# A Book of the West/Volume 2/19

LAND'S END
CHAPTER XIX.
THE LAND'S END
THE Land's End is properly Penwith, either Pen-gwaed, the Bloody Headland, or Pen-gwaedd, the Headland of Shouting. Probably it is the former, for it was the last place of refuge of the Ibernian population, and in the first years of the sixth century, even perhaps earlier, it was occupied by Irish settlers, and that there was fighting is clearly shown us in the legend of SS. Fingar and Piala. It must have been to the original people of the peninsula what Mona was to the Welsh.
All we know about this invasion is what is told us in the legend just mentioned, and that states that Fingar, son of an Irish king, came to Hayle, landed there with his party, and was fallen upon by Tewdrig, the Cornish duke or king, who massacred some of the party. But the names of the parishes tell us more than that. They show us that the Irish were ​ not defeated, that they made good their landing, and that they spread and occupied the whole of Penwith and Carnmarth, that is to say, the entire district of West Cornwall up to Camborne and the Lizard district.
The colonists cannot have been few, and they must have purposed settling, for they brought women along with them ; and that they were successful is assured by the fact that those killed by Tewdrig are recognised as martyrs. Had the Irish been driven away they would have been regarded as pirates who had met their deserts.
Now this inroad of saints was but one out of a succession of incursions, and the resistance of Tewdrig marks the revolt against Irish domination which took place after the death of Dathi in 428, the last Irish monarch who was able to exact tribute from Britain; though Oiliol Molt may have attempted it, he was too much hampered by internal wars to make Irish authority felt in Britain. Oiliol fell in 483.
The Irish saints came across in detachments. Senan, Ere (Erth), Setna (Sithney), Brig (Breage), Just were some of the earliest. There was trouble when Brig arrived, and she and her party fled from Tewdrig and fortified themselves on Tregonning Hill, where their camp still remains. But Kieran and his pupils, Medran (Madron) and Bruinech (Buriena), were unmolested ; so also was S. Ruan.
One thing they could not do, and that was impress on the people the Scottish or Irish pronunciation. They were few among many, and they not only could not make the natives pronounce a ​ hard c, but they were themselves obliged to suffer their own names to be softened, and the c in them to be turned into p, and the f into gw. 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. Consequently, if we desire to know about the early kings and saints of the peninsula, we have to ask the Irish, the Welsh, and even go hat in hand to the Bretons. It is a sorry truth, but truth it is.
How thoroughly occupied by the Irish this district was may be judged when we come to look at who the saints were.
Let us take them in order from Newquay.
First we have Carantock, the fellow-worker with S. Patrick, who assisted him on the commission to draw up the laws of Ireland. Then we have Perranzabuloe, the settlement of Kieran of Saighir. Across the ridge, four miles off, is Ladock, where he planted his nurse as head of a community of women. Some of Kieran's young pupils found it not too far to trip across and flirt with the girls at Ladock, and ​ there was a pretty to-do when this was discovered. He was wont, when he had ploughed his own lands, to send over his oxen to plough the fields of his nurse. At Redruth was S. Euny, whom the Irish called Eoghain, and who later was Bishop of Ardstraw. He was brother of S. Ere of Erth, as it was said in later times, but earlier writers frankly call Ere his father.
Illogan was son of Cormac, King of Leinster. Piety ran in the family. Cormac abdicated and assumed the monk's cowl in 535. The sisters of Illogan were Derwe and Ethnea, who accompanied him to Cornwall, and are numbered with its saints. He was father of S. Credan of Sancreed. Phillack is S. Piala, the sister of Gwynear (Fingar). S. Elwyn is but another form of the name Illogan. Erth, as already said, was father of S. Euny; he was a disciple of S. Brendan, the voyager, and was nursed by S. Itha, who was a woman almost as famous in Ireland as S. Bridget, and who has churches in Cornwall and Devon. S. Ives is really S. Hia, an Irishwoman. Zennor is, perhaps, dedicated to a disciple of S. Sennen of Land's End, the very woman about whom Tom Moore wrote his song of "The Saint and the Lady." S. Just was the deacon of S. Patrick, and he was S. Kieran's tutor. Sennen is Senan of Inscathy, in the Shannon. S. Levan was metal-worker for S. Patrick, but in holy orders also. S. Burian was the female disciple of S. Kieran. Germoe was a bard, and an intimate friend of Kieran, and so we see him planted near his friend, who was at Perran-uthnoe. Breage was a disciple of S. Bridget ​ and a friend of S. Kieran. Crewenna was another Irishwoman. Sithney is Setna, a disciple of S. Senan. S. Ruan, in the Lizard district, and S. Kea, on the Fal—Irishmen as well—I have spoken of them elsewhere.
