Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/121

 Legends of Parishes, etc. 109 servant-maid, having placed him to stand near a bowl of water in order to wash him, chanced to have forgotten the towel, and having stepped into another room to procure one, on her return found the boy dead, having fallen into the water with his head foremost : and in consequence of this unfortunate event the father spent a large part of his large property in charitable purposes, and in building and repairing churches in the county of Cornwall. —J. C. Gilbert. A story of a similar nature is related of one of the Arundells, of whom it had been foretold "that he should die in the sands." To prevent this he left his house of Efford, near Stratton, and took up his abode at Trerice, another of his estates, about three- and-a-half miles from Newquay. But the Earl of Oxford, having surprised and taken St. Michael's Mount, Sir John Arundell, who was then sheriff of Cornwall, marched there to besiege and retake it for the king, Edward IV. Here his fate overtook him, for in a skirmish on Marazion sands he lost his life, and was buried in the chapel at the Mount. A funeral procession goes through Strattqn before the death of the Bathes of Kilkhampton. Bet/ween Stratton and the village of Marham, about half-a-mile from / the former town, in the orchard of Binamy farm-house, is an old quadrangular moat, all that remains to show where stood the tastle of the Blanchminsters, an old family now, I believe, extiiict in this neighbourhood. Of one of them, who lived in the reigin of Edward I. and went with him on a crusade, folk-lore still tells some strange but^through the lapse of time — vague tales. His name was Ranulph de Blanchminster, corrupted by the country people into old Blowmanger, and it is said that after he had been absent for two or three years in the Holy Land, his wife, I suppose thinking that he was dead, married another baron. On his return he shut himself up alone in his castle, with the drawbridge generally raised to keep off intruders. No one was with him when he died ; but after his death a will was found leaving the greater part of his property for the benefit of the poor of the parish of Stratton. His effigy may be seen in the church, in the habit of a Crusader, grasping a sword, with his