Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/72

 6o Legends of Parishes, etc. wandering, however, for some time in the dark, without being able to find his hat, he gave over the pursuit and returned for the staff; but this also he was unable to discover, and both were irrevocably lost. In the morning, when the giant was gone, his hat and staff were both found by the country people about a mile asunder. The hat was found on White-horse Down, and bore some resemblance to a mill-stone, and continued in its place until 1798, when, some soldiers having encamped around it, they fancied, it is said, as it was a wet season, this giant's hat was the cause of the rain, and therefore rolled it over the cliff. The staff, or long- stone, was discovered in the position in which it remains ; it is about twelve feet high, and tapering toward the top, and is said to have been so fashioned by the giant that he might grasp it with ease." — Murray's Guide. There is another longstone in the parish of St. Cleer,* about two miles north of Liskeard, which bears an inscription to Doniert (Dungerth), a traditional king of Cornwall, who was drowned in 872. In fact, these "menhirs," supposed to be sepulchral monu- ments, are to be found scattered all over the county. The following curious bit of folk-lore appeared in the Daily News of March 8th, 1883, communicated by the Rev. J. Hoskyns Abrahall, Coombe Vicarage, near Woodstock : — "A friend of mine, who is vicar of St. Cleer, in East Cornwall, has told me that at least one housemaid of his — I think his servants in general — very anxiously avoided killing a spider, because Parson Jupp, my friend's predecessor (whom he succeeded in 1844), was, it was believed, somewhere in the vicarage in somp spider — no one knew in which of the vicarage spiders." Spiders are often not destroyed because of the tradition that one spun a web over Christ in the manger, and hid him from Herod. There are other superstitions current in Cornwall somewhat similar to the above. Maidens who die of broken hearts, after they have been deceived by unfaithful lovers, are said to haunt their betrayers as white hares. The souls of old sea-captains never • The Cornish manner of pronouncing the name of St. Clare.