POPULAR ROMANCES OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND.* Tins is not
a book of fairy stories, such as would interest a child. It is a series of local tales and traditions, too fragmentary and dis- jointed to sustain interest as works of fiction. Let no one there- fore hope fully to appreciate them the roots of whose local sympathies are not imbedded in Cornwall, taking the name com- prehensively to include so much of Devonshire as lies west of the eastern edge of Dartmoor. To this region the stories and traditions related in this book are confined, and they have little in common with any to be found in other parts of the country. Each has its own special locality, separated from which it loses most of its interest and all its appropriateness, while connected with familiar rocks, and coasts, and streams, the most outlandish as well as the simplest tradition has an interest and charm of its own, and helps the imagi- nation to construct its bridge to the realms of a mythical, if not of an historic past. Independently of the distinct origin of the Cornish, and of their being from their situation so cut off from the rest of the world, the wild and rocky nature of the country and the peculiar ex- posure of its coasts have tended to keep tradition alive. Mountains and granite boulders remain for thousands of years unaltered, and with them the stories which cling around their sides, whereas in featureless plains the plough and the axe of each succeeding generation are sufficient to change the face of the country and the memorials of the inhabitants.
Yet even in Cornwall, it seems, traditions are fast perishing, and the old people becoming ashamed, instead of anxious, to tell them to their children. Mr. Hunt was only just in time to perform the good work of rescuing many of the tales from oblivion, several, he says, well known and often repeated to him when he was a child having already disappeared. He has edited the col- lection in the spirit not so much of an author as of a painstaking and diligent annalist, preserving all that he found with an anxious fidelity, and not with a view to effect. With respect to the historic value of the myths, he has prudently abstained from even expressing an opinion on a problem so impossible of solution. He has indeed separated those relating to mythic from those relating to historic times, but by so dividing them he does not mean to imply that more faith is to be put in the latter than in the former. Picking a tradition to pieces to separate the foundation of fact from the aftergrowth of romance is • an unprofitable occupation. Tradi- tions must be made intelligible to each generation which transmits them, and thus, as Mr. Hunt points out, the customs of the age in which the story is told are interpolated, and they are constantly changing their form. The greater the change of manners the greater must be the interpolation, and unless the surrounding cir- cumstances through which the thread of tradition has been carried are known, it is impossible to arrive at its original form. It is like trying to find the value of two unknown quantities from a single equation.
The stories about the famous Cornish giants are a strange mixture of old and new. Everybody who believes in real live giants having existed in Cornwall, agrees that they mast have vanished at any rate before the Romans became masters of Britain. Yet we find the great giant Bolster falling in love with and perse- cuting a Christian saint, St. Agnes, who in self-defence kills him by tricking him into trying to fill a bottomless hole with his own blood. Another giant, who has acquired the name of Tom, drives a brewer's wain (not a very antique species of chariot) along a highway from Market Jew to St. Ives, which perhaps would not have been possible even a century ago.
Popular Romotoes of the no of England; or the Droll', Traditions, (gni Super. *idioms of Old Cornwall. collected Cud edited b7 Robert Hunt, F.R.S. London John Camden Holten.
Several romances are occupied with a mythical tyrant and evil- doer called Iregeagle, and the retribution suffered by him for his crimes. One of them relates how a famous lawsuit, caused by some forgeries of his, was after his death tried at the assizes. Iregeagle himself was a necessary witness, and accordingly his spectre appears in the witness-box. Here is a scene for the Western circuit, enacted in court at Bodmin :—
" There was a strange silence in the judgment-hall. When the awe- struck assembly had recovered, the lawyers for the defendant com- menced their examination, which was long and terrible. . . . The trial- over, every one expected to see the spectre witness removed. There, however, he stood, powerless to fly, although he evidently desired to do so. Spirits of darkness were waiting to bear him away, but some spell of holiness prevented them from touching him. There was a struggle with the good and the evil angels for this sinner's soul, and the assembled court appeared frozen with horror. At length the judge with dignity commanded the defendant to remove his witness.—' To bring him from the grave has been to me so dreadful a task, that I leave him to your care, and that of the Prior by whom he was so beloved.'—Having said this, the defendant left the court. The Churchmen were called in, and long were the deliberations between them and the lawyers as to the best mode of disposing of Iregeagle. They could resign him to the Devil at once, but by long trial the worst of crimes might be absolved, and as good Churchmen they could not sacrifice a human souL The only thing was to give the spirit some task, difficult beyond the power of human nature, which might be extended far into eternity. . . One of the lawyers remembering that Dosmery Pool was bottomless, and that a thorn bush which had been flung into it but a few weeks before had made its appearance in Falmouth Harbour, proposed that Iregoagle might be employed to empty this profound lake. Then one of the Churchmen, to make the task yet more enduring, proposed that it should be per- formed by the aid of a limpet shell having a hole in it."
From this labour Iregeagle is driven by pitiless storms. Flee- ing from the tormenting demons, he dashes his head through the windows of a hermit's church, and remains for weeks In this posi- tion, with the rest of his body exposed to the elements on a bare rock. Thence he is taken by the monks to make balls and ropes of sand on the shore ; and last of all, to sweep the sand round a headland against tides and currents. Even to this day he labours, and " those sounds which some call ' the soughing of the wind ' are known to be the moanings of Iregeagle."
Amongst the traditions of later times having a claim to historie authenticity, the most remarkable is that of the existence of a tract of country called Lyonesse (celebrated in the romances of King Arthur), extending from the Land's End to the Scilly Isles, and containing no less than a hundred and forty churches. It is said to have been submerged so recently as the year 1099, according to Stowe by the same tide which converted part of Kent into the Goodwin Sands, and overflowed the banks of the Thames, destroying many towns. " One of the ancestors of the Trevilians is said to have had time to remove his family and his cattle, but at last he had to fly himself with all the speed which a fleet horse could give him I It is very
extraordinary that the occurrence of so great a catastrophe should have remained a matter of doubt. In Any other part of England Domesday Book would have settled the question by containing, or failing to contain, an account of the hundred and forty churches ; but Cornwall was, at that time, hardly part of Eng- land, and Cornishmen speaking a strange unknown dialect of celtic, would not easily make themselves intelligible to their
neighbours.
The second series of the romances contains, amongst other things, a number of fragmentary pieces, superstitious, charms, incantations, and sayings of various kinds. Here is a descrip- tion of the weather at Liskeard, which if not absolutely and strictly accurate, is at least above criticism as regards conciseness and exhaustiveness :—
" The south wind always brings wet weather ;
The north wind wet and cold together, The west wind always brings us rain ; The east wind blows it back again.
If the sun in red should set, The next day surely will be wet ; If the sun should set in gray, The next will be a rainy day."
Mr. Cruikshank has contributed two very good etchings. One of them represents the giant Boleter taking his stride of six miles from the Beacon to Carn Brea. A six-mile stride, says Mr.. Cruikshank, implies a twelve-mile high giant, whose head must be about three-quarters of a mill long ; and Bolster is depicted. accordingly, with full benefit of perspective, his head appearing a mere speck, as it would do to I human spectator's eye, looking up to it some thirteen or fourteen miles off. The other etching represents a party of witches floating sweetly in the air on broom- sticks and black cats' backs. The book is so excellent of its kind, so well worthy to be illustrated, so suggestive and replete, with opportunity for the pen of an artist of fanciful and creative imagination, that we wonder Mr. Cruikshank was not tempted to do more.
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