Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/85

 Legends of Parishes, ete. 73 people, and of his dismal howls at not being able to fulfil his tasks. Mothers all over Cornwall when their children are loudly crying may be often heard to declare "that they are roaring worse than Tregeagle." "A tradition of the neighbourhood says that on the shores of this lonely mere (Dosmery pool) the ghosts of bad men are ever employed in binding the sand in bundles with ' beams' (bands) of the same. These ghosts, or some of them, were driven out (they say horsewhipped out) by the parson from Launceston." — H. G. T. Notes and Queries, December, 1850. Tregeagle had also to remove the sand from one cove to another, where the sea always returned it. It was on one of these expedi- tions that either by accident or design he dropped a sackful at the mouth of Loe-pool, near Helston. (When in wet seasons the waters of this pool rise to such a height as to obstruct the working of the mills on its banks, and heavy seas have silted up the sand at its mouth, the Mayor of Helston presents by ancient custom two leather purses containing three halfpence each as his dues to the lord of Penrose who owns Loe-pool, and asks for permission to cut a passage through the bar to the sea). Another of Tregeagle's tasks is to make and carry away a truss of sand bound with a rope of sand from Gwenvor (the cove at Whitsand Bay) near the Land's End. But his unquiet spirit finds no rest, for whilst he is trying to do his never-ending work the devil hunts him from place to place, until he hides for refuge in a hermit's ruined chap'el on St. Roche's rocks (East Cornwall). When the sea roars before a storm, people in the Land's End district say " Tregeagle is calling," and often, too, his voice may be heard lamenting around Loe-pool.* The substance of the following I had from a Penzance man (H, R. C), to whom I must own I am indebted for much in- formation about Cornish folk-lore. All his life he has in his business mingled with the peasantry of West Cornwall, and, unlike myself, he comes from a long line of Cornishmen. "You know Gwenvor Sands, in Whitsand Bay, at the Land's West Cornwall. L
 * A. fuller account of Tregeagle and his wonderful doings may be found in Bottrell's Traditiom,