Cornish Saints & Sinners
by J. Henry Harris · English · Gutenberg #46690 · 464,573 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Cornish Saints & Sinners
Author: J. Henry Harris
Illustrator: L. Raven-Hill
Release date: August 26, 2014 [eBook #46690]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORNISH SAINTS & SINNERS ***
Cornish Saints and Sinners
_By the Same Author_
THE FISHERS
Crown 8vo.
[Illustration: THE SMUGGLERS.]
CORNISH
SAINTS & SINNERS
BY
J. HENRY HARRIS
WITH NUMEROUS DRAWINGS BY
L. RAVEN-HILL
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF CORNWALL.]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXV
NEW EDITION
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
THE SMUGGLERS _Frontispiece_
THE ARMS OF CORNWALL _page_ 1
FATHER JOHN AND THE CIDER _facing_ " 6
PADDLING " 9
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT " 10
ST. MICHAEL AND THE CONGER _facing_ " 16
THE KEIGWIN ARMS, MOUSEHOLE " 19
DOLLY PENTREATH _facing_ " 22
LAND'S END " 27
LIGHT WINDS " 35
ASHORE " 36
THE VILLAGE SHOP, MOUSEHOLE _facing_ " 36
SMUGGLERS " 43
A SHORT CUT _facing_ " 48
LANYON QUOIT " 55
PADSTOW _facing_ " 60
COTTAGE, ST. IVES " 63
KING TEWDRIG AND THE SAINTS _facing_ " 64
ST. IA " " 66
ST. AGNES " 75
THE SMUGGLERS' CAVE " 76
THE LEGEND OF THE CHEESE-WRING _facing_ " 82
TRURO CATHEDRAL " 84
"TAKING SNUFF AND LOOKING LEXICONS" _facing_ " 88
THE PORCH, LAUNCESTON CHURCH " " 92
SMILER'S PIOUS CAT " 94
A CORNISH FISH-WIFE _facing_ " 98
A SIDE STREET " 100
OLD COINAGE STREET, PENZANCE " 114
BOSCASTLE HARBOUR _facing_ " 118
BRETON ONION-BOY " 122
MEVAGISSEY _facing_ " 126
A FISH-HAWKER " 136
TWO COTTAGES, MEVAGISSEY _facing_ " 144
AN OLD CORNER, ST. IVES " 147
ON THE SANDS " 156
THE PILLORY, LOOE " 157
MAKING CRAB POTS _facing_ " 158
A TAIL-PIECE " 167
AN ALLEY " 168
OLD NEWLYN _facing_ " 168
A CORNISH INTERIOR " 178
THE OLD MILL _facing_ " 178
PERRAN PORTH " 187
GORRAN HARBOUR " 188
HOMEWARD BOUND " 197
PRINCESS OLWEN IS CHANGED INTO A BRAMBLE _facing_ " 202
POLPERRO " 205
CARN BREA " 212
THE CHAPEL ROCK, BUDE _facing_ " 216
HIGH AND DRY " 222
"KNACKED BALS" (_disused mines_) " 223
MORWENSTOW CLIFFS _facing_ " 226
THE MANACLES " 232
"ONE DAY THE DEVIL, HAVING NOTHING TO DO,
BUILT A GREAT HEDGE FROM LERRIN TO LOOE"
_facing_ " 234
THE ROCHE ROCK " 237
NEWQUAY SANDS " 238
NEWQUAY _facing_ " 240
"THE SOUL OF TREGEAGLE IN PAIN" _facing_ " 244
FRONT DOORS " 248
A FAIR PROSPECT " 254
JOHN BURTON " 255
BARRACKS HOPP, FALMOUTH _facing_ " 256
THE PENRYN STOCKS " 263
ST. GOELAND AND THE SEA-GULL _facing_ " 268
THE DOG-FISH " 271
THREE MINUTES WITH A DOG-FISH _facing_ " 274
A STREET CORNER, ST. IVES " 280
FIGURE-HEAD OF THE "CALEDONIA," MORWENSTOW _facing_" 284
TINTAGEL " 291
YSEULT AND TRISTAN _facing_ " 294
THE DIGEY " 298
KING ARTHUR'S CASTLE _facing_ " 298
A CORNISH STILE " 309
LOW TIDE " 312
[Illustration: THE ARMS OF CORNWALL.]
_CORNISH SAINTS AND SINNERS_
CHAPTER I
We were three.
Guy Moore, who had scraped through his "final," and eaten his call
dinner, and talked sometimes of full-bottomed wigs and woolsacks.
George Milner, surnamed the "Bookworm."
Myself.
It was an old arrangement between Guy and myself to go somewhere as
soon as the Long Vacation commenced, and the Bookworm, a relation of
Guy's, was included on account of his health. The doctor told him that
if he did not take a timely rest now he'd never read all the books in
the British Museum library, which he had set himself to do before going
to Paris to read there, and then some other place, and so on. Bookworms
are like that. Our mutual friend was an earnest young man, and had the
reader's look about the eyes; and when he went to bed he read unknown
books in his sleep. The doctor said, "Get him away--plenty of air,
plenty of walking, no books."
We met in Guy's chambers, and talked Cornwall; but the trouble was with
the Bookworm, who wanted to take a truck-load of books with him.
We decided on going to Penzance, and then rambling just where we would.
A visit to the land of a lost language attracted the Bookworm, who at
once added a few score books to be read on the spot.
Guy was appointed guardian of the common purse, and empowered to make
all arrangements.
The books were left behind.
* * * * *
A splendid day in August we had for our run westward. The Bookworm
had a corner, and by-and-by the spirit of wonder crept over him as
he looked at the blue skies and the green grass. There was a world
outside of books, after all.
"Here's the briny! Out with your head, man, and suck it all in; it's
the wine of life," shouted Guy.
Up went all the blinds, and down went all the windows, and every one
who could gazed upon the blue sea shoaling into green with white-flaked
edging on the frizzling sands. It is the custom to pay this homage to
the sea for being good enough to be just where it is, between Starcross
and Teignmouth. Right and left, the Bookworm saw heads thrust out and
faces in ecstasy, as though the whole human freight of the flying
train was in rapt adoration. White handkerchiefs waved, and the pure
voices of children trilled spontaneous anthems whenever the vexatious
tunnels permitted them to gaze upon old England's symbol of power and
freedom. It was a new experience to the Bookworm, and it surprised him
that anything not printed and stitched and bound should stir so much
emotion. It was Nature's book in red sandstone and blue sea illuminated
by the sun, on which his tired eyes rested for a few moments; he felt
refreshed by the mere vision, his pulses throbbing with new sensations.
And when the vision passed in the broad valley of the Teign, he asked
simply--
"Is there more of this?"
"Plenty," said Guy, promptly.
According to Guy's account, we were to have just whatever we liked,
when we liked, and where we liked. Seascape and moorscape, hill and
vale, sailing and fishing, riding and driving, and golfing, and all
that sort of thing. And then there were certain mysterious regions
where we were to find tracks of the fairies, and come across odds and
ends of things, and people too. We were not to have any guide-books; he
insisted on that. What was the good of guide-books to fellows on their
rambles? Who cared how many yards he was from anywhere, or how many
miles it was from one place to another? All that was worth remembering
could be picked up on the spot, and then there wouldn't be any danger
of everything running into one blurred outline of travel, just as
happened to a fellow after tramping for weeks through picture-galleries
and curio-shops, and all that sort of thing. Guy said he knew a fellow
who did the whole county most thoroughly guide-book in hand. He started
from Bude, and did the north coast; and then he turned around and did
the south coast. He scored his guide-book like a chart of navigation,
and his marginal notes played leap-frog all over the show. When he got
to Plymouth he lost the precious book, and if it wasn't for railway
labels and hotel bills, he wouldn't have known where he'd been.
A commercial man, having totted up his accounts, seemed greatly
interested in Guy's remarks, and glided into the conversation. He told
us he hadn't had a holiday for thirty years, and never expected another
in this life. He became quite confidential, and gave us his views
about happiness in the world to come. He never intended going "on the
road" again for a living in the next world, he said, if there were any
telephones about. He didn't like telephones when the boss was always at
the other end.
We ran through the apple country, and the commercial man said these
orchards were simply nothing to be compared with those a few miles
away, where the real Devon cider was made. He told some funny
stories about cider and its makers--the way in which sweet cider was
discovered, and the hand that Old Nick had in the matter.
"It's a short story," said he, good-naturedly. "Old John Bowden had
the finest orchard land in South Devon, and it appears that in the
olden times the land was the property of Tavistock Abbey, and the good
Fathers used to come over every season to make cider and have a frolic.
Sometimes the good old cider, being no respecter of persons, got into
the good Fathers' heads. Now, you must know that the best of cider is
a trifle sharp to the palate--the natives call it 'rough'--and the
Fathers were in the habit of toning some rare good stuff, reserved for
high days and holidays, in empty wine-casks. One season, the wine-casks
falling short, the Abbot of Tavistock drew up a sort of prize
competition, like the magazines do now, offering something tasty to the
inventor of a process for making 'rough' cider sweet without the use of
wine, which, I suppose, worked out expensive, and, moreover, encouraged
more drinking than was allowed under the tippling act. I must now tell
you that, for a very long time, things hadn't gone on smoothly between
the monks of Tavistock Abbey and Old Nick, who was constantly prowling
about the premises, picking up little bits of information, and making
the good Fathers uncomfortable. Well, he chanced upon this prize
competition notice on an old door covered over with cast horse-shoes
and vermin nailed up for 'good luck' and to keep his satanic majesty
off the premises. However, there he was, and read the notice.
[Illustration: FATHER JOHN AND THE CIDER.]
"A very obliging little old man turned up at the orchards one season,
and offered his services, and was taken in to do odd jobs about the
pound-house, and as he wasn't particular about his bed, he was allowed
to curl himself up in one of the big empty cider-casks. In truth, after
the work was over for the day, the good Fathers had other fish to fry,
and thought no more about him; but the strange workman was most busy
when he was supposed to be sound asleep.
"Of all the Fathers of the Abbey, Brother John was the keenest on
winning the prize for turning 'rough' cider into sweet, and he spent
hours in the pound-house alone, spoiling good stuff, without getting
one foot forrarder. 'Dang my old buttons!' said he, after another
failure.
"It wasn't so much the language as the temper of Brother John which
attracted the notice of the little old man who slept in the cask,
and he whispered something which made the good brother turn pale and
tremble in his shoes. He was not above temptation, it is true, but
he was a brave man for all that, and dissimulated so well that the
stranger was so off his guard as to sleep in his cask and leave one
of his cloven feet sticking out of the bung-hole. Brother John bided
his time and covered the bung-hole, and then arranged for such a flow
of cider into the cask upon the sleeping stranger as to settle his
hash, unless it was the very old Nick himself. Old Nick it was, and
when he awoke to the situation he was so hot with passion that the
cider bubbled in the cask, and he disappeared, leaving the strongest
of strong smell of brimstone behind. Brother John kept the secret to
himself, not knowing what might come of it; but when he tasted the
cider his eyes sparkled, for it was as sweet as honey, and when sweet
cider was wanted at the Abbey, he used to pour it 'rough' upon the
fumes of burning sulphur, and, lo and behold! it became sweet. It was
Old Nick who gave away the secret to Brother John, who was smart enough
to learn it. A Devon man calls sweet cider 'matched,' on account of its
connection with old Brimstone."
"Did Brother John patent the process?" asked Guy.
"No, he didn't, though Old Nick tempted him; but Brother John was
too wide awake to have his fingers burnt by patent lawyers and their
agents."
"Is that story in print?" asked the Bookworm, preparing to make a note
for future reference.
"I should say not. It's just one of those trifles you pick up on the
road. Plenty about when Old Nick is concerned. They say his majesty
didn't cross the Tamar in olden days; or, if he did, then he hopped
back again in double-quick time. That may be, but he's a season
ticket-holder now, and has good lodgings, and I ought to know, for I do
business all through the country," said the man of samples, stepping
out of the carriage.
"A trifle rough on us lawyers," said Guy. "Poor beggar has suffered, I
suppose."
Across the bridge, and we are in the land of pasties and cream--the
land of a lost language, of legend and romance, where the old seems new
and the new seems old, and the breath of life everywhere.
Penzance.
[Illustration: PADDLING.]
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT]
CHAPTER II
The proper thing to do when you awake at Penzance is to run down to
the sea and bathe. We were told all about it in the smoking-room. It
is a sort of ceremony with something belonging to it. When once you've
bathed in the sea you're free of the country, like the Israelites,
after swimming the Jordan. Everybody asks his neighbour, "Have you
bathed?" If you have, it's all right.
We missed the Bookworm soon after breakfast, but Guy said we would soon
find him if we drew the libraries. Guy supposed that reading was like
dram-drinking to a fellow who had got himself into the Bookworm's
condition, and it would be just as well to let him have a dose
occasionally. We decided to "do" Penzance on our own account.
There's nothing much to "do." All the streets run down to the sea, and
then run up again. It is a capital arrangement and saves one asking
questions. It is humiliating for a Londoner to be seen asking his way
about, and takes the fine bloom off his swagger not to be able to find
his way to the next street, in a town all the inhabitants of which
could be put into one corner of the Crystal Palace. Guy said he'd
rather walk miles than ask such a silly question.
Penzance had a reputation long before any modern rivals were heard of,
and was the Madeira of England before the Riviera made its _début_ as
a professional beauty in the sunny south. Professional beauties want
"touching up" sometimes, and Penzance has been doing a little in that
way lately, though without destroying the charm which draws admirers,
and keeps them. It is one of those towns in which you seem to be always
walking in the shadow of a long yesterday. Go into the market, and buy
a rib of beef, and you are brought face to face with an ancient cross
whose age no man can surely tell. You buy a fish, still panting, from
the creel of a wrinkled specimen of human antiquity which takes snuff,
and bargains in unfamiliar words. Shops with modern frontages are
filled with dark serpentine, which carries you back to geologic time;
and at the photographers, the last professional beauty on the stage is
surrounded by monuments in stone, weathered and hoary before the Druids
used them for mystic rites. And the names are strange. A sound of
bitter wailing is in Marazion, and Market Jew brings to mind the lost
ten tribes. You learn in time that Market Jew has nothing to do with
Jewry, nor Marazion with lamentation; but all this comes gradually, and
there is ever the sensation of having an old and vanished past always
with you. You may step from Alverton Street, Pall Mall and Piccadilly
rolled into one, with its motor-cars and bikes, knickers and chiffons,
into Market Jew, reminding you of antiquity and gabardines, or _vice
versâ_, just as you happen to be taking your walks abroad.
Penzance has one "lion"--Sir Humphry Davy. Sir Humphry and his little
lamp is a story with immortal youth, like that of Washington and
his little hatchet. Sir Humphry meets you at unexpected places and
times--there was something _à la_ Sir Humphry on the breakfast menu.
We heard about him soon after our arrival, from an American tourist of
independent views. He said that Sir Humphry would not be a boss man
now because he didn't know a good thing when he had it, and gave away
his invention in a spirit of benevolence, which was destructive of all
sound commercial principles. Then he figured out how many millions,
in dollars, Sir Humphry might have made, if only he had patented his
little lamp and run the show himself.
Sir Humphry is a sort of patron saint, and some people feel all the
better for looking at his statue in marble outside the Market House.
He was born here, but his bones rest in peace at Geneva. They may
be brought over at the centenary of his death, and canonized by the
miners, whose saint he is, and God reward him for placing science at
the service of humanity.
We found ourselves in the Morrab Gardens; the Public Library is there,
and Guy said we might surprise the Bookworm if he came out to breathe.
We didn't see him, but we saw the gardens--a little paradise with
exotic blooms, and fountains playing, and the air laden with perfume.
We sat down, but didn't feel like talking--a delicious, do-nothing sort
of feeling was over us. We didn't know then what it was, but found that
it was the climate--the restful, seductive climate.
A couple of fishwomen with empty baskets passed us, and they talked
loud enough, but it might have been Arabic for all we knew. The letters
of the alphabet seemed to be waltzing with the s's and z'z to the old
women's accompaniment, and words reached us from a distance like the
hum of bees. We were inclined to sleep, so moved on; but the feeling
while it lasted was delicious. It may be only coincidence, but the
Bookworm discovered that Morrab is a Semitic word, and means "the place
of the setting sun." The Morrab Gardens face the west; and to sit in a
library in a miniature garden of Eden with an Arabic name is, in his
opinion, the height of human enjoyment. The natives think a lot of the
garden.
Serpentine and saints are common--the former is profitable; but there
was an over-production of the latter a long time ago, and the market is
still inactive. Some parishes had more than one saint, and some saints
had more than one _alias_, to the great confusion of all saint lovers.
The memory of saints, however, will last as long as the Mount stands.
The Mount, dedicated to St. Michael, makes one curious about the early
history of the good people who came here long ago, when the sea was
salt enough to float millstones. The cheapest way of coming across in
those days from the "distressful country," was to sit on a millstone
and wait for a fair breeze. The saints were quite ready to grind any
other man's corn as soon as they landed, and the millstones were
convenient for that purpose. The rights of aliens to eat up natives
were articles of belief and practice.
Penzance appeared on the saints' charts as the "Holy Headland," which
was a mark to steer by; but St. Michael, it appears, drifted out of his
course, and landed at the Mount, where the giant lived, and thereby
hangs a tale.
SAINT MICHAEL AND THE CONGER.
There are more St. Michaels than one, but the hero of this story landed
at the Mount in a fog. The Mount was then the marine residence of
an ancient giant, well known as keeping a sharp look-out for saints
through a telescope, which he stole from an unfortunate Phoenician
ship laden with tin and oysters. The giant had an evil reputation, but
did nothing by halves. He was asleep when St. Michael landed; and when
he slept, he snored, and when he snored, the Mount shook.
The poor saint was in a terrible funk, wandering about for days,
reading the notices which the giant posted up warning saints not to
land, unless they wished to be cooked in oil, after the manner of
sardines. There was nothing to be picked up just then but seaweed, and
the dry bones which the giant threw away--and there wasn't enough on
the bones to support a saint after he had done with them. St. Michael
had got rid of the very last drop of the best LL. whisky, and sat on
the empty keg, and dreamed of his own peat fire at Ballyknock, and the
little shebeen where a drop was to be had for the asking. It was fear
of the fierce giant above which alone kept him from singing the poem
which he had composed about "Home, sweet home."
The saint was very sad, and had almost given up hope, when something in
the sea attracted his attention, and he saw a great conger rise, tail
first, and stretch itself, until the tail topped the rock. Its head
remained in the sea. The giant was snoring, and the Mount shook. St.
Michael was the gold medallist of his college, and could put two and
two together with the help of his fingers. "A sign," said he, girding
on his sword, and putting on his best pair of spurs. The conger was to
be for him a Jacob's ladder.
So he dug his spurs well into the fish's side, and climbed and
climbed until he reached the top, and, with one mighty stroke, cut
off the giant's head. There wasn't much personal estate--only the
telescope--and the saint took that, but forgot to send a "return" to
Somerset House, and pay death duties. The conger wagged his tail, by
way of saying he was tired and wanted to be off, so the saint slipped
down quite easily--so easily that he found the earth hard when he
touched bottom. Those who have eyes to see may see the mark to this day.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL AND THE CONGER.]
Then the conger disappeared in the sea, but returned again, this time
head first, and licked the saint's hand, who blessed it. Now the
conger is very fine and large, and abundant in its season, and the
white scars down its sides are the marks of the saint's spurs, which
tell the story of the climb. There are some who say it was a bean-stalk
which grew in the night for the saint to climb, and those who believe
it, may.
The giant's blood flowed over the cliff, and a church sprung up, which
St. Michael dedicated to himself, and then went away, for the Mount was
not inhabited in those days.[A]
[A] Story-books, please copy. No rights reserved.
This was the beginning of the war between the saints and giants, which
continued for centuries, and might have lasted until now, only the
saints came out on top.
Saint Michael crops up in various places, and, for convenience, I may
add here what is known of him. He became the patron saint of the county
after meeting with the arch-enemy at Helston. There was no time to
advise the newspapers, and get special correspondents on the spot, but
it was reported that the battle was tough and long. The enemy carried a
red-hot boulder under his arm, and hurled it at the saint; but he was
out of practice, and the ball went wide. Then the saint got in with his
trusty blackthorn, and basted the enemy so well that he couldn't fly
away fast enough for comfort.
N.B.--The boulder was picked up when cool, and is still on view at the
Angel Hotel.
Saint Michael, having now done enough for mere reputation, grew
ambitious, and turned author, and that finished him. He wrote "The
Story of my Life," but the publishers returned the manuscript with
compliments; and when he found he had to pay double postage on the
unstamped parcels, his great heart broke.
The Bookworm got back in time for dinner. He had been to all the
libraries, and made friends of all the curators, and was going to have
a good time.
