A Book of Cornwall

In Cormac's Glossary of Old Irishisms-and Cormac, king-bishop of Cashel, died in 903-is a curious instance of the force of a curse in pagan times.

The wife of Caier fell in love with Neidhe the bard, her husband's nephew. Now a bard had the privilege of hurling a curse if a request made by him should be refused, but not else. So the woman, desiring to be rid of her husband, bade the bard ask of the king a knife which had been given to him in Alba, on condition that he never parted with it. Neidhe demanded the knife.

"Woe and alas!" said Caier, "it is prohibited to me to give it away."

Neidhe was now able to pronounce a glam dichinn, or curse. Here it is: -

"Evil, death, and short life to Caier!May spears of battle slay Caier;The rejected of the land be Caier;Buried under mounds and stones be Caier!"

Caier went out next morning to wash at the well, when he found that boils and blains had broken out over his face, disqualifying him for reigning, as a king must be unblemished. He accordingly fled the country, and concealed his disgrace in the dun on the Old Head of Kinsale, and Neidhe took to him the wife and throne of his uncle. Caier remained at Kinsale till he died, blasted by the curse pronounced by the bard.

The saints did just the same, only not for such scandalous reasons; they did it in the cause of humanity, and for the protection of the weak against the strong.

But it will be seen, from what has been said, that the Celtic saint was a very independent personage, and that he and the chief had their separate residences. It will be found that usually a stream divided the territory of the saint from that of the chieftain.

All this in illustration of Llan Stephan and Dunheved, the castle and the church facing and glowering at each other from opposite heights.

Launceston Castle is Norman. That there stood here a castle in Celtic times is certain; the name Dunheved indicates as much. The heved in composition is a difficulty. Some suppose it a Saxon addition: haefod, a head; but it is more probable that the whole name is Celtic, and signifies the summer dun. Hafod is a summer residence in contradistinction to a hendre, which is that for the winter-the old house, in principal use. The keep consists of concentric rings on a mound natural originally, but much adapted by art. That the castle was employed to dominate the West Welsh, first by the Saxons and then by the Normans, is indisputable. It formed one in a chain of fortresses employed by the Saxon kings, of which Warbstow and Helborough and Killibury were others. That the garrison of Warbstow was composed of Mercians is probable, as they dedicated their chapel to S. Werburga, a Mercian princess-saint. Another contingent was planted at Wembury, commanding Plymouth harbour, where also they introduced the same saint, who really had no "call" to come into these parts.

The parish church of Launceston, dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen, is a very interesting structure externally, of carved granite of extraordinary but somewhat barbaric richness.

The church was begun in 1511. Henry Trecarell, of Trecarell, in Lezant, was rebuilding his mansion there in great splendour. He had already constructed a chapel and a noble banqueting hall, and had got masses of carved granite ready for a gateway, when his only son, a child, was drowned in a basin of water whilst the nurse was bathing him, she having left him for a few moments. The mother survived the shock only a few hours. Henry Trecarell, the father, dropped for ever the intended mansion for himself, and devoted his wealth to a higher ambition-the glory of God. He rebuilt not only the church of Linkinhorne, but also that of Launceston. On the south porch of the latter on a shield appear the Trecarell arms, arg. two chevrons sable, which are those of Ashe of Devon, Trecarell being really an Ashe, but he bore the name of his Cornish residence. On a scroll is the date 1511. The niche over the door has lost its image, but on the left are S. George and the dragon, and on the right S. Martin dividing his cloak with a beggar. Above S. George is the Good Samaritan, and above S. Martin is Balaam striking his ass.

At the east end of the chancel, externally in the central gable, are the royal arms, the supporters of which are the lion and red dragon (the unicorn was substituted for the dragon by James I. in 1603). Under the sill of this window, in an arched recess, is a recumbent figure of the Magdalen. Four surpliced minstrels are on each side of the niche, and above the line of the niche similar figures ascend in pairs, but those in the two topmost storeys seem never to have been completed. The instruments which these musicians hold are the rebec, the lute, the bagpipe, shawm, and harps, and one plays the viol, turning a handle like a hurdy-gurdy. The leader of each set of minstrels carries a bâton, and wears a chain about his neck.