But along the south coast are some settlements of a different kind. Paul is Paul of Leon, a Briton, who came there to visit his sister, Wulvella, at Gulval before he crossed into Brittany; and Towednack is not an Irish foundation.
Senan and Kieran, or Piran, were such allies that the former was wont to call the latter "his inseparable friend and comrade." It is therefore no wonder that we find settlements of the two in West Cornwall together.
Senan and Kieran probably came to Cornwall some years later than Hia and Breaca, Fingar and Piala. Senan was very much attached to S. David, and both are said to have died on the same day in the same year.
As Sithney's mother was a sister of Non, the mother of S. David, it is possible that David may have induced his cousin to study with his friend Senan, and that when Senan came to Cornwall he hoped that Sithney would be able to smooth his way, as an aunt of his was queen there. This I have already pointed out.
It is noteworthy that Sithney parish is close to that of his first cousin Constantine.
The key to the Land's End district is Penzance. This is a comparatively modern town, and it was but a village in the parish of S. Madron, with a little ​ chapel of S. Anthony on a spit of land running into the bay, till incorporated by James I.
That bay is singularly fine, and, facing the south, the climate is warm. Out of it stands up S. Michael's Mount crowned with a castle, formerly a monastery, now the residence of Lord S. Levan, and connected by a causeway with Marazion, or Market Jew. The name has nothing to do with "Bitter Waters of Zion," or with Israelites. Marazion is the Cornish for Thursday Market, and Market Jew is a corruption for Jeudi (Thursday) Market.
From Penzance a visit should be paid to S. Ives and to Hayle. The Hayle river flows in a natural furrow from near Germoe, and the whole of the district west is, as it were, cut off from the rest of the peninsula. It needed to have been but a little more depressed, and it would have been converted almost into an island, linked to the mainland only by the ridge between S. Hilary and Godolphin.
The great S. Ives Bay is conspicuous through its white hills of blown sand that form what are locally called Towans.
The church of S. Ives is interesting, and is, like most others in Cornwall, Perpendicular. It is of granite, and contains some fine oak carving in bench-ends and waggon-roof, and a portion of the screen presented, it is supposed, by Ralph Clies, a master smith; also a brass to Otho Trenwith and his wife. The latter is represented kneeling to and invoking the archangel Michael. The head of S. Michael has a comical effect. "Some perplexity may be felt ​ at the appearance of Saint Michael's head, which looks like nothing so much as a Dutch cheese. The fact is, that when this brass lay on the floor, the feet of passers - by had gradually erased the features of the archangel, leaving only the circular nimbus or glory round his head. Some well-meaning but misguided restorer of later days has evidently taken the nimbus to be the outline of the head, and has roughly filled in eyes, nose, and mouth to correspond."
An event occurred at Penzance in 1760 that was curious.
A large vessel was driven ashore on the beach. Numbers of persons crowded to the wreck to get from it what they could, when they were startled to see it manned by swarthy mariners with scimitars and turbans. At once a panic seized on those who had come out of interested motives to the wreck, and they scuttled off as hard as their legs would take them. Presently a company of volunteers was called out to roll of drum, and marched down to surround the 172 men who had disembarked from the wreck. These were gallantly captured and driven like sheep into a spacious barn, and left there under guard through the night.
