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 THE PADSTOW DISTRICT 313 add : " We have had commissions and I know not what about converting this place into a harbour of refuge. A harbour of refuge would be a great blessing, but not all the Government commissions in the world could keep the sand out, or make the harbour deep enough to swim a frigate, unless the parsons can find out the way to take up the merry-maid's curse." But there is another tradition attaching to the Bar. This is the country of Tregeagle — he lies buried at St. Breock, close to Wadebridge : " John Tregeagle, of Trevorder, Esqr., 1679." His story forms a curi- ous mixture of the recent and the prehistoric. We see that a man named Tregeagle truly lived and died something more than two centuries ago ; but the Tregeagle or Tergagle of legend belongs to folklore rather than to modern social life. Very old ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name ; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates ; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. From some versions of the story it would appear that Tregeagle could not have lived earlier than the seventeenth century, in actual accordance with the date on his tombstone ; but in others certain of the early Cornish saints are introduced, carrying the history twelve centuries back or further still. It would seem that Tregeagle was a landowner in the neighbourhood of Bodmin, holding the Trevorder estate ; but he won his chief notoriety as steward on the lands of the Robartes family, at Lanhydrock. There is still