We met the American gentleman in the smoking-room, and he gave us more
opinions. He said this part of the world was a durned sight too slow
for the twentieth century. It was, say, two hundred years behind the
age. He expected that an American citizen would come across one day,
and just show the people what to do, and how to do it. This Cornwall
was a big show for the man who knew how to handle it. He took a special
interest in the matter, because of the Gulf Stream, and he wasn't sure
whether or no this part of the old country came within the Monroe
doctrine. If it's England where the British flag waves, then isn't
it America where American water runs? And if the Gulf Stream wasn't
America, what was? He told us frankly that he, John B. Bellamy, Kansas
City, Mo., U.S.A., had ideas.
[Illustration: KEIGWIN ARMS, MOUSEHOLE.]
CHAPTER III
Dolly Pentreath, the fishwife of Mousehole, had a reputation as wide,
but different, as Sir Humphry's. Her portrait is sold in Penzance,
wherein Dolly is only a name now. She belonged to the adjoining parish
of Paul, and so there is no statue to her in the Market-place, where
she sold fish, and talked the old Cornish with the real twenty-two
carat stamp upon it. The Bookworm said Dolly's fame had done a good
deal towards advertising the land of a lost language. He showed us the
portrait of a determined-looking, passionate old party in short skirts,
and a creel on her back. We had seen already several ancient dames
carrying fish quite as capable of taking care of themselves, which
indicated that if the language is lost, the race survives. It's a nice
walk along the shore to Mousehole. We might have lingered at Newlyn,
only the Bookworm wanted to get upon classic ground, where old Dolly
used to smoke her pipe, and drink her flagon of beer with the best, and
talk Cornish--the real old lingo, hot, sweet, and strong, so that those
who heard her once never forgot it. Dolly lived to one hundred and
two, and then departed, carrying with her, in her queer old brain, the
completest vocabulary of the Cornish language upon earth. This is the
legend, to which is to be added that she had the reputation of being
a "witch." There exists an ancient corner in the village where Dolly
would be at home again if she could come back; and the Bookworm walked
up and down, and in and out, touching the stones and rubbing shoulders
against the pillars, as though he expected to feel an electric shock,
or receive the straight tip from the old lady that he'd touched the
spot, like Homocea. He may have passed over it, but he was happy. If he
could only have found an old clay pipe that Dolly had smoked!
An old man sitting on a post watched us out of a corner of his eye. He
knew what we were up to, and that there was a trifle at the end of it.
Guy tackled him.
"Dolly Pentreath? Oh yes; she died poor, and was buried in the parish
churchyard of Paul. People came in shoals to see her monument and read
the inscription."
"Had anybody got anything belonging to her?"
Not that he knew by. "She might have had a Bible or a hymn-book, but
she wasn't given that way much. So many people wanted 'relics,' and if
there ever were any, they would have been sold long ago."
All this was straight enough, and his blue eye looked as clear as the
well of truth. We stood around him as an oracle, and he began his story.
"Dolly Pentreath was a fine woman, with a voice that you could hear
to Newlyn. She had the heart of a lion, and it was told of her that
when a press-gang landed in search of men for the navy, Dolly took up
a hatchet and fought them back to their boats, and so cursed them in
old Cornish that that crew never ventured to come again.[B] And she was
artful as well as brave, and saved a man, 'wanted' by the law for the
purpose of hanging, by hiding him in her chimney. Dolly lived in an old
house overlooking the quay, the walls of which were thick, and in the
chimney was a cavity in which a man could stand upright, and it was a
convenient hiding-place for many things. 'Back along' Mousehole was one
family, and the ties of blood spoke eloquently; so, when a man rushed
into Dolly's cottage, saying the officers were after him, and would
hang him to the yardarm of the ship out in the bay, from which he had
taken French leave the week before, he did not appeal in vain.
[B] The old lady's eloquence in her native tongue did not run greatly
to swear-words, of which, according to Carew, there were only "two or
three natural." "But then," saith Carew, "this want is relieved with a
flood of most bitter curses and spiteful nicknames." The mouth hath its
pearls; and our Dolly's was well filled, when her blood was stirred.
"There was no time to lose, and Dolly rose to the occasion. Up the
chimney she popped the man; then, taking an armful of dried furze, she
made a fire in the wide open grate, and filled the crock with water.
Into the middle of the kitchen she pulled a 'keeve,' which she used for
washing, and when the naval officer and his men burst into the kitchen,
Dolly was sitting on a stool, with her legs bare, and her feet dangling
over the 'keeve.' This was the situation.
[Illustration: DOLLY PENTREATH.]
"'A man, indeed!' quoth Dolly; 'and me washing my feet!' She was only
waiting for the water to 'het,' and they might all wash their own, if
they liked. Search? Of 'coose' they might, and be sugared. (This was
old Cornish, of course.) Would they like to look into the crock, and
see if a man was boiling there?
"Search they did, and found no man; but Dolly found her tongue, and
let them have it; and then she found her thick shoes and let them
fly; and then she made for the chopper, and that cleared the house.
Dolly made the most noise when she heard the poor man cough in his
hiding-place. The aromatic smoke from the burning furze tickled his
throat, and though life depended on silence, he could not keep it.
Then Dolly gave tongue, and old Cornish--the genuine article--rattled
amongst the rafters, like notes from brazen trumpets blown by tempests.
She threw wide her door, and, with bare legs and feet, proclaimed to
all the world the mission of the young lieutenant and his men, who now
saw anger in all eyes, and made good their retreat whilst in whole
skins. Then Dolly liberated the man in the chimney. In the dark night a
fishing lugger stole out of Mousehole with the deserter on board, and
made for Guernsey, which, in those days, was a sort of dumping-ground
for all who were unable to pay their debts at home, or were 'wanted'
for the hangman."
The old man, with true blue eyes, turned a quid in his mouth, and said,
with the simplicity of a child, "And that man was my mother's father."
Guy was preparing to cross-examine the man of truth, but we would
not have it. It was his own witness. He had found him sitting on an
iron stump, and was bound to treat him as a witness of truth. Why
shouldn't his own mother's father have been a deserter from the king's
ship, and been saved by Dolly Pentreath? Guy agreed; but, said he, it
was suspicious that that man should have been sitting on that very
stump, at the very right moment, and have the right story on the tip
of his tongue for the right people to listen to. There was too much
"coincidence." We let it go at that.
The Bookworm had the old man with the truthful blue eyes all to himself
for a time, and discovered the very room in the Keigwin Arms in which
Dolly was wont to take her pint and her pipe at her ease, and the
window out of which she would thrust her hard old face and shout to
the fishers when they came to the landing-place. The old lady was keen
on her bargains, and when she had bought her "cate," she trudged into
Penzance with "creel" on back, and spoiled the Egyptians, according
to the rules of art. The costume of the fishwife is the same now as
then--the short skirt, the turned-up sleeves, the pad for resting the
creel. Newhaven fishwives, but with less colour.
The Bookworm tried some old Cornish, which he had picked up the
previous day, upon the old man with the truthful blue eyes, but he
shook his head mournfully. "_Karenza whelas karenza_," repeated the
Bookworm; but the old man looked blank, and did not blush at not
knowing the family language. The finest chords of his heart were
untouched; but he brightened up when the Bookworm sought his hand
furtively, and left something there. Guy said he was perpetuating
testimony.
The old fellow offered to go with us to Paul, and show us Dolly's
monument, but Guy said the place was consecrated ground, and something
tragic might happen if he refreshed his memory too largely on the spot.
The truthful-looking eyes were unabashed.
"I don't care," said the Bookworm, as we walked along the road--"I
don't care; we have received from the old fellow the impressions which
he received from those who saw Dolly Pentreath in life--her passionate
self-will and pluck, her artfulness, her readiness of tongue, and
quickness in making a situation. What could be more dramatic in a
cottage with only a fireplace, a wash-tray, and a stool in it for
accessories? I don't care how much is invention--the living impression
is that Dolly would have done this under the circumstances, and so the
true woman has been presented to us."
"I wish you joy of her, only I'm glad she doesn't cook my dinner," said
Guy. "Let us reckon up her virtues--she snuffed, she smoked, she took
her pint, and she cussed upon small provocation; these are the four
cardinal virtues in your heroine. I wonder how often she was before
her betters for assault and battery, and using profane language in an
unknown tongue?"
We saluted the monolith in the churchyard in memory of Dolly Pentreath,
but no one can say for certain that it covers the ashes of that ancient
volcano in petticoats. Guy said he could not thrill unless he was sure
the old lady was there, and the Bookworm ought to do all the thrilling
for the party.
We were glad to have seen the monument, and the Bookworm said it was a
sign of the _bonne entente_ which is to be. "The Republic of Letters is
superior to public prejudices and racial antipathies," he added, with a
magnificent wave of the hand.
We saluted, the monument, including the shades of Dolly and Prince
Lucian, if they happened to be around, and departed with the conviction
that we had behaved very nicely towards the lost language and the
"Republic of Letters."
[Illustration: LAND'S END.]
CHAPTER IV
The American citizen was not very interested in our doings. He thought
that one language was good enough for the whole earth, and that was
English, improved by the United States. There were languages still
spoken in America which, he guessed, wouldn't be missed if they died
out, as well as the people who spoke them. He wasn't gone on lost
languages, or lost trades, or lost anything, but was a living man, and
wanted people about him to show life. He had been told to take back
some "relics" of the late King Arthur, because there was money in them,
and he was going to Tintagel to look round--a button, or shoe-lace, or
lock of hair picked up on the spot would fetch something considerable.
There was a market for "relics" on the other side. We told him we
weren't keen on "relics" for commercial purposes, and were going the
other way first, so he would have it all his own way as far as we were
concerned.
We reached the Land's End at the lowest of low water, and touched the
very last bit of rock visible, so as to be able to say we'd touched the
very last stone of dry England. We left it there for future generations
to touch.
Cornwall is a tract of land with one-third in pickle, and what can't
be walked over can be sailed over. When you sail far enough you reach
the Scilly Isles, which is a sort of knuckle-end to the peninsula which
once was land. There isn't very much to be found out in books about the
land under the sea. Of course it is there, or water wouldn't be on top.
The Cornwall under the sea is the land of romance, where, some say,
King Arthur was born. There is no getting away from this land under the
sea, for the old fairies rise from it still, and spread enchantment.
We were told that every little boy and girl born in the peninsula is
breathed over by the fairies, and in after-life, wherever they may be,
they turn their faces in sleep towards the west, and dream. From under
the sea there rises, morn and eve, the sound of bells, telling their
own tale with infinite charm. The stranger who comes into the county
must hear these sounds and thrill, and see in sunshine and shadow,
on hill and in coombe, on moor and fen, the fluttering of impalpable
wings; for if he hears and sees them not, he will depart the stranger
he came, though he live a lifetime in the land. In Cornwall everything
is alive--the mine, the moor, the sea, the deep pools, the brooks, the
groves, the sands, the caves; everything has its moan and harmony and
inspiration. And the land under the sea, which is called Lyonesse by
the poets, was a fairy zone, and some say it sank in the night, and
some say other things harder to believe.
Cornwall under the sea has been there a long time. Some people, who
like to be accurate above all things, say it disappeared in the year
1089, and contained 140 parish churches, and God wot how many chapels,
and baptistries, and holy wells, and places. The only survivor was a
Trevelyan, of Basil, near Launceston, who was on the back of a swimming
horse. As it is not improbable that the inhabitants of Lyonesse traded
with somebody elsewhere and owed them money, it is wonderful that the
bad debts should have been wiped out without a murmur, and that no
entry has been found in any court, or in the accounts and deeds of
abbeys and priories of any interest in the 140 parish churches, and
chapels, and holy wells, and baptistries. The Trevelyans seem to have
been a larkish family, for when one of them was arrested for debt, he
fetched a beehive and presented it to the bailiffs, who ran away from
honey and honeycomb as fast as they could. The chimes which rise from
the 140 parish churches under the sea are very beautiful to those who
hear them. The square-set man who tacked himself on to us smiled when
we asked him to say honestly if he had heard them. He had heard people
say that they had. Some people are wonderfully quick at hearing.
The fact remains that from Land's End to Scilly is blue water, and from
Scilly to Sandy Hook is blue water also. There are some other facts
of almost equal interest, if one cares about them; but the first and
foremost fact is, that every one standing for the first time upon the
bluff, perpendicular cliffs at the Land's End, turns his face seawards,
and says, "There's nothing between me and America." Many people also
think that the waves breaking on the dark rocks travel all the way from
Sandy Hook without stopping for the privilege of dying on English soil.
Wherever they come from they're welcome, and so also are the winds
laden with Atlantic brine, which certainly have touched no land since
they left the other side. No American tourist ever comes as far west as
Penzance without rushing to the Land's End to get a lung-full of home
air, as pure and unadulterated as it can be got in this old country.
Guy was particularly interested in the Gulf Stream, which we found was
another matter of unfailing interest to everybody, and at all times and
seasons. Some things may be explained every hour of the day without
being explained away, like the sun's light, or a rainbow, or a new
baby's eyes. Guy wanted to have the Gulf Stream pointed out to him,
just as though it were painted red on the chart, or sent up clouds of
steam. There wasn't much fun in looking for the Gulf Stream, only,
being on the spot, one was obliged to do it. We had heard such a lot
about it at the hotel, and the square-set man told us that people
always made a dash for the Gulf Stream when they came here. His story
of the old lady bringing eggs with her to cook in the Stream kept us
in good temper when we found for ourselves that the water was just
the same as any other sea-water, as far as we could tell, and that we
should not have suspected the Gulf Stream of being near if we hadn't
been told. Guy said it was a fine thing to know it was somewhere about,
even if we couldn't see it, because it was a sort of link between the
old world and the new, and made it easy to understand why Mr. Choate
was made a Bencher. Guy promised to think the matter out, and put it in
another way if we couldn't quite understand the reference.
The square-set man said he was sure there was a Gulf Stream, because
foreign seaweed was picked up sometimes; and if it wasn't for the
Stream, early potatoes and broccoli wouldn't be early, and the flowers
at Scilly would be just the same as at other places. It's a long way
for a stream to come, and the square-set man told us that at one time
it must have been stronger than now, for it carried away the mainland
between us and Scilly; but when Guy cross-examined him on what he
called a question of fact, he broke down, and finished off by saying
that that was what "people said." Guy was willing that there should
be a Gulf Stream, but he bristled when told that the peninsula was
snapped off like a carrot, and carried away by a stream from the Gulf
of Mexico. His English pride was hurt, and he declared that he'd rather
do without early potatoes and broccoli and flowers from Scilly for
the rest of his life than that foreign water should ever be said to
have carried away English acres, and so many of them. The invasion of
England by the Gulf Stream indeed! Then where were the Navy League,
and the Coast Defence Committee, and Mr. Balfour's great speech in the
House of Commons?
There was one spot that we must see and stand upon, and the square-set
man was sure of himself this time. We must go and stand upon the rock
where Wesley stood before composing the hymn, "Lo, on a narrow neck
of land." People come from all quarters of the universe for this
privilege, and some people actually go away and compose hymns and send
copies to the square-set man. He did not say what he did with them, but
he did not talk respectfully of an absent lady who mailed him a poem
from New York and forgot the postage stamps.
It was Guy's idea to stay where we were. He put it very nicely to the
Bookworm about "communing with Nature, the great unwritten book, and
all that sort of thing, you know." Guy was afraid that he would make a
bee-line for the library if we returned to Penzance, and that we should
have to dig him out again. "We'll keep him in the open, and let the
square-set man stuff him with pre-historic monuments--something solid,
you know, after the Gulf Stream." Guy's mind was constantly running on
the Gulf Stream. He didn't care a fig for the stream, he said, in the
course of the evening, and it was welcome to travel where it would; but
when it came to taking away English soil, he wouldn't hear it; no, not
if all the scientists in the universe were against him.
Most people carry away something--pebbles, or blooms, or bits of
seaweed, or something of that sort--and there's plenty left; and all
seem to carry away "impressions." The guide-books don't help the
impressionists much, for everything appears different to every other
person, as though the local fairies had a hand in it.
The square-set man called upon us in the evening, and told us stories
of people whom he had conducted around the cliffs, and from monument to
monument. The cliffs, we found, were "grand," "sublime," or "terrible;"
and the rest was summed up in "charming," "queer," "fantastic,"
"unaccountable," "odd," "sweet," and the like. Specialists, of course,
had their own pet phrases; but our friend was particularly struck
with the fancy of the gentleman who saw in the cliffs only admirable
situations for solving the great mystery. The higher the point, the
more he seemed delighted. "Now, this is what I call a grand place
for committing suicide," he finished off by saying, and "tipped" so
liberally that Mr. Square-set is on the look-out for his return. An
emotion once so deeply stirred will surely need be stirred again, he
hinted.
When we asked Square-set to sit down and chat a bit, he said he'd be
very pleased to "tich-pipe;" and when I passed him my pouch, he said he
hadn't smoked since he was a young man.
"What you want to touch-a-pipe for if you don't smoke, I can't
imagine," said Guy; and then we found that "tich-pipe" had nothing to
do with the weed, but simply meant an interval of rest.
The Bookworm made a note.
[Illustration: LIGHT WINDS.]
[Illustration: ASHORE.]
CHAPTER V
No one ever comes here without inquiring for "wreckers"--Cornish
wreckers are in demand. Guy put artful questions artfully, but could
get no admissions beyond that--that he had "heard tell" that in ancient
days things were done which no honest, God-fearing man should do. He
was always being asked about wreckers and their doings, and a real,
live sample on show would be a fortune to any man. What was called
"wrecking" now was simply picking up and carrying away little odds and
ends which the sea threw up high and dry upon the beaches. And why not?
Who had a better title to them?
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE SHOP, MOUSEHOLE.]
Guy said he supposed it was all right; and he remembered there was
authority for saying that the king is rex because all wrecks belong to
him. If so, then wreckers are rexers in their own right, and can
do no wrong. Mr. Square-set was not impressed, but he assured us that
the double-dyed villain of Cornish romances innumerable was extinct
now, and Mr. Carnegie's millions could not purchase a specimen for the
British Museum. It was a disappointment not to find a "wrecker"--the
bold, bad man who tied lanterns to cows' tails, and sent up false
lights to lure passing ships to destruction. We wanted to shake hands
with one and stand him drinks, and make notes of his bushy eyebrows and
the colour of his eyes, and then turn him inside out to discover what
his secret thoughts were when hatching diabolical plans. Our faith in
Cornish romances received a great shock just then, and Guy's cherished
ambition to write "The Chronicles of Joseph Penruddock, Wrecker,"
suffered frost-bite. The world will never know more.
Of deeds of derring-do for the saving of life our square-set friend was
full. This was another picture--a picture of black night and tempest,
and noble souls wrestling with death and destruction, with scarce one
faint chance in their favour. He told us of a man who hung over the
precipitous cliff which we had stood on that morning, shuddering as we
looked down in the full light of day, and the sea calm as the surface
of a mirror; he told us of a man who descended that cliff by a rope
when a storm was raging, and the sea "boiling" beneath him, and how he
brought back in his arms a burden, battered, but still living, and
how, in mid-air, the strands of the rope were chafed, so that those
above trembled as they hauled. And as he spoke an inward glow spread
over the man's face and revealed him. Guy seized the man's hands in
both his own and wrung them, saying, "Great Scott! and you are the
man who did this thing!" He told us afterwards that he couldn't help
himself, and wasn't the least ashamed of being a bit "soft" just then.
To think that this hero was the man we picked up scratching himself
against a cromlech and looking for a job!
We couldn't get away from the sea now, and Mr. Square-set told us how
differently sailors in misfortune were treated now than formerly--how
they were fed and clothed and sent from one end of the country to the
other, wherever they wished to go--in fact, by rail. In his young
days it was not so, and a shipwrecked mariner was compelled to tramp
wherever he chose to go, either to his own home or to the next port, in
the hope of getting a berth. But a tramp in fine weather, sleeping in
the fields and outhouses at night, and begging at decent houses by day,
was very much enjoyed by the men, who became heroes when they returned
home. He told us the story of
TWO ANCIENT MARINERS
who hailed from Cornwall, and once found themselves stranded in the
port of London, with little but what they stood upright in. They were
young men and merry-hearted, and stood by each other in fair weather or
foul, as shipmates should. They hailed from the same fishing village,
and wished to be home during the "feast" week, which was near at hand.
Failing to find a coasting vessel bound west, they started to walk,
and part of their arrangement was to take it in turns to call at
gentlemen's houses and ask for assistance. They preferred not to go to
the same house together, but to leave one on the look-out, in case of
"squalls." They got on well enough for some days, sleeping where they
could, and telling yarns of peril and disaster, most likely, in their
opinion, to melt the hearts of hearers. And the story went like this--
"They came to a great gentleman's house, and it was Tommy Hingston's
turn to go in, and Bill Baron's to watch outside. Tommy went up, as
bold as brass, and asked for the gentleman, who was at home, and
received him very kindly; and when he found he had come from London, he
asked him for the latest news.
