A Book of Cornwall

Without een a bitt,
'Cause Noyah hath all in his Arke."

The presentation of this billet caused great amusement, and Noyes sent back a dish of venison with the rhymes recast, at the dictation of the king, in this fashion: -

"When the World was drown'd
There deer was found,
Althoe there was noe Park;
I send thee a bitt
To quicken thy witt,
Which comes from Noya's Arke."

Halls says: -

"William Noye was blow-coal, incendiary, and stirrer up of the Civil Wars by assisting and setting up the King's prerogative to the highest pitch, as King James I. had done before, beyond the laws of the land. As counsell for the King he prosecuted for King Charles I. the imprisoned members of the House of Commons, 1628; viz., Sir John Elyot, Mr. Coryton, and others; whom after much cost and trouble he got to be fined two thousand pounds each, the others five hundred pounds."

A portrait of William Noye, by Cornelius Jansen, is at Enys, the property of D. G. Enys, Esq.

S. Mawgan, the founder of the church, as also of that in Kerrier, was a man of extraordinary importance to the early Celtic Church in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall. He was the great educator of the saints, and perhaps the first head of a college in Britain. He had under him S. David, Paulinus, and the ill-conditioned Gildas; and he is probably the same as Maucan, "the master," entrusted by S. Patrick with the education of the clergy for the Irish mission. S. Euny and S. Torney were disciples of his, and it was he who gave to Brig, or Breaca, the rules by which a religious community of women should be governed.

His great educational establishment was at Ty Gwyn, or the White House. This was planted on the slope of Carn Llidy, a purple, heather-clothed crag close to S. David's Head in Pembrokeshire, whence in the evening the sun can be seen setting behind the mountains of Wexford.

Here remains of a rude old chapel can be traced, and around it are countless very early interments in unhewn stone graves, pointing east and west. In fact, this is the necropolis of the great missionary home whence streamed the first Christian teachers into Ireland, and whence Scotland, Cornwall, and Wales were supplied with evangelists.[23 - Not Witherne in Galway, nor Ty Gwyn âr Daf. See Mrs. Dawson's article in Archæol. Cambr., 1898.]

His establishment was a double one, of female disciples as well as of males, and the consequences were not always satisfactory.

A British king named Drust (523-28) sent his daughter to Ty Gwyn to be educated. In the college were at the time Finnian, afterwards of Clonard, and two other Irishmen, Rioc and Talmage. Rioc fell in love with the girl, and bribed Finnian to be his go-between and get her for him as wife by the promise of a copy of all Mawgan's books that he undertook to make. Finnian agreed, but by treachery, or as a joke, did the courting for Talmage in place of Rioc. When the circumstances came to the ears of Mawgan he was very angry, and he gave his boy a hatchet, and told him to hide behind the chapel, and when Finnian came to matins to hew at him from behind. But instead of Finnian, the first to arrive was Mawgan himself, and he received the blow destined for Finnian. Happily, either because the boy missed his aim in the dark, or more probably because the order had been given to beat Finnian and not kill him, Mawgan was not mortally wounded.

Non, the mother of S. David, was brought up in the same house, and was there when it was visited by Gildas the historian, whose works we have.

It does not at all appear that the rule of celibacy was required of clergy, even of abbots, in the early Celtic Church, for this same Gildas was father of two founders of churches in Cornwall-S. Eval and S. Filius, of Philleigh; and S. Kenneth, the crippled Abbot of Gower, was the father of S. Enoder.

S. Patrick in Ireland did not require his bishops to be unmarried; all he demanded of them was that they should follow the apostolic rule, and that each should be the husband of one wife. The same regulation continued in force in Wales till the Norman invasion in the twelfth century.

S. Patrick was no doubt mainly guided in making his rule by what was ordered in Scripture, but he was also doubtless satisfied that on practical grounds it was the best course, for he had a difficult team of missionaries to drive. This comes out clearly enough in the "Lives" extant.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LIZARD

Meneage-The meaning of Lizard-The character of the district-Helston-The Furry Day-Pixy pots-Loe Pool-Tennyson-Serpentine-The Cornish heath-The Strapwort-Other plants-Woad-S. Piran and the woad-Windmill-Peter Odger-Mullion-Tregonning Hill-S. Ruan-S. Winwaloe-One and All-Gunwalloe Church-Cury-The colonisation of Brittany-Wrecks.

"The learned Scotus," says Addison in the 174th number of the Tatler, "to distinguish the race of mankind, gives to every individual of that species what he calls a seity, something peculiar to himself, which makes him different from all other persons in the world."

What the learned Scotus said of individuals may as truly be said of localities; and indisputably the seity of the Lizard is most pronounced.

In itself the district is not beautiful. It consists of a tableland elevated a few hundred feet above the sea, very bald and treeless, and without hills to break its uniformity.

