CHAPTER VII

THE LIZARD TO HELSTON

Mr. Norway says that it would be hard to find an uglier spot than Lizard Town, but of course he fully admits the grandeur of the coast of which it is the small metropolis. The name, which first applied only to the most southern headland, was not given from any fanciful resemblance to a Lizard, but appears to be a corruption of the Cornish words Lis-arth, lis being the secular enclosure, the palace or court, as distinct from lan the sacred enclosure, and arth meaning high. Lizard Town is a cluster of houses, growing in number to meet an increasing popularity, of which Landewednack is the church town, about half a mile distant; it is served by motor-buses from Helston, and in time there will doubtless be a branch line of the railway here. Housel Bay, formerly Househole, is the bathing-place, with a large modern hotel standing close to the cliffs; on the east is Lloyd's signal station, and on the west the lighthouse. Vessels that used to call at Falmouth for sailing orders, or for other information, now receive these instructions by signal from Lloyd's station here, flags being employed by day and lights by night; a wireless telegraph has also been established. All vessels, outward or homeward, are thus reported at this most southern point of England. At the lighthouse there were formerly two lights, whose double purpose was to warn seamen not only of the Lizard but also of the Wolf rocks off Land's End; these rocks have now a light of their own, and at the Lizard is displayed a single electric lamp, of 1,000,000 candle power, revolving, whose reflection is visible at over sixty miles' distance. It is said that when its revolutions first turned its light towards the houses of Lizard Town, some alarm was felt at this sudden searching gaze piercing into the very heart of the dwellings; it was like the vivid illumination of a flash of lightning, a great prying eye which no one could avoid. To obviate this a screen has been placed on the landward side of the lantern. The light stands about 200 feet above the sea; and in addition to this there is a fog-siren, whose tremendous voice bellows through thick weather at intervals of two minutes. West of the lighthouse is the little fishing-cove and lifeboat station of Polpeor. In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, kept burning at night; and there is a story that a Government packet, passing in the days of our French wars, noticing that the sleepy watchman had allowed the fire to dwindle to a mere smoulder, discharged a cannon-ball at the spot to arouse the neglectful watcher. It must be remembered that the Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by coal-fires—a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847. This formation was an immediate object-lesson as to the manner in which these remarkable hollows, caverns, and rock-freaks have been produced in the course of time; and there can be no doubt that such natural weathering alone accounts for the Belidden Amphitheatre, east of the fine Penolver Point. Bass Point is the eastward bluff of this rugged and bare old headland, known to ancient geographers as Ocrinum, the southern extremity of the Britains.

With many visitors, to speak of the Lizard is to speak of Kynance. It is Kynance that the guide-books and the artists have chiefly popularised; it is Kynance that is probably the most celebrated beauty-spot on the whole south-Cornish coast. Is it worthy of its reputation? Some visitors give an emphatic affirmative; others are a little dubious. To some the spot is a little spoiled by its popularity; during the season it is like a corner of a fashionable watering-place, covered with tourists, refreshment booths, and sellers of serpentine. But autumn and winter bring a grand solitude when all traces of the tripper are washed away: the storms cleanse it with their mighty lustrations; only the white sands, the black or richly stained rocks remain, a haunt of homeless winds and crying gulls. The cove is encircled by a group of off-lying rocks, insular at high tide; it is only at low water that Kynance can be explored. The Gull Rock, Asparagus Island, the Lion, the Steeple, the Kitchen, the Drawing-room—these names of the crags and clefts have become almost as familiar as household words; while every one knows that if you post a letter in the Devil's Post-office, it will presently be returned in a great outburst of water. It is of little use for the local authorities to forbid such posting, as being dangerous to the individual who waits too eagerly near for his reply; visitors will still venture, and are sometimes drenched, if nothing worse, by the natural blow-hole for their pains. There are other places here where care must be exercised—steep sudden descents, unguarded chasms, nooks and coves where it is easy to be entrapped by the tide; even the active and skilful may get into trouble, and visitors who bring venturesome boys must be prepared for alarms. It is natural that many a parent of a family should prefer a level sandy shore for his summer resort, and Cornwall happily has many such spots to offer, where father and mother can recline restfully without constant anxiety for their boys and girls.