"'There's fine news, sure 'nuff,' says Tom.
"'Then let me have it, my man.'
"'Haven't 'ee heard it, yer honour? Haven't 'ee heard that London was
as black as night at noon-day?'
"'Most remarkable,' said the gentleman; 'and can you tell me what
caused the darkness?'
"'Sartin sure I can. A monstrous great bird flew over the town, and
shut out the sun with his wings.'
"'That is astonishing. And did you hear anything else?'
"'Ess; they've a-turned Smithfield Market into a kitchen, and all the
people are to be fed upon whitepot.'
"'You really mean it?'
"'I tasted it, yer honour,' replied Tom.
"'And was there anything else worthy of notice?'
"Tom scratched his head. 'There was something else,' he added, in a
sort of hardly-worth-talking-about style. 'The River Thames catched on
fire.'
"'Ah,' said the gentleman, rising and ringing the bell; 'and I have
"catched" a rank imposter, and, being a magistrate, will commit you
forthwith to prison as a rogue and a vagabond.'
"Billy Baron was keeping watch outside, and as his mate did not return,
he grew uneasy. By-and-by he marched up and 'faced the brass knocker,'
and was brought before the gentleman, who was now writing out a
committal order, and Tom he saw standing, bolt upright, by the side of
a man who had charge of him.
"Billy was a soft-hearted man, and burst into tears. Then the gentleman
told Billy, in very straight terms, what he thought of his mate--a
lying imposter, whom he was sending to prison.
"'Never!' said Billy, firmly. 'I'll lay my life on him.'
"'Very well; then, tell me, did you see a great bird fly over London,
so large as to hide the light of the sun with its wings?'
"'No, sir,' replied Billy. 'I didn't see the bird, but I seed four
horses dragging an egg, which people said a great bird had laid.'
"'You _are_ a truthful man,' said the gentleman.
"'I hope so,' said Billy, with one eye on his mate.
"'I hope so, too. Then, tell me, did you eat some whitepot at
Smithfield Market?'
"'No, I didn't, yer honour, but I seed a store full of gurt horn
spoons.'
"'He told me something else, and I'm sure you'll answer truthfully. He
told me he saw the River Thames on fire.'
"'However cud 'ee have said that, Tom?' blurted out Billy,
reproachfully. 'He never seed the river on fire, but what we did see
was waggon and waggon-loads of fish carted away with burnt fins and
tails.'
"'And they would have been taken from the burning river?'
"'I do not doubt it; but, mind, I dedn't zee it,' said Billy, with the
air of a martyr to the truth.
"The gentleman, no longer able to contain himself, sent Tom and Billy
down to the kitchen, and gave them the best 'blaw out' they had on the
journey. And, when they left, he told them, by way of compliment, that
they were 'real Cornish diamonds, and the best pair of liars' he had
ever known.
"And they were hard to beat," said Mr. Square-set.
[Illustration: SMUGGLERS.]
CHAPTER VI
Our square-set friend owned up to smuggling as one of the virtues of
his countrymen. The real thing is getting scarce now. One evening he
brought an old acquaintance with him, introducing him crisply as "Uncle
Bill." We saw a good deal of Uncle Bill afterwards, who was ninety
next birthday, and ready and willing to "fight, wrassel, or run" with
any man of his age in this country or the next. We did not doubt him,
for his blue eye was clear, he moved easily, and his pink finger-tips
and filbert-shaped nails showed breed. Uncle Bill looked as though
he intended to carry out his bat for a century or more. He was, he
said, as sound as a bell, except that he was a bit "tiched on the
wind" when walking against a hill. Never took "doctor's traade," as he
contemptuously called physic, and his cure for all ills was a pipe of
'bacca to smoke and a pen'ard of gin mixed with a pen'ard of porter.
He said he had done a little smuggling, in the old-fashioned way, in
a small lugger, running for dear life across the Channel in a gale of
wind when the King's cutters were all snug in harbour, and then landing
the tubs of spirits and parcels of lace and other things under the
very noses of the preventive men. "They dedn't prevent we," said Uncle
Bill, his face all a-glow with the pleasures of memory. He told us that
he settled down to fishing when his "calling," and that of his father
before him, was interfered with; but the dash and peril and the fame of
successful smuggling suited him, and warmed up the cockles of his heart
now only to think about. He spoke of himself as an injured man because
he received no compensation for disturbance.
Guy worked at the subject, and came to the conclusion that Cornwall
was as intended by Nature for smuggling as the inhabitants were for
carrying it on. Every little bay and creek and cavern, villages
and farmhouses, even the tombs in the parish churches, could tell
tales. And the women, they were hand in glove with their husbands and
sweethearts, fathers and brothers; and all that made life worth living
then was made dependent on a successful "run" from a little French port
with goods honestly bought and paid for, but--the sorrow and shame of
it!--made contraband the moment they touched English soil.
"Bad laws made smugglers," said the Bookworm, provokingly, to Guy, who
always fires up with professional wrath when he hears of anything bad
in connection with the law.
"Bad fiddlesticks! People smuggled because they liked it--just as you
liked it when you smuggled those nice little Tauchnitz editions last
year, and without thinking of the poor devil of an author in England
that you were robbing," replied Guy.
"That never occurred to me," said the Bookworm, meekly.
"Of course not. You are only a petty smuggler, but a smuggler all the
same. And do you mean to tell me that 'bad laws,' forsooth, made you
smuggle the books? Not a bit of it. You liked the game, and you know
it."
There is a grandeur about the old smuggler which increases with age.
He put his little all upon a venture--nothing of the limited liability
principle about him. The lugger which left a Cornish fishing cove
was, as a rule, family property, owned by father and sons, or by two
or three brothers. The family capital was put into one purse, carried
away, and converted into honest brandy, wines, and other articles
of commerce. Then the struggle commenced between the individual who
pitted his own cunning and frail boat against the King's cruisers and
all the resources of a mighty State. He was surrounded by "spies" from
the moment his cargo was on board until he was ready to slip from his
moorings. He could trust no man. And then his voyage across the Channel
was a race for life--in fog, in tempest, when only a madman would run
the risk, the old smuggler would "up sail and off;" and if a King's
officer liked to follow, then all he'd see would be the drippings from
the smuggler's keel. The god of storms was the smuggler's divinity,
and he loved his little craft, which was, for the time, a thing of
life fleeing from pursuit, from imprisonment, and even death when
cannon-balls flew about. How the old smuggler prayed for storm and
night, for any peril which would enable him to show courage and
mastery over the elemental forces which should drive his pursuers to
destruction!
And how he would fight when brought to bay! When becalmed, the King's
cutter would send a boat alongside to board the lugger, every man
armed with pistol and cutlass, and wearing the uniform of authority.
Then the smuggler would fight for property and life, cast off the
grappling-irons, and cut down the man who ventured to set foot upon his
little craft. And all the while the old man at the helm looked fixedly
at the heavens and across the water to see if, perchance, a "breath of
wind" was stirring--only a breath might be his salvation when he was
too far inshore for the King's cutter to venture, and his men fighting
off the cutters crew like heroes. Then a puff, and the sail draws; then
more wind, and, inch by inch, the lugger sails away from cutter and
cutter's crew, only, perhaps, to fall in with another enemy which has
to be out-sailed, or out-manoeuvred, or fought off, as best serves
the purpose. No surrender when boat and cargo is the bread of the
family.
Then the old smuggler reaches home, and every shadow may spell ruin;
and all that is done is done in fear, and he has to be cunning always,
and ready to fight to the death. The old smuggler belonged to the
heroic age, and in all genuine stories he bulks colossal against a
midnight sky black with tempest. The race has not disappeared; the
conditions have changed, that is all. Uncle Bill told us that he could
find a crew to-morrow if there was but a fair prospect of making five
hundred pounds on the venture. And "I'd be one," said he.
If Nature intended a county for smuggling, it is Cornwall, which seems
somehow to have been caught when cooling between two seas and pressed
inward and upward, so that it is full of little bights and bays and
caverns, which might have been vents for the gases to escape when the
sea pressure at the sides became unbearable, and the earth groaned like
the belle of the season in tight corsets. The caverns are given up to
bats and otters and slimy things now, but in the "good old days!" The
women, by all accounts, took kindly to smuggling, and stood shoulder to
shoulder with their men when there was a fight with the preventive men,
and ran off with the "tubs" of spirit and whatever they could carry,
whilst the men held the King's officers in check. A young man who was
content with a "living wage" on sea or on land wasn't thought much of
by the black-haired, black-eyed damsels of the coast, who were up to
snuff in the free-trade principles of their day and generation. The
children were taught to look upon the sea as their own, and to regard
smuggling as an honourable calling, and thousands of infant tongues
prayed at night for God's blessing on smuggling ventures. And the
Church was with the people, and blessed them, and shared their profits
when there was no danger of being found out. "Nothing venture, nothing
have" was the good old motto bound upon the smugglers' arms and
hearts like phylacteries, and was to them as prayer.
[Illustration: A SHORT CUT.]
Uncle Bill had a pen'ard of gin in his beer to clear his pipes one
evening, and told us some yarns which he had heard from his father, who
was called Enoch, who died in his bed at the age of ninety-six, and
would have lived longer, only he "catched a cauld dru washing his feet
in fresh water."
Uncle Bill was a young man, but not too young to go courting when
his father made his last run across the Channel for a cargo of
spirits. It came about in this way. Enoch and his family possessed
five hundred one-pound notes issued by a bank which had failed, and
so were practically worthless. This was a serious matter, and Enoch
proposed, at the family council, to run across to Brittany and exchange
the worthless notes for tubs of good brandy. Everything was done in
secrecy and in hot haste to prevent suspicion, and to get the cargo
of contraband on board before news of the bank's failure reached the
French merchants. Had they been members of the Japanese Intelligence
Department they could not have kept the secret better. They had a
splendid run, landed the cargo all serene, and cleared cent. per cent.
"I have often blessed God that there were no telegraphs in those days,"
said Uncle Bill, fervently.
"What became of the notes?" asked Guy.
"I don't know," replied Uncle Bill, with a lively wink. "All I know is
we had the brandy."
"Is this genuine, or only make-up?" asked Guy.
"As true as the Gospel," replied Uncle Bill.
He told us many other stories, but we thought this best worth
preserving, as it showed native cunning, promptness, and audacity.
"And I have lived to hear a man bless God that there were no such
things as electric telegraphs," said the Bookworm, realizing that he
was now in an England of a century ago.
Uncle Bill was a good old sort, and once when he came to see us he
pulled a medicine-bottle from the folds of his knitted frock, and,
taking out the cork, invited us to taste. It was pure cognac, and its
flavour was what the old man called "rich." The spirit had not been
coloured, and had a history, which the old man told with relish. News
was one day brought to the coastguard station by a boatman that a cask
was stranded on an adjacent beach, and the coastguard officer, who
loved his joke and good company, summoned numerous good men and true
(Uncle Bill being one) to go to the beach, and there hold an inquest
upon the said cask and its contents.
"My men," said the coastguard officer, "I summon you in the name of the
Queen (God bless her) to come with me to Treganna beach, and to taste
the contents of a cask which we shall find there. I think it's a brandy
cask," he added, "and you are to act as Queen's tasters. Now, my men,
if you declare that the contents of the cask are wines or spirits, then
the same will be seized on behalf of the Crown, and the Excise will
claim it; and if you further declare that the contents taste of salt
water, then the cask will be staved in, and the contents run out upon
the beach. You are the jurors, and meet me here in half an hour. If any
of 'ee have a tin can it might be handy" said he, with a wink.
When the jurors met again, they all had something in their hands in the
shape of tin cans or pitchers; and there were men upon this jury who
had not tasted spirits at their own expense for many years, and they
carried the largest pitchers.
The coastguard officer produced a gimlet, and broached the cask, and
every man tasted.
"The smell of it was enough for me," said Uncle Bill; "but I tasted,
like the rest. It went down 'ansum, sure nuff. And some of us tasted
again, to make sure for sartin."
Says the coastguard officer, "What is it, my men?"
"Cognac."
"So say you all?"
"One and all, for sure."
"Then I seize the cask, in the Queen's name."
He took out a bit of chalk, and marked the broad arrow upon it; but our
jugs were empty. The best of the game was to come.
"Now, my men, tell me, as good men and true, whether the brandy has
been touched with salt water."
So we all tasted again, and said it was sickly, and brackish, and made
such faces that you might think we were poisoned.
"And so say you all?"
"Ess, one and all."
"And your verdict is that the cask of brandy, seized in the Queen's
name, is brackish?"
"That is our verdict."
"Then I order the cask to be stove in and its contents run upon the
beach."
And when the head was stove in, he turned his back upon us, and every
can and jug and pitcher was filled, and, if we'd only known, we'd have
had more pails and buckets and pitchers.
"I've got a drop still left, and 'tis precious," said Uncle Bill.
This medicine-bottle was his gift to us, and we now knew the flavour of
cognac cast upon the shore, which had never paid the Queen's penny.
"I don't wonder that smuggling was popular," said Guy.
Smuggling made the sort of sailor that Nelson loved, a man who could
fight and forgive when worsted, like the old smuggler of Talland, who
had it recorded on his tombstone that he prayed God to pardon those
wicked preventive men who shed his innocent blood.
It was in the Lizard district that smuggling reached its zenith. The
Bookworm put a copy of the "Autobiography of a Smuggler" into his
pocket when he tramped over to Prussia Cove, a place which Nature and
a little art intended for an emporium for smugglers. Blind harbours,
blind caves, hidden galleries, mysterious inlets and exits form a
delicate network of safety and concealment. Only a century ago, the
man who lived here was the king of Cornish smugglers and privateers,
and defended himself with his own cannon.[C] Now the fine caves are
fern-arched, and the water drips, drips, drips upon nothing precious.
The smugglers borrowed these caves from the piskies who have re-entered
into possession, for here are the piskie sands and piskie caves.
"Here, in cool grot, the piskies dwell," hummed Guy.
[C] All ranks engaged in smuggling. Mr. Philip Hawkins, M.P.
for Grampound, left £600 to the King as "conscience" money. But
privateering was a royal game, and men made money rapidly at the
expense of the enemies of England. People used, it is said, to
measure their gold in pint pots, instead of counting it.
The caves seemed none the worse for having been smugglers' storehouses;
but the gingerbeer and sandwich man left his trail, as usual. What he
couldn't reach or cut down, he left alone, but broken glass he left
behind.
Guy ran across a gentleman anxious to tell us things. He was a
"pensioner." The man with a pension is a common object by the seashore.
After a time, you get to know him as a superior sort of being reduced
from his high estate, and only making the two ends meet by the grace
of God. "Get a pension, and don't worry" is very good advice when
the pension is big enough; but generally the pension-man is a trifle
seedy--his pension won't spread all over him, but leaves him minus
gloves, with patched shoes, and short everywhere. This honest old
gentleman was Guy's find, and he was so eager to tell all he knew, and
more on top of it, that Guy was glad, at last, to get rid of him with
some excuse covered deftly with a small consideration.
[Illustration: LANYON QUOIT.]
CHAPTER VII
There is a good deal of history in Cornwall. Some may be read in
stones, and some in books. The stone reading is very interesting to
those who like it, and affords a good scope for imagination. Without
imagination, stone reading is a trifle dull. Stones are everywhere at
the Land's End and Lizard--some are stationary, and some "rock," and
all are weather-worn. The Bookworm had a trick of running his hands
over the surfaces of pre-historic monuments, like a blind man reading.
It was just a fancy of his that he was shaking hands with antiquity.
Our Mr. Square-set put his pencil mark in our Murray against what is
called the "show-stones," and he couldn't tell us much more than we
could find out for ourselves. We thought it best to let ancient stone
history alone until we had a dull Sunday, or a wet day; and look out
for what was nearer our own times.
We found that the Cornishman's motto is "One and All," and that
"One" comes first, so he says, "I and the King;" and, when he speaks
geographically, it is Cornwall first, then England, and then the rest.
Formerly, everything outside of England was Cornwall, but he is not so
sure now. However, he always takes a bit of the old county with him
when he travels, so that the piskies may find him. A Cornishman abroad
is given to "wishtness," and so he gets up clubs in London and other
places, and talks of pasties and cream, blue skies and sapphire seas,
and sings "Trelawney," and dances the "Flurry" dance, and One and All's
it generally.
The Cornish had their own kings and queens--and as the kings were
liberal to themselves in the matter of queens, they were not always
happy. The Bookworm helped us a good deal at times, and told us that
the ancient kings were not much given to diplomatic correspondence, nor
to the keeping of "memorials of the reign," so that modern historians
had a pretty free hand. The kings, however, must have been numerous at
one time, as there was a king at Gweek and another at Marazion--as
thick as tenants on a gentleman's estate. Cornish history had, however,
been worked up by poets, and the characters of the old kings drawn
by Tennyson and Kingsley were not too amiable. There was Tennyson's
Cornish king, who had an uncomfortable way of sneaking round on tiptoe
and striking a man in the back. The poet had not made allowance for
the fact that King Modred lived in days before private inquiry offices
were invented, and so was obliged to do his own dirty work, instead
of employing a professional spy at per hour and expenses. For real
knowledge of Cornish kings, Kingsley whips creation. Listen!
"Fat was the feasting, and loud was the harping, in the halls of Alef,
King of Gweek." There was going to be a wedding, so that may pass. Then
we come to details worthy of the poet historian: "Savory was the smell
of fried pilchard and hake; more savory still that of roast porpoise;
most savory of all that of fifty huge squab pies, built up of layers of
apples, bacon, onions, and mutton, and at the bottom of each a squab,
or young cormorant, which diffused both through the pie and through
the ambient air, a delicate odour of mingled guano and polecat." There
was a little toddy, of course, to wash it down, and a few songs with
harp accompaniment, and the bride, being properly elated with the
perfume of "guano and polecat," was very civil, and, being a princess
in her own right, and queen of Marazion, gave the vocalist a ring to
remember her by. The next morning the newly-wedded pair start off on
their honeymoon, and this is what happens. The King of Marazion grips
his bride's arm until she screams, and says, "And you shall pass your
bridal night in my dog-kennel, after my dog-whip has taught you not to
give rings again to wandering harpers."
Tennyson and Kingsley have been read pretty generally by men and
women of the Anglo-Saxon race, and some people may even think that
the Cornish kings were like these portraits, and fed upon "guano
and polecat" flavoured pies, and whipped their brides to sleep in
dog-kennels in their bridal garments. Poets have always been privileged.
There were Cornish "kings," of course, just as there were Cornish
"saints" and a Cornish language, and all three played their little
parts, and went off the stage, without even the lights being turned
down for them. With regard to the kings, this seemed to have happened:
when the local rates and taxes were getting too high, and trouble was
brewing about the Education Act, the kings saw that they must go under,
and gave way to a Duke. Edward the Black Prince, having won his spurs
in the Crusades, the kings asked him to take over what they could no
longer keep, or didn't want, and so, "like a Cornishman's gift, what he
does not want for himself" became a proverb. The proverb may be relied
on as authentic. The Prince of Wales has been the Duke of Cornwall
ever since, so the Cornish people have had a very close connection
with royalty from pre-historic times, as the Bookworm discovered; then
through Kingsley's "guano and polecat" period, and then from Edward the
Black Prince down to the present, which we can verify for ourselves
every year, when the Duchy accounts are published, and the ancient
tribute passes into the noble Duke's banking account. History loses
much of its charm for poets and romantic souls when it enters the
prosaic region of banker's ledger and cheque book, but this sort of
prose has advantages.
The Cornish had a long way to walk when they wanted just to talk
matters over with their sovereign. They went in their thousands to
London on several occasions when things were not to their liking, and
the late Queen was the first sovereign of the realm to come into the
county and "God bless" the people on their own doorsteps. Charles I.
came into the county under very peculiar circumstances, and, though he
was qualifying for martyrdom, he found time to write a very handsome
letter of thanks "to the Inhabitants of the county of Cornwall" for
giving the Cromwelliams more than they bargained for, or wanted even,
on several occasions. This letter is still to be found painted on
boards in parish churches, and as conspicuously placed as the Lord's
Prayer or the Ten Commandments. The practice of reading the letter in
churches and chapels has long been discontinued, but the testimony to
unselfish devotion and gallant defence of a sovereign whose star was
setting in blood remains.
Good Queen Bess rather liked Cornishmen, or said she did, which
answered the same purpose. She said that "Cornish gentlemen were all
born courtiers, with a becoming confidence," two qualities which
naturally attracted her as woman and lady. Climate probably has
something to do with native politeness, and that is why the Eastern
races are so civil to one another.