The devices carved round the church are repetitions of the plumes of the Prince of Wales, pomegranates, balm-plants dropping precious gums, the Tudor rose, and the arms of Trecarell, Kellaway (three pears), and the castle of Dunheved. Above the plinth encircling the building is a line of panelled tracery. In every alternate panel is a shield, bearing a letter, that make up the words: "Ave Maria, gracia plena! Dominus tecum! Sponsus amat sponsum. Maria optimam partem elegit. O quam terribilis ac metuendus est locus iste! Vere aliud non est hic nisi domus Dei et porta celi" ("Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord be with thee! The bridegroom loves the bride. Mary hath chosen the best part. Oh, how terrible and fearful is this place! Truly this is no other than the house of God and the gate of heaven").

The church was consecrated on June 18th, 1524. It was never completed, as may be seen by the condition of the west end. The tower belongs to the earlier church, and is twenty-six feet west of the church. Trecarell doubtless intended to rebuild that in a stately style according with the church, but the religious disturbances of the Reformation took all heart out of him, and he abandoned his task. The interior is very disappointing, but it must be remembered it was intended to have a screen of surpassing richness, which would have brought the whole into proportion. The pulpit alone was completed, and that is of singular richness. The modern carving in the church is thin and fanciful.

The neighbourhood of Launceston is rich in objects of interest and scenes of great beauty. The Inney valley will well repay a visit. There is an Inney also in South Wales. It is an excellent stream for fishing, and flows into the Tamar at Cartamartha (Caer Tamar), in a glen of wooded loveliness. The unfinished mansion of Trecarell deserves a visit. There are also old houses at Treguddic and Basil, both much spoiled by bad "restoration." On the heights commanding the river are Laneast, with old bench-ends, old glass, and a holy well, and S. Clether, with its well chapel, recently reconstructed. It was in a condition of complete ruin; almost every stone was prostrate, and the rebuilding was like the putting together of a child's puzzle. At the north-east of the chapel is a rather fine holy well, about three feet six inches from the north wall. A description has already been given in the chapter on holy wells, and the explanation of some very curious features in it.

But there is one further feature of interest in this structure that deserves to be noted. The old granite altar, rude, like a cromlech, had never been cast down. It remained intact, and has been left intact in the reconstructed chapel.

S. Clether was the son of Clydwyn, king of Carmarthen. Clydwyn's sister was married to an Irish priest, Brynach, who, on account of the ill-favour in which the Irish were regarded in South Wales, moved into Cornwall and Devon. After a long while he returned, but was again badly received. However, Clether welcomed him, and Brynach spoke to his nephew of the God-forsaken condition of North Cornwall, and an overpowering impulse came over the king to surrender his principality to his sons, and to depart for Cornwall, there to labour for the evangelisation of his Welsh brethren in the peninsula. He had relatives there. His uncle Gwynys was at S. Genes, on the coast, and his aunt Morwenna at Morwenstow. How long he remained at S. Clether we do not know, but he probably moved on to S. Cleer, near Liskeard, where also he has a fine holy well, and there died. We do not know the precise date, but it was about A.D. 550.5

A very fine and interesting church, deserving a visit, is that of Altarnon (Alt-ar-Nôn, the cliff of S. Non). The village is called Penpont (the head of the bridge). The church is rich in carved oak, benches, and screen. On several of the benches may be seen carved the corn man, that is to say the little figure that was plaited out of the heads of wheat in the last sheaf at a harvest.

About this and the custom of "crying, 'A neck!'" at harvest I will say a few words.

Towards the end of last century the member for North Devon was extremely unpopular, especially with the lower classes, and there had been a disturbance on the occasion of his election, in which he had run some personal risk. The time was when Lord North was Prime Minister.

