Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/80

 68 Legends of Parishes, etc. About eight miles from Truro is the lost church of Perran- zabuloe, which for centuries was supposed to have been a myth, but the shifting of the sand disclosed it in 1835. In Hayle Towans is buried the castle of Tendar, the Pagan chief who persecuted the Christians, and in the neighbouring parish of Lelant that of King Theodrick, who, after beheading, in Ireland, many saints, crossed over to Cornwall on a millstone. Many of the Cornish saints are reputed to have come into Corn- wall in the same way as this king ; but St. la, the patron saint of St. Ives, chose a frailer vessel. She crossed from Ireland on a leaf. The afore-mentioned lost city was most likely a very small place, as I asked an old woman three or four years ago, who lived not far from the little village of Gwithian, where I could get something I wanted, and she told me, " In the city." The bay between this place and St. Ives (St. Ives Bay) has the reputation of being haunted at stormy times before a shipwreck by a lady in white, who carries a lantern. At Nancledra, a village near St. Ives, was formerly a logan rock, which could only be moved at midnight ; and children were cured of rickets by being placed on it at that hour. It refused to rock for those who were illegitimate. Not far from here is Towednack, and there is a legend to the effect that the devil would never allow the tower of its church to be completed, pulling down at night what had been built up in the day. When a person makes an incredible statement he is in West Cornwall told " To go to Towednack quay-head where they christen calves." (No part of this parish touches the sea.) Mr. Robert Hunt records a curious test of innocency which, not long since, was practised in this parish. "A farmer in Towednack having been robbed of some property of no great value was resolved, nevertheless, to employ a test which he had heard the ' old people' resorted to for the purpose of catching the thief. He invited all his neighbours into his cottage, and, when they were assembled, he placed a cock under the ' brandice ' (an iron vessel, formerly much employed by the peasantry in baking when this process was carried