The people are like Japs for politeness to one another on a deal. When
a man is drawing the long bow and coming it too strong, the other
fellow will say, "I wonder if it is so," with the slightest possible
accent of suspicion in his tone. We were present when two men were
trying to make a deal in horseflesh, "halter for halter," as the
saying is. The owner of a weedy-looking chestnut wished to swop with
the owner of a useful black cob, and his rhetoric was florid. Sometimes
he drew on his imagination in praise of the chestnut, and the owner
of the black cob would say, "I wonder now," just by way of note of
admiration. Then the chestnut's owner, growing bolder and more vigorous
in his style, garnished his language with many fancy words, and wound
up by asking, "Doan't 'ee believe me?" And the other man replied, as
politely as a Chesterfield, "I'll believe 'ee to oblige 'ee." The
Foreign Office couldn't beat it.
[Illustration: PADSTOW.]
The Bookworm discovered that Cornwall had somehow linked itself with
great names in history, or, rather, that some great names had linked
themselves with Cornwall, using her as a gallant for a season, and
then passing out of her life. Camelford had three successful wooers in
Lord Lansdowne, Lord Brougham, and "Ossian" Macpherson; Lostwithiel
was wooed and won by Joseph Addison; then Horace Walpole, jilted at
Callington, made up to East Looe, still attractive, when the great Lord
Palmerston came along with a buttonhole in his coat and the blarney.
Then John Hampden found a first love in Grampound, and Sir Francis
Drake a soft place in the bosom of Bossiney, a mere village close to
the angry roar of Tintagel's sea. But all these seats were mere lights
o' love, and some were swept away on account of their dissoluteness
before the great Reform Bill, and then the rest went, and none were
remembered on account of their gallant political lovers. Guy said it
didn't make a bit of difference what the constituency was, or where, so
long as the man was right. He saw a great many advantages in the old
pocket borough; and if he ever went into Parliament (which he might) as
a stepping-stone to the Woolsack (like the veteran Lord Chancellor, who
found comfortable quarters at Launceston), he'd like to have the fewest
number of constituents, and those all of one mind. But the Bookworm
would not have it that way, and stuck to his guns that it was the
constituency which really had a seat in Parliament, and constituency
and member were one and indivisible; and when not, there was failure
somewhere in first principles. The Bookworm always takes these things
so seriously, Guy says.
[Illustration: COTTAGE, ST IVES.]
CHAPTER VIII
Most of the saints came into Cornwall, dropping little bits of fame
and reputation as they travelled from parish to parish, and from holy
well to holy well. Old Fuller says they were born under a travelling
planet, "neither bred where born, nor beneficed where bred, nor buried
where beneficed," but wandering ever. Cornwall is known as the "Land
of Saints," and county teams are usually "Saints." "The Saints _v_.
Week-enders. Six goals to three. Five to one on Saints." It sounds a
bit curious, but you get used to it.
The true story of the saints is a little mixed; the giants and the
piskies come in, and wherever the saints went there was sure to be
trouble. We picked up a few stories, not all in one place, but here and
there. Those already published we weeded out, together with some which
appeared doubtful. Some needed a little patching up in places, and the
Bookworm said the most imperfect were the most genuine. The following
were thought worthy of survival.
[Illustration: KING TEWDRIG AND THE SAINTS.]
KING TEWDRIG AND THE SAINTS.
Irish saints swarmed as thick as flies in summer in the reign of
Tewdrig the King, who built his castle on the sands at Hayle, wherein
it now is, only the X-rays are not strong enough to make it visible.
This Tewdrig was a good old sort, and was called Theodore by the saints
as long as he had anything to give. But the saints letting it be known
in the distressful land that they had struck oil, their friends and
relatives swarmed across the Channel in such crowds that the King was
in danger of being eaten out of house and home. He summoned the Keeper
of the Victuals, and asked for a report. He had it; and it was short
and sad--as sad in its way as an army stores inquiry. Every living
thing in air and field and wood had been devoured. All the salted meats
in the keeves had disappeared, "and if you don't stop this immigration
of Irish saints," said the unhappy official, "we shall be eaten up
alive." The good King became serious. Whilst they were talking, a
messenger came with the news that a great batch of saints had come
ashore. The King and his Keeper of the Victuals--when there were any
to keep--looked at each other solemnly. "Put the castle in mourning,"
said the King. When the new arrivals danced up to the gate, with teeth
well set for action and stomachs empty, the Keeper of the Victuals
spoke sadly. "The good King died," he said, "the moment he heard that
more saints had arrived. Those who came first ate all his substance and
emptied his keeves, and there was nothing left of him now but bones.
The last words of the good King were, 'Give them my bones.'" The Keeper
of the Victuals turned, as though to fetch the good King's bones for
the saints to feast on; but they one and all departed and spread the
story. The King played the game and ordered his own funeral; and when
the time came, he got up and looked through a peep-hole to see the
procession. "The saints," said he, "have spared my bones, but they will
surely come and see the last of me." But he was mistaken. The story
that all the keeves were empty spread, and there wasn't a "saint" left
in the land on the morrow. Then the King showed himself to his own
people, and a law was passed, intituled "An Act against Alien Saints'
Immigration." The country recovered its ancient prosperity, and the
Keeper of the Victuals filled the keeves with salted meats, and there
were wild birds in the air, and beasts in the field, and the King once
more feasted in his own hall.
St. Ia came across the Channel on a cabbage leaf, and the wind and tide
carried her gaily to King Tewdrig's shore, but when the Customs asked
her what she had to declare, she only held up the cabbage leaf. As she
was a princess in her own right, and good-looking for an emigrant,
the Customs officers were sad, but showed her a printed paper, rule
xli, which stated that "foreigners without luggage, or visible means
of subsistence, must not be allowed to land." The saint pointed to
the cabbage leaf, and argued that it was "luggage" and "visible means
of subsistence," and would have made good her point but for the
King's Chancellor, who said that the cabbage leaf, being "pickled,"
was a manufactured article, and liable to duty under the new fiscal
regulations. St. Ia always left her purse at home when she travelled,
so she was unable to pay the duty. Once more she committed herself to
the mercies of the sea on her cabbage leaf, and was carried to St.
Ives, where she landed, and was made much of. She stayed there for
a time, planted her leaf, and was blessed with a wonderful crop of
pickled cabbages, the like of which had never before been seen or heard
of. But she revenged herself upon King Tewdrig by writing to all the
papers, and the saints, who deserted the King when they had almost
eaten him up, made a fine how-de-doo, and an "Irish grievance," and the
bad name which they gave the King stuck to him. The saints wrote the
books in those days, and those who came after repeated what they wrote,
until the people believed, and called it "history."
[Illustration: ST. IA.]
Guy said it was very unconstitutional to lay the fault upon the King,
who, it was well known, could do no wrong. It was the duty of the
Prime Minister to bear all faults, and it was noticeable that many
prime ministers were round-shouldered, so that they might carry faults
lightly.
THE BATTLE OF ST. BREAGE.
The saints and piskies had a battle-royal at St. Breage. A three-line
whip was sent over to Ireland, and as soon as it was known that there
was a little fighting to do, and a cracked skull almost certain, for
the glory of God, the saints sent up a shout, straightened their
blackthorns, and came across the water in whole battalions. The cause
was popular. St. Patrick had driven the snakes into the sea, and why
not the saints drive the piskies out of Cornwall? Hooroo! Paddy's blood
was up, and he was spoiling for a bit of fun. The saints had the best
of it, but so much blood was spilt on both sides that the sand was
turned into stone. There is no other such stone in the district, and
St. Breage had a block carved into a cross, and set up as a memorial,
which may be seen to this day, only it has a hole in it which was made
by the Giant Golons, who wore it on his watchchain until the date of
his conversion.
"When anything has to be accounted for in this land, put it down to the
saints, or the piskies, or Old Artful, and you're sure to be right.
Nothing ever took place in the ordinary course of things. A month of
Cornwall would be enough to drive a modern scientist stark, staring
mad," said Guy.
"It would be curious to speculate what sort of world we should be
living in to-day if things really happened, as they are said to
have happened, between fairies and piskies, saints and giants, each
possessing supernatural powers. And yet law and custom grew out of
beliefs in the invisible-visible," said the Bookworm.
THE STORY OF AN ARTFUL MAID.
There were women as well as men saints, and when a woman came to the
front she made a sensation. St. Agnes was a woman. She was not born
a saint, but became one. She was christened Ann, plain Ann, and was a
good little girl, with blue eyes, and light brown hair much given to
curl into love locks. She stayed at home until she grew up, and became
restless, and wanted to see the world for herself. She did not complain
more than other girls that her dresses were not tailor-made, and she
had no particular grievance, only she felt that she must have a change.
She wrote a dear little note, and enclosed one of her love locks to
her dear and loving parents, freely forgiving them all the trouble and
expense she had been to them, and went on her own.
She was supposed to be delicate on the chest, and Cornwall having a
great reputation, she made all haste to get there. In those days there
were a good many pilgrims on the road who used to entertain one another
with stories of many lands and their adventures therein, and delicate
little Agnes heard in this way about a famous Cornish giant, named
Bolster. Mr. Bolster was in many respects a monster, and his story had
great interest for little Agnes, because it was said he changed his
wife every New Year's Day. He was called "Bolster" because he used to
smother the old ones. Agnes wanted an adventure, and as her saint-like
qualities developed, she felt more and more drawn towards Mr. Bolster,
until she determined to try her hand upon him. It was a bold thing;
but Agnes was bold, and when she felt at all timid she said aloud,
"Courage!"
Mr. Bolster was a very fine fellow, the Colossus of his age. When his
right foot rested on the summit of one hill his left foot rested on the
summit of another, and the only thing that troubled him was corns, and
when the weather changed, sometimes he had such twinges that he often
thought he had a "conscience," and wished to get rid of it. At other
times his conscience was "passive." Agnes heard about the corns, and a
light played in her eyes of heavenly blue. She had an idea.
New Year was approaching, and Mr. Bolster was on the look-out for a
fresh partner of his joys. When Agnes sighted him he was standing
with one foot on Carn Brea and the other on Beacon, looking at the
little virgins round about playing at "touch." His habit was to make
a selection, watch the young lady home, and then, at New Years dawn,
to carry her off just when she was busiest dreaming of mince-pies.
Agnes guessed that the psychological moment had come, so she walked up
Carn Brea and tickled Mr. Bolster's right foot with a bramble, quite
close to his pet corn. Mr. Bolster, thinking that conscience was at
him again, lifted his foot angrily; but, happily for Agnes, saw her
kneeling at his foot.
"Hulloa!" he shouted.
Agnes presented her card.
+---------------------------------------------+
| BEAUTIFUL FOR EVER! |
| |
| MISS AGNES. |
| |
| _Corns Extracted, Bunions Attended to._ |
+---------------------------------------------+
Beauty at his feet, and the New Year near. Corns extracted. Was there
ever such luck? So he took the little maiden up in his arms and
promised, then and there, that she should be the next Mrs. Bolster.
"Not long to wait," he added with a chuckle, the present Mrs. B. not
having turned out to his liking.
Mr. Bolster had neglected his personal appearance very much lately, and
when he sat Agnes on his knee in the gloaming, she began his education.
"Beautiful for Ever!" was her trade mark. If Bolster only wore curls,
what a head! Hyacinthine locks, what an Apollo! Bolster looked at her
dear little love locks, and then put his great hand over his own hair,
which was long and matted, and began to think that, after all, short,
crisp curls would be an improvement. He did not surrender at once,
but Agnes said she couldn't, she really couldn't, be the next Mrs.
Bolster and trim his pet corns unless he had hyacinthine locks, like
an up-to-date hero in a novel. She found a bit of chalk and drew on
a blackboard the head of a Hercules with Apollo's locks. Mr. Bolster
was touched in a weak spot, and to keep him soft, Agnes vowed that she
would never be Mrs. Bolster until he was such a man--such a curled
darling.
Mr. Bolster's hair was long and matted, and Agnes got a rake, and
combed and combed until it all came off, and there was none to curl.
New Year came, and Mrs. Bolster in possession went the way of all the
giant's wives, and Agnes sat upon Bolster's knee and wept because of
her vow which she must keep--no curls, no Agnes. She stroked his bald
pate, saying the new hair was sprouting already, and it would curl so
sweet when short that his own mother wouldn't know him. Then Agnes
put him on health diet to make him young again, and when his hair
really began to grow she became afraid, for she caught him heating the
curling-tongs in secret, as though he meant business at an early date.
Agnes sat upon his knee and wept. He was so stout. She could not clasp
his manly waist. He must reduce--he must, he must. The tears were in
her beautiful eyes. Once more she touched the spot, and Mr. Bolster,
the Colossus, was soft. He'd do anything, and then he took an oath at
which the stars trembled.
There was a little basin in the rock which the giant used for
shaving-water now he had become a dandy. Water trickled down the
crevice into the sea when the cork plug was removed. Agnes prescribed
a little blood-letting--for she was skilled in phlebotomy--"just a
basinful, you know," said she, with great pleading eyes of heavenly
blue. Mr. Bolster threw his mighty arm carelessly across the basin.
"Only a basinful this time," said Agnes, pulling out the plug.
"Wake me up when it's full," said Bolster.
He slept and slept, dreaming of Agnes, and the vital stream flowed and
ran down the crevice into the sea. And Agnes looked over the cliff and
saw the sea blush, and blush deeper still.
"Is it nearly full?" asked Bolster, in a tone of lazy happiness.
"Not yet--not yet, my love," said Agnes, stroking his bald head where
the curls were to grow.
So he slept and woke again, and asked, "Is it nearly full?"
"Yet a little more; it runs so slowly now," said Agnes.
And Bolster slept again.
Agnes looked over the cliff and the sea was deeply dyed, so great a
stream had flowed from the mighty form, smiling in sleep, but pale in
death.
He woke and tried to rise, but Agnes soothed him, saying--
"But a little more, 'tis nearly to the brim."
And his last vision was of Agnes.
So the land was rid of Bolster; but the people were not so thankful to
Agnes as they might have been, so she "skipped." She led a wandering
life, making and selling an ointment which people rubbed over their
eyes to make them see clearer, and her fame followed her, so people
began to praise and dedicate churches to her. The place where Bolster
was slain became St. Agnes, and the basin into which his life's blood
flowed may be seen to this day. A pebble thrown in finds its way to the
sea if there is nothing to prevent it.
Guy said he liked to hear stories told on the spot, things seemed
so real. Here was the very basin which held Bolster's shaving-water
before it became the receiver for his blood. Just as good being here as
reading an illustrated article in a magazine.
The Bookworm said the story was only one of a class, and it was quite
easy to separate fact from fiction when we once knew how. In this case,
Bolster was not a real person, but a snow-god, to whom the people
offered a virgin every New Year to make him melt and let the earth
bring forth her increase. St. Agnes made the people see the error of
their ways--that was the ointment which she made for giving people
clearer vision--and so it was said that she had slain Bolster. She
was, no doubt, artful, and was all the more popular in consequence, it
becoming a saying that "an artful maid is stronger than Bolster."
Guy said he liked the story best as it was, and had no patience with
the Bookworm's treatment of it as a myth. He'd put money on Agnes, he
said, to make her way in the world as well as any twentieth-century
woman.
[Illustration: ST. AGNES.]
[Illustration: THE SMUGGLER'S CAVE.]
CHAPTER IX
A liking for stories of the saints grows with the supply. The Bookworm
discovered in them the makings of history, and Guy mere love for the
marvellous and dramatic situations. He thought St. Agnes would work
up splendidly. It is well that saints catch on, because one can't get
away from them. No sooner is one out of the parish of St. A., than
he's into the parish of St. B., and from St. B. to St. C., and so on
through the alphabet. It must have been a sore trial to the aborigines
to see so many foreign saints upon the soil without visible means of
subsistence, yet claiming exemption from income tax.
Wherever there was a well a saint took possession of it. The votive
offerings of the natives to the bright, sparkling divinity dwelling
in springs of water passed into their hands, the water cures became
"miracles," and chapels and baptistries were built over the wells.
Chapels and hermits' cells abound. There is one spring which insures a
man from hanging if he is but christened with its water in childhood.
There is another, in which a madman may be ducked until he is cured;
there is another, in which a maiden may see her "future;" and there are
others which can cure sad souls and sadder bodies.
As things are reckoned now, the best of the saints did not have a
good time. The ruined chapel in the Saints' Valley was at one time
the residence of a holy man, who never saw human form, or heard human
voice, unless some one in distress needed his good offices to heal
or console the sick or dying. It was a dark and dreary cell, with
two slits in the walls for light and air, and a thin stream trickled
through, and fell into a rocky basin outside, now green with fern and
lichen. This feeble stream cut a channel in the rock, so we thought the
cell must be pretty old; but there was no niche, or anything to show
that lamp or image swung from the roof, or nestled somewhere to cheer
the poor man. Whoever he was, he left no trace, not even a scratch in
the rock recording his name. We would not have been much the wiser,
after all, even if we had known the name of the poor human who endured
torture here, and had the courage to live, and not throw himself to the
first wolves who came howling around.
The ideas conjured up were unpleasant, and Guy gave a shout when he
got outside, just to be sure that he was himself. He was sure, he
said, no penal settlement in the world possessed a solitary system
so depressingly solitary as this. He was quite prepared to take an
affidavit neither now, nor at any time, to go in for honours in
saintship.
The Bookworm said stories of the saints made what we saw much more
interesting than if we merely looked at them through the eyes of
guide-books. There was the "Cheese-wring." What did Murray say? Just
this--
"This remarkable object consists of tabular blocks of granite heaped
one upon the other, after the manner of cheeses, to the height of
twenty-four feet, but has probably acquired its name from its supposed
resemblance to the press employed in the preparation of cider....
It derives its extraordinary appearance from the circumstance of
the stones at the base being less than half the size of those they
support, which are ten or twelve feet in diameter. Hence, the shape
of the pile is that of a huge fungus, with a stalk so slenderly
proportioned for the weight of the head, that the spectator will find
it hard to divest himself of the idea of its instability."
He had, he said, made notes of a short story which accounted for the
fantastic mass of weathered granite in quite a different way, and made
of the stone a lasting memorial of the triumph of the saints over the
early giants in the land--faith against strength.
ST. TUE AND THE GIANTS.
The story opened at a period when the saints had been some time in the
land, and the people took kindly to them, and brought them fish on
Fridays. The giants grew jealous, and resolved on holding a conference,
and when they were all assembled, Uther was voted to the chair, because
he had the broadest shoulders and the best headpiece of all the race
from the Tamar to Pol-Pedyn. The question was, What shall we do with
the saints? Various methods had been already tried--boiling, baking,
and grilling were no use. The giants were not a united family, and were
fond of hurling rocks at one another, and fighting and wrestling for
fun or glory, just as the humour prompted. Uther, the president, put
the matter before them in a statesmanlike way. First of all, he counted
six up, and then he counted half a dozen; then he said, if you take
six from six, there's nothing, but if you wipe out six, six remains.
The speech was so precise and clear, that it was pencilled down on a
half-sheet of notepaper, and, in time, became the model for future
prime ministers. It was certainly very well received. Then there was
a discussion, and some said one thing, and some another, and when all
spoke at once, it was very difficult to know what was said or meant.
The president tried to keep order, but was just as helpless as Mr.
Speaker in modern days. Fortunately it was an open-air meeting, and the
sky was not cracked.
Saint Tue had a little well all to himself, but was a small and weakly
man, who took cod-liver oil fasting; but he was young and full of zeal.
The conference was held in what he called his "sphere of influence,"
and when he heard the mighty shouts, he looked upwards and saw a
sign. Then he hastened to the conference, and, by dodging in and out
between the giants' legs, he managed to reach the president, who was
threatening to leave the chair unless better order was kept.
"Pick me up," said St. Tue.
So Uther picked him up and showed him to the assembly; and, being a
strong man himself, he admired pluck.
"What do you want here, my little man?" asked Uther, thinking into
which pocket he should pop him to ensure his safety.
"I want to challenge you to a trial of strength; but let me speak to
the giants," replied the saint.
Uther stood St. Tue on the palm of his hand and held out his arm,
so that he might speak, which he did in a loud voice, telling them
solemnly that they were warring against heaven and one mightier than
they, and finished by challenging the mightiest to a contest of
rock-hurling. If he were beaten, all the saints would leave the land;
but if he won, then the giants were to cease their persecution and be
baptized with the sign of the cross.
Now, Uther was a champion rock-hurler, and it was a pastime with him
to throw rocks like quoits, and so truly as to balance them one over
the other, the top being the largest. The game was no child's play; and
the assembly said if Uther would accept the challenge, they would abide
by the result. When they looked at St. Tue and the rocks to be hurled,
they laughed mockingly.
There were twelve rocks in all. They had been used before, and were
fairly round. The smallest was hurled first, and Uther pitched it one
hundred feet. St Tues knees shook. What if his faith should fail now?
He cast his eyes upwards, and then, oh, blessed miracle! the rock was
as a feather in his hand, and he hurled it with such precision that it
capped number one as though it grew there.
So the game went on, and the pile grew more and more like a mushroom.
