Robert Stephen Hawker

“ Beneath, on three sides, spread the moor, dotted here and there with a grey old church, that crouched toward the shadow of its low Saxon battlemented tower, as if it still sought shelter, after so many ages, from the perils of surrounding barbarism. On the fourth side swelled the sea. But the brow of this hill, like that of many others in the west, dropped into the shape of a mighty circular bowl—a kind of hollow valley turfed with grass, and surrounded by a rim; an amphitheatre, however, large enough to hold five thousand people at once. ”

“ There, on a green and rushy knoll and underneath a gnarled and wind-swept tree, a damsel in the blossom of youth stood leaning on her shepherd-staff: her companion, a peasant boy, drew back, half shaded by a rock. Sheep of the native breed, the long-forgotten Cornish Knott, gathered around. As he drew nigh, the stranger discovered that the maiden was tall and well formed, and that her rounded limbs had the mould and movement of a natural grace that only health and exercise could develop or bestow. ”

“ A sheep-track—for no other visible path will render guidance along the moor—leads on to Kilmarth Tor, from the brow of which lofty crag the eye can embrace the expanse of the two seas which are the boundaries of Cornwall on the right and left. There, too, looms in the distance rocky Carradon, with the valley of the Hurlers at its foot. These tall shapes of granite, grim and grotesque, were once, as local legends say, nine bold upstanding Cornish men who disdained the Sabbath-day ”

“ Dimly visible by the darker hue of the crushed grass, these straight and narrow roads led the traveller along from chapelry to cell, or to some distant and solitary cave. On the one hand, in this scenery of the past, they would guide us to the “Chapel-piece of St. Morwenna,” a grassy glade along the gorse-clad cliff, where to this very day neither will bramble cling nor heather grow; and, on the other, to the walls and roof and the grooved stone for the waterflow, which still survive, halfway down a headlong precipice, as the relics of St. [3] Morwenna’s Well. ”

“ ANTONY PAYNE, A CORNISH GIANT [77]
On the brow of a lofty hill, crested with stag-horned trees, commanding a deep and woodland gorge wherein “the Crooks of Combe” [78] (the curves of a winding river) urge onward to the “Severn Sea,” still survive the remains of famous old Stowe,—that historic abode of the loyal and glorious Sir Beville, [79] the Bayard of old Cornwall, “sans peur et sans reproche,” in the thrilling Stuart wars. No mansion on the Tamar-side ever accumulated so rich and varied a store of association and event. ”

“ Now take ye good heed, Cornish maidens, how ye put on vain apparel to win love! And cast down your eyes, all ye damsels of the west, and look meekly on the ground! Be ye ever good and gentle, tender and true; and when ye see your own image in the glass, and ye begin to be lifted up with the loveliness of that shadowy thing, call to mind the maiden of the vale of Morwenna, her noble eyes and comely countenance, her vesture of price, and the glittering ring! ”

“ Above them lowers the Devil’s Wring, a pile of granite masses, lifted, as though by giant or demon strength, one upon another; [93] but the upper rocks vast and unwieldy, and the lower gradually lessening downward, until they rest, poised, on a pivot of stone so slender and small that it seems as though the wind sweeping over the moor would overtopple it with a breath; and yet centuries many and long have rolled over the heath, and still it stands unshaken and unswerved. ”

“ Such has been the look that I myself have witnessed in many a poor disfigured corpse. The death-struggle of the conscious victim in the strong and cruel grasp of the remorseless sea was depicted in harsh and vivid lines on the brow of the dead.
But one day my strange old man, Peter Burrow, came to me in triumphant haste with the loud greeting, “Sir, we have got a noble corpse down on your beach! We have just laid him down above high-water mark, and he is as comely a body as a man shall see!” ”

“ A crowd of people had gathered from the land, on horseback and on foot, women as well as men, drawn together by the tidings of a probable wreck. Into their midst, and to their astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger: he snatched from a terrified old dame her red Welsh cloak, cast it loosely around him, and bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young damsel, who had ridden her father’s horse down to the beach to see the sight. ”

