Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/525

Charles Dickens] pardoned. In 1612 she presented the corporation of Penryn with a big silver cup, in gratitude for the sympathy they had shown her.

Not far from Falmouth, in the parish of Constantine, was the scene, many years ago, of an unprecedented escape. A Mr. Chapman, of Carwithenick, was returning, on a dark night from Redruth, with his servant, the worse for wine, but just conscious that there was danger of abandoned and unfenced shafts. They were both leading their horses, when all at once Chapman's horse started back and his master fell into a pit twenty fathom (ninety feet) deep. Wonderful to relate, he dropped fifteen fathoms, and then was stopped unhurt by a cross drift only three feet above six fathoms of dark water. Hearing the earth and stones splash below, he thrust his sword into the earth to hold by, and planting his feet against the opposite wall, clung there seventeen long hours, till those who searched for him in the neighbouring shafts heard his groans set tackle over the black chasm, and drew him up unhurt. He lived many years after.

A beat of the wings further west to Helston pleasant on its hill ruling over the valley opening to the sea. It was here that Satan, carrying a huge rock (broken up in 1783) that had once closed the mouth of hell, to balance him in his flight through Cornwall, dropped his burden when attacked and put to flight by Michael the Archangel, who ever defends the town. This victory is still commemorated by Furry Day, a festival on the 8th of May. No Helston man works on that day. Furry Day morning is born to the merry sound of church bells. At nine o'clock the people assemble at the grammar school, and demand their annual holiday. They then collect money and go into the fields; "fade" into the country as they call it. About noon they return laden with flowers and green boughs, then till dusk they dance hand-in-hand through Helston streets, and in and out of the different houses, preceded by a fiddler playing the old British Furry tune, and chanting in chorus some traditional doggerel, which commences:

Cutting the bar of Looe pool, is another Helston festival. When in winter the stream of the Cober cannot filter through the bar of pebbles that Tregeagle dropped, and mills are stopped and floods begin, the mayor of Helston comes with workmen, presents the lord of the manor with his feudal fee of three halfpence in a leather purse, and obtains permission to cut the bar.

Far west now, the crow passes within sight of the mount that looks towards "Nomancos ami Bayona's hold," and within hearing of the booming Atlantic waves; past the mansion of the Godolphins, now a farm nouse; past Pengersick Castle, built by a merchant whose weight of gold broke his donkey's back; past Prussia Cave, where about 1780 an audacious smuggling landlord actually opened fire on a revenue sloop; and lastly Tremen Keverne, where there are some boulders of ironstone, to which is attached a most damaging legend of St. Just. The legend deposes that once on a while, St. Just, of the Land's End, paid a visit to St. Keverne of the Lizard, who entertained him hospitably. The fact is, however (we cannot conceal it), that St. Just behaved with shameful ingratitude, for he went off with several valuable articles of plate in his pockets. St. Keverne, counting his spoons, discovering his loss, and more than suspecting his artful guest, started at once in pursuit, only stopping at Crousa Down to pocket three large blocks of granite of about a quarter of a ton each. He overtook his saintly brother at Breage, and at once charged him with the robbery. St. Just was at first astonished, then angry, lastly furious. The great and good men, lamentable to say, came to blows; but St. Keverne so plied the erring man with stones that he at last took to his heels, disburdening himself of the plate as he ran. The missiles of the injured St. Keverne are those very stones now lying by the roadside at Tremen Keverne.

At Perran-uthnoe, on the coast between Cuddan Point and Marazion (the Jews' town), just as Mount's Bay opens to the eye, there is a rocky recess shown, where an ancestor of the Trevelyans, the only survivor, rode ashore when Lyonesse, with its one hundred and forty churches, and all the land between the Land's End and the Scilly Isles, was submerged by a sudden inundation of the sea. There is a legend at Cuddan Point, close by, that a wicked lord of Pengersick was feasting in a boat, in which there was a silver table, when the craft suddenly went down. Fishermen have seen the table in deep water, with the skeletons still seated round it. One thing is certain, that the sea even now is making great inroads on this coast. The Eastern Green, between Penzance and Marazion, has been sensibly diminished during the last fifty years; and the Western Green, now a sandy beach, was all pasturage in the reign of Charles the Second. Beneath the sands of St. Michael's Bay black vegetable mould is found, with nut-leaves and branches, roots and trunks of oak-trees, and bones of red deer and elk. As ripe nuts have been dug up, it is supposed that the sea must have broken in in the autumn.

Penzance, sacked by Spaniards in 1595, and by Fairfax in 1646, boasts one curious custom, which perpetuates the old sun and fire worship. On the 23rd and 25th of June, the summer solstice, the eves of St. John and St. Peter, the people of Penzance, Mousehole, Newleyn, Manazion, and the Mount, light tar barrels and brandish torches, till the whole bay glows with a crescent of flame. The people then join hands and play at thread-the-needle, in the streets, running madly about, shouting, "An eye! an eye! an eye!" When they suddenly stop, the last couple, raising their clasped hands, form the eye, through which all the other couples run. The next day is spent idly on the