Passing westward from Kynance there are numberless features of the coast that might cause one to delay; and the coastguard's walk above the cliffs is rendered plain by the white stones that are so necessary at night. In one place is the intervening cleft called Gue Graze, which may be scrambled across or skirted, leading to the precipice that rises above the cavernous Pigeon Hugo; this cave can only be approached from the water, and then very rarely. Fields of buttercups and clover come near to the shore, but inland lies the moorland waste of Pradanack and Goonhilly Downs. Beyond Pigeon Hugo are two notable headlands, Vellan and Pradanack. This brings us to Mullion, another small metropolis of what is considered the Lizard district, though we have now left the true Lizard five or six miles behind us. This is another region of shipwrecks, but if we can forget them Mullion Cove, with its outlying islet, is purely delightful, and is reaping the fruit of its charms by the establishment of hotels, boarding-houses, and golf-links. Both Polurrian and Poldhu share some of this favour. The coast here is quite as fine, some think even grander, than it is around the Lizard; while the air, though temperate, has a bracing freshness from the Downs. The true name of Mullion Cove is Porthmellin, and it is probable that Mullion itself is a corruption of Mellin, for the church is dedicated to Melyan or Melanus, the father of Mylor. The church-town is about a mile distant from the Cove, and its church, with "black-and-white" tower of granite and serpentine, somewhat resembles that of Landewednack. The tower dates from 1500, but portions of the remaining building are obviously earlier; it was restored in 1870. There is a curious crucifixion over the west window, with the figure of the Father standing behind that of the Son; and in front of the altar are carved wooden figures which may have formed part of a screen; one of these is supposed to represent St. Cleer, or Cleher. The bench-ends are of rare excellence for this part of the Duchy—in fact, they are among the finest in the West of England, and to say that is to say much. They probably date from the fifteenth century, and bear all manner of devices, letterings, symbols. One series, in the western nave, gives the arms of the Passion, while others bear fleurs-de-lis and different crosses. The gallery that was formerly here has been removed. In the chancel is an inscription to the memory of Thomas Flavel, vicar, who died in 1682, being well known locally as a ghost-layer. Such duties were at one time a recognised part of a clergyman's vocation. The epitaph of this reverend exorcist is quaint enough to bear quotation:—

"Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet, The World my goods; my Soul my God who gavet; For from these four—Earth, Satan, World and God, My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."

There is a ballad of Goethe's ("De Zauberlehrling") which tells how a magician's apprentice, who had learned enough of his master's craft to be dangerous to himself, once succeeded in raising spirits during the wizard's absence, but was quite unable to dismiss them. A similar tale is told of Flavel's servant-maid. During her master's absence at church she unwarily opened one of the books in his study, "whereupon a host of spirits sprung up all round her. Her master discovered this, though then occupied at church, closed his book and dismissed the congregation. On his return home he took up the book with which his servant had been meddling, and read backwards the passage which she had been reading, at the same time laying about him lustily with his walking-cane; whereupon all the spirits took their departure, but not before they had pinched the servant-girl black and blue." It is said that this parson used to charge five guineas for laying troublesome ghosts; but as there are no longer ghosts at Mullion, it is not advisable to attempt a revival of the business. Nor are there smugglers, though the locality had once a reputation not only for smuggling but for wrecking. It may not have been often that persons deliberately drew vessels on the coast by false signals, but that this was sometimes done seems indisputable. More often still, boats may have been deceived by lights that were merely displayed as signals or warnings during operations of the smugglers. But there was little need to do anything that might lead to shipwreck; the deadly coast itself was enough. To relate the stories of even a few might be monotonous, after those of which we have already spoken at the Manacles. Of a fresher interest is the station of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, at Poldhu (formerly written Poljew), whose four highest towers or scaffolds, each over 200 feet in height, have become a prominent local landmark. It is not easy to describe these; an illustration can best convey the impression, and no immediate scrutiny is allowed to the public. The activities of this station must remain mysteries to the uninitiated, but it must be a weird and wonderful experience to ascend those white winding stairways around the iron poles during a strong wind. Poldhu has one of the fine modern hotels that come as a surprise to the rambler in the district that has hitherto been so lonely and desolate. Around the wireless station is a network of posts, wires, and lower towers.