Not long after the election he went to Dunsland, the seat of George Bickford.

Whilst strolling near the house he came near a harvest field, whereon he saw a rush of men, and he heard a cry of "Us have'n! us have'n! A neck! a neck!"

Panic-stricken, he ran, nimble as a hare, to the house, and shouted to Mr. Bickford, "For God's sake, hide me, anywhere, in the cellar or the attics! There is a mob after me who want to string me up!"

What the M.P. for North Devon saw and heard was the "crying, 'A neck!'" a custom universal in Devon and Cornwall till reaping machines came in and abolished it. It is now most rarely practised, but I can remember it in full swing some forty or fifty years ago.

Mrs. Bray, in her Borders of the Tamar and Tavy, thus describes it in 1832: -

"One evening, about the end of harvest, I was riding out on my pony, attended by a servant who was born and bred a Devonian. We were passing near a field on the borders of Dartmoor, where the reapers were assembled. In a moment the pony started nearly from one side of the way to the other, so sudden came a shout from the field which gave him this alarm. On my stopping to ask my servant what all that noise was about, he seemed surprised by the question, and said, 'it was only the people making their games, as they always did, to the spirit of the harvest.' Such a reply was quite sufficient to induce me to stop immediately, as I felt certain here was to be observed some curious vestige of a most ancient superstition; and I soon gained all the information I could wish to obtain upon the subject. The offering to the 'spirit of the harvest' is thus made: -

"When the reaping is finished, towards evening the labourers select some of the best ears of corn from the sheaves; these they tie together, and it is called the nack. Sometimes, as it was when I witnessed the custom, the nack is decorated with flowers, twisted in with the seed, which gives it a gay and fantastic appearance. The reapers then proceed to a high place (such, in fact, was the field, on the side of a steep hill, where I saw them), and there they go, to use their own words, to 'holla the nack.' The man who bears the offering stands in the midst and elevates it, whilst all the other labourers form themselves into a circle about him; each holds aloft his hook, and in a moment they all shout as loud as they can these words, which I spell as I heard them pronounced, and I presume they are not to be found in any written record: 'Arnack, arnack, arnack, wehaven, wehaven, wehaven.' This is repeated several times; and the firkin is handed round between each shout, by way, I conclude, of libation. When the weather is fine, different parties of reapers, each stationed on some height, may be heard for miles round, shouting, as it were, in answer to each other.

"The evening I witnessed this ceremony many women and children, some carrying boughs, and others having flowers in their caps, or in their hands, or in their bonnets, were seen, some dancing, others singing, whilst the men (whose exclamations so startled my pony) practised the above rites in a ring."

Mrs. Bray goes on to add a good deal of antiquated archæological nonsense about Druids, Phœnicians, and fantastic derivations. She makes "wehaven" to be "a corruption of wee ane" "a little one," which is rubbish. "Wehaven" is "we have'n," or "us have'n," "we have got him." As I remember the crying of the neck at Lew Trenchard, there was a slight difference in the procedure from that described by Mrs. Bray. The field was reaped till a portion was left where was the best wheat, and then the circle was formed, the men shouted, "A neck! A neck! We have 'n!" and proceeded to reap it. Then it was hastily bound in a bundle, the ears were plaited together with flowers at the top of the sheaf, and this was heaved up, with the sickles raised, and a great shout of "A neck! A neck!" etc., again, and the drink, of course.

The wheat of the last sheaf was preserved apart through the winter, and was either mixed with the seed-corn next year or given to the best bullock.

My old coachman, William Pengelly, who had been with my grandfather, father, and then with myself, and who died at an advanced age in 1894, was wont annually, till he became childish with age, to make the little corn man or neck, and bring it to be set up in the church for the harvest decorations. I kept a couple of these for some years, till the mice got at them and destroyed them.