The giants shouted mightily when Uther's rock capped the saint's; but
when the saint's capped Uther's, they groaned aloud, and showed temper.
It was the saint's turn to hurl the last rock, which, being the
heaviest and largest, and having to be thrown the highest, required the
greatest skill and judgment and strength. The slightest error, and the
pile would topple over. The silence was so great that a grasshopper was
heard to chirp. True as a die the rock settled on the rest, and the
whole mass swayed upon its stem, but fell not.
The victory was not yet, and a thirteenth rock was brought, and so huge
was it that the giant knew it was beyond his powers to hurl; but he
raised it with both hands and threw it with all his might and strength,
and fell prone to earth, exhausted. The rock fell short, and was rolled
back to where St. Tue stood, trembling once again. Would Heaven fail
him now? But no. His eyes were opened, and he saw an angelic host raise
the stone to his hand, carry it through the air, and place it as a
crown upon the "wring," that man might wonder at for evermore. But
the giants were blind with rage, and saw not.
[Illustration: THE LEGEND OF THE CHEESE-WRING.]
Then Uther bowed his head in humility and confessed his sins, and was
baptized; and some followed his example, but more returned to their
castles and did what scathe they could. But the saints rejoiced when
they heard what St. Tue had done, and were made free of the land; and
made so free with it that all the best they took to themselves, and
so pursued the giants with soap and water and Sunday clothes, and so
trimmed their beards and nails, that the race dwindled and dwindled
and died out. So the saints triumphed, and the Cheese-wring is their
memorial.
St. Tue founded the "Union of Saints," and then his troubles began in
such earnest that he had to increase his doses of cod-liver oil in
order to bear them. He was nursed in his last days by the good St.
Keyne, who came over from Wales for the purpose. An elm, an oak, and
an ash tree grew over his grave, whose roots formed an arch, and under
the arch a spring of pure water gushed forth. So St. Keyne lived by the
well, and Cornish brides, drinking first of the water, wear divided
skirts, and feed their husbands with long spoons.
Guy said he thought we had had enough of saints, both he and she, for
the present.
[Illustration: TRURO CATHEDRAL.]
CHAPTER X
The Cornish taste has not hitherto rioted in "graven images." Ancient
monuments were so plentiful that it may have been thought quite
unnecessary to add to the number in any shape or form, especially when
it was known that the finest monoliths were split up and carted away
for gate-posts for cattle to rub against; or, worse than all, be burnt
for lime. However, graven images are rare in the county. A good citizen
of Edinburgh or Glasgow would put all the statuary in the county in his
back garden. Sir Humphry Davy stands outside the market at Penzance,
and Richard Lander, the plucky African traveller, is skied on a Doric
column on the top of a hill in Truro. Foote, the comedian, Polwhele,
county historian, and Henry Martyn, the sainted missionary, over whose
barren love story and early death rivers of salt tears have flowed,
were all born in Truro; but we didn't see any graven images recording
the fact. Guy sought information from an intelligent policeman, who
said he knew Henry Martyn well, and a quiet man he was, when sober!
There are some capital sites in the city for a few statues to Cornish
worthies, and the effigy of the sainted Martyn would, at all events,
help to preserve his memory from sad imputations. There is a Cornish
flavour about the great Earl of Chatham, who should have been born at
the family mansion at Boconnoc instead of at Westminster, where his
mother happened to be; and a Cornish flavour, too, about the gifted
Lady Hester Stanhope, who did not forget to speak well of Cornish
miners, "on account of their race," in her Syrian home. Cousin Jack
might remember this, and shell out liberally, if the public fancy
runs one day towards statues. The Molesworths have a claim to be set
up in marble, and so has Richard Trevithick, the Camborne miner, and
so also John Couch Adams, the discoverer of the planet Neptune. These
are a few worthies to go on with, and by the time their statues are
unveiled some, now living, may be ripe for immortality in stone. The
few modern monuments are not remarkable, as such. The Gilbert monument,
at Bodmin, outgrew its strength, and is not likely to startle remote
posterity as a nineteenth-century antiquity. Once upon a time there was
a battle at Stamford Hill, not far from Bude, when Sir Bevill Grenvill
and his stalwarts gave the Roundheads a fair drubbing. Then a monument
was erected to record the historic event, and it tumbled down. Sir
Bevill Grenvill had a giant servant, named Anthony Payne, and the great
Kneller painted his portrait, and the canvas has a place of honour in
the museum of the Royal Institution. The Bookworm remarked that it was
not at all singular that the county had turned out no sculptors, when
public bodies did so little to encourage art, and that what they did
was done so badly.
Truro is not the capital of the county, though many people think it
ought to be. It has a cathedral now, which counts for something, and
is the home of the "classy" people, which counts for a great deal when
the question is one of capital with a big C. Every few years there is
a battle-royal over the capital question, and the archæologists and
the antiquarians dust each other with seals and charters, Domesday
Books and inquisitions, and all the rest of it. The grand tournament is
between Bodmin and Launceston, which latter possesses an old castle,
or what is left of one, and was anciently the place for the hanging
of criminals for capital offences. But as the judges were served with
small beer at dinner, and their beds were not properly aired, they
moved on to Bodmin, where the beer was stronger, and the bed-linen
better looked after. Besides, the tallow candles gave better light in
the Bodmin than in the Launceston lodgings, which was important to
judges on circuit, when they had to sit up late and read papers, and
"note up" evidence badly written with their own hand and bad pens.
The Launceston people didn't seem to care much about their privileges
at the time of losing them. In fact, they were just then feeling sore
at having lost one member of Parliament under the Reform Bill, and
the market was flat for honours which didn't mean cash in hand. Then
Bodmin took on the assizes, and the hangings, and became the capital
with a big C, and built a lunatic asylum and a jail, up to date. The
question now is whether our Gracious Lord the King would hold out a
little finger to the Mayor of Launceston or to the Mayor of Bodmin as
most truly representing the capital of Cornwall. The point has to be
settled. Then Truro comes in and laughs at both, and, pointing to its
cathedral, says, "If you want a capital with a big C, look here," which
pleases all the "classy" people, and sets the rest laughing, except the
ancient Britons of Penzance, who swagger about climate, also with a big
C. As climate and capital both begin with C, it is easy to argue that
they are very much alike. Bodmin and Launceston tilt in rusty armour,
and Truro and Penzance with bodkins, and no harm is done.
The Bookworm made a tour of the libraries and museums, and somewhere
met a "kindred soul," which so pleased him that he pronounced Truro the
literary town in the duchy. Certainly, the city has a professorial air,
which is native. If ever there is a Cornish university it will come to
Truro, if it walk upon crutches to get there. Caps and gowns taking
snuff and looking lexicons coming out of the shadow of Church Lane
would be as natural as life; and then the undergrads swelling Boscawen
Street in term! They are not there just now, but the place looks as
though cut out for academic maternity. The professorial air belonged
to the place before the cathedral was dreamt of--perhaps the cathedral
came because the place had the right sort of style about it. There is
a county look about the shops in Boscawen Street, which is all its
own. Some of the shops just put up wire blinds, with a legend painted
on them, discouraging to the vulgar looking for bargains and misfits.
"Nothing of the sort here; our customers write cheques, you know."
There are other shops with "discount for cash" writ large all over
them, but they seem out of place, somehow. There was always this sort
of county family style about the town and people, who were always
fond of sports, and had a cock-pit.
[Illustration: "TAKING SNUFF AND LOOKING LEXICONS."]
What strikes the stranger first is the inexhaustible water supply.
Miniature canals ripple along on both sides of the streets--clear,
bright, fresh water, which would be worth no end of money in a thirsty
land. Ripple, ripple, ripple, all day long, and all the year through,
never overflowing, never drying up, a thing of beauty and a joy for
ever. Hydrophobia is unknown amongst dogs, and is only observable
amongst the higher animals--generally on pay days and holidays. The
inhabitants, however, pay water taxes quite cheerfully, and are not
extravagant users in their houses. It is a reproach to Londoners, who
are so extravagant with water, to see how thrifty the people are. The
people of Helston are blessed with water running free in the same way.
Cornish people do not live much in towns; they seem to prefer living
amongst the rocks and trees, upon the downs, amongst the shadows of
they know not what, and sounds which are as echoes from long ago. A
very small town elsewhere fills the untravelled with amazement; and
stories are told of the cunning which was shown by an old man who
carried a piece of chalk in his pocket and placed a mark on the corner
of every street he turned, and so made his way plain when he wished
to return; but the poor fellow was sadly puzzled when a joker rubbed
out his marks and put facsimiles in wrong places. But, in truth,
Cornish towns are not very puzzling to an ordinary pavement trotter,
and the houses are not much to look at. Solid walls pierced with holes
and covered by a roof is a "house." There are whole streets like this
in all the towns, and most of the shops have the appearance of being
private houses "accommodated." In a land where the Phoenician and
Greek came, and the Roman dwelt; where Spaniard, Frenchman, and Fleming
settled, leaving their names and blood behind, one might expect to
find specimens of the architecture of many periods and countries; but
it is no use looking for what does not exist. The Cornish never seem
to have invited the envy and hatred of others by the outward beauty
of their dwellings. The Fore Street of a town, however ancient and
celebrated for riches and commerce, never gives one the idea that
merchant princes dwelt here, and loved to dwell in earthly tabernacles
with polished beams, and hanging galleries, and oriel windows, painted,
decorated, and varnished, as we see in many a High Street, in many
a town in the rest of England. The Cornish genius had no great turn
for architecture--its municipal buildings are plain and thrifty, like
the dwelling-houses. To be "wind and water tight" is the native idea
of comfort; and then plenty of whitewash and a little paint. There
must have been native artists in abundance during the centuries, but
they were seldom employed with chisel and brush in decorating private
dwellings or corporation buildings. The county turned out one little
painter who "mixed his colours with brains," and so became the rage
for a London season; but when you come to a town, don't inquire, "What
artist was born here?" The old people didn't throw away money on
decorative art. If there is a bit to be found anywhere, it is generally
in or about a church, and stranger fingers executed it.
On the moors, and on the coast, the idea of a dwelling is that of a
stone hut with window and chimney, not so very much in advance of the
dwellings of the Palæolithic Age, which shows how slow the evolution of
one idea may be whilst others are travelling at motor pace. Where stone
abounds the dwelling is a cave above the ground; where stone is scarce
the yellow earth is mixed with a little chopped straw, and makes a wall
as much like the neighbouring soil as peas in a pod. This is "cob"
wall, and, when covered with thatch and half hidden with flowering
creepers, cob-wall cottages are pleasant to look at. Specimens of
stone dwellings with thatched roofs abound in the Lizard district, and
cob-wall cottages, more or less in ruins, are almost everywhere. Men
and women are in the habit of leaving their boots and clogs outside
their dwellings, and when the doors are open there is a great display
of old crockery and china ornaments in stiff-looking cupboards with
glass doors. Very like a painting by a Dutch artist is the interior of
a Cornish cottage on a moor.
Old fishing towns which have not yet been too much "improved" show the
practical side of the Cornishman's mind in the matter of dwellings. The
idea of a street never occurred to him. What he wanted was a place on
shore in which to store his nets and fishing gear, sails and spars, and
over that a loft, which he divided into rooms fitted up with "lockers,"
like the cuddy of his boat, or the cabin of a ship, and that was his
castle. He reached the ground by means of stone or wooden steps, having
the appearance on land of steps let down from the gangway of a ship.
In fact, the idea of a dwelling was that of a ship in stone, and the
similarity was the greater when a "hatch" was lifted up in the kitchen
and descent made into the cellar below, just as one would descend into
the hold of a ship through the open hatchway. The Cornish fisher's idea
of comfort was snugness. His dwelling overlooked the harbour, and he
could see his boat lying to her moorings, and open his window and talk
to the men as they passed, and consult the sky and clouds. He could do
a lot from his window, his chin resting on his arms, with the least
possible trouble to himself. When a fisher cannot live so as to see the
harbour from his window, he lives as near the harbour as he can,
so as to be out of his boat and into his bed in the shortest time. He
detests walking one step further than he can help after he lands, so
the idea of regular streets never dawned upon the original builders of
Newlyn and St. Ives, Polperro and Looe, Fowey and Mevagissey. A street
is an accident, unless it is modern--the ancient builders of the old
towns deeming it sufficient to leave a gangway between the houses, as
at Polperro, where a man with broad shoulders can block up the whole
thoroughfare. In the villages and coves at the Lizard and the Land's
End, the fishers' dwellings have a physiognomy in common, and tell of
struggle and endurance; and in favoured places, jasmine and myrtle,
fuchsia, geranium, and roses step in and cover all the weather-beaten
stone and shabby lintels with glory and perfume.
[Illustration: THE PORCH, LAUNCESTON CHURCH.]
[Illustration: SMILER'S PIOUS CAT.]
Chapter XI
St. Ives is small for its age, but is growing now. The town divides
itself into two parts, the new and the old. The new is new, and the
old is fragrant. The history of St. Ives also divides itself into two,
the ancient and the modern; and the ancient goes back to the time of
the saints. It was a woman who founded St. Ives. It is well to keep
this in mind, because the well-known St. Ives was a lawyer, and so
honest that he was never once struck off the rolls. Some of the piety
of the ancient lady is said to linger about the town. It was she who
introduced a new breed of cats, and the old town is still famous for
cats. There are Manx cats and Persian cats and St. Ives cats. The St.
Ives cat is "at home" in the streets, and may be found in corners
and on doorsteps, or stretched at full length across the roads, and
sidewalks when there are any. St. Ives is apparently owned by cats, so
respectful are the inhabitants, and so careful not to tread on their
tails or toes. If a cat is stretched out enjoying the sunshine, a man
will drive his cart around it, to the danger of humans paying rates
and taxes. The St. Ives cat has a well-to-do, lascivious-looking air,
and is only properly awake at nights. In the daytime the animal slinks
along courts and side streets, and rubs itself against water-butts and
tar-barrels and fish-flaskets, until it has an odour of mixed scents
as strong as a distillery of perfumes. Nothing can beat pilchard oil
mixed with garbage, which the St. Ives cat loves. When the boats return
in the early hours of the morning, the cats make tracks for the quay,
and every cat knows its own boat, and waits for the men to come ashore,
and then purrs and purrs, and rubs its scented fur against the men's
long-boots. The men belong to the cats, every cat a man and every man a
cat. Women and mice don't count much with St. Ives cats--it's men and
fish for them.
SMILER'S PIOUS CAT.
"Ded 'ee ever hear th' story of Smiler's cat? No? Well, then, I'll
tell 'ee," said a man, gutting a fish upon an iron post, and throwing
tid-bits to a long lanky tabby with one mild blue eye and one a dark
grassy green. "He wadn't a fighter, egcept he was provoked, and then
he was game; but he was a most orderly cat and pious. Now you may
laugh, but ef iver there was a pious cat, 'twas Smiler's. Smiler wadn't
pious, but Bob was. Bob was black with a white tie round his neck, so
he had a respectable appearance, and was looked up to by all the cats
in the parish. Bob knew when Smiler had a good week, and knew where to
find him when he'd had enough and 'twas time to go home. Smiler was a
peaceful man at all times, and when he'd had full 'lowance, and more,
he'd sit down and talk over old times, and his father and mother, and
begin to cry. Then Bob would rub against his legs and make for the
door, and Smiler would follow 'zackly like a cheeld--ess he would. When
'twas dark Bob 'ud walk back-'ards and show Smiler the way by the light
of es eyes--starboard and port, port and starboard--till Smiler got
home. Bob was that pious he wouldn't eat no vish on a Sunday, and he
was so looked up to by all the cats that not one would run down to the
quay on a Saturday or a Sunday night--not sure 'nuff--not if all the
boats came in chock-vull of vish. 'No Sunday vish for St. Ives!' was
the motto with Bob, and all the cats followed. Smiler was that happy on
Saturdays that he cudn't rise on Sundays, and Bob used to keep watch
and listen to the Salvation Army services which he cud hear quite plain
through the open window. Bob got to like the music and grew serious,
and tuk to followin' th' band. People tuk notice, and said 'twas
Smiler's Bob, and expected to see Smiler foller the cat, as he did at
nights when he was well 'bowsed.'
"Bob was going after Smiler one night, as usual, after 'sharing,' and,
as ill fortune would have it, he met an old friend in the cat-line,
and they went off together, which was sad for Smiler, who went wrong,
and slipped into the water, without being seen or heard. Bob went
about like a mazed cat, and never rested till he sniffed out Smiler,
caught by a mooring chain. It was wonderful to see Bob follerin' at the
funeral, and many would have taken care ov him, but he had a 'call,'
and follered the Salvation Army, and to the last day of his innocent
life would eat no vish on a Sunday--not no vish even caught on a
Saturday; no risks for Bob. If some people was only as good as some
cats," said the man, resuming work and throwing a morsel to the long
lanky tabby, "why, then I say there'd be no call for bad blood between
East and West on the score of Sunday fishing and Sunday markets."
"How do you account for this uncommon piety in a cat?" asked Guy.
"'Twas bred in him, s'poase. Anyhow, he was uncommon pious, and his
good example is follered. Thiccy theer cat wud no more ate vish catched
on Sunday than he'd fly. Wad'ee, Tom?"
Tom purred.
"I knawed it," said the man, washing the fish and pushing his
forefinger through its gills.
* * * * *
The St. Ives women always enjoyed the reputation of being well endowed
with tongue. Some people think their old vivacity is the result of
foreign blood, but it is singular that the "gift" of tongue should
follow only in the female line. A St. Ives man is quiet enough until
his blood is up, and then he wants to hit something, or throw something
overboard, and make a big noise in the open air. There is the story of
three young women slipping into their pattens and going to the well
with their pitchers for water. Their husbands were at sea. The young
women began to talk, and they talked on and on until their husbands
returned, and found them just at the beginning of an argument. So they
off to sea once more, and back again, and the three women were still
at the well, and getting interested in the argument. Then the three
men took a long voyage, and returning with well-lined purses found
their wives, now grown white, still at the well, but on the point of
adjourning till the morrow to take up the thread of the old argument.
[Illustration: A CORNISH FISH-WIFE.]
The St. Ives woman, however, has a turn for business. What her man
catches she sells, and pays his bills for nets and barking and repairs.
On land she's "boss," and has a "sharing cake" once a week when she
settles accounts. The "sharing cake" is an ancient institution, and
must be respected. It has its ceremonial, too, and must be broken with
the fingers, not cut with a knife, because cold steel would bring bad
luck. The customs of women are very different in the North and South.
Like Newlyn, St. Ives is the home of artists of world-wide reputation.
[Illustration: A SIDE STREET.]
CHAPTER XII
A Cornish Sunday to a man of cities is a weariness to the flesh, and a
temptation to pray for Monday to come quickly; but for the natives it
is a blessed day--a day of feathers and soft down, a day for chewing
the cud and being lazy without reproach. The fishermen rarely fish on
Saturdays because the sacred idleness of the Sunday may be broken by
the salesmen and railway porters--so the day of rest is made to stretch
over as much of two days as is worth the having. Farmers are not so
well off as fishers, but do what they can in the resting line, and that
is something. When we walked through any of the villages on a Sunday
we found the people mostly looking over their garden gates, casting
glances "up-along," or "down-along," or "athwart," just to see what was
going on, and who was moving. They don't like cycles or cyclists on
Sundays, and when one comes along all the men in their shirt-sleeves,
and all the women helping them to do nothing, squirm as though wounded
in a tender place. Every time it is the same--the same inward shrinking
from activity on a day of rest. Those who do nothing all the week
feel just the same, and lie about, and squat about, indoors, when not
outside resting their ample chins upon ample arms upon gates and walls,
staring "up-along," and "down-along," and "athwart," watching one
another.
Whatever can sleep, sleeps, and the people don't seem properly awake
until after tea, when the women make ready for chapel, and the men go
after them. The men wouldn't stir but for the women, and the women make
a bee-line for chapel. Sunday is given up to preaching and preachers.
If you see a man driving on a Sunday, you may put him down for a
"local" brother, who works at his trade all the week and is preacher
on Sundays. You may know him by a certain smile of goodness that
plays around his mouth, for he is going to have a good time. The lay
preacher is a by-product of Methodism, and a valuable one in large and
scattered circuits too poor for anything but a little chapel of four
walls and a brush of whitewash. The Methodist clergy live in the towns
and work around the circuit, so the people in the villages see their
minister sometimes. The ordained minister is a "rounder," because of
his travelling round. The lay, or "local," brothers come in and fill up
gaps, and they travel from place to place according to a "plan"--a sort
of calendar and time-table combined. It is a system, and it works, and
congregations are not wearied with the same face and voice two Sundays
in succession. It is good for the lay brother, who can run one sermon
for three months without much fear of being bowled out.
The lay preacher is almost a professional once a week, and goes so far
as to wear a clerical bowler, but the white necktie is reserved, as a
rule, for his betters. There is no written law upon the subject, but it
is understood that the white necktie is for the professional "rounder."