Poldhu was chosen in 1900 as the site of a station for the purpose of establishing communication by wireless telegraphy with America, Mr. Marconi being assisted at that time by Professor Fleming, of London. No such distance had hitherto been attempted, and the employment of very powerful magnetic waves was necessary. These were obtained, Mr. Marconi has himself told us, "by means of a generating plant consisting of an alternator capable of an output of about 25 kilowatts, which, through suitable transformers, charged a condenser having a glass dielectric of great strength." A corresponding station was erected at Cape Cod, but in the autumn of 1901 the masts and aerial at Poldhu were wrecked by a storm, and this caused delay. In November, 1901, Mr. Marconi crossed to Newfoundland with the hope of opening communication; and in December he was satisfied that he received signals from Cornwall, proving to him that messages might be transmitted by electric waves from a distance of 2,000 miles. Two months later further satisfactory tests were carried out between Poldhu and the American liner Philadelphia. In 1902 a new station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, was put into touch with Poldhu; and at this time the four wooden lattice-towers, 210 feet in height, were raised at the Cornish station, the buildings for the generating plant being placed in the space between them. The superior equipment at Glace Bay caused the communication from Canada to be excellent, while the reverse was not so good; Canada had granted a subsidy, and England had not. But the communication was established; and a message from President Roosevelt, sent to Cape Cod and transmitted to Glace Bay, was safely received at the Poldhu station. Although the efficiency of this station was greatly increased by the addition of the numerous wires, sloping umbrella fashion, Mr. Marconi decided to establish a new long-distance station in Ireland; and the Poldhu station is now used for transmitting news to vessels on the Atlantic, whereby, with the addition of intelligence received from the Cape Cod station, most of the first-class liners to America are enabled to publish daily news journals throughout their voyage—a very wonderful thing, when we remember how completely a sea voyage used to cut one away from news of home. Though it is not at the moment the foremost of the Marconi stations, therefore, Poldhu has all the merit of having been the earliest permanent wireless station; and in the near future it is probable additions will be made to its plant, so as to bring it up to the standard of the Company's station at Clifden in Ireland, when it will become available for regular commercial communications between England and America.

A little river flows into the Poldhu cove, running down from the charming wooded estate of Bochym, mentioned in Domesday as Buchent. There was formerly some fine old tapestry and stained glass in the mansion, but these have gone; however, its oak room with sliding panel and secret staircase remains, and the garden has some remarkable tropic growths. A number of prehistoric relics have been discovered on this estate. Close to Bochym is another old manor, Bonython; it is said that the poet Longfellow was descended from one of the Bonythons, who was an early settler in America. We are now in the parish of St. Cury, or Corentin. He is a saint better known in Brittany that in Cornwall, but it must always be remembered that the two countries are very closely connected in race and tradition; also even in name, for there was a Cornouaille in Brittany which former chroniclers have sometimes confused with the English Cornwall.

The church, which is chiefly late Decorated, has a very good Norman doorway, and a most interesting hagioscope, resembling that of Landewednack, with the difference that the Cury window is a single light. Much change and mutilation seems to have taken place in this church; a former vicar found many remains of alabaster figures hidden among plaster and débris behind a slab. There is a very singular aumbry or alms-box, formed in an oak bench-end near the door. The rugged old building is finely placed, with a magnificent view over land and sea. But the ordinary visitor takes more notice of Grunwalloe, which is one of the most curiously situated churches in the kingdom, standing where the sea-spray sometimes makes a clean sweep over it. Its churchyard walls rise immediately from the sands of Gunwalloe Church Cove—at times the very graveyard has been invaded by dashing waves; and its little campanile tower is literally built into the solid rock. Thus founded on rocks, it stands old and weather-beaten, in a desolate district of sand-towans. The dedication is to St. Winwaloe, and it must be left to more learned hagiologists to decide who this Winwaloe really was, or whether he was identical with the founder of Landewednack. There are about half a dozen churches with detached belfries in Cornwall, but this of Gunwalloe is perhaps the most striking; the campanile here stands 14 feet west of the main building. It is difficult to account for the peculiarity, but of course there are stories that attempt to solve the mystery. The church itself is said to have been the votive offering of a survivor from shipwreck; some, however, speak not of a single survivor, but of two sisters whose lives were saved here, and who could not agree about the exact position of the church they desired to erect as a thank-offering. The result was a compromise. There are traditions of buried treasure here, as well as of wrecked dollars; and in both cases much time and money have been spent by treasure-seekers.

