sunday clothes, and they 
 agree to meet in such or such a spot, and there one 
 will crowdie and the others daunce, and beat out the 
 time with their feet, till they've worn the shape of a 
 roundaliout in the grass, and nort will wear out that 
 ring for evermore ! " 
 
 Deeply grateful for this information, I ventured to 
 inquire, " And did you ever see any of these pixy people 
 yourself ? " 
 
 "Why, I can't say for sartain that I didno seed nuin ; 
 my mother hath — so I've yeerd her tell divers times. 
 No; but I've seed their works, such as tying up the 
 manes of the colts in stirrups for riding l)y nigbt, and 
 terrifying tlie cows into the clover till they wor jist a 
 ]josted witli the wot grass. And I've l)ccn pisky-eycd
 
 186 OLD TKEVARTEN". 
 
 more tli.in oiicc Cdiniii^' linmo from llic market or fair ; 
 and I've yeerd iiiuii at their rollicking night-times fray- 
 quciitly, l)ut T can't say that I ever seed their faytures, 
 so as to know 'em again another time." 
 
 " Well," said I, as a sort of closing and clenching 
 remark, "all I can say is that I wish I could lay hold 
 of one of these pixies, just to look at — that's all." 
 
 " Do you ? " was his quick rejoinder ; " do you really 
 desire it ? I daresay I can oblige you one day. It is 
 not a month agone that I'd all hut catched one." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said I, half bewildered. " How ? Where 
 was it ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, you see the case was this. I'd a bin to 
 Simon Jude fair, and I stayed rather latish settling with 
 the jobber Brown for some sheep, and so it wor past 
 twelve o'clock at night before I come through Stowe 
 wood ; and just as I crossed Combe Water, sure enough 
 I yeerd the piskies. I know^'d very well where their 
 ring was close by the gate, and so I stopped my horse 
 and got off. Well, on I croped afoot till there was 
 nothing but a gap between me and the pisky ring, and 
 I could hear every word they said. One had got the 
 crowder, and he was working away his elbow to the 
 tune of ' Green Slieves ' bravely, and the rest wor daunc- 
 ing and singing and merrymaking like a stage -play. It 
 made me just 'mazed in my head to look at 'em. Well, 
 I thort to myself, if I could but catch one of these 
 chaps to carry home. I've yeerd that there's nothing 
 so lucky in a house as a tame pisky. So I stooped 
 down and I picked up a stone, oh, as big as my two fistes, 
 and I swinged my arm and I scrashed the stone light 
 into the ring. What a screech there was ! Such a 
 yell ! and one in pertickler I yeerd screaming and 
 hopping with a leg a-brok like a drashel. That one I
 
 OLD TKEVARTEN. 187 
 
 was pretty sure of. But still, as it was very late, and 
 my wife would be looking for me home, and it was 
 dark also, so I tliout I might as well come down and 
 fetch my pisky in the morning by daylight. Well, 
 sure enough, soon as I rose, I took one of these baskets 
 with a cover that the women have invented — a ridicule 
 they call it — and down I goes to the ring. And do you 
 know, sir, they'd a be so cunning — they'd a had the art 
 for to carry their comrade clear off, and there wasn't so 
 much as a screed of one left ! But, however," said my 
 venerable friend, seeing that I did not look quite satis- 
 fied with the evidence — " however, there the stone was 
 that I drashed in amongst mun ! " 
 
 Alas I alas ! how often in after-days, when I have 
 encountered the theories of men learned in the 'ologies, 
 and pondering the prodigious inferences which they 
 had deduced from a stratum here and a deposit there, 
 — how irresistibly have my thoughts recurred to old 
 Trevarten and his amount of proof, " There the stone 
 w^as that I drashed in amongst mun ! " 
 
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