The lay brother has privileges, and may drive proudly through the land
of saints on Sundays and be welcomed, though no one else may let or
hire a trap for love or money. The lay brother may not ride a bicycle,
which is a pity, looked at from the side of horseflesh.
"I'll drive 'ee to plaize 'ee, but I'd rather not," said a
good-tempered landlord, one Sunday, when we wished to pay respects to
an ancient monument.
"Why would you rather not?"
"People talk so, and say nasty things to the children."
"But some one has just driven past, and every one smiled and
how-de-doo'd him."
"That's oal right. He's goin' to praich."
"But the pony looked tired."
"I shud zay so. Six mile and stiffish hills, and not wance ded ee git
out ov th' trap."
"Do you mean that a preacher of the Gospel over-drives his horse?"
"I mane that ef a hill is as stiff as a house a praicher won't never
walk on a Zunday--not wan inch of th' way."
Now the vent-peg was out, our host's eloquence ran freely, and much
he said of the over-driving and under-feeding of hired horses by lay
preachers on Sundays, and of the reluctance which people had to take
on the "horse hire" contracts for the Sunday work, because the men
who walked the hills fast enough in their weekday clothes would not
walk an inch in their Sunday clothes when "planned" for preaching. A
false standard of dignity this, which made men cruel. And then the
under-feeding? There is no excuse for this. The lay brother is served
with all the luxuries of the season at the tables of the brethren
on whom he is billeted as a soldier of the cross, and should not
forget the hard-working little animal which has dragged him the whole
distance, and will have to drag him back again, and the worse the
weather the quicker the pace.
Lay preaching is the homely fare of Sunday congregations, who thrive
on it because it suits them and sticks in their memories. The "higher
criticism" is not wanted by them. Here are a few specimens, picked up
in various places.
"You'll never want friends whilst you've God and your victuals."
"Some people's religion is like badly baked dough--put in with the
bread and took out with the cakes."
"What the Bible says is true, as true as I've a-got specketty stockings
on."
"I do pity the poor ould devil, he lost such a good plaace oal dru
catching a cold en es faith. Ess, my dears, he was like some folks
along weth we, who get boilin' hot when they'm convarted, and then
catch chill dru sittin' en a draught."
"There was wance a great man who gave a great supper to a braave lot
of guests. And ded'm come? Not for sure, but they all sent excuses.
Wan said, 'I've boughten a piece of land, an' must go an' try et;' an'
another said, 'I've boughten vive yoke of oxen, an' must try they;' an'
another said, 'I've married a wife, an' must stap to home to try she.'"
"Cast your bread upon the waters, and doan't 'ee luk fust to see
whichee way th' wind es blawing. Aw, my dears, there's many a man
wean't trust the Loard weth a penny loaf, and so they lose the
blessing, like ould Timothy Tack, who spent sixpence to find thrupence."
"Love your neighbour, that is a commandment; but ef you b'lieve in him
he's sure to do 'ee!"
"Some people say, 'You can't believe a thing unless you can see and
feel it;' but I say you can. Look 'ee now. Here's my hand--fowr fingers
an' a thum'. Well, that's fact, edn't et? Now then" (hiding his hand
from view), "my hand has got fowr fingers an' a thum', but you can't
see'm. Well, that's b'leef. Never say, then, you can't b'lieve what you
can't see and feel."
"When I was a boy, a man used to come round crying 'Bellows to mend,'
and the schoolmaster our way put up a sign, 'Manners to mend.' Now, I
think we might put up that sign in chapels where people come on Sundays
trapesing in as though they were going by train, and quattin' down, and
spittin' on th' floor, for oal th' world 'twas a tiddly-wink. Them's
manners to mend, sure 'nuff, an' would be th' better for mendin', like
Jakey Luney's britches, ragged behind."
Sometimes the local brother's homily is very pointed, but no offence
is taken. The preacher is one of themselves, and they will take a lot
from him in good part. If a stranger were to take the same liberty
there would be trouble. Here is a specimen from an address spoken from
the pulpit in the free-and-easy manner of every-day conversation.
"You wean't get into heaven just because you've a pious mother or a
pious father. Not for sure. Now, I'll tell 'ee a story about a man
who deceived moast everybody when he was in the flesh, and he liked
chateing so much that he al'ys prayed loudest after he'd tooked in
somebody--an' there's more like'n down along weth we now. We'll just
give him a name, an' call him Jim Tresidder. He was on the 'plan,' like
me, and people said 'twas good to hear him hold forth, and I s'poase
'twas. Jim put a bold face upon it when he marched up to the golden
gate, and rapped weth his knuckles upon the little shutter, till Peter
looked out. 'Who ar'ee?' asks Peter. 'Doan't 'ee knaw me? Why, I'm Jim
Tresidder.' Then he tunied up a bit, and began to sing, 'Heaven is my
home.' Now, Peter must have liked the look of Jim--he had sich a pious
look weth un, for he stretched forth his hand for the key hanging
over his head to open the gate weth. 'I'm oal right now,' thinks Jim,
singing louder and louder. 'Avoor I let 'ee in,' says Peter, 'I'll have
a look at the book,' and he turned over the leaves till he came to
the T's. 'You'm Jim Tresidder of Trevalsa,' ses he. 'Ess,' says Jim.
'Then I'm sorry for 'ee,' says Peter, hanging up the key wance more.
Then he showed Jim the book through the peep-hole, and when he seed
oal the people he'd chated, and the evil he had caused, his heart sank
into his shoes. 'I'll live in a dark corner, anywhere, if you'll only
let me in. My poor mother is waiting for me. She was called Jane, an'
was pious--now do 'ee lev me in, there's a dear man,' ses he, the great
tears rolling down his chacks. 'Your mother is here weth the shining
ones,' says Peter, 'but you caan't come in because of she, no, f'y, you
caan't, for up here every fish do hang by his own gills. And you will
hang too--on the outside.'"
The county is honeycombed with dissent, and the fat of the land is
labelled "Wesleyan." The beneficed clergy are beautifully housed, with
gardens and stables, and all the appointments of gentlemen; but the
"livings" are not fat. Some country clergy take "paying guests," and
some let their houses in the summer. The orthodox Wesleyan ministers
are fairly well off, and live rent free; and the others live as best
they can, and get commissions on the sale of books and periodicals. One
of the brethren left a record of thirty thousand teeth drawn during
his professional career. As a rule, they "draw" well, and will draw
coin from the most unlikely places. A child having swallowed a piece of
silver, the doctor, in despair, sent for the minister, saying the case
was hopeless if he failed to get it. The coin was recovered.[D]
There is a good deal of "religion" to be met with, and not so much need
for Salvation Army music as in some places. There are certain times
when people want to feel good, but they don't all feel the same way at
the same time, which saves monotony. They say that at St. Agnes the
people start being good when the cold weather sets in, and the feeling
lasts until potato-planting time, and then, somehow, the good feeling
sloughs off. I don't know what becomes of it, only it is put on one
side for the next season, just like a boy puts on one side his bag of
marbles and brings out tops. It's the same boy, but a new game. In
the summer it's a struggle to be good anywhere, there's so many fairs
and feasts and frolics, and the young men and maidens are so fond of
courting on the cliffs and downs. It's the custom of the country and
suits well enough, so strangers may turn their heads on one side--it's
none of their business. In the autumn the good feeling comes again and
extends along the coast, especially when the fishing is "slight." The
young men get tired of the maidens about this time, and want to be
good for evermore, and the want grows with the badness of the season.
One sign of goodness in the country is thrift. The man who neither
chews, nor smokes, nor drinks beer, and who never spends a copper
without looking on both sides of it, is sure to be good.
[D] An ex-President of the Wesleyan Conference told this story.
You always know when the good season is coming on by the people
singing. They are pretty good, in spots, at singing, but the "gift," as
they call it, is not universal. A gift is supposed to run in families,
and a man with the voice of a crow will insist on singing because his
great-grandfather once played the double bass in a church choir. There
is a musical zone in the West, and the young women who work in the open
air have very sweet voices. These are the "bal" maidens, and work on
the dressing-floors of the mines. When the time comes round for them
to feel good they "tuney up" a bit, and take the young men who work
underground along with them to the love-feasts and prayer-meetings in
the little Bethels scattered all about the moors.
They call themselves "Weslums" when they are not something ending in
"ists" or "ite," and are bursting with goodness every Whit-Monday, just
as sure as the day comes round. Why Whit-Monday more than any other day
in the year would puzzle any one who did not know that on a certain day
the cuckoo must sing. It's a sort of something which makes the bird
sing, and it's a sort of something which makes the "Weslums" feel good
on Whit-Monday, and draws them with invisible bands towards Gwennap
Pit. Whit-Monday is the anniversary of an occasion when John Wesley,
_the_ John Wesley, _our_ John Wesley preached in the pit--- not the pit
as it is, but the pit as it was.
John Wesley wouldn't know the pit, or the people who flock there now
on Whit-Mondays. The old pit was an abandoned mine of no particular
shape, but inclined to be round, like a bowl warped in the firing.
Then the miners came with pickaxe and shovel, and cut terraces against
the land, and made the ring quite round, with its terraces rising one
above another, until it became a sort of county monument to which the
"Weslums" are drawn in their tens of thousands as to a shrine. John
Wesley is a "Saint" in Cornwall, and all those who went before him
have to take back seats; and Whit-Monday, at the Pit, is now a sort of
religious carnival, with picnic combined, at which Saint John would
have shied when in the flesh, like good St. Anthony at a Pleasant
Sunday Afternoon, with fiddles and a ballet. When Wesley first came
among the people they had an unpleasant trick of throwing stones and
turves at him, and hustling him out of one parish into another, and
then out upon the downs, where he might live upon frosty turnips
when there were no blackberries. "Starring" in the country was not
pleasant at times; and cold, wet, and starving, the little-great man
often had the appearance of a scarecrow riding upon a tough little
nag as starved as himself. But he caught on, and emptied the cock-pit
and wrestling ring, and provided entertainments wherein were mighty
wrestlings with the invisible for immortal stakes. So he reached the
natural cravings of a dramatic people for excitement and scenic change,
and made them actors, with the blue heavens above, the earth trembling,
and the hill-sides lined with living faces, wet and radiant. Greater
than he have tramped the county since, but conditions have altered,
and only _one_ Wesley is possible. And that is why people are drawn
as to a shrine to Gwennap Pit, and the feeling comes upon them every
Whit-Monday that they must go there, for there is a troubling of the
waters then, and they may be healed. The old spirit of votive offerings
survives in the land of saints and holy wells.
The Cornish must have been a very well-meaning folk at one time,
estimated by the number of churches which they built. They built little
else, perhaps, but they did build good and substantial churches,
mostly with square towers and four pinnacles, to be seen of men far
and near. In the parish of Paul, near Penzance, the towers of fifteen
parish churches may be counted from one spot, and, though not so
thick everywhere, the minds of the people centred around the churches
for more reasons than one. In the old days, when roads were few and
detestably bad, people reckoned church towers as guides, and calculated
distances from church tower to church tower. Every man who ventured
far from home knew the church towers by sight and the bells by sound;
they were marks at sea as well, and mariners knew them and their bells
as well as now they know bell-buoys and lighthouses upon the charts.
A hamlet with a church became a "town," so a man says he's going to
Church-town, and still measures the distance between places by saying
it is so far from one church tower to the other.
Then came the little chapel, four-square and whitewashed, with plain
glass windows, winking and blinking in the daytime, but a place of joy.
Some people measure distances as from Bethel to Zion, and then no other
question is needed on the point of worship. It's all there, when the
chapel comes before the church. The day of bitterness is passing, but
the preference comes out accidentally.
Now there is a third building seen from far and seen everywhere, and
that is the school which has been raised by the people with more
hardship and self-denial than in the rest of the kingdom, because of
the smallness of means, which often makes the dividing line with
downright poverty very fine indeed. Only the thrift of the people
would have enabled them to uprear schools finer in every respect than
chapels, and first and foremost amongst the buildings of the county.
The schools rank next the churches, and are usually built where they
may be seen.
The parsons had to fight tooth and nail for their tithes of cows
and calves and pigs and other things, and had to look sharp that
butter and cheese were not palmed off on them as of like value. The
Vicar of Zennor made a note in the parish register that three of his
tithe-paying parishioners had planted butter and cheese in the chancel
of the church, where he let it stay until it became too ripe for
endurance, and then he ordered the churchwardens to remove it, which
they did; and the three smart farmers lost their produce, and the vicar
got his tithe of living animals, after all. A vicar wanted knowledge
not included in university curricula to make the two ends meet in a
Cornish parish in the good old times. They have to struggle now to hold
their own and make a bit, which some say they are doing, and some shake
their heads, so one may think what he likes.
[Illustration: OLD COINAGE STREET, PENZANCE.]
CHAPTER XIII
The Cornish are born actors and actresses, but the natural talent is
suppressed early, and it is not considered respectable to do or say
anything like a "play-actor." But the talent breaks bounds and shows
itself even in the last moments of the aged, composing their features,
so as to "look 'ansum" after death.
The county has no theatre, no vaudeville, nothing in which to develop
the dramatic instincts of a dramatic people. Now and again a travelling
company, or piece of one, gives a performance in a hall licensed
for dramatic presentations; but the people have become shy of being
seen with uncovered faces at plays not labelled "sacred." Susannah,
with realistic touches, would be popular, if the Lord Chamberlain
could see his way to license the performance. When away from home
the people patronize theatres and music-halls, and, on their return,
sing favourite hymns to comic opera. Dancing is prohibited in places,
and is "taboo" even when winked at; but some of the day schools are
now teaching children how to use their feet and legs to music, under
the head of "exercises" or "physical instruction." When an Italian
organ-grinder comes into a village, the children dance as though they
like it. The Flora, or Flurry, dance has some claim to be Cornish, and
in time may be danced well again in the open air at fairs and feasts.
The Cornish are imaginative, vivacious, quick to realize situations.
When there is any difficulty about words, a man or woman will get over
it by acting the part. Watch the men disputing, and you see unrehearsed
comedy--and very good comedy in its way. The old Cornish were very fond
of mysteries and miracle-plays, which were performed in the open, and
for the love of the thing. If one may believe, tens of thousands of
people used to tramp over the pathless downs to see a miracle-play, or
a series of plays, performed in some natural amphitheatre. The plays
speak for themselves. Some still exist, and we have only to fancy
the tens of thousands standing and squatting around, gazing rapt and
full-eyed upon the stage hour after hour, and then day by day, until
the mysteries were finished for the season. Men, women, and children
all "trapsed" to these plays, and, like the Japs of to-day, never left
the scene as long as there was anything to see. The performances were
realistic enough, and angels and devils took their parts in a manner
to upset any respectable system of theology. The actors learned their
parts, and the prompter, book in hand, followed the actors and told
them what to say when they were at a loss. The prompter was known as
the "ordinary," and on one occasion the ordinary, being a pleasant
conceited gentleman, played "a merry prank" with a poor actor who was
not well up in his part. The story runs: "His turn came: quoth the
ordinary, 'Go forth, man, and show thyself.' The gentleman steps out
upon the stage, and, like a bad clerk in Scripture matters, cleaving
more to the letter than the sense, pronounced those words aloud. 'Oh,'
says the fellow softly in his ear, 'you mar all the play.' And with
this his passion the actor makes the audience in like sort acquainted.
Hereon the prompter falls to flat railing and cursing in the bitterest
terms he could devise; which the gentleman with a set gesture and
countenance still soberly related, until the ordinary, driven at last
into mad rage, was fain to give all over; which trousse, though it
break off the interlude, yet defrauded not the beholders, but dismissed
them with a great deal more sport and laughter than twenty such guaries
could have afforded."[E]
[E] This is the only indigenous stage story in existence, and is
preserved by Carew.
In former times, Midsummer Eve festivities were celebrated with much
joyousness and dancing through the streets, and the lighting of
bonfires at night, so that, seen from the sea, the coast-line showed a
blaze of light. This was originally a pagan celebration of the summer
solstice, and the Romish Church took it over and rechristened it,
calling the rejoicing the festivals of St. John and St. Peter. The
Reformed Church took over the festivals as a legacy, and they lingered
on in the land until dissent brought out their fire brigades and at
last extinguished them. There is another "pagan" celebration which will
not die. The public May-time rejoicings were nearly extinguished once,
but are active again, and the good people of Helston dress up, and sing
and dance from morn to night, because the spring has come again, and
the land may once more be made beautiful with flower and corn. At one
time the Church encouraged these public rejoicings, and gave them as
much of a religious appearance as possible, but now there is nothing
to suggest religion except the "collection" which the dancers make for
their own benefit.
When the Cornish language fell into disuse, fell also all prospect of
a drama indigenous to a land of which one can never say how much is
real. The sad autumn leaves fell upon the literary remembrances of the
people when old Dolly Pentreath died, and as some one must have been
the last to speak the language, as well Dolly as another, and better,
perhaps, as we can see her portrait and her monolith. The old popular
performances under the blue sky died out with the tongue, and then
followed the travelling showman and the lady in tights and spangles,
and then the old Christmas mummers with their diabolrie and three-men
songs. The English drama in no form has any hold in the county now, and
even Shakespeare is caviare to the general. Only one Cornishman made
his mark upon the stage, and of no great credit he, so we let him pass;
but the county is foster-mother to Sir Henry Irving, fittest of all men
to have been a son, so well he "loved the fancies and legends of the
people."[F]
[F] When Sir Henry died, it was remembered that he whose soul was all
Cornish, had never acted in the county.
"There are comedies and tragedies with scenes laid in Cornwall in
plenty, but no Cornish drama or dramatist," said the Bookworm. And yet
there might have been.
[Illustration: BOSCASTLE HARBOUR.]
Tregeagle is the Cornish Faust. The story took a few centuries
to develop, and there is nothing to be added now to heighten its
dramatic effect. Tregeagle was a young man of ambition, with a vein
of discontent running through his composition. One day, when brooding
over what he was, and what he would be, seeing all things in false
perspective, Old Artful made his acquaintance, and there was the usual
bargain, signed, sealed and delivered. "This is my act and deed,"
said Tregeagle, putting his finger on the red seal drawn from his own
veins. Tregeagle was to live in airy-fairy palaces, and have the run
of every man's preserves until such time as Old Artful choose, and
then--well, what was left of his tissue-paper soul would be wanted in
another place. Old Artful behaved in the handsomest manner, and Mr.
Tregeagle lived in a palace in up-to-date splendour, with men-servants
and maid-servants, and every one took off his hat or curtsied as he
passed, and he was as hard to the poor as a landlord's agent, and rode
roughshod over whom he would. In fact, he couldn't be a greater swell
before the days of motors. All went gaily with him, until, one day, he
consulted his diary and found that his lease under the contract had
nearly expired, and then he became "hurried in his mind," and lost
appetite, and cast about to see if he could save himself, and pay no
forfeit. Now, Old Artful was a good judge of character and knew his
man, so, when the time was up, he let the fairy palace, with all its
beautiful gardens and stables and greenhouses, sink into the earth,
and covered them over with water so deep that some said no plummet
could find bottom. Having trapped his man so nicely, Old Artful was in
good humour, and gave Tregeagle a limpet-shell with a hole in it, and
told him he might work out his redemption by emptying the lake; for,
said he, "you can't expect to have all the good things of this world
without paying for them, either in money or marbles." Tregeagle looked
at the limpet-shell, so small that a thimbleful of water would overflow
it, and then at the hole in the bottom, but he cared little for that
as he could stop it up with his finger. It was a hopeless task, yet
he was comforted by the thought that in the matter of the hole, by
stopping it with his finger, he would score one off Old Artful. Then
he commenced baling the water from the lake; and when he would rest,
Old Artful's imps spurred him on and on until he shrieked and roared,
so that all the people round about him shook in their shoes. "To roar
like Tregeagle," became a saying when one was groaning under deserved
punishment. The unhappy man is still working at his task, and it is
said there is not so much water in the lake as aforetime.
"Then Old Artful will have outwitted himself after all, for he gave the
fellow a task intended to be endless," said Guy.
"There is hope; and that is where the Cornish story differs from many
variations of Faust," said the Bookworm.
"I like the Cornish all the better for that," said Guy.
[Illustration: BRETON ONION-BOY.]
CHAPTER XIV
We always removed our hats before entering a church: it is the custom
of the country, and we were without prejudices. If we saw a clergyman
wondering at the rapid growth of nettles and docks and wild heliotrope
over his little freehold, we took off our hats to him. I don't mention
this in a vain-glorious spirit, only once or twice we were looked on
with suspicion, and shown dirty finger-marks upon walls, and scratches
made with knives upon monuments, and detestable rhymes scribbled in
pencil, where they could be seen. We were shown some writing which was
discovered pinned to the altar after a strange "gentleman and lady"
had made the round of the church, and gone away. The verger apologized
when showing us the writing, which he did only in order to justify his
looking upon us with some degree of suspicion. We felt sorry for the
"lady and gentleman," and they might have been sorry for themselves, if
we could have talked to them for a few minutes in a convenient place.
