Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/445

Rh their prisoners to Spain, instead of allowing them, as was undertaken, to return to England.

He is one of those to whom the ballad is supposed to relate:—

But it is also told of a member of the Popham family, by whom the lady's picture, and her chain and bracelets, mentioned in the ballad, were preserved.

Next to the Hawkins heroes we have Drake, a Plymothian by adoption, the son of a yeoman near Tavistock. Camden calls him, "without dispute the greatest captain of the age."

Many strange stories are told of him, as that he brought water to Plymouth by pronouncing an incantation over a spring on Dartmoor, and then riding direct to the seaport, whereupon the water followed him, docile as a dog. When he was building Buckland Abbey, every night the devils carried away the stones. Drake got up into a tree and watched. When he saw the devils at work he crowed like a cock. "Dawn coming?" exclaimed a devil. "And there comes the sun!" cried out another, for Drake had lit his pipe; and away they scampered.

Another story is, that he left his wife at Lynton, and was away for so long that she believed him dead, and was about to be married again, when Sir Francis, who was in the Bristol Channel, fired a cannon-ball, that flew in at the church window and fell between her and her intended "second." "None