Next morning it was ascertained from the men who had come ashore (some of whom could speak broken French), by means of some English officers who could understand a little French, especially when broken, that the vessel was an Algerine corsair, carrying twenty-four guns, and ​ that the captain, finding his ship making water rapidly, had run her ashore in Mount's Bay, fully believing he was about the latitude of Cadiz. The instant it was known that the sailors were Algerines, a deadly panic fell on the neighbourhood, for now the plague was feared. The volunteers could hardly be kept at their posts, where they quaked, and felt internal qualms. Intelligence was conveyed to the Government, and orders were issued for troops to march from Plymouth. Happily, however, the panic rapidly abated; the local authorities convinced themselves that there was no plague among the strangers, and, slowly and cautiously, people approached to look and gape at the dark-moustached and bearded men with dusky skin, bare legs, and turbans. The pirates were on the whole kindly treated, and after some delay were sent back to Algiers.
The whole country is wind - blown, and everything looks small: the trees are stunted; the hills rise to no great heights, the very highest point reached is 827 feet; and Tregonning, which does not mount above 600 feet, assumes the airs of a mountain. The coast is fine, but by no means as fine as that of the Lizard. The rocks are of granite, and not of serpentine. But, on the other hand, the surface is less level than that of Meneage. It is crowded with prehistoric antiquities, cromlechs, camps, and stone circles. And the Land's End district has this great advantage, that if you are overdone with the soft and relaxing air on the south coast, you have but to ascend a hill and ​ inhale the invigorating breath that comes from the Atlantic on the north.
Newlyn and Hayle are great fishing stations, and in the Land's End district as in the Lizard chances arise for watching the pilchard fishery.
So many seans, or nets, about 220 fathoms long and about 15 fathoms deep, belong to each fishing station, and three boats go to each sean. The first boat, which is also the largest, is called the sean-boat, as it carries the net and seven men; the next is termed the vollier, probably a corruption for "follower," and carries another sean, called the tuck-sean, which is about 100 fathoms long and 18 deep, this boat also carries seven men; the third boat is called the lurker, and contains but three or four men, and in this boat is the master, or commander.
Pilchards are migratory and gregarious fish, rather smaller than herrings, which they much resemble, but are cased in larger scales. They begin to appear at the end of June, but they are then at a great distance from the coast, and the boats have to go out far to sea before they encounter the shoals. It is a pretty sight to see a flight of fishing-smacks, with their white wings spread, issuing from one of the harbours, and all making for the spot where the fish are ascertained or supposed to be.
At nightfall the nets are set either across or parallel to the drift of the tide, and are suffered to be carried along by the current. About midnight the nets are hauled, and the fish having become entangled by their gills, are taken into the boats, and the nets are again set. It is only by night that ​ fish can be caught in this way, as they are keen-sighted. This is drift-net fishing.
In the morning the boats return with the spoil, and the port, or harbour, is alive with women and children ; these latter on such occasions can by no persuasion be induced to attend school. A string of carts is drawn up on the beach, each containing several "maunds," or panniers, to receive the silver load.
As the season advances the shool, or shoal, comes nearer the shore.
A saying is that
"When the corn is in the shock,
Then the fish are at the rock."
And now the time for drift-net fishing is over, and that of sean, or seine, fishing begins.
Pilchards swim in dense hosts, so that the sea seems to be in a state of effervescence.
On the cliffs men and boys are to be seen all day long lying about smoking, apparently doing nothing. But their keen eyes are on the sea. They are watching for the coming of the pilchards. It is not possible to see from the boat so as to surround a shoal; that is why a watch is maintained from the cliffs by "huers" (French huer, to shout). The moment their experienced eyes see by a change in the colour of the water that the shoal is approaching, by preconcerted signals the crew are informed as to the place where it is, and the direction it is taking.
The fish playing on the surface are called ​ skimmers. The colour of the water, as seen from above where the fish are dense, is almost red; it is always darker than the water around.
Another token of the presence of a shoal is the sea birds hovering about, expecting their prey.
The boats are all in readiness.