The vicar came in and insisted on showing us his "treasures." They were
not many, and we wished them more, for his sake, he was so anxious to
make us forget having been told that a "gentleman" with a soft cap,
and a "lady" with no cap at all, should have been guilty of pinning an
indecent writing to God's altar. He pitied them; and Guy felt that he
would like to have the chance of pitying the gentleman with the soft
cap after a strictly private interview.
The vicar tapped the Bookworm, and would have us stay to luncheon.
They exchanged views, and talked book catalogues, and dry goods like
that. We got out into the grounds, which were a little paradise.
Something from all quarters of the world grew there, and in the open,
too--nothing to hurt them, winter or summer, in this charming place. We
got away from books and dry stuff at last, and found that our genial
vicar could talk other things.
"The _bien entente_, or _entente cordiale_, or whatever you like to
call it, which startled Europe, is so old a thing amongst us, that we
were set laughing when told of the new discovery--the diplomatic radium
of the hour," said the vicar, laughing.
"I thought you Cornish were very alarmed at French invasions, and hated
Frenchmen like the lost archangel holy water. What were the popular
stories with which you sent children sobbing to bed, about the Great
Napoleon?" asked the Bookworm.
"Stories innumerable, and they served a purpose. A thousand such
stories might be invented to-morrow, and some would be believed, with
a German, a Russian, or a yellow bug-a-boo for figurehead. But, let
me tell you, there has always been a link between England and France,
and that is the Cornu-Breton link. Cornish boats were often safe in
French harbours when Napoleon was fitting out his great Armada, and
Nelson driving Frenchmen from the seas. We wanted brandy and silks,
and the French merchants wanted money, so the _bien entente_ was all
serene. Then we wanted salt for curing, and there was nothing more
common in our harbours than French _chasse-marées_ laden with sea-salt;
and who more popular than the Breton sailor in a Cornish port, in
blue blouse and sabots, and pockets stuffed full of prunes, which he
shook out as he walked, followed by a queue of children singing, 'How
do you do, Johnny Crapaud?' And then, most touching, when Frenchy
and the little _mousse_, trusting themselves alone in Cornish lanes,
gathered bucketfuls of esculent snails for soup. The _bien entente_
was all right still, though there were wars and rumours of wars. The
Cornu-Breton link held fast when Cornwall raised its volunteers when
Napoleon the Third sent a thrill of fear through the land, when Fashoda
was a burning word, and when the Paris journals made the English blood
boil during the Boer war. And what was the Cornu-Breton link?"
The vicar paused, and then added: "The link is here. It is knocking at
my gate."
There was a chubby-faced youngster at the back door, in blue smock and
knitted cap, bending under the weight of the onions he was carrying
suspended from a pole on his shoulder.
"This is the Cornu-Breton link--onions followed salt, and salt brandy.
These chubby-faced boys invade us every year and 'dump' all the spare
onions they grow in their little gardens at home. It is their harvest,
and the brave little hearts, trudging in a strange land, with raw
shoulders, are welcomed everywhere, whatever the party passions of the
hour. It is a small link, but it is steel, and when London and Paris
were drinking champagne to the new sensation, we were buying our onions
off our little Breton friends, giving them milk to drink, and sharing
pasties, and giving them ointments with which to rub their poor little
raw shoulders, and then resting them in barns so that they might be up
and off with sunrise to sell their onions."
The vicar beckoned to the boy, who came and told us of his home at
Paimpol; this was his second season here, and next year he would not
come because he was conscript, and would serve on board a man-of-war.
His eyes glistened when he talked of meeting British ships, and the
Cornish bluejackets who knew him as a little onion boy. And they would
be friends!
Guy tipped the boy when no one was looking, and so did his best to keep
the Cornu-Breton link intact.
I do believe the good vicar was sorry when we went.
* * * * *
The people are not given to "hustle;" if the word has reached the
county, the thing hasn't in any great quantity. There is still a
blessed refuge in the world for men and women tired of "hustle" in all
its moods and tenses. Being on time at a railway station is genuine
distress to natives until they get used to it, and the language is
not strong in equivalents for "hustle." To make moderate haste is to
"hurry-all," to be in a genuine hurry is to be "stark-staring-mad." The
idea of smoothness resulting from leisure suits the Cornish genius
at home, and he has a pleasing word for it in "suant." When everything
is as "suant as oil," it is perfection itself. "Who carries the broth
must go suant," gives the idea of abundance of time in which to perform
an errand without mishap. To be too slow for anything is only to be
"asleep"--there is no anger in the reproach, just a gentle reminder,
that is all. Anything mouldy and vinewed is said to be "sleeping"--in
a delicious state of rest which it would be a pity to disturb. A
Cornishman only does one job at a time; when he talks he rests from all
other work.
[Illustration: MEVAGISSEY.]
Guy said he must have his hair cut; the Bookworm might please himself;
it might suit his style of beauty to be mistaken for an ancient bard.
The first town we came to we looked out for the striped pole, and there
was one outside a tobacco shop. It was afternoon when we entered the
shop with a partition running through it, so one half was sacred to the
"weed," and the other half to the performance of ancient rites. A green
curtain divided the double shop from the rear. The shop was empty,
but the curtain was half drawn, and we saw a man polishing his boots.
This was the barber, who finished his job, and met us, smiling. Guy
induced the Bookworm to take the chair first, because his hair being
darker would not show the illustrative finger-marks so clearly as his
own. Guy talked to the barber about boot-polish, and so interested him
that he stopped operations and talked. A man came in and propped up the
partition with a shoulder, and Mr. Figaro left his job and served a
packet of cigarettes. Then the new-comer began a story about one Billy
Tregarne who, falling down a clay-pit, was mistaken for the miller
by his own wife, who turned him to doors with much abuse and a "scat
in the chacks." It was all very interesting, but took time, and the
Bookworm was only half trimmed. The new-comer suddenly remembered that
he had left his shop open with no one to "mind" it, and walked away
as leisurely as he came. Then Mr. Figaro worked away, only stopping
occasionally to enjoy an inward chuckle; and when Guy went off without
being operated on, he seemed quite glad at having no more to do just
then.
In towns, tradesmen spend a good deal of time in their shop doors,
looking "up-along" and "down-along," or across the street, and hold
conversations with each other in their several shop doors.
The inhabitants live long and die leisurely. When one is a trifle
over-anxious people tell him not to worry, for "you'll live till you
die, like Nicketty Booth."
The man in the highway never misses a chance for a gossip, and will
give old nuts for news, to any extent.
"Holloa! my man; which is the way to Church-town?" Guy shouted to a
labourer, who seemed to be doing his best to prop up a hedge.
The man struck work at once and came forward leisurely. He eyed us up
and down, making a mental register of our marks. Then he seemed to take
an interest in us and our business.
"Going Church-town, art a?"
"Yes, and which is the way?"
"Want to see Farmer? Well, then, a ed'n home. Farmer had fine field
of wheat in ten-acre field, sure 'nuff, and he's gone to market. He
was drashing yesterday, and the drashing machine cut off Tom Curnow's
fingers. Ess sure, 'e ded."
"We don't want Farmer," said Guy, cutting in.
"Well, then, Tom Trebilcock? Tom's cow calved last week, and she's a
good milker. Didn't know Tom was going to sell."
"Never mind Tom; tell us the road, the way, the
what-you-like-to-call-it, to Church-town."
"There's passun's house close by the church, and passun's little mare
is a good un to travel. They do say----"
"How do we get there?"
"Ef so be you'm in a hurry you need'n go, cos Farmer's drivin' mare to
market."
"We'd like to get there in daylight," said Guy, gravely.
"Sartinly;" and then the man gathered himself together for a supreme
effort. "You do go through meadow-close, and plain-close, and then into
high-lane, and volly on, an' there you be, sure."
"But where is meadow-close?"
"Oh, back along."
"But where?"
"Back along to stile."
"Thanks very much, my good man, and may your shadow never grow less."
We left the man apparently wondering what sort of animals there were
at large who didn't know the way to Church-town. Gradually he unbent
himself, and went back to prop up the hedge.
In conversation a good deal of ground is covered in a non-committal
sort of way by illustrations well understood by the parties, but Greek
to any stranger. A worthy person who does mischief with the best
intentions is said to be like "Aunt Gracie's vear"--which means that
the little pig, with the best intentions in the world, sucked the old
sow to death. Few would suspect that "Betsy Bowden's leg" tells a
tragedy, but it does:--
"Old age and sorrows did she decay,
And her bad leg carried she away."
To have "Betsy Bowden's leg" is a very serious matter to those who
understand what it means.
"It's as well to leave high English at home," said the local doctor,
whom Guy picked up in his rambles. "I was asked by a woman on leaving
the house of a patient the other day what the matter was? and, in a
moment of forgetfulness, I said it was a case of 'strangulated hernia.'
'My dear life!' said the woman, opening her eyes wide, 'that's a very
different story to what I heard.' 'And what did you hear?' 'Why, I
heard that the man had a kink in his innards.' We meant the same
thing; but you must live amongst people really to understand and be
understood."
Sometimes a humorous situation is created, and the incident lives.
An officer inspecting volunteers wished to dismiss them. "Stand at
ease! Attention! Disperse!" The men stood still with wonder in their
eyes. "Disperse!" repeated the officer, and still the men stood still.
The sergeant saluted. "May I give the order?" "Certainly." Then the
sergeant: "Stand at ease! Attention! Scat up!" And every man went his
way, and the corps are the "Scat-ups" to this day.
A coastguard told us the story of a young officer of the kid-glove type
giving an order to the men in the maintop. "Maintop, ahoy!" "Aye, aye,
sir." "Extinguish the illuminator." "No such rope, sir." Then the
boatswain: "Maintop, ahoy!" "Aye, aye, sir." "Douse the glim." Light
goes out.
A bargain is dear to the soul of a Cornishman; only send round the
crier with the bell, announcing a sale, and he'll be there, and pay
cheerfully more than the things are worth, if only he's told that he's
getting a bargain. To get something for next to nothing is to be happy.
A man will walk two miles to ride one, and build his house out of shape
rather than remove a bit of rock which can be worked into the wall.
Much ingenuity is shown in using up odds and ends of things. A sailor
will tell you that any man can make a sail if he has plenty of canvas
to cut from, but the man for his money is the man who "makes do what
won't do." To throw anything on the scrap-heap as long as there's wear
or use in it, would make an average man turn green, and wish for the
better land. He's thrifty in the wrong place, and can't help it; but
once get him away from home and he develops and does well, as times go.
We were told that Bryant, of blacking and match fame, and Pears, of
soap fame, are not only Cornish, but hail from neighbouring parishes;
and Ralph Allen, the lucky, was born at St. Blazey. Ralph was a man
of many parts. He brought some order and method into our country mail
services, ran the Bath theatre, married a beautiful wife, and made
£16,000 a year out of a Government contract. Once outside the charmed
circle of his native land, a Cornishman gets on just as well as a
Scotchman, and is as thrifty as need be.
There is an ingrained dislike amongst the Cornish towards mean-looking
things, and things ugly or deformed. A well set-up man, with head
thrown back defiantly, and arms swinging, is forgiven much on account
of his appearance of strength and general can-take-care-of-myselfness.
A weak-looking man with a mean face must walk warily if he's to get
credit at all for the good that is actually in him. An elegant woman,
well-dressed, is immaculate; and a woman with an eye generous and
passionate has her sins condoned almost before they are committed.
But let a woman squint and be anæmic, short in nose, and long in
chin, a bit "hunchy" and out of shape, and goodness becomes an added
offence to her sin of living. "A poor, wakely thing," and "a wisht,
old-fashioned maid," are offences to the community, and are willingly
parted with. Downright ugliness in man or woman is looked on as the
devil's hall-mark;--"mark you the man whom nature marks," is a proverb.
The first question asked about a stranger is, what does he, or she,
look like? A great deal depends on the answer--a good-looking and
fair-spoken person may travel far and suffer no hunger in the land. The
devil is sin, and sin the father of ugliness, hence an ugly person has
the devil for father, and is treated accordingly.
The Cornish are a very hopeful race. Bad times depress, but there is
always to-morrow to look forward to, and to-morrow may be better than
to-day. Without this bank of hope to draw upon, the two main industries
of the county, mining and fishing, would have caved in long, long ago.
Contentment is another sign by which you may know the Cornishman at
home. If a man meets with misfortune, or a friend has gone under, he
sums it all up by saying, "Well, there 'tis." The phrase "there 'tis,"
is like a plaister of figs covering a sore, hiding much, but giving
rise to hope that a healing process may be going on.
"How be gettin' on, Jim, without the ould woman?" asks a man of his
fellow who has buried his wife. "Slight, sure 'nuff, at first, but
there 'tis;" and then he goes on about his work, as though the last
word was said upon the matter. Equally content is another aged pilgrim
who has lost the partner of his joys. "Do 'ee miss her, Bill?" "Ess,
sure." "Lonely, s'poase?" "Ess, tes lonely, but tes quiet." Bill was
content. "When the cyder is rinned away every drap, 'tis too late to
be thinkene of plugging the tap," is a little bit of old proverbial
philosophy which escaped Martin Tupper. The same spirit is in the
words, "Well, there 'tis," whether the cyder cask runs dry, or a mine
is "knocked," or a ship is wrecked, or a pitcher is broken. "Well,
there 'tis," says the victim, with the beautiful serenity of fatalism.
"There 'tis," and hope springs up amongst the ruins of shattered
hopes, and the Cornishman goes on his way again, trundling his own
wheelbarrow, without appealing to the heavens and the earth and all
that therein is to listen to his misfortunes. When he has a stroke of
good luck he's very quiet about it.
"I knaw he 'ave a chate somebody, he's so quiet," one man will say of
another on a market day.
[Illustration: A FISH-HAWKER.]
CHAPTER XV
Tickle a Cornishman, and he'll smile. He likes it; and when you have
rested, begin again, and he'll still smile. Some people want different
handling, like Kaffirs in mines, who only smile nicely after being
knocked down with a crowbar. "Going! And I'm just beginning to like
'ee," is a common form of regret towards a civil-tongued stranger who
has found out the way to tickle. Cornishmen abroad tickle one another
at their annual dinners, when all that's fair and lovely to the sight
"belongs" to the land of pasties and cream.
There are some dialects which make people restless, and some which make
people tearful, and some to want to go to theatres and operas, and some
to churches, and some--well, elsewhere. An Irish M.P., on the wrongs
of Ireland, is sure to make you tearful; and a Scotchman, mellow, is
certain to cry himself when eloquent on Bobby Burns; but the ordinary
Englishman is not moved to tears by ordinary English. His language is
very good for getting about with in trains and tramcars, and finding
out the prices of things, and making profits from the Equator to
the Pole. A hard-hearted sort of a language, that wants filing and
sand-papering a bit to reach the heart--like French, just by way of
making a comparison, which will not be odious now the _bien entente_ is
on the carpet.
One should come into the duchy to hear how the English language may
acquire a languorous ease, which makes one want to sit still at the
first milestone, and never to go any further. At first, Guy wanted
everything "sharp"--boots "sharp," breakfast "sharp," everything to the
minute, and every one on the alert. The Cornish constitution wasn't
made to work that way in Cornish air. A woman was selling fruit at a
street corner, and Guy bought some. A small boy was sent to change a
coin, and Guy grew tired and impatient of waiting. Then he murmured,
and talked of calling again at Christmas, if the boy was likely to be
back by then. The woman was sweetly placid, and asked Guy if he was
in a hurry? Guy said he wasn't suffering from that complaint, only he
liked to see boys smart, and things done quickly, and so help the world
to spin.
"I hate to be kept waiting," said he.
"It doan't sim long to we," said the woman, counting the coppers
slowly, one by one, into Guy's impatient palm, when the boy did return.
It doesn't seem long to the native to "quat," and listen to another
telling a yarn of endless length which might all be packed into a
sixpenny "wire." The stranger has to get rid of irritable impatience
before the restful influences of the words, and the manner of speaking
them, lay hold of him; and when they do he is in a peaceful oasis.
A bustling commercial man never dreams of opening his samples until
he's inquired about all the family, down to the third generation; and
in villages he has to remember that his customer's cow was bad last
journey, that his black minorca hen hatched out fifteen eggs, and that
the rats carried away ten in a single night. Then he has to see the
missus, and talk babies, and corns, and indigestion; and then, when no
one is looking, he undoes his samples, and business is introduced as
though by accident.
Who can be in a hurry when he finds that to get to a place three or
four miles away he must take the road to Trevalsamin, then cross the
town place at Ponsandain, which brings you to the stile at Hallywiden,
leave Ventongimps to the right, and the church-town of Trevespanvean
will come in view, then down by Trebarva well, and you will reach your
destination? Imagine this direction given in a zigzag fashion, with
comments and sketches of scenery thrown in, and the story of a man who
tackled a bull down by Trannack-Treneer bottom, and was carried home
on a gate, and then lived----. You can't get away from the man until a
sense of peace has fallen upon you; and you don't care if you take the
journey now, or put it off until to-morrow.
The old people who invented these names were in no humour for hurry,
and names are as thick as blackberries, for every field, and brake, and
bottom has its own particular name, which is always repeated in full in
conversation, no odds how often it occurs. A farmer knows his fields
by their names, just as he knows his children by theirs. The English
language shows its restful side in Cornwall.
Since our first parents were turned out of Eden, there has been no
paradise for children more perfect than Cornwall. We didn't know it
until we were told so by an old man hobbling along by the side of a
donkey with panniers on its back, and in the panniers fresh fish to
sell in the villages through which we were to pass. The old man was
in trouble on account of the school children jumping on his donkey's
back, and riding off at their own sweet wills. Then a boat came in with
a little "cate" of fish, which the old man bought to sell to country,
but nowhere could the donkey be found. Then he went about seeking,
until, at last, he ran the animal to earth in a quarry in a brake,
where the children had hidden it in order to ride back again in triumph
after school. This was the old man's grievance, and he called heaven
and earth to witness that there was no place under the sun where the
rising generation better deserved hanging than in this parish; or where
parents more deserved hanging for bringing up such varmints.
Guy tried his hand at a little friendly examination, and we learnt that
things were different when the old man was young; when his very own
father would have thought no more of cutting him down with a shovel, or
stretching him stiff with a hammer, if he went leastways contrary, than
he would have of eating a pasty. Well, if he did not like it he had to
put up with it, like the rest, and it taught him how children ought to
be trained. But now----
The old man was too full of words to speak for a time, but a passage
cleared itself, and then we found it was all the fault of the school,
and the rates, that children were varmints, and ought to be nailed up
to barn doors, like weasels and wants, and sich-like. "Lay a finger
upon a cheeld now, and the wimmen'll screech murder, marbleu! just as
ef the French was coming. An' th' men's no better, tes oal, 'Coom here,
Johnny, my son, an' plaise doan'ee break th' cloam, an' plaise doan'ee
make a malkin ov yersel'; an' plaise doan'ee stale Tom Cobbledick's
jackass, and hide'n away, when he do waant to go to country weth vish.'
I'd 'plaise' em, th' varmints; I'd scat th' brains ov'm out!"
The old man told us frankly that the maidens were a tarnation sight
worse than the boys under the new order of things. They didn't steal
away his donkey, but they were the cause of quarrels among the women,
and the women egged on the men, until there was neither rest nor peace
in the parish. "There's that maid of Nancy Golley's," said he, "an'
you'd s'poase she was the quietest maid in the country to see her on
a Sunday, with a feather in her hat a yard long, and oal the fashions
on her back. An' so she es quiet till she do see another maid come
down along weth something on her back which she thinks would suit her
beauty better. Then what do she do but go over to the other maid, oal
artful-like, an' begin to purr round, and find out what it cost, and
what tallyman her mother got it from; and then she rounds and says,
ted'n paid for, and she ought to be ashamed to wear it, when her old
granny is eating parish bread. Then the two wimmen begin upon their own
account, and rip up each other, an' set th' men on; and they'd have
killed one t'other, only the parish com'd in and tooked sides, and
fout till they cud'n blaw nor strike. And this trubble oal becase the
maidens were dressed up, and sent to school to learn bukes, instead of
goin' to work. I'd giv' it to th' varmints, ess, sure I wud," said he,
with a sing-song drawl, but all his ill-temper gone.
The old man turned down a by-lane to sell a fish at a farmhouse, first
telling us how to find Church-town and Mrs. Tregarthen's inn, where
there was "a drap of good beer" on tap, and we could pay for a pint for
him to drink when he came along.
Guy said it was refreshing to hear higher criticism of this sort; and
wondered what the Education Department would think did they but know
what a man of the soil thought of their strenuous efforts to spoil the
rod and teach the "varmints" to have it their own way? The Bookworm
wouldn't be provoked into saying anything, and so we reached the inn,
and found a very good larder there.
