S. Baring-Gould

“ Owing mainly to the remoteness of this mountain from the habitations of men, and from the mischievous activity of stone quarriers for buildings, there are scattered about this stately five-pointed tor some very interesting relics of antiquity, of an antiquity that goes back to prehistoric times. Among these most interesting of all are the beehive huts that cluster about the granite rocks like the mud nests of swallows. ”

“ One day the rain came down in torrents, and the clergy did not relish being wet to the skin, so they decided not to beat the bounds. However, cross and banners would not be done out of their little flirt, and to the astonishment of all, away they trotted, none bearing them, and made the rounds by themselves. Popular tradition is prudently silent as to when this took place.
That Winnow should have been forced to leave Cornwall after his father had addressed the king in such forcible but inelegant terms as “Tyrannical whelp of the unclean lioness of Dumnonia,” is not surprising. ”

“ It may seem paradoxical, but I contend that for intellectual culture it is a great loss to the Cornish to have abandoned their native tongue. To be bi-lingual is educative to the intellect in a very marked degree. In their determination not to abandon their tongue, the Welsh show great prudence. I have no hesitation in saying that a Welsh peasant is much ahead, intellectually, of the English peasant of the same social position, and I attribute this mainly to the fact of the greater agility given to his brain in having to think and speak in two languages. ”

“ Trewartha Marsh occupies the bed of a lake that decants over a granite lip into the valley of the Lynher. At some remote period the miners cut down the lip and let off the water, and then turned over the lake bed. A former owner of Trebartha Hall gave to his daughters on their marriage heavy gold rings from the precious ore washed out of the gravel of Trewartha. A stroll among the refuse-heaps that occupy the lake-bed among lanes of water and stretches of morass will show the visitor how great was the industry of the ancient streamers. ”

“ On one occasion, as he and his men were rowing a cargo ashore they were pursued by a revenue boat. Tristram Davey, as I will call this man, knew this bit of coast perfectly. There was a reef of sharp slate rock that ran across the little bay, like a very keen saw with the teeth set outward, and there was but one point at which this saw could be crossed. Tristram knew the point to a nicety, even in the gloaming, and he made for it, the revenue boat following. ”

“ The story of the creation, subsequent history, and extinction of those English boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Bill of 1832, and which were commonly designated as pocket or rotten boroughs, is too curious an episode in Parliamentary history to be allowed to remain in the limbo of Parliamentary reports—​a charnel-house of the bones of facts—​unclothed with the personal reminiscences and local details which invest these dry bones with flesh, and give to them a living interest.
In a very few years there will not be a man alive who can recall the last election for them. ”

“ There is plenty and to spare in the west of England now, but we may feel grateful that we do not exist in such detestable weather, nor exposed to such sousing rains, nor have to stand against such deluges, as those which granite had to encounter. ”

“ Everyone has seen a chough, if only in a museum; and therefore knows the beautiful glossy black of the adult plumage, the long wings crossed over the back and extending beyond the squared tail, the long, slender red legs, and the brilliant red curved bill. But only those who have kept them know their marvellous docility. You may train a falcon to sit on your wrist and come down to the lure, with infinite labour ”

“ The islands belong to the Duchy of Cornwall, and thereby leased to the late Mr. Augustus Smith, who, firmly imbued with the notion that men must be manufactured by education rather than allowed to bring themselves up in independence, transported the population from the smaller islands and planted them about the schools. No doubt that the native originality, freshness, and force will be drilled out of the new generation, and they will all spell and think, and write and act alike. ”

“ Nothing can be added, but one word in caution. The whole is a little over-coloured. Scilly presents scenes of great interest, but the cliffs are by no means so fine as those of Land’s End, and far inferior to those of the Lizard. Nevertheless, island clusters have a charm of their own distinct from the scenery of the fringe of the mainland, and a cluster Scilly is, intricate, and presenting great variety. There are one hundred and forty-five islets, large and small, forty miles due west from Lizard Point, and twenty-eight west-by-south from Land’s End. ”

“ The hermit was undoubtedly a Cornish Briton, and Olaf was obliged to hold communication with him through an interpreter from Ireland or Wales.
The old man said to him, “There is a great future in store for thee, Olaf. Thou wilt have to pass through much conflict, but in the end wilt reign in thine own land; and when that comes to pass remember to advance the faith, and to use every opportunity to turn men from their idols.” ”

“ Camelford has no public buildings of interest. It is situate on very high ground, on a wind-blown waste 700 feet above the sea, exposed to furious gales from the Atlantic; but it has this advantage, that it forms headquarters for an excursion to the Bodmin moors, to Brown Willy (1375 feet) , and Rough Tor (1250 feet) . These tors, though by no means so high as those on Dartmoor, are yet deserving of a visit, on account of their bold outlines, the desolation of the wilderness out of which they rise, and the numerous relics of antiquity strewn over the moors about them. ”

“ In some it was close and secret; in others open and democratic. In some the electors were nominated by the patron; in others they maintained a measure of independence, and disposed of their votes to the highest bidder.
One of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs was Mitchell, Modishole, or, as it was sometimes called in error, S. Michael. It is a wretched hamlet on a bleak portion of the great backbone of Cornwall, exposed to every blast from the Atlantic, without trade, without manufacture, almost without agriculture, so poor and unremunerative is the soil. ”

“ Surely it affords an interest, and gives a zest to an excursion into Cornwall, when we know something of the founders of the churches, and they stand out before us as living, energetic characters, with some faults, but many virtues, and are to us no longer nuda nomina. ”

“ I believe that there does not live any single man who has actually explored all the isles of Scilly, stood upon every rock, climbed every hill, and searched on every island for its treasures of ancient barrows, plants, birds, cairns, and headlands. ”

