Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/99

 Legends of Parishes, etc. 87 to see if they could find the vessel from whose deck the stranger had fallen into the sea. It was safe in harbour, and the captain, whom the sailor had always thought to be his father, told him then for the first time, " How, when he was an infant, he had rescued him from drowning where last night he had nearly lost his life." Thus they were discovered to be brothers, and a day or two after, when out hunting, guided by the white hare, they accidentally came upon the miraculous sword that had disappeared when his mother was drowned. Then these two brothers sailed away from Cornwall, and dwelt in peace in the land of a strange princess ; where the Cornishman studied, under a celebrated master, astrology and all other occult sciences. After some time the old lord of Pengersick met his death in this wise : As he was riding out one fine morning, the white hare suddenly sprang up in front of his horse and startled it, so that it ran madly with its rider into the sea, where both were swallowed up. When this news was brought to him, the Cornishman bade his brother an affectionate farewell, and, with his wife, a learned princess, went back to Pengersick, where they lived' happily for several generations, for amongst many other wonderful things, the young lord had discovered an elixir of life which, had they so wished, would have kept them alive to the present day. {^See Bottrell.) In addition to being well versed in occult lore, Pengersick's wife was a fine musician ; she could with her harp charm and subdue evil spirits, and compel the fish in Mount's Bay, also the mermaids who then dwelt there, to come out of the sea. Another account of the old lord's death says that he and a party of his friends were dining in his yacht around a silver table when she went down, and all on board perished. This happened off Cudden Point, which juts into the sea just opposite Pengersick. Children living there formerly used to go down to the beach at low water to try and find this silver table. (A ship laden with bullion is reported to have been lost here in the time of Queen Elizabeth.) " The present castle," one tradition says, " was built in the reign of Henry VIII. by a merchant who had acquired immense wealth beyond the seas, and who loaded an ass with