Properly it is not the Lizard at all, but Meneage, i. e. the land of the Minachau, the monks. Lizard-Lis-arth, the high-placed or lofty Lis(court) – applies merely to the head and point where stands now Lizard Town, and where was formerly the enclosed court of a prince of the district, or perhaps that of the Irish monks, who occupied the region and appropriated it.

It is almost an island, for the Helford river runs up to Gweek, five miles from the Helston river, that opens into Loe Pool.

Helston is not a particularly interesting place in itself. It consists of a long street leading to the old bowling-green, which is preserved, and stands above the ravine of the Cober (Gael. cobhair, foam), where is an archway to William Millett Grylls, designed for execution in sugar-candy, and carried out in granite.

What makes Helston interesting is the annual observance of the Furry Day, on May 8th. It has been often described. The morning is ushered in by a peal of bells from the church tower, and at about nine o'clock the people assemble and demand their prescriptive holiday. They then collect donations, and repair to the fields "to bring home the May."

About noon they return, carrying flowers and branches, and a procession of dancing couples is formed at the Town Hall; and this proceeds down the town, dancing in at the front door of every house and out at the back, and so along their way, with a band preceding them, performing the traditional Furry Dance tune, which is not of any remarkable age, being a hornpipe. The dancers first trip in couples, hand in hand, during the first part of the tune, forming a string of from thirty to forty couples, or perhaps more; at the second part of the tune the first gentleman turns, with both hands, the lady behind him, and her partner turns in like manner as the first lady; then each gentleman turns his own partner, and they trip on as before. The other couples pair and turn in the same way and at the same time.

It is considered a slight to pass a house and not to dance through it. Finally the train enters the Assembly Room, and there resolves itself into an ordinary waltz.

As soon as the first party has finished another goes through the same evolutions, and then another, and so on; and it is not till late at night that the town returns to its peaceful propriety.

The dancers on the first day are the gentlemen and ladies. The servants go through the same proceedings on the morrow.

I have given both the song and tune in my Songs of the West.

A few years ago the celebration was discontinued; but this provoked such dissatisfaction that it was revived with fresh zest.

The visitor to Helston may see an occasional pixy pot on a roof-ridge of an old house. This is a bulbous ornament, on which the pixies are supposed to dance, and in dancing drop luck on the house below.

Loe Pool is the largest lake in Cornwall; the only other is Dozmare. It is a beautiful sheet of fresh water cut off from the sea by a pebble ridge, which it was wont to overflow, but a culvert has been bored through the rocks to enable the Cober to discharge without, as formerly rising and inundating the land below Helston.

It is really marvellous to see how the mesembryanthemum flourishes here, throwing up masses of pink and white blossom.

In the neighbourhood it is fondly dreamed that this was the tarn into which Arthur had Excalibur cast.

"On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water-"

After the sword had been cast in, hither Arthur was carried by Sir Bedivere.

"To left and right
The bare black cliff clang'd round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag, that rang
Sharp smitten with the dint of armed heels-
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon."

Hither came the "dusky barge" that was to bear Arthur away to the isles of the blessed. This is very pretty; the lake, the black serpentine rocks agree well enough, but how was the fairy barge to get over the pebble ridge? Mr. Rogers had not then cut the culvert. No doubt it was brimming, but it must have been risky over the bar. I do not believe a word of it. Arthur never was down there. The reputed site of the battle is at Slaughter Bridge, near Camelford. But before we settle where the battle was fought, we must fix Arthur himself, and he is slippery (historically) as an eel.

What makes the Lizard district interesting is in the first place the serpentine rock that forms it, and then the plants which luxuriate on the serpentine.

The serpentine lies to the west, reared up in the magnificent cliffs of Mullion and Kynance coves, but the main body of the upheaved plateau consists of another volcanic rock called gabbro. The serpentine is so called because it has something of the glaze and greenness of a snake's skin.

The Lizard rocks have long been an object of interest and dispute among geologists. For a study of them I must refer to the papers of Mr. T. Clark in the Transactions of the Polytechnic Institution of Cornwall.

The most casual visitor must be struck, if in Meneage at the season of flowering, with the abundance of the beautiful Cornish heath (Erica vagans), which in growth and general appearance cannot for a moment be mistaken for the common heath. The Rev. C. A. Johns says of it in his Week at the Lizard: -

"The stems are much branched, and in the upper parts very leafy, from two to four feet high. The flowers are light purple, rose-coloured, or pure white. In the purple variety the anthers are dark purple; in the white, bright red; and in all cases they form a ring outside the corolla until they have shed their pollen, when they droop to the sides. On the Goonhilley Downs in Cornwall these varieties of heath grow together in the greatest profusion, covering many hundreds of acres, and almost excluding the two species so common elsewhere."