Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/113

 I FROM FALMOUTH TO THE LIZARD 107 river is the Hel, or Hayle, and affords comfortable harbourage to many craft. There is a literary association here of some interest ; for Kingsley tells us how Hereward the Wake sailed up this river to Gweek, hungry for adventure. " He sailed in over a rolling bar, between jagged points of black rock, and up a tide river which wandered and branched away inland like a landlocked lake, between high green walls of oak and ash, till they saw at the head of the tide Alef's town, nestling in a glen which sloped towards the southern sun. They discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the beach, whose long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on the beak-head of one, and the adder on that of the other, bore witness to the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them unopposed ; past the ugly dykes and muddy leats, where Alef's slaves were streaming the gravel for tin ore : through rich alluvial pastures spotted with red cattle ; and up to Alef's town. Earthworks and stockades surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite cabins, thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode." If this is a picture of Gweek, the church must be imaginary ; the nearest churches are those of Constantine and of Mawgan. This is Maw- gan-in-Meneage, so called to distinguish it from the Mawgan-in-Pydar, near Newquay. The Men- eage, which we find affixed to several other parish names immediately north of the Lizard, clearly derives from the Cornish men — a stone — and denotes the " stony district " ; just as Roseland signified the heath or moorland district. When- ever we find man in an early place-name, we can