Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/48

6 in the prison, jail, or hold, to which she was confined as aforesaid. The parish feast is holden on the Sunday following St. Agnes' Day.

In this parish stands Carne Bury-anacht, or Bury-anack, synonymous words, only varied by the dialect; id est, the still, quiet, spar-stone grave, or burying-place, where, suitable to the name, on the natural, remote, lofty circumstances thereof, stand three sparstone tumuli, consisting of a vast number of those stones, great and small, piled up together, in memory of some one notable human creature before the 6th century interred there.

This is that well-known place called St. Agnes' Ball, that is to say, St. Agnes' pestis, or plague, so named from the hard, deep, and dangerous labour of the tinners there, out of which mountain hath been digged up, for at least 150 years' space, about ten thousand pounds worth of tin per annum; which keeps daily employed about the same 1,000 persons, who for the most part spend their time in hard and dangerous labours as afore said, in order to get a poor livelihood for themselves and families, in the pursuit of which, here and in other places, many of those poor men yearly by sad accidents lose their lives.

The natural circumstances of this Ball is a subject as worthy the consideration of the most sage virtuosos, or natural philosophers; for, though it be a stupendous and amazing high mountain, abutting upon the Irish sea, or St. George's Channel, rising pyramidally from the same at least 90 fathom above the sea and contiguous lands, yet on the top thereof, under those spar-stone graves, or burying-places, is discovered by the tinners, five foot deep, good arable land or earth; under that, for six foot deep, is found a fine sort of white and yellow clay, of which tobacco-pipes have been made; beneath this clay is a laying of sea-sand and nice totty-stones. Two or three hundred fathoms from the sea,