“ A plan exists drawn by Mr. Blight before the well was as ruined as at present. It is a crying scandal that it should be allowed to remain unrestored. The altar-stone remains with a square depression in the middle to receive the portable altar placed there on such occasions as the chapel was used for mass.
Penzance, on the glorious Mount’s Bay, enjoys a warm and balmy climate, and scarlet geraniums scramble up the house-fronts, camellias bloom in the open air, and greenhouse rhododendrons flourish unprotected from frosts that never fall. ”

“ Now when the three years were ended, one day there came an extraordinary ebb-tide. And when the saint saw that there was a way dry, or almost dry, to the land, “Arise,” said he; “in God’s name let us go over;” and he bade his disciples follow him. “But,” said he, “let none go alone; let one hold my hand, and with his other hand hold his brother’s, and so let us advance in chain, and we shall peradventure be able to reach the land before [Pg 256] the tide turns and overwhelms all. Let us hold together, that the strong may support the weak, and that if one falls the others may lift him up.” ”

“ Since then the machinery employed advanced with strides till reaching perfection, when the need for any ceased in Cornwall and Devon, where nearly all mines have been abandoned. Barca tin can be raised so much more cheaply, being surface tin, that lode tin cannot compete with it in the market.
Now the mining districts of Cornwall are desolate. Heaps of refuse, gaunt engine-houses, with their chimneys, stand against the sky, hideous objects, and as useless as they are ugly. The Cornish miner [Pg 66] has gone abroad. ”

“ King Arthur has been so laid hold of by the romancers, and his story has been so embellished with astounding flourishes of the imagination, that we are inclined to doubt whether he ever existed, and all the more so because we find legend attached to him and associated with localities alike in Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland. ”

“ The ground occupied by Stamford was well chosen. A ridge of high ground running from the north to south parallel with the coast dips sharply down, and rises as sharply again to a grassy hill, from the southern end of which there is a still deeper cleft through which the road descends steeply to the left into the valley in which lies the little town of Stratton. On the top of this hill, the sides of which slope in all directions from the highest point to the edge of the plateau, the Parliamentary army lay. ”

“ The early history of Cornwall is inextricably mixed up with that of the saints who settled there, or who sprang from the native royal family. We have unhappily no annals, hardly a Cornish record, of those early times. Irish, Welsh, Bretons, have been wiser, and have preserved theirs; and it is to them we are forced to appeal to know anything of the early history of our peninsula. As to the saintly lives, it is true that they contain much fable ”

“ The whole of the Cornish moors, like Dartmoor, are strewn with prehistoric villages and towns of circular houses, sometimes within rings of rude walling that served as a protection to the settlement, and connected with enclosures for the cattle against wolves. But though in many cases the doorways remain, of upright jambs with a rude lintel of granite thrown across, complete examples roofed in are rare, and those to which we direct attention now are known to very few persons indeed. ”

“ Itha never was herself in Cornwall, her great foundation was Kill-eedy in Limerick, and she was taken as the tutelary saint or patroness of Hy-Conaill, but there were establishments, daughters of the parent house, what the Irish called daltha (i.e. pupil) churches, enjoying much the same rights as the mother house.
Camelford has by some been supposed to be the Gavulford where the last battle was fought between the West Welsh and Athelstan; but there was no reason for his advancing into Cornwall this way, where all was bleak, and by no old road. ”

“ In Ireland every king had his dun. This was an enlarged rath with an outer court in which he held his hostages, for the law required this: “He is no king who has not hostages in lock-up.”
Dun in Welsh is din, and dinas is but another form of the same word, and signifies a royal residence.
A gloss to an old Irish law tract says that a royal dun must have two walls and a moat for water.
Dun in Scotland is applied to any fort. According to the Gaelic dictionaries, it is “a heap or mound,” and even a dung-hill is a dun.
In fact, the French dune and the Cornish towan derive from the same root. ”

“ Whether taught by experience, or illumined by the light of nature, I cannot say, but most assuredly [Pg 31] the saints of Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall were vastly particular as to their wells being of the purest and coldest water obtainable.
S. Senan had settled for a while by a well in Inis Caorach, and one day his disciple Setna—​our Cornish Sithney—​found a woman washing her child’s dirty clothes in the fountain. He flew into a fury, and his companion Liberius was equally abusive in the language employed. Shortly after the boy tumbled over the rocks into the sea. ”

“ Thus Kieran became Piran, and Fingar became Gwinear. The Irish c is always sounded like k, and the Cornish disliked this sound. When S. Kiera settled in Cornwall she had to accustom herself to be called Piala; and Eoghain was melted down into Euny, and Erc softened into Erth.
Just one advantage to Cornwall did this invasion afford; by it we know the histories of the founders of churches in West Cornwall; because the Irish had the wit to preserve their records and biographies, whereas of the home-grown saints, princes of blood royal, the Cornish have not kept a single history. ”

“ The town lies in a hollow, and the descent into it from the railway station is considerable. It has been a place of more consequence in the past than Bodmin, and several of the Cornish county families had their town residences in Truro, going there for the winter, to enjoy assembly balls and card parties.
The cathedral soars up above the houses, and is a fine structure, doing vast credit to the county, which has strained every nerve to erect it at a time of depression and the death of the chief industry. When completed the effect will be very noble. ”

“ A modern range of buildings has been added for the accommodation of the nuns, but it is not unsightly. The lovely pinnacled tower of the church [Pg 237] of S. Mawgan rises beside the ancient mansion, at a considerably lower level, and the interior is rich with sculptured oak, and with monuments of the Arundells.
Alas! the mighty family that once dominated in Cornwall, second in power only to the Princes of Wales, royal dukes of that duchy, is now represented in Cornwall by empty mansions, alienated to other holders, and by tombs.
The motto of the family is “Deo data—​Given by God.” ”