It is possible that the Goonhilly Downs, which occupy the high-lying and barren interior of this Lizard district, really embody a corruption of the name of Gunwalloe, though the name is generally explained as meaning "hunting down." These downs belong to the true meneage or stony district, but in the past they seem to have been covered with thickets and wild beasts. It is still a lonely, deserted track of country, with prehistoric hut-circles and entrenchments, crossed by two good roads, now often traversed by brake and motor and cycle, leading from Helston to St. Keverne and the Lizard. Leland speaks of "a wyld moor, called Gunhilly, wher ys brood of catyle"; perhaps the cattle were the once-famous Goonhilly nags referred to by Norden. "There is a kinde of nagge," he says, "bred upon a mountanous and spatious peece of grounde, called Goon-hillye, lyinge between the sea-coaste and Helston; which are the hardeste naggs and beste of travaile for their bones within this kingdome, resembling in body for quantitie, and in goodness of mettle, the Galloway naggs." The breed seems now to be extinct, though there are doubtless living descendants; and Goonhilly remains an almost treeless table-land, broken by streamlets where it meets the sea. There are many to whom this inland portion of the Lizard country may seem dreary enough, but others will be touched by its indefinite charm of breezy expanse, the beautiful colour of its Cornish heath, the loneliness of its pools and hollows, the call of its curlews, the hum of its summer bees.

Just below Gunwalloe fishing-cove are the fine Halzaphron cliffs, on which a transport was wrecked about a century since, and the bodies then buried are said to have been the last shipwrecked persons to be laid in unconsecrated ground. Public opinion rebelled against the so-called heathen burial given to such remains, and an Act was passed in Parliament sanctioning their interment in the churchyards of the parishes on which they were cast. Whatever advantage there may be in lying in consecrated earth is now freely granted; the unknown drowned are given the benefit of the doubt, and their bodies committed to the dust in Christian fashion. In parishes like these of the Lizard, and on the north Cornwall coast at places like Morwenstow, this duty of giving Christian sepulture has been no sinecure.

We come across traces of an ancient Cornish family at Carminow, the eastern creek of Loe Pool; but the most tangible relics of the Carminows now remaining are the two effigies in the church of Mawgan-in-Meneage, in which parish we find ourselves once more after having made the tour of the Lizard peninsula. Various tales are told of the Carminows; it is said they claimed descent from King Arthur—it is even said that a Carminow fought against the Romans at their first landing, which would carry them far eastward of Cornwall. Hals thought that the Mawgan figures were brought from the old chapel of their manor-house, which stood here by the Carminow creek; but Blight is of opinion that the effigies were removed from Bodmin. In Loe Bar we have a formation slightly resembling the famous Chesil Ridge of Dorset, and the bar at Slapton Sands in Devon; but this Loe Bar is on a much smaller scale. Being formed of very fine pebbles, the waters of Loe Pool are in ordinary times able to percolate to the sea; but after much rain there is more water than can thus be carried off, and it was formerly the custom to cut the Bar at such times that the superfluous flood might rush through. A culvert has now been constructed for this purpose, so that the cutting of the Bar is now superseded. A writer who was at school at Helston tells us that "when the floods became serious, and the Loe too near Helston to be pleasant, there was a solemn function performed by the men of Helston, with the Mayor at their head, called breaking the Bar. The Loe was so full that a small trench cut between it and the sea let out the waters; there was then a rush of water and the Loe became connected with the sea by a deep chasm through which the tide flowed. I have never seen the Bar broken, but I have seen the deep chasm in the bar of sand with the tide flowing in and out. The natural forces which originally made the Bar restored it, and in the course of some months it became the same as before." Mr. Hind says he was told by a sailor that "when he was a boy Loe Bar used to be broken once a fortnight"; but we sometimes exaggerate the things that we remember of our boyhood, and certainly the cutting can never have been as frequent as this. C. A. Johns, who knew Helston well, says that it was rarely necessary to cut the Bar more than twice a year, sometimes not even once; and further, describing a cutting, he says: "In a few hours a deep mighty river is bursting out with inconceivable velocity, and engaging in violent conflict with the waves of the ocean; as the two meet they clash together with terrific uproar, while the sea for twenty, or even thirty miles, is tinged of an ochreous hue. Even at the Scilly Islands the cutting of the Loe Bar has been notified by the altered colour of the water." As the pool belonged to the lord of Penrose, it was customary to present him with a purse containing three-halfpence to obtain his permission for the cutting of the Bar. All this is a thing of the past, but Loe Pool remains as the only sheet of water in Cornwall worthy to be termed a lake, with banks finely wooded and carpeted with flowers. In shape it is more like a broad river than a lake, and it is in fact the land-locked estuary of the Cober, cut off from full intercourse with the sea by this pebbly and sandy spit. Helston claims that it was once a seaport, with vessels sailing close up to its walls; and the formation of the Loe Bar, which destroyed all access, is said to have been one of the accidents of the doomed Tregeagle, whose story will be told later. The Pool is about seven miles in circumference, and affords some excellent fishing; it is the one great attraction that Helston can boast. When Tennyson wrote his "Morte d'Arthur," the germ from which all his Arthurian Idylls sprang, and in some respects the finest portion of them, he described how the knight Bedivere carried the wounded Arthur after his last battle—

"And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full."