In Essex a stranger passing a harvest field stands the chance of being run up to by the harvesters, caught in a loop of straw twisted, and held till he has paid a forfeit. To the present day in Devon, at haysel, the haymakers will make a twist of dry grass, and with this band catch a girl-or a girl will catch a boy-and hold her or him till the forfeit of a kiss has been paid, and this is called "making sweet hay."

Hereby hangs a tale.

The Quakers in Cornwall have, as elsewhere, their Monthly Advices read to them in the meeting-house, wherein are admonitions against various sorts of evil. Among these is one against "vain sports." Now, just about haymaking-time a newly-joined member heard this injunction, and he timidly inquired whether "making sweet hay with the mīdens" came under the category. "Naw, sure!" was the answer; "that's a' i' the way o' Natur'."

Our Guy Fawkes is actually the straw man transferred from harvest to November.

These straw men take the place of human victims, and the redemption with silver or a kiss is also a last reminiscence of the capture of a victim to be sacrificed for the sake of a future harvest to the Earth Spirit. In Poland the man who gives the last stroke at thrashing is wrapped in corn and wheeled through the village. In Bavaria he is tied up in straw and cast on a dunghill.

Among the Pawnees, as late as 1838, the sacrifice was carried out in grim reality. A girl was burnt over a slow fire, and whilst her flesh was still warm it was cut to pieces, and bits were carried away to be buried in the cornfields. At Lagos, in Guinea, it was till quite recently the custom to impale a young girl alive to ensure good crops. A similar sacrifice was offered at Benin. The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for the crops. He is captured, then intoxicated, carried into the fields, and there slaughtered. His blood and ashes, after the body has been burned, are distributed over the tilled land to ensure a good harvest next year. The Gonds of India kidnapped Brahman boys for the same purpose. The British Government had to act with great resolution in putting down the similar sacrifices of the Khonds some half-century ago.

The mode of performing these sacrifices was as follows. Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice the victim's hair was cut. Crowds assembled to witness the sacrifice. On the day before, the victim was tied to a post and anointed with oil. Great struggles ensued to scrape off some of this oil or to obtain a drop of spittle from the victim. The crowd danced round the post, saying, "O god, we offer this sacrifice for good crops, seasons, and health." On the day of the sacrifice the legs and arms were first broken, and he was either squeezed to death or strangled. Then the crowd rushed on him with knives and hacked the flesh from the bones. Sometimes he was cut up alive. Another very common mode was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and as it whirled round the crowd cut the flesh off while life remained. In some villages as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants were found, all of which had been used for this purpose. In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was erected, sloping on each side like a roof; upon this the victim was placed, his limbs wound about with cords to prevent his escape. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as much as possible, for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. The next day the body was cut to pieces. The flesh was at once taken home by delegates of the villages. To secure its rapid arrival it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who had remained at home fasted until the flesh arrived. When it came it was divided into two portions, one of which was offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground. The other portion was divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his share in leaves and buried it in his favourite field. In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream that watered his fields.

Since the British Government has suppressed the human sacrifices inferior victims have been substituted, such as goats.

Here, then, we have almost before our eyes a change of the victim. A still further change takes place when an image is used as a substitute; and there is again modification when the person captured and destined for sacrifice is allowed to redeem himself with a handsel or a kiss. But the fact that in Europe, aye, and in England, we have these modified customs only now dying out, is an almost sure proof that at a remote period our ancestors practised the awful rites at harvest and in spring, of which a description has been given as still in use in Africa, and as only just put an end to in America and in India.

North and west of Launceston is the Petherwin district; the former of these is in Devon, although lying west of the Tamar, as is also Werrington.

