Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/357

Rh which is open to the Atlantic breezes straight from Labrador, and Penzance is declining in favour.

But it is a pleasant, it is a most pleasant town, well furnished with all that can make a winter sojourn delightful; it has in addition to libraries and concert-halls and clubs, that may be found in any seaside place, an unrivalled neighbourhood, and with the warm climate it enjoys a winter may be spent delightfully in making excursions to the many surrounding objects of interest.

In my next chapter I shall treat of the Land's End district, and in this I shall attempt to give some idea of what is to be seen to the east.

As already intimated, the whole of this part of Cornwall was occupied at the end of the fifth and the first years of the sixth century by the Irish from the south, mainly from Ossory. An invasion from Munster into that kingdom had led to the cutting of the throats of most of the royal family and its subjugation under the invaders, who maintained their sovereignty there from 470, when the invasion took place, to the death of Scanlan, the descendant of the invader, in 642. It was probably in consequence of this invasion that a large number of Ossorians crossed over to Cornwall and established themselves in Penwith—the Welsh spell it Pengwaeth, the bloody headland; the name tells a story of resistance and butchery. Unhappily we have the most scanty references to this occupation; records we have none.

But a single legend remains that treats of it at some length; and with regard to the legends of the