The shoal is also known by the stotting, or jumping, of the fish. When fish are observed stoiting a signal is given, whereupon the sean-boat and vollier get on the spot, and the crew of the foremost boat pass a warp, that is, throw a rope, which is fixed to the end of the sean on board the vollier, and then shoot the net overboard, which, having leaden weights at bottom, sinks, and the top is buoyed up with corks. The sean-boat is rowed in a circular course round where the fish are stoiting, and when they have reached the vollier the fish are enclosed. They then hem the two ends of the sean together with a cord to prevent the fish from breaking out, and whilst this is being done a man is engaged in frightening the fish away from the still open end by means of a stone fastened to a rope. This is termed throwing the minnies (maen stone, pi. meini). When the two ends of the net are laced together, grapes, i.e. grapnels, are let down to keep the net expanded and steady till the fish have been taken up. This latter process is called tucking the sean. The boat with the tuck-sean on board passes the warp of that sean to one of the other boats and then shoots this tuck-sean within the stop-sean, and next draws up the same to the edge of the water, when it is seen to be one quivering mass ​ of silver. The fish are now taken or dipped out with baskets into the boats. When the boats are filled, if more fish remain in the large sean, it is left in the water, till by successive tuckings all the fish have been removed.
The fish that have been caught and brought on shore are taken to the cellars. Fish cellars are usually dug out of the rock, and in them the pilchards are deposited in heaps, to be cured by the women, who work at this night and day. The cellar floor is covered with a layer of salt for the distance of five or six feet from the walls, and on this is laid a row of fish with their tails touching the wall; then next to these is laid another row, and so on in concentric rings, till a sufficient space is paved with fish. On this foundation is laid more salt, and then more fish, and this process is continued till the pile is complete and the cellar is stacked with fish. They are now said to be "in bulk," and so are suffered to remain for some weeks, during which time boards are placed on them with stones, so as to squeeze out of them all superfluous water and oil. The process of salting completed, the fish are packed in barrels, and are sent away to market.
After July or August the pilchards leave the coast, and do not reappear until the end of October or the beginning of November. They now appear in the Bristol Channel, and come down towards Land's End, which they turn and follow the south coast of Cornwall, and then disappear.
Formerly pilchards were smoked, and went by the name of fumadoes. The name clung to them after ​ the smoking was abandoned, and fumadoes Is now corrupted into "fair maids."
There is a song of the pilchard fishery which is sung by the boatmen. I know of it but three verses, and I doubt if there be more.
"The cry is, 'All up! Let us all haste away!
And like hearty good fellows we'll row through the bay.
Haul away, my young men!
Pull away, my old blades!
For the county gives bounty
For the pilchard trades.'
" 'T is the silver 'fair maids' that cause such a strife
'Twixt the master-seiner and his drunken wife.
Haul away, etc.
" She throwed away her fiddles (?) and burnt all her thread,
And she turn'd him out o' doors for the good of the trade.
Haul away," etc.
The churches of the Land's End district are not remarkably fine. They are not, however, without interest.
The finest is that of S. Burian, about whom first of all a word or two.
Buriena was an Irish damsel, noted for being both slender and beautiful. In fact, her willowy form obtained for her the nickname of Caol, or "the Slim." She was a daughter of one Crimthan, "the Fox," a Munster chieftain, a granddaughter of Aengus, King of Munster, who was baptised by S. Patrick, on which occasion the apostle ran the spike at the end of the pastoral staff into the foot of ​ the king. Afterwards, when S. Patrick saw the wound and the blood, he was shocked, and said, "Why the dickens did you not tell me of it?" "I thought it was part of the ceremony," replied Aengus.
However, to return to Buriena, his granddaughter. She was so pretty and so graceful, that although she was at school with Liadhain, the mother of S. Piran, as her spiritual child, a chieftain named Dimma carried her off to his own castle. Liadhain came in a fume to S. Piran and told him of the outrage. At once the old man seized his staff and went after Dimma, who was head of the clan Hy Fiachta. It was midwinter, and the snow was on the ground. When Piran arrived at the gates of the cashel he was refused admittance. He would not return, but maintained his place, and next morning there he was still. He had stood there all night in the snow, waiting to insist on the restoration of the girl. Dimma now was alarmed. He saw that the saint was determined to "fast against him," a legal process, as has been described already, and he returned the damsel.
