The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-10-23
THE LORE OF CORNWALL.
ANTIQUITIES AND suPERsTlTloNs.
MIR. Wakeman's Final Article on King Ar
thurs Land-Cornish Customs-IIIus-
trations Of Long Continued Mys-
ticisms of the Heroic Past.


HELsroN, Cornwall, Oct 10.-TCopy-
righted. l-Souvestre, who did so much
to preserve the interesting traditions
and reveal the pleasing character
istics of the people of Brittany,
aptly says that traditions if not true as to
facts, are always so as to sentiments. APP
plying this test to Cornwall, itwould prove
the richest, and but partly-worked, field
for the archeologist and antiquarian of
any portion of the British isles. There is
abundant proof that an important COM
merce existed in tin between the people
of the extreme western Cornish coast and
the Phpnicians from Gades, a colony on
the western Spanish coast, more than 100
years before the Christian era; while the
most celebrated British psychologists be-
lieve that Cornwall was actually colon
lied while the rest of the island was yet a
desert, and even the opposite CONT
nent of Gaul. and the greater part of
Europe, was uninhabited." Evidences
of exceedingly remote prehistoric activi-
ties are everywhere apparent in western
England, and their numbers and interest
increase from the boundaries OF Devon
through Cornwall to Lands End. These
consist of cromlechs, those rude forms of
pagan burial memorials scattered with
such profnsion throughout Ireland; huge
uninscribed monoliths of such remote age
that their mystery has not yet been I'M
raveled; duns or forts of tremendous
earthen circles; cliff castles in countless
numbers upon the nights of the overhang-
ing granite and slate of the sublime Cor
nish coast; immense alightments and ave-
nues of stone similar TO the marvellous
stone chevaux de frise before mighty
Dun Engus upon lonely Aranmore off the
western Irish coast; cave dwellings, the
first homes of men; and the hut and bee
hive structures, those tiny and first ex-
amples of architecture illustrating the
earliest development in man of home and
the habitation longing and effort which
first raised him, in habit, above the wild
beast with which he struggledfor mastery.
Indeed everywhere one may go in Corn
wall are found evidences OF that extreme
antiquity which so impresses and at times
appalls the student in Ireland; and COM
ing TO a later period one cannot escape the
proof that the first Celts of Ireland and the
first people of Cornwall were not only of
common stock, but for centuries were,
while pagans, people of common Ian
guage, customs and interest. So, too after
the introduction of Christianity in Ireland,
during that period of peerless Christian zeal
and missionary sacrifice, one cannot but
become convinced that Cornwall as a re-
ligious dependency of Ireland became the
seat of a wOndrously flourishing Christian
community; one which in time even TO-
nored Roman tradition and discipline, cell
ebrated Easter as with the Greeks, and in
sisted on its origin as from the patriar-
chal seat at Jerusalem. English ecclesi-
ology and hagiology do not like to admit
this; but Yankee as | am | could show
that three-fourths of the oldest and best
known hamlets, towns and places of anti
quated renown in Cornwall, either to-day
bear the names, or originally derived their
names from the jealous Irish missionaries
who made Cornwall Christian instead OF
pagan land.
In the Interviewing of paganism and
OUTlhlldully tutIt Was undoubtedly IIge
ecclesiastical sanction entertained toward
many of the superstitious practices of the
Damonians, the ancient Cornish people.
Long isolation from the remainder of pro-
gressive England, and the retention OF
distinct language, the Cymric division OF
the Celtic, TO within but little over CEN
fury since, fostered the clan theory of soci-
ETY. and left countless legends, supersti-
tions and customs among this stolid, though
singularly impressive and sentimental peO-
pie.
Whatever Wesley and Whitfield, with the
railway, the newspaper and the telegraph,
may have done in altering the everyday
lives of the Cornish folk, no power has
yet been able to Danish the endeared
wraiths Of the mysticisms and mysteries Of
n legendarily heroic past. To-day. as
firmly as five centuries since, the inner
heart OF the Cornish man still clings to