It has been sometimes imagined that this "great water" was none other than Loe Pool, and certainly the spot has a better claim than Dozmare on the Bodmin Moors; but the placing this last battle in the West at all is merely a concession to fancy, and to the desires of West Countrymen. History tells us that Arthur's last fight must almost certainly have taken place in Scotland. But Tennyson's localities are a land of dream and myth; we do better not to try to identify them—their beauty may go with us from place to place, their atmosphere bring peace and soothing to us wherever our steps may be.

It is probable that the origin of the name of Helston is the Cornish hêl, "water," as at Helford and Hayle; but some Saxon derivations have been suggested, and certainly the name was once Henlistone. It is a clean, bright little town of about five thousand inhabitants, with a broad main street. Relatively, the town was once of greater consequence than now; its earliest known charter was granted by King John, with many later charters from other monarchs. It was an active centre of mining, and became a stannary or coinage town. The Grammar School (now extinct) was notable in the days of Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, who was headmaster here at a time when Charles Kingsley was pupil; the second master was Johns, known to all botanists by his Flowers of the Field, and to all lovers of Cornwall by his Week at the Lizard. Kingsley utilised his knowledge of this corner of Cornwall when he wrote his Hereward, and there is no doubt that he derived much good from his schooling under such excellent masters as Coleridge and Johns. When writing of Helston it is customary to say a great deal about its Flora, or Furry Day, the 8th of May—a relic of old Maytide saturnalia. Though the dance through the streets to a special kind of hornpipe, in at the front doors and out at the back, is still continued, the old spirit that actuated it is dead—it has become very much of a make-believe, a show for visitors, a galvanised custom that might as well be decently buried.

If we believed the guide-books, we might imagine that Cornish folk were still a gay, childlike, merry-making people, carrying on the customs of their forefathers, cherishing the old traditions, nursing the old myths and superstitions, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. Even writers who might know better try to present them as a race apart, sharing to the full in that character of mysticism and vision which is attributed to Celtic peoples. As a matter of fact the Cornish are by no means gentle-minded simpletons nor poetic visionaries, though, of course, there may be a few of either class among them; and these nominally Celtic folk have no greater power of imagination than the natives of other English counties nominally Saxon. There is a strain of difference—something that is possibly pre-Celtic—something at times sinister, passionate, incoherent; but there is nothing that is more romantic, more thoughtful, than may be found in the average countryman of the southern counties. We have all met delightful Cornish people—hospitable, kindly, lovable; but, thank God, such are to be met with elsewhere. It is not that the Cornish are to be under-valued or slighted, but they are to be defended from the foolish claims of casual visitors and the equally unwise assertions of some natives. There is one grave charge that may be laid against the people—Mr. W. H. Hudson made it in his beautiful book on the Land's End: this is a charge of cruelty, especially against birds. There could be no good in repeating this—it is never pleasant to say things that sound unkind and perhaps uncharitable—unless it be that when the people realise that certain practices are thought cruel by outsiders, they may in time come to see the cruelty themselves. There is also the supposed religiousness of Cornwall. From reading certain books we might be led to imagine that Wesley found the Cornish savages and left them Christians. He did a great deal certainly—let no one say a word against that noble-hearted man. But the aspects of Wesley's teaching that took chief root in Cornwall, as also in Wales, were just those parts on which he himself would have laid least emphasis—the excitability, the emotionalism. We do a grave wrong to Wesley in giving his name to those manifestations of frothiness and of undue familiarity with the Deity that have too often been classed as Wesleyanism. These, coupled with sectarian bitterness against the Church of England, may flourish if their votaries desire; but why should they take the name of one who was an earnest and sober-minded Churchman? Of course there is much in Cornwall of which Wesley or any other religious teacher might well be proud; but there are other aspects also, and plenty of room for those who shall teach the people love, charity, and tenderness towards all forms of sentient life.