However, some days afterwards, feeling his passion still strong, he went at the head of a body of men to reclaim her. Buriena fainted when she saw his approach; but Piran had time to call out all his ecclesiastical tribe, and they surrounded the place where Liadhain and Buriena were, and he had sent a detachment to make a circuit and set fire to Dimma's cashel, so that the chief was compelled to beat a precipitate retreat. It was probably in con​ sequence of this that Piran left Ireland and came to Cornwall.
S. Burlan Church does not stand on the site of the old settlement of Buriena ; that is about a mile south-east, at Bosliven, where the "sanctuary" remains about some mounds and ruins. It was destroyed by Shrubsall, one of Cromwell's miserable instruments of sacrilege. When Athelstan traversed Cornwall from east to west he made a vow that if he reached the Scilly Isles and returned in safety he would endow a collegiate church where was the oratory in which he made the vow. This he did, and the date of the foundation is supposed to have been 936.
The church had a superb screen, probably the finest in Cornwall, but it was taken down and destroyed in 18 14. Some fragments have been preserved sufficient to admit of its complete reconstruction at some future day. Many of the bench-ends remain, and are fine. The church has been illtreated in that fashion which is in bitter mockery called " restoration." The new woodwork is a fair example of what woodwork never should be. It is treated like cheese.
S. Levan has fine old bench-ends and exquisitely bad modern woodwork, and in the neighbourhood is the Logan Rock and some of the finest coast scenery of the Land's End. S. Levan was priest and metal-worker in S. Patrick's company, and some of his bells and book-covers remained long preserved as treasures in Ireland.
S. Senan has been gutted by the restorer, and has ​in it no longer anything of interest except a mutilated statue of the Virgin and Child.
Madron has not much of interest, except the oft-quoted epitaph on George Daniel:—
"Belgia me Birth, Britain me Breeding gave,
Cornwall a Wife, ten children and a grave."
Paul's, dedicated to S. Paul of Leon, brother of S. Wulvella of Gulval, has a good tower, and several points of interest. Here was buried, 1778, Dolly Pentreath, the last person able to converse in the old Cornish language. Pentreath was her maiden name. She was married to a man of the name of Jeffery. It is still the custom in the villages of Mousehole and Newlyn for women to be called by their maiden names after marriage ; indeed, there are some instances in which the husband goes by the maiden name of his wife, when his individuality disappears under her more pronounced personality. Such would doubtless be the case in the following instance I quote from the Cornish Magazine:—
Girl (selling papers): "If you please, sir, do you want a 'Ome Companion?"
Householder (at door): "No, thank 'ee, my dear. I got wan."
Girl: "'Ome Chat, sir?"
Householder: "'Ome Chat!" (throws open the door). " Here, just come fore and listen for yourself Hark to her a bellerin' in the back kitchen."
Or in such a case as this.
Pasco Polglaze was henpecked. He opened his heart to Uncle Zackie at the "Dog and Pheasant." ​ "Now, look here," said Uncle Zackie, "you be a man and show yourself maister in your own 'ouse, You go 'ome and snap your vingers in the missus' vaice, and sit down on the table. I'll come in two minutes after and see your triumph—you maister and all."
"Right," said Pasco, and went home.
But when he had snapped his fingers under the nose of his wife she took the poker at him, and he took refuge under the table.
Tap! tap! at the door.
"Come out from under there," said Susan, his wife.
Then Pasco lifted up his voice and sang out as loud as thunder, "No, Sue! no, I want come out from under the table. I 'll stick where I be; for all you say, I'll show Uncle Zackie as I'll be maister in my own house."
