Читать книгу The Cornish Coast (South) , and the Isles of Scilly - Charles G. Harper - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The country of this Mount Edgcumbe peninsula is beautifully wooded. Inland from Millbrook towards Antony again, you come to St. John's, a pretty village, with an old church and plenteous elms. And then, having explored the peninsula, the way out to the coast line on to Looe is up again to Tregantle, whence a coastwise road leads past Crafthole and Portwrinkle to Downderry. Those places may easily be dismissed, together with the coast on which they stand. They are quite recent collections of houses, mostly of an extremely commonplace plastered type, devoted to letting lodgings for