“ She stood—she gazed upon her own fair countenance and form, and worshipped! “Now all good angels succour thee, my Alice, and bend Sir Beville’s soul! Fain am I to greet thee wedded wife before I die! I do yearn to hold thy children on my knee! Often shall I pray to-night that the Granville heart may yield! Ay, thy victory shall be thy mother’s prayer.” “Prayer!” was the haughty answer: “now, with the eyes that I see in that glass, and with this vesture meet for a queen, I lack no trusting prayer!” ”

“ None, high or low, during the lifetime of the squire, were allowed with impunity to injure or harass his cross-grained jester, and many a mischievous escapade was hushed up, and the sufferer soothed or pacified by money or influence. When gout and old age had imprisoned Mr. Arscott in his easy-chair, Black John snoozed among the [88] ashes of the vast wood fires of the hearth, or lay coiled upon his rug like some faithful mastiff, watching every look and gesture of his master; starting up to fill the pipe or the tankard of old ale, and then crouching again. ”

“ It was indeed a scene to be looked on once only in a human life. On a ridge of rock, just left bare by the falling tide, stood a man, my own servant; he had come out to see my flock of ewes, and had found the awful wreck. There he stood, with two dead sailors at his feet, whom he had just drawn out of the water stiff and stark. The bay was tossing and seething with a tangled mass of rigging, sails, and broken fragments of a ship; the billows rolled up yellow with corn, for the cargo of the vessel had been foreign wheat ”

“ Trees stand, like warders, beside their graves; and the Saxon and shingled church, “the mother of us all,” dwells in silence by, to watch and wail over her safe and slumbering dead. It recalls the imagery of the Holy Book wherein we read of the gathered relics of the ancient slain: “And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.” ”

“ But beside these travellers by sea, there would be found ever and anon, in some solitary farmhouse inaccessible by wheels, and only to be approached by some treacherous foot-path along bog and mire, a strange and nameless guest—often a foreigner in language and apparel—who had sought refuge with the native family, and who paid in strange but golden coins for his shelter and food; some political or private adventurer, perchance, to whom secrecy and concealment were safety and life, and who more than once lived and died in his solitary hiding-place on the moor. ”

“ The loyal soldier of a Stuart king—he was that stately Granville who lived a hero’s life and died a warrior’s death! He was her star. Now there was signal made of banquet in the halls of Stowe, of wassail and dance. The messenger had sped, and Alice of the Combe would be there. Robes, precious and many, were unfolded from their rest, and the casket poured forth jewel and gem, that the maiden might stand before the knight victorious. ”

“ No man ever yet became happily great [97] or joyfully distinguished without that kindling strength, the affectionate presence of a woman.
“He who Joy would win,
Must share it: Happiness was born a twin.”
Such was the solace that arrived to soothe the dreary path of Daniel Gumb. He wooed and won a maiden of his native village, who, amid the rugged rocks and appellatives of Cornwall, had the soft Italian name of Florence. But where, amid the utter poverty of his position and prospects, could he find the peaceful and happy wedding-roof that should bend over him and his bride? ”

“ The unaltered scenery of the legend still [167] survives, and, like the field of the forty footsteps in another history, the place is still visited by those who take interest in the supernatural tales of old. The pathway leads along a moorland waste, where large masses of rock stand up here and there from the grassy turf, and clumps of heath and gorse weave their tapestry of golden and purple garniture on every side. ”

“ But Daniel died “an old man full of days,” and he was carried after all ad plures, and to the silent society of men, in the churchyard of the parish wherein stood afar off his rocky home. He won and he still deserves a nook of remembrance among the legendary sons of the west, “the giants” of Keltic race, “the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” His mind, though rough-hewn, like a block of his native granite, must have been well balanced: resolute and firm reliance on a man’s own resources, and disdain of external succour, have ever been a signal of native genius. ”