In 1768 the Hon. Daines Barrington visited Cornwall to ascertain whether the Cornish language had entirely died out or not, and in a letter written to John Lloyd a few years after he gives the result of his journey, and in it refers to Dolly Pentreath:—
"I set out from Penzance with the landlord of the principal inn for my guide towards Sennen, and when I approached the village I said there must probably be some remains of the language in those parts, if anywhere. My guide, however, told me that I should be disappointed; but that if I would ride about ten miles about in my return to Penzance, he would conduct me to a village called Mousehole, where was an old woman who could speak ​ Cornish fluently. While we were travelling together I enquired how he knew that this woman spoke Cornish, when he informed me that he frequently went to Mouse- hole to buy fish which were sold by her, and that when he did not offer her a price that was satisfactory she grumbled to some other old woman in an unknown tongue, which he concluded to be Cornish.
"When we reached Mousehole I desired to be introduced as a person who had laid a wager that there was not one who could converse in Cornish, upon which Dolly Pentreath spoke in an angry tone for two or three minutes in a language which sounded very much like Welsh. The hut in which she lived was in a very narrow lane, opposite to two rather better houses, at the doors of which two other women stood, who were advanced in years, and who, I observed, were laughing at what Dolly said to me.
"Upon this I asked them whether she had not been abusing me, to which they answered, 'Very heartily,' and because I had supposed she could not speak Cornish.
"I then said that they must be able to talk the language, to which they answered that they could not speak it readily, but that they understood it, being only ten or twelve years younger than Dolly Pentreath.
"I had scarcely said or thought anything more about this matter till last summer (1772), having mentioned it to some Cornish people, I found that they could not credit that any person had existed within these few years who could speak their native language; and therefore, though I imagined there was but a small chance of Dolly Pentreath continuing to live, yet I wrote to the President (of the Society of Antiquaries), then in Devonshire, to desire that he would make some inquiry with regard to her, and he was so obliging as to procure me information from a gentleman whose house was within three miles of ​ Mousehole, a considerable part of whose letter I shall subjoin:—
" 'Dolly Pentreath is short of figure and bends very much with old age, being in her eighty-seventh year; so lusty, however, as to walk hither to Castle Horneck, about three miles, in bad weather in the morning and back again. She is somewhat deaf, but her intellect seemingly not impaired. . . . She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English, being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it, or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by the parish, and partly by fortune - telling and gabbling Cornish.' "
A monument has been erected to her memory by Prince Lucien Bonaparte. She died on December 26th, 1777, and was buried in January, 1778. The following epitaph was written for her:—
Cornish.
"Goth Doll Pentreath caus ha deau;
Marow ha kledyz ed Paul plea:—
Na ed an egloz, gan pobel bras,
Bes ed egloz-hay coth Dolly es."
English.
"Old Doll Pentreath, one hundred aged and two,
Deceased, and buried in Paul parish too:—
Not in the church, with people great and high,
But in the church-yard doth old Dolly lie."
A word may here be added relative to the Cornish tongue. The Celtic language is divided into two branches, one represented by the Irish and Gaelic of North Scotland, and this is called the Goidhelic, or Gaelic; the other by the Welsh, old Cornish, and Breton, and this is called the Brythonic.
The main distinction between them consists in the Gaelic employing k or the hard c where the Welsh and Cornish would use p. Thus pen is used in the latter, and ken in the former. When the Irish adopted the word purpur, purple, they changed it into corcair; and when they took the low Latin premter for presbyter into their language they twisted it into crumthir. The Cornish was identical with old Welsh, and the Breton was originally identical with the Cornish; but in course of time some changes grew up differentiating the tongues, and forming dialects derived from the same mother tongue, that is all.
In or about 1540 Dr. Moreman, vicar of Menheniot, in the east of the county, was the first to teach the people the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Commandments in English.
Carew, however, in his Survey of Cornwall in 1602 says, "Most of the inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but few are ignorant of English, and yet some so affect their own as to a stranger they will not speak it, for if meeting them by chance you inquire the way, your answer will be, ' Meeg nauidna cowzasawzneck '—I can speak no Saxonage."
