Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/122

 no Legends of Parishes, etc. feet resting on the back of a lion. Through his interest Stratton had the charter of its market. His spirit haunts Binamy grounds (avoided after dark by the superstitious) in the form of a hare, which always starts out of the moat and manages to elude the dogs. Of the doings of the famous Grenvilles of Stow, — Sir Beville, the brave Royalist leader, who lost his life at the battle of Lansdowne in 1643, — Admiral Sir Richard, immortalized by Tennyson in his ballad "The Revenge," — and of his son. Sir John, who served under Sir Walter Raleigh and died at sea, — I shall say nothing, these noted men belonging more to history than folk-lore. Under the same head, too, may be classed the Cornish female Whittington, Thomasine Bonaventure, of St. Mary Wike (now Week St. Mary), who lived in the fourteenth century ; the daugh- ter of a labourer, she herself was a shepherdess. A London merchant, when travelling in Cornwall, lost himself on our moors, and accidentally met her with her sheep. He asked of Jier the way, and was so much struck by her good looks and intelligence that he begged her from her parents and took her back with him to be a servant to his wife. In her new situation she conducted herself with so much propriety that on his wife's death he cci,urted and married her. Soon after he himself died, and left her a wealthy widow. Her next marriage was to a much richer man, named Henry Gall. Widowed a second time, and again inheriting her husband's money, she took for her third and last husband Sir John Percival, Lord Mayor of London. Him, too, she outlived, and after his death returned to her native village, where she em- ployed her great riches in works of charity. Amongst her other good deeds she founded and endowed a chantry there, together with a free school, and lodgings for masters, scholars, and oflScers. The Rev. R. S. Hawker, in his book before-quoted, has a legend which he calls " The first Cornish Mole. A Morality." L however, suspect it to be a pure invention of this author ; but as it is very pretty, I will give the substance of it. Alice of the Coombe was a very beautiful, but proud and vain, damsel ; the only child of