There was a pleasant hum of talk outside the inn, where a knot of young
miners were chatting over what concerned them most. The corner of the
building seemed to be the favourite spot in the whole village, and
the young men took turns to scratch themselves between the shoulders
against the corner-stones. It soothed them, and when they'd all
scratched in turns, they did a sort of jig with heel and toe, kicking
the wall with the heels of their boots. They never came inside; and
this was their way of showing that they had no animosity to the
institutions of their country. Our window was open, and Guy said this
would be a good opportunity for studying the language of the district.
"When people are together they talk it pure," said he, arousing the
Bookworm's attention.
Picking up a dialect in this way is not so easy; everybody seems
talking at once, and there's no full-stops, and the commas, when there
are any, seem to be in the wrong places. After a time, we captured a
few syllables, and the Bookworm wrote down phonetically a conversation
with two voices only--
"Say-yu, whatkoorarta?"
"Laastkoor b'nite."
"Adurnedkoorthat."
We all heard it, and there was no doubt about the sounds; every
shorthand writer would be sure on that point. Then we called in Mrs.
Tregarthen's husband and read over the transcript, and he said it was
all right, and we might take away as much of the dialect as we pleased
in the same way. He spoke slowly, and it came out like this--
"Say you, what coor art thou?"
"Last coor by night."
"A durned coor that."
A "coor" is a turn, or shift, in mine work, and the last shift by night
is not popular. Guy asked the Bookworm how long he thought it would
take him to pick up the dialect? and suggested leaving him behind, and
calling for him later. The Bookworm was used to this sort of thing from
Guy.
We picked up a dialect story, and preserved a sentence or two,
warranted to be genuine.
"Giv' me a kiss, me aul' dear," said Phil Pentreath, fisherman, just
home from a cruise, throwing his arms around his wife, who has got
herself up for the occasion, and does not want to be rumpled. She
flushes, and is in a great rage, but can't get over the ground quicker
than this--
"Taake yer baastlie wristeses awah fr'm me neck, you stinken',
ravishen' aythen! Lemmego! I waan't kiss'ee, and you oall auver
sunken' grease-oil an' tar. My sawl an' bawdee! I shud be fitty parfit
ashaamed, ef I was you, kissen' your wife in broad daalight, an'
daown-steers, too." An East End girl would cut half across London in
the time.
[Illustration: TWO COTTAGES, MEVAGISSEY.]
Cornish maids don't like cool lovers, and you may kiss early and
often, and be thought none the worse of by the maid you are sweet on.
If nothing comes of it the kissing part will be all right, and can be
wiped out, or carried forward, at pleasure. Kissing is a mode of
salutation in some districts where the population is stationary and
all the families somehow connected, and a strange kiss is welcome as
varying the flavour. It is a sign of religious communion among the
Methodists--the old people enjoy it at their love-feasts, and the young
take kindly to the godly example. There is no such county on earth for
"kiss-in-the-ring" at teas and picnics--old and young, rich and poor,
pastors and flock, run after one another, chasing and doubling and
tumbling, and then "smack, smack," and the captives are led back with
eyes sparkling and lips watering for more runs and more kisses. Pious
elders see their young ministers dashing after the maidens, lifting
up their chins, and kissing them on the lips, and holding them in
tight embrace the while, and they just nod to one another and smile,
as who should say, "Bless the dear lambs, lev 'em enjoy themselves
while they'm young." But only say "dance," and the dear old faces are
troubled with visions of the "pit" yawning beneath their feet. There
are different ways of kissing in different parishes, so a young man
may tell in the dark what parish a girl comes from by the way she
acts, if only he has had sufficient practice. It all comes to the same
thing, though the maidens think themselves slighted if not kissed often
enough. As a rule they get on very well.
The common furze which blooms perpetually has, on that account, got
mixed up with kissing; and when a girl is asked, "When is kissing out
of season?" her ready answer is, "When the furze is out of bloom;" that
is to say, never. The rich chrome yellow is very seductive, but the
thorns!
In the south, when a maid is disappointed in love she takes to her
bed, and is waited upon by the rest of the family, just as though she
were passing through a sickness known to the pharmacopæia. It is a
matter of public interest; and the maid is said to be "wisht" about it,
and going into a "decline." Generally, it comes all right again, and
the maid gets up and walks out with her young man, and receives the
congratulations of the parish. Then things are hurried up, and the end
comes.
[Illustration: AN OLD CORNER, ST IVES.]
CHAPTER XVI
The girls learn early that "it is not good for man to live alone," and
never forget it. It is the one text that sticks, and they make the
running early for the boys, who are a shy and awkward lot, and want
encouragement at first. Then the boys wake up, and the girls catch
them, as they intended to do when they first started; and the boys
grow into men, and are never "alone" any more. Marriages may be made
in heaven for other folks, but the Cornish maidens like them better on
earth, and please themselves pretty much in the matter. Misfits will
happen sometimes, but they have a nice, soft, easy way of their own,
and slip through life "as well as moast, and better'n some."
The women make very good wives, and seldom become acquainted with the
learned president of the Divorce Court; and if they don't believe
the men are "saints," they wink the other eye and say little. A
country-woman, tired of her bargain, inquired of a solicitor where she
could get a bottle of the "drops" for the dissolution of her marriage,
apparently thinking that nothing weaker than legal aquafortis, or Dutch
drops, would be any good to dissolve the bond. Very few Cornish women
have figured in the Divorce Court, which stands to their credit, so
many being the wives of sailors at sea nine months out of the year,
or of miners in foreign lands, whom they may not see for years after
a brief honeymoon. In the Cornish version of the old mystery play of
the Deluge, willing obedience to the husband is shown in the dialogue
between Noah and his spouse. Noah says it is time to get into the ark,
and the lady says, "Oh, master dear! I will do everything like as thou
wishest." In the Chester play on the same subject the wife of Noah is a
perverse, wilful, passionate woman, who will not go into the ark unless
every one of her "gossipes" go with her. And when her sons get her in
by superior force, she gives poor Noah a slap in the face, saying,
"Have that for thy note!" The unknown Cornish translator changed
the note to suit his audience. A married woman makes the best of her
bargain, and finds "Oh, master dear!" better than fisticuffs.
+--------------------+
| NOTICE. |
| ALL WHO WANT |
| A HAPPY HOME, |
| TRY CORNWALL. |
+--------------------+
The women take a pride in doing little things for their
husbands--polishing their Sunday boots, brushing and putting away
their clothes, and turning them out spick-and-span, like dandies. A
man isn't allowed to look after anything but his sea-boots and oileys,
if he's a fisher; or his working togs, if some other trade. When there
are girls in a family the boys are "tended" like little princes; and
when the girls marry they look after their husbands so carefully that
they seldom stray far away. Ladies who write social conundrums to
the newspapers, and ask how it is that they only get a bit of their
husbands, and that bit not worth the having, should live in a Cornish
village for a season, and keep their eyes open. Not very exciting, to
be sure, but, if all is true, worth the experiment. The beautiful
influence of climate comes in, "and so it is; and you must put up with
it, my dear," is the grease-box which makes the wheels run smoothly.
The women keep shop in the small towns and villages whilst the men
go to sea, or fishing, or whatever work they profess to do. A bell
tinkles when you open the door, and, by-and-by, the missus comes into
view, wiping her hands on her apron. She may have what's wanted, but
generally she's "run out," and is expecting it within a week or so. She
goes on wiping her hands, and looks as contented as though she had sold
something. Then the little shops look like a dry-goods store after an
earthquake, and if the thing wanted isn't on top it is not much good
looking for it.[G] It's just their way, and the business flourishes
like a plant in native soil. Sometimes the post-office is mixed up
with the "business," and a dear little cherub sits up aloft somewhere
and watches over the property of the Postmaster-General. Letters and
parcels muddle through, somehow, which is proof positive that the age
of miracles is not over and done with.
[G] An enterprising huckster exhibited the following signboard:--
BIBLES, BELLOWS AND BOOTS. GODLY
BUKES AND GRINDING STONES, TROUSERS,
TESTAMENTS, AND TEA KITTLES, EVERYTHING
BOUGHT AND SOLD HERE EXCEPT TREACLE.
BEST PRICE GIVEN FOR WHALEBONE STAZE
BY I. W. NINNIS.
For the spectator a wedding is a very dull and slow affair now, even
in out-of-the-way districts and in the fishing coves and villages,
where the old customs have struggled hard to live. Young people are
married all the same, but much of the joy at the life that is to be has
been gradually elbowed out of the ceremony, and all that belongs to it.
It used to be a very different sort of thing when the people were more
prone to dancing and fiddling and feasting, and only half enjoyed a
thing unless all their world enjoyed with them. The Bookworm chanced on
some faded letters describing some of the merry-makings not more than a
century ago, when a wedding was an event, not for John and Mary merely,
but for the whole parish. The fiddler skipped before the happy pair
to church, and every one, not in the procession with wedding favours,
lined up, and made nice little speeches, as the spirit moved them;
and the spirit moved them so often that the bride had few blushes to
spare when she reached the chancel steps. And then the feast and dance
and mystic rites, concluding with the bedding of the bride. Then more
dancing for the guests; and more young couples vowed that day to marry
within the year than on any other occasion. It was a "quiet" wedding
which finished up with a three days' rejoicing.
If John and Mary lived on a farm, or were servants at the "big house,"
then there were high jinks in the great kitchen and squire's hall, and
no one merrier than parson and clerk, who led the revels with voice
and flute, and the schoolmaster brought his fiddle, if he had one. A
wedding was a very human affair, and everybody's business, not so very
long ago. In the fishing villages there was more colour and boisterous
mirth than elsewhere, for the men dressed their boats, and made sport,
and sang and danced, and got drunk and sober, and then drunk again,
until the morn broke. And the next day, and the next to that, the pot
was kept a-boiling, and then the women captured their men and toddled
them home, and hid away their boots, until the delirium of the wedding
march had passed away.
No more feasting and fiddling now. The "day" is kept secret, and the
"happy pair" arrive, somehow, before a registrar, and are hitched up,
according to law. Mary may marry John now, and no one be the wiser--a
cold, cheerless, colourless thing is this sort of wedding.
A funeral is still an event, and touches hidden springs, which must
gush forth, and will take no denial. The people have a superstitious
reverence for the dead. The doors and windows of the chamber are thrown
open for the unfettered spirit to escape, and, one by one, neighbours
and friends take a last look at familiar features. To be "a 'ansum
corpse, white as a lily and light as cobwebs," is a consolation to an
old rip, when looking at his wasted hands. A village funeral is a long
procession with sacred hymns. Then a cup of tay and a bit of curranty
cake amongst the women, who talk and sigh, and tell each other of their
own complaints, and the complaints which carried off their friends.
Widow-women are great at funerals, which freshen up their memories. "My
man was teeled a year agone, an' I do miss 'un," says number one. "Ess,
fath, my dear, and no wan do knaw what tes like them that's lonely,"
says number two. "Tes bitter cauld in winter, an' I tells my maid her
poor father would be weth me now ef 'twadn't for want of bref. Tes a
wisht complaint, that," continues number one, sighing. "'Twadn't like
that weth my man, fur he had es bref up to the last," replies number
two, triumphantly vindicating the superior merits of her dear departed.
Widow-women don't often change their names. If without money they
are not tempted; and if they have enough they may tempt, but seldom
yield. The next-of-kin are very watchful over the shekels; and the man
who marries a widow with relations does not always enter paradise. A
widow-woman is looked on in the light of an investment. Here is a short
story. Mrs. Treloar was a widow-woman with a bit of property--just
comfortable, as times go. She was no great beauty, but the chapel
steward cast a longing eye towards her, and wished to lose no time.
Said he: "We doan't want to go coorting, do us? Waste of precious time
for us who are both old enuf to know our own minds." Said she: "You
knaw, s'poase, ef I do marry agen, boy Tom'll have the property?" Then
he: "Why, es that so? Then you won't sell at that price, I'm thinkin'.
Good day, my dear." No harm done.
Guy made the observation that the people we saw about were not much
given to frills. He supposed they had them packed up somewhere, but
there being no swagger concerts, and bands on swagger piers, with
swagger subscription tickets for the season, no one unpacked them. It
would be too absurd to go about freshly dollied up, three times daily,
to show one's self to sea-cliffs, and sea-sands, moss-grown monoliths,
and British tumuli, and all that sort of thing. The piskies would
laugh. The Bookworm remembered a French professor writing that when he
visited the Acropolis at Athens he removed his rings and watchchain
as being too much out of keeping with his surroundings. He said he
smiled at the confession at the time as "too Frenchy," but it had a new
meaning for him here. Wherever we went no one we met seemed to want
to show off their "frills" to one another, or to the hoary fragments
of antiquity permitted to survive--one would just as soon think of
dressing up and showing off in a museum of extinct animals. It must
take a lot off a woman's brain, Guy said, to know that she need not
unpack her things; and he supposed that was one reason why so many
took their fresh air and sunshine treatment now on Cornish moors and
beaches, instead of crowding stuffy old German spas, where it was the
rule to put in time in showing new "frills" to one another.
The curiosity of the people inhabiting highways, byways, and villages
as to the going and coming of strangers has been so gratified of late,
that little short of a dancing bear would cause a woman to run to her
door, and stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The advent of the hatless
one in many colours, making the sun to blush, or in oilskins in wet
weather, seemingly satisfied the native, and made every other vagary,
hats or no hats, clothes or none, not only possible, but something to
be looked for amongst strangers. A tall, thin lady, showing much wrist
and leg, swinging a stick, and wearing her hair short, passed along the
road, taking it easy at five miles an hour. She was a new arrival at a
whitewashed house with thatched roof at the end of the village. We were
chatting to an old woman in a big blue sunbonnet (called a "gook"), who
had rested her basket on the top step of the market cross.
"Stranger?" asked Guy.
"Iss, sure; we doan't grow that soart in this soil, but they may wan
day, for I do mind when they ded'n grow mangel-wuzzels. What do I caal
'em? Why, I do caal 'em great he-shees--they'm spoiled fur women, and
bain't vitty fur men."
This was a wayside verdict on a choice variety of the sort.
[Illustration: ON THE SANDS.]
[Illustration: THE PILLORY, LOOE.]
CHAPTER XVII
Cornish humour has its practical side with a tang. "To curing your old
cow till she died," is native. A candidate for Parliamentary honours
once sent the freemen of the borough a silver teapot, as a prize to be
sailed for at the forthcoming regatta. The freemen returned it with
the remark that "the taypot do not draw well enuf." The teapot came
back again filled with golden guineas, which so improved its "drawing"
powers that the freemen kept it. A Cornishman likes a story about some
one who comes out on top by a trick; or one which hides his meaning by
a play of words, until the situation is revealed in a flash. We picked
up a few specimens.
AS DEEP AS OLD HUGH.
Two brothers went a-fishing, and one was a scholar, with a reputation
beyond his attainments, which, in fact, were limited to reading and
writing, after a fashion, and reckoning with his head. The other was
a man of simple and trustful nature, and was often puzzled, but let
things go without inquiring deeply into them. The scholar was called
Hugh, and as he managed to come out on top on most occasions, he was
considered both cunning and wise, and people encouraged their children
to cram themselves with book-learning in order to become "as deep as
old Hugh;" and "deep as old Hugh" became a proverb which he locally
shared with old Nick, who, up to this time, had the monopoly. The
simple brother was Dick. Hugh and Dick were partners in a small boat
and nets, and earned a poor living by their trammels, and drag-nets,
and crab-pots. What they caught they equally divided, but Hugh always
had the best half, which puzzled Dick; but scratch his head as he
might, he could never get to the bottom of the mystery, everything
being so fair and aboveboard, and done in the light of day. One day
they were out and caught six mackerel and six scads. Now, scads are
of small value, and yet Dick got them all, and Hugh all the mackerel.
Hugh did the sharing: "Here's a mackerel for me, and a scad for you,"
said he, making a division; "and a scad for you, and a mackerel for me;
and a mackerel for me and a scad for you," and so on, until _all_ the
scads fell to Dick, and _all_ the mackerel to himself. Hugh's system
was perfect, and, if it could be adapted, might be depended on to break
the bank of Monte Carlo every night. "How is it that I've got all the
scads?" asked Dick. "It's all right," replied Hugh, pleasantly. "And if
you don't think so, I'll do it over again--here's a mackerel for me and
a scad for you, and a scad for you and a mackerel for me," and so on to
the end, until Dick got _all_ the scads as before.
[Illustration: MAKING CRAB POTS.]
"He would have settled the fiscal question in no time," said Guy. "'A
mackerel for me and a scad for you'--a fair motto for protectionists."
The game was played in the Far East with the Mikado, but the Czar got
the scads. It's safest played with the blind.
THE MAN WHO SLEPT WITH A BADGER.
Guy wanted something done to a shoe, and walked into a room where a
man was sitting, waxing a long thread, and whistling to the thrushes
and blackbirds hung around in cages. The fellow was most obliging,
Guy told us, and put aside the work he was doing, and asked several
questions about himself--where he came from; where he was going; how
long he intended to stay; and whether his father and mother were
living? Then the cobbler told him about himself, and how many of the
Tremains--he being called Reuben Tremain--lay in the parish churchyard.
All this time Guy's shoe rested on his apron. Just a few stitches
were all that was wanted, and Mr. Tremain got in one when he started
talking of London, what a "braave plaace" it must be, and what a "pure
few" people it contained, all being true that he had heard. Guy forgot
about his shoe, and gave an entertaining sketch of a London crowd
in Fleet Street on Lord Mayor's Day, and the Lord Mayor's show was
described in his best style. And then the Crystal Palace on a fête
day, and on a Handel Festival day, and the Houses of Parliament, and
Madame Tussaud's! Guy made the Arabian Nights' Entertainments look
small, and he began to fear that Reuben Tremain would be paralyzed with
admiration, and unable to put in another stitch. All the morning was
gone, and Guy still sat on a low three-legged stool, with one shoe off,
as happy as any Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack. He really was enjoying
himself with the simple Reuben.
"Ded 'ee ever hear tell ov a man up to Lunnon who slept with a
badger?" asked the cobbler, at length piercing the shoe with his awl
for another stitch.
"A real, live badger?"
"Ess, sure, live enough."
"Never," said Guy, turning up his nose.
"Why, a badger----" And he put his thumb and finger to his nostrils,
with a sign which meant more than words.
"I knaw a man," said the cobbler, confidentially, "who have slept with
a badger for ten year, come next Michaelmas Fair goose day. And he got
so accustomed to it that he cudn't sleep apart. Would 'ee like to see
the badger?"
"Very much."
"And the man?"
"Oh, certainly. One of Nature's freaks."
"Two ov em!" said Reuben, solemnly, putting in the last stitch, and
handing the shoe to Guy.
"You'd like to see what's to be seen, s'poase?"
The cobbler whistled shrilly whilst untying his apron, and a woman with
dark hazel eyes, and a face aquiline and refined, appeared. Guy made
his best bow.
"The gentleman do want to see the badger that the man slept with," said
Reuben, slowly.
"And the man, I should like to see the man who had such extraordinary
taste," added Guy, saying something just to enable him to look at the
woman without being rude.
The woman reddened, and her eyes sparkled.
"Tell un, my dear, what name you owned to avoor you was married," said
the cobbler.
"Badger; and too good for you," replied the lady.
"That's the badger, and this is the man," said the cobbler, with a
smile.
Guy was very cross when he told the story. Only to think that he had
painted London town and London wit in such colours; and then to be
dropped on by a simple cobbler before a handsome woman! But he wasn't
cross long, and he went out and bought a pretty chain, and gave it to
the cobbler to lead his "badger" with. So Guy and the cobbler cried
quits.
THE PARSON TRUMPS.
To be able to do a "clane off trick" is to be the hero in a parish
for generations, and Parson Arscott was quoted at all the fairs as
a masterpiece for doing the thing clane off at a horse deal. The
story goes that the reverend gentleman attended Summercourt Fair,
which is famed throughout the land. If you can't get what you want at
Summercourt Fair, you must be hard to please, for the lame and the
blind are there, the young and the aged, the sound and unsound, and
you buy on your own judgment and without warranty. Parson Arscott knew
a good horse when he saw it, and went early and looked about him. In
the thick of the fair the parson went and examined the horses' tails,
and so attracted attention to himself, for every one knows that to tell
a horse's age you must open its mouth, and look at its teeth. And the
curious part of the business was that the parson knew as much about
the animal he was handling by lifting its tail as other people did by
opening its mouth. At length, parson came to a nice little cob that
suited him, and the deal began. It was a weary deal, but parson was
firm. "I've looked at his tail, and I know he's rising five," said he;
and he was right,--whatever the parson said about the cob was right,
and yet he never once looked at its mouth. There was a trifle of five
pounds between them when the shades of evening began to fall, and no
hope of any advance on the part
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