Carew's Survey was soon followed by that of ​ Norden, who says that the tongue was chiefly confined to Penwith and Kirrier, and yet "though the husband and wife, parents and children, master and servants, do naturally communicate in their native language, yet there is none of them in a manner but is able to converse with a stranger in the English tongue, unless it be some obscure people who seldom confer with the better sort."
The Cornish was so well spoken in the parish of Feock till about the year 1640 "that Mr. William Jackman, the then vicar, . . . was forced for divers years to administer the Sacrament to the communicants in the Cornish tongue, because the aged people did not well understand the English, as he himself often told me" (Hals).
So late as 1650 the Cornish language was currently spoken in the parishes of Paul and S. Just; and in 1678 the rector of Landewednack "preached a sermon to his parishioners in the Cornish language only."
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. When he gives up one of these ​ tongues he abandons mental gymnastics as well as the exercise of the vocal organs in two different modes of speech.
What we do with infinite labour in the upper and middle classes is to teach our children to acquire French and German as well as English, and this is not only because these tongues open to them literary treasures, but for educative purpose to the mind, teaching to acquire other words, forms of grammar, and modulation of sounds than those the children have at home.
By God's mercy the Welsh child is so situated that from infancy it has to acquire simultaneously two tongues, and that in the lowest class of life; and this I contend is an advantage of a very high order, which is not enjoyed by children of even a class above it in England.
The West Cornish dialect is a growth of comparatively recent times. It is on the outside not more than four hundred years old. Whence was it derived? That is a problem that has yet to be studied.
Mr. Jago says:—
CHUN QUOIT
​ Sancreed screen, which must have been almost as fine as that of Burian, has disappeared all but a magnificent fragment. The church is dedicated to S. Credan, disciple of S. Petrock, an Irishman, who returned to the Emerald Isle. He was the son of S. Illogan, and he had two aunts in Cornwall—one at Camborne and the other at Stythians.
S. Just Church is late; it has rather handsomely carved capitals of the piers, with angels bearing shields, on which are figured the arms of the principal families connected with the parish. S. Just, as I have said, was deacon to S. Patrick, and was the tutor to S. Piran.
In Gwythian parish may be seen the early eighth-century chapel of the saint, which was for long buried under the sands, but was revealed by a drift in 1808.
At Forth Curnew, near S. Levan's, are the ruins of another of these early oratories.
Madron was founded by S. Medran, brother of Odran; they went as boys under fourteen to S. Piran, to consult him about making a pilgrimage. But Medran wished to stay with the old abbot, whereas Odran was for travelling. Odran said to S. Piran, "Do not part my brother from me. We agreed to stick together." "The Lord judge between you both," said the abbot. "Let Medran hold this lantern and blow on the smouldering wick. If it flames, then he stays. If not, he goes." Medran succeeded in producing a flame, and thenceforth he became an attached follower of S. Piran. Odran went his way.
It is chiefly for prehistoric antiquities that the Land's End district is remarkable. It possesses cliff​ castles, and also some fine examples of the stone cashel. Such is Chun ; also beehive huts, as at Bosprennis, and a curious cluster of habitations at Chysauster already referred to.
There are cromlechs, sacred circles, and menhirs. These are so numerous and so interesting, that a visitor should take Mr. Lach-Szyrma's guide and examine them in detail.
Note.—Books to be consulted:—
Blight (J. T.), A Week at the Land’s End, 1861. List of Antiquities in Kirrier and Penwith. Truro, 1862. Churches of West Cornwall, Oxford: Parker, 1885 (second edition).
Lach-Szyrma (W. S. ), Two Hundred and Twenty-two Antiqtiities in and about Penzance, Plymouth: Luke. n.d.
Matthews (J. H.), A History of the Parishes of St. Ives, Lelant, etc. London: Stock, 1892.
* ↑ Matthews, A History of St. Ives. London, 1892.
* ↑ Jago (Mr.), Glossary of the Cornish Dialect, Truro, 1882.