These three churches, all dedicated to S. Padarn, form a large territory once under his government. It was his Gwynedd, but whether so called from its being open moorland or from its being exposed to the winds-windblown (Gwynt) – I cannot say. Padarn was son of Pedredin and Gwen Julitta, and was first cousin of S. Samson. He was born in Brittany, but owing to a family revolution his father and uncles fled to Wales, but Padarn remained as a babe with his mother. Finding her often in tears, he asked her the reason, and she told him that she mourned the loss of his father. So when Padarn had come to man's estate he went in quest of him, and finally found him in Ireland, where, old rascal, he had embraced the monastic life, entirely regardless of what was due to the wife of his bosom. As Pedredin absolutely refused to leave his newly-chosen mode of life, Padarn returned to his mother, and they went together to Wales, passing through Cornwall. In Wales he founded Llanbadarn Fawr in Cardiganshire, which became an episcopal see; but he got across with Maelgwn, king of North Wales, as also with King Arthur, who in the lives of the Welsh saints is always represented as a bully, showing that they were written before that king had been elevated into the position of a hero of romance by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century. His position now became untenable, and he left Wales. It was then, I presume, that he made his great settlement in East Cornwall.

According to one account he crossed into Brittany with Caradoc Strong-i'-th'-Arm, but the expedition ended in no results, and he returned. Now after a while Cousin Samson arrived in Padstow harbour, and resolved on making a Cornish tour before he crossed into Brittany, whither he much desired to go and see what could be done towards the recovery of his paternal acres. At Padstow he visited S. Petrock. Then he went along the north-east, and as he approached Gwynedd, or Padarn's Venedotia, he sent word that he was coming. Now Padarn was getting out of bed when the tidings reached him, and he had pulled on one stocking and shoe; but so delighted was he to hear that his cousin was at hand, that he ran to meet him with one leg shod and the other bare.

The dates of his life are approximately these. He came to Wales in 525, remained there till 547, when he migrated to Devon and Cornwall, where he remained to his death in 560.6 When the Saxons obtained the mastery, North Petherwin and Werrington were given to the abbey of Tavistock, and the old Celtic foundation of Padarn ceased-monastically.

A pleasant excursion may be made from Launceston to Trewartha Marsh. This occupies the site of a lake, but it has been filled by detritus from the granite tors around, and this rubble has been turned over and over by tin-streamers, who not only extracted the baser metal, but also gold.

On the way Trebartha is passed, one of the loveliest sites in England, second in my mind only to Bolton Abbey. It is the seat of F. R. Rodd, Esq. The parish church of Northill is a foundation of S. Tighernach or Torney, godchild of S. Bridget. There are two ways up to Trewortha: one is by Higher and Lower Castick, where a picturesque old farm is passed, by Trewartha Tor, on which is shown King Arthur's bed; the other is by the bridge at the back of Trebartha. The stream flowing from the marsh forms a really beautiful fall in the grounds.

The marsh itself and its surroundings are desolate, but Killmar (Cêl-mawr, the great place of shelter) rising above it is a noble tor, and the view from the north-west, by Grey Mare Rock looking over the flat marsh to Killmar, is as fine as anything on the Bodmin moors. On the west side of the marsh is an ancient British settlement, apparently unconnected with the stream-works for tin. The houses were long and quadrangular; one was apparently a council chamber, having a judge's seat in granite and benches of granite down the sides. Unfortunately these have been wantonly destroyed recently by a man who was building pigsties. The houses had separate bakeries, and two or three of these with their ovens remain in a tolerably perfect condition. The same long building was occupied by two or three families, divided off from each other by an upright slab of granite, making so many horseboxes, but each family had its own hearth. The pottery found there was all wheel-turned; and as many hones were found, no doubt could exist that the occupants belonged to the iron age. No other village of the kind has as yet been noticed on the moors except another somewhat higher up the stream that feeds Trewartha Marsh, and this has been much mutilated of late years. Independent of these singular quadrangular buildings are hut circles belonging to a far earlier age, before steel and iron were known.

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1

Irish Nennius, ed. Todd and Herbert (Dublin, 1848), p. 237.

2

Misses Couch were misled when they visited S. Mawes, and they give a photograph of a well which is not the holy well. The latter is among the houses opposite the post office, and had an arched entrance, now walled up.

3

Matthews, History of the Parishes of S. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 40.