Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/114

 I02 Legends of Parishes, etc. Raleigh, who had been entertained by an ancestor at their family- seat of Arwenack, when there was only one other house in the place. There is a red stain on it, "A blood-mark," the old people said, "that would not wash out, splashed there from the body of a man employed in making it, who fell from its top and was killed." On the coast just outside the town is Gyllanvaes, or William's Grave, which is pointed out as the place where King Henry I.'s son, who was drowned on his passage from Normandy to England, was buried. On the opposite side of Falmouth harbour, where St. Anthony's church now stands, was formerly the priory of St. Mary de Vale, and King Henry VHI. is reported to have landed here in 1537, and told the prior that it would soon be destroyed, and he with all his brethren turned out. It was ; but the prior left his curse behind him, and the first holder of the lands lost all his family by untimely deaths, and he himself committed suicide. Of all the creeks up the Fal from Falmouth to Truro, most marvellous tales of smugglers and their daring deeds are told ; and of King Harry's passage, where a ferry-boat crosses the river, this legend : That it is called after bluff King Hal, who forded it with his queen (sometimes Katherine of Arragon) on his back. To have accomplished this feat he must have been taller than the sons of Anak, for in the middle the water is several fathoms deep. At the head of one of these creeks is Veryan parish. And there is a tradition that should its church clock strike on the Sunday morning during the singing of the hymn before the sermon, or before the Collect against Perils at Evening Prayer (which does not often happen), there will be a death in the parish before the next Sunday. On a hill near Veryan is a barrow, in which Gerennius, a mj^thical king of Cornwall, was said to have been buried many centuries ago, with his crown on his head, lying in his golden boat with silver oars. It was opened in 1855, when nothing but a kistvaen (a rude stone chest) containing his ashes was found.