“ The lessons of the legend of Daniel Gumb are simple and earnest and strong. The words of supernatural wisdom might be graven as an added superscription on his rock, “Whatsoever thou doest, do it [108] with all thine heart.” If thou be a man friendless and alone, the slave of the hammer or the axe, and doomed to the sweat of labour day by day till the night shall come that no man can work, “aide-toi et Dieu t’aidera”—aid thyself and God will succour thee. ”

“ Another time he strode along the path from Kilkhampton village to Stowe with a bacon-hog of three hundredweight thrown across his shoulders, and merely because a taunting butcher had doubted his strength for the feat. Among the excellences of Sir Beville’s Giant, it is told of him that he was by no means clumsy or uncouth, as men of unusual size sometimes are, but as nimble and elastic, and as capable of swift and dexterous movement, as a light and muscular man. ”

“ My soul! my soul! a happier choice be thine;
Thine the hushed valley and the lonely sod:
False dream, far vision, hollow hope resign,
Fast by our Tamar spring—alone with God!”
Then arrived, to people this bleak and lonely boundary with the thoughts and doctrines of the Cross, the piety and the legend of St. Morwenna. This was the origin of her name and place.
There dwelt in Wales in the ninth century a Keltic king, Breachan [5] by name—it was from him that the words “Brecon” and “Brecknock” received origin; and Gladwys was his wife and queen. ”

“ His master’s house was surrounded with all kinds of tame animals and birds so bold and confiding, from long safety and intercourse, that the rooks would come down at a call and pick up food like pigeons at the very feet of a man. Among the familiar creatures of the Hall were two enormous toads: these were especial favourites with Mr. Arscott, who was a very Chinese in his fondness for the bat and the toad, and who used to feed them very often with his own hands. One morning the family were aroused by sounds near the porch, of battle and fight. ”

“ Money had become scarce, and the resources of the cave began to fail. More than one armed king’s cutter were seen day and night hovering off the land. Foreigners visited the house with tidings of peril. So he “who came with the water went with the wind.” His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a turbulent storm. A wrecker, who had gone to watch the shore, saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. By-and-by a rocket hissed up from the Gull Rock, a small islet with a creek on the landward side which had been the scene of many a run of smuggled cargo. ”

“ They share and they embrace those instinctive tendencies of their Celtic nature which in all ages have led their race to cherish a credence in the existence and power of witches, fairies, and the force of charms and spells. It is well known that all such supernatural influences on ordinary life are singularly congenial to the ancient and the modern Cornish mind. I do not exaggerate when I affirm at all events my own persuasion, that two-thirds of the total inhabitants of Tamar-side implicitly believe in the power of the Mal Occhio, as the Italians name it, or the Evil Eye. ”

“ There her timbers slowly moulder still, and by-and-by her dust will mingle in the scenery of death with the ashes of those living hearts and hands that manned her, in their last unavailing launch and fruitless struggle for the mastery of life! But the history of the Alonzo is not yet closed. Three years afterwards a letter arrived from the Danish consul at a neighbouring seaport town, addressed to myself as the vicar of the parish; and the hope of the writer was that he might be able to ascertain through myself, for two anxious and grieving parents in Denmark, tidings of their lost son. ”

“ He was “the parson,” in canonical phrase—that is to say, The Person, the somebody of consequence among his own people. These men were not, however, smoothed down into a monotonous aspect of life and manners by this remote and secluded existence. They imbibed, each in his own peculiar circle, the hue of surrounding objects, and were tinged into distinctive colouring and character by many a contrast of scenery and people. ”

“ How’s that, sir?” “Are you sure, Tony,” I rejoined, “that there are such things in existence at all?” “Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice! He was out once by night for wreck (my father watched the coast like most of the old people formerly) , and it came to pass that he was down by the duck-pool on the sand at low-water tide, and all at once he heard music in the sea. Well, he croped on behind a rock, like a coastguard-man watching a boat, and got very near the noise. ”