Nooks and Corners of Cornwall. C. A. Dawson ScottЧитать онлайн книгу.
cup was substituted for chalice, we find by the churchwarden's accounts that the vessels were frequently re-shaped. We have, for example, one of 1571, "to Iohn Ions, goldsmith, for changing the chalice into a cup, £1 15s. 5d."
Boscastle
After the High Cliff the shore gradually assumes a less terrific aspect, until Boscastle, with its tiny firth and its blow-holes, is reached. This little straggling place took its name from Botreaux Castle (or Castel-boterel), which was built here in the twelfth century. The last Lord Botreaux died in 1462, and of the castle only a grassy mount, called Jordans, from a neighbouring stream, remains. This mount is on the hill, that steep and wooded hill which leads down into Boscastle, and on the sides of which the houses are hung like birds' nests on a cliff.
At the end of the valley the hills unite into slaty cliffs which take a sudden fjord-like turn before reaching the sea. This short and tiny estuary cannot, of course, compare with the smallest of those winding inlets which make the strange beauty of the Norwegian coast, inlets whose walls would dwarf the High Cliff and whose majestic desolation would make the barrenest headland in the west seem mild and fertile.
If the tide is in, the islet at the mouth of Boscastle Harbour sends up sudden showers of spray which suggest a geyser, but are in reality due to a blow-hole, and there is another on the mainland.
An ancient form of tenure survives here. The upper part of Forrabury Common is divided into "stitches"—slips of land divided by boundary marks only—and these stitches are held in severalty from Lady Day to Michaelmas, the proprietors for the rest of the year stocking it in common, according to the amount of their holdings. The hilly part of the common being unfit for cultivation is stocked in common all the year round.
Boscastle has two churches, that of Forrabury, which has been too zealously restored, deal having been substituted for the sixteenth-century oak benches and for the old pulpit that was covered with arabesques, and Minster. Near Minster, on Waterpit Downs, is a fine specimen of Celtic interlaced work on a cross shaft. It is now rescued, but for many years it served to bear the pivot of a threshing-machine. The church itself stands on the chancel site of an old minster. A doorway, now blocked, once led to the priory buildings, but of them nothing remains.
Otterham and Warbstow Barrows
Inland from Boscastle is Otterham, which possesses two bells dating from before the Reformation and mentioned in the inventory of Edward VI. The inscriptions on these mediæval bells are interesting, a frequent one being, "With my living voice I drive away all evil things." A little to the east of Otterham, on a hill 807 ft. above sea level, is Warbstow Barrows, one of the largest and best preserved earthworks in the county. Its two ramparts have each two entrances, the outer wall being 15 ft. high with a ditch 15 ft. wide. In the middle is a barrow known as the Giant's Grave, perhaps the resting-place of a chieftain who died in defence of the place, and was buried where he fell. Cornwall is thickly strewn with these memorials of the past. Earthworks of different race encampments lie cheek by jowl, strings of forts reach from sea to sea, and even the cliffs are fortified. These cliff castles, and there are traces of fortification on almost every headland, must have been built by people who were actually "between the devil and the deep sea." Foot by foot they must have given way, till at length they stood with their backs to the sea, defending from their enemies one ultimate rock. Only too often is there a grave within these defences, the grave of the last man, strong enough to hold back the enemy, but slain at last.
To the south-west of Boscastle is Willapark Head, and beyond it are some caves which until recently were haunted, as was all this north-western coast, by mild-eyed seals. "A man with a gun" and the English instinct to "go out and kill something," an instinct useful in the days of the mammoth and the cave-tiger, but more than a little tiresome in our present state of civilisation, is responsible for their disappearance. There are still the caves to be seen.
St. Nechtan's Kieve Bossiney
Inland the little towns are of slight interest, with the exception of the old cross at Lambrenny, but the walk along the cliffs—and the Cornish are amiably ignorant that trespassers ought to be prosecuted—presents an ever-changing panorama of lichened rocks and lacy surf and every shade of wonderful blue. In Trevalga Church is some old woodwork that has been carefully placed against the east wall of the church, and presently we are crossing the neck of the Rocky Valley on our way to derelict Bossiney—Bossiney once having mayor and officers and represented in Parliament by Sir Francis Drake, but now only a sleepy lovely nook in a quiet corner of the land! At the head of the Rocky Valley is St. Nechtan's Kieve, a fine but broken waterfall of some 40 ft. A legend is told of two unknown ladies who inhabited a cottage near by and who died without ever having revealed their names, but the legend sprang like so many others from the fertile brain of the Rev. Robert Hawker. He thought the place looked as if it ought to have a legend, and not finding one was both ready and able to supply the deficiency. A cross which was formerly part of the garden gate and was supposed to be of the ninth century has been taken to Tintagel, and is now to be seen in the garden of that comfortable old-fashioned hostelry, the Wharncliffe Arms.
Tintagel
The far-famed "Dundagel" consists of a single grey street, lined in irregular fashion with grey cottages and houses. In this land of stone you sigh for the cheerful sight of a red-brick building or a glowing tiled roof; but the stone used is grey, and where the roofs are not of a cold blue slate, they are of a thatch held on by ropes that are heavily weighted. The place is still primitive. Until recently the nearest baker lived at Delabole, and to judge by the prizes (instead of cakes) on view in his window, he must have been the king of pastry cooks. In Cornwall, however, the housewife still bakes her own bread and is in other ways more self-sufficing, and let us add more thrifty, than elsewhere.
Arthur
"Who Arthur was," says Milton, "and whether any such person reigned in Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason." We must remember that the traditions concerning him were not reduced to writing until centuries after his death, while Gildas, who was born according to his own account in what would be Arthur's lifetime, does not mention him.
The legends, however, assert that he was born at Tintagel Castle about 499 a.d., that he had three wives, but no children, and that his second wife, Yenifer (Guinevere), was buried with him at Glastonbury. Against the probability of this is the fact that Tintagel is not mentioned in Domesday and that its ruins are of the thirteenth century with later additions. It is quite likely, however, that the place, which is strongly situated on a jutting headland—the so-called Island—was fortified from time immemorial. It may originally have been one of those pathetic cliff castles, may have been improved on and made habitable by the conquering race of that epoch, and may eventually have fallen into decay.
The Castle
The present ruins are said to represent a castle built some little time after the Norman Conquest, a castle which speedily fell out of repair, for it had to be restored by Richard, King of the Romans, brother of Henry III., before he could entertain his nephew, David, Prince of Wales, here in 1245.
When Cornwall, till then an earldom, was made a duchy (1337) and bestowed on the Black Prince, a boy seven years old, all the castles were again fallen into decay. At Tintagel the timber had even been removed from the great hall "because the walls were ruinous." The main part of the building appears to have been on the Island, but it was connected with outworks on the shore by a drawbridge. Sir Richard Grenville, who made an official survey in 1583, tells us that this drawbridge, which had been in existence within living memory, was gone, its supports having been washed away by the waves. The sea having continued its work of destruction, the space is now too wide for any drawbridge to span, and in spite of a handrail the little climb to the "Island" ruins is a dizzy one. Nor is there much to see. Some of the masonry is recent, while the tiny chapel and altar are of about the same date as the later parts of the castle, but the view is fine. It makes up for the disappointment in Tintagel as a castle, for the disappointment