J. Henry Harris

“ A Bucca is not fair to see, being human but in form, with a dark face, like weather-beaten rock, and big head with tangled masses of fine seaweed for hair; but he has power to change at will into fish or bird, though not into anything with a human soul. So when the maiden looked upon the prince, she shrank from a thing so loathsome, and he rushed down the nearest cliff and into the sea, and sought companionship with fishes, until he learnt the ways of a Bucca, and could exercise dominion in his new element. ”

“ A deep-sea fisher, with a boat of his own, is the most independent man in the universe, having no landlord, paying no rent, burdened with no tax on boat and gear, going and coming as he pleases. He reaps without sowing, and is "protected" within the three-mile limit by gunboats in a land of "free trade." A blue-water fisher is not ashamed of his calling, hiding himself under the title of "artist" in shrimps, or "purveyor" of lobsters, or "merchant" in mackerel, and the rest. A fisherman, honest fisherman, is not too proud to be called what he is. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Very little time was lost, even in the old days, when there was anything to tell, and Cornwall was the eye, and ear, and tongue.
The Dodman, the highest headland in the county, is one of those places of solitude where depression will not stay. Hour after hour one [Pg 260] may pass upon the bluff headland without seeing a human soul or hearing a human voice, and yet feel one's spirits elated in the silence. With a mere half-turn of the head one can see the whole Cornish coast, from the Lizard to the Rame, and beyond, and all the ocean traffic passing up and down. ”

“ He supposed if this long-nosed old Quaker had lived a thousand or two years ago he would have been turned into a piskie, and a fine crop of legends would have sprung up. We failed to trace any legend or folk-lore about china clay. It was all modern—modern discovery, modern uses, modern shipments; the only thing fabulous seemed to be the inexhaustible supply and the value of certain spots free from impurities. One might almost fancy legend at work—the wicked giant and the sainted virgin crumbling into kaolin rather than be the heroine of the romance with wedding bell accompaniment. ”

“ A deep-sea fisher has a good eye for colour, and every shade and tint upon the face of the sea and heavens he knows as well as any artist. Fish colours he knows to a shade of a shade, and when the sky has a queer look, he likens it to "mackerel" tints, and every tint is an omen to him. ”

“ What a gull will eat, and want no liver pill, would make any other respectable bird on the wing bilious; but the gull is always bright and cheerful, and ready for another gorge, and its natural store of gastric juice would set up a chemical factory. When fish is scarce the gull goes inland and feeds upon the fields, or joins the noble army of poachers over gentlemen's preserves.
On the wing the gull is the spirit of poetry, and in storm the spirit of the tempest ”

“ Variety is one of the attractions of the county. For a tourist who rides a bike or a motor, the variety is perpetual, and he must pull up even now and again and ask himself what has become of the last sensation. If you can rely upon your legs, you had best walk from village to village until you are where you wish to be. To lose one's self is an advantage sometimes; and you can't go very far wrong. When at Newquay, breathing in the Atlantic on the north, you are only twenty miles from your friends breathing in the soft airs of the sunny south. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ The town seems to have grown as wanted, every house pushing its neighbour towards the centre. The wealth of Ophir in black, glittering tin is said to underlie the town, and there is no doubt about the tin being there, for the nuggies may be heard working on their silver anvils, and bright lights dance upon the surface during autumnal mists. ”

“ Surely men may live in beauty until they cease to see it.
We were out piskie-hunting to-day, all except Guy, who already had his eye upon the stream which passed the old mill, then broadened where it could be seen glistening in the sunshine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just for a wonder, it was neither saint nor piskie who was quoted in connection with blackberries, but Old Nick himself, who ate so many one thirteenth of September that he felt real ill, and he cursed the fruit with such a terrible curse that, after the fatal thirteenth, the fruit is said to be unfit for food, and is allowed to rot where it grows.
If the blackberry isn't a native, it ought to be, considering the impudent way in which it takes possession of the hedges and fences, scrambling over everything, and sucking in all the sunshine which comes out of the sky. ”

“ Almost anything under the sun may be put into a pie, and no one be the wiser, for the crust puts on a brave face and hides the poverty (should there be poverty) underneath. No end of stories have been told of pies. A person in a sarcastic mood has been known to send a neighbour a pie with a halter in it; but the piskies did something better than that, and sent the barren wife of the Earl of Cornwall a pie which, when opened, was filled with sweet herbs and wild flowers, in the midst of which a little heir lay smiling. ”

“ Guy fancied that there was not so much "expression" in the faces and dramatic action with the people we met here as in other places, and hazarded a guess that this was a result of looking at so much inexpressionless clay. There is not much in clay to lay hold of the imagination, except its whiteness, and the purer the blanker it is; but, then, smirches in clay would cause a sensation, like the entrance of a lady with a past into a party of sweet young things playing at goodness in a social comedy. There is little in the article suggestive of anything but money. ”

“ The Bookworm said Cornwall was a bigger place than it looked, or than could be gripped between the arms of the Atlantic, because of the tributaries it sent all over the world, every man taking with him a bit of Cornish earth and love, and setting up a new colony beyond the seas, just as the old Greeks carried with them some of the fire from the ancient hearths. ”

“ But he was no match for Yseult, who threw herself into the arms of her lover, saying—
"There are three trees of constant hue,
The ivy, the holly, and the yew;
They bear leaves summer and winter;
Tristan! I am thine for ever."
"A woman drove three chariots abreast through Temple Bar that time," said Guy, laughing. "If women practised at the bar to-day, it would be a bit awkward for the judges, for they'd make holes in judgments as wise as Solomon's." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A strange mixture of blood—Great Britain in epitome—may be found in one small station we halted at, namely, two Irish, one Scotch, one Novocastrian, and one Devonian—not a dash of Cornish blood at a Cornish station. A native might wink the other eye if his own flesh and blood did a bit of free trading in spirits and tobacco, and only run with his "two left legs" after a culprit related to himself. The men, as a rule, have seen the world, read a great deal, and pass their time in thinking—not very much else to do when on duty but watch and think. ”

“ Now, at the King's court there was a "wise man," who smelt a rat as soon as ever he heard about the bramble being in bloom, in season and out of season, whenever the prince happened to be there; so he turned the young prince into a chough, and told him to fly over to the herdsman's house and look around. The Cornish chough was common enough in those days, and the old witch took no notice of the black bird with red beak hopping about the garden, its head on one side, and one eye on Olwen the fair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And then the wind, blow which way it will, must sweep this headland, bringing with it the scents of heather and wild flower untainted, as though in all the world there were no such things as smoke, and factories, and areas of pollution. For miles the cliffs are covered with tall bracken, green in summer, but quickly touched with brown and gold. These cliffs teem with life which we cannot see but know to be there; but feathered life is abundant and everywhere in evidence, flying in air, clustering on the rocks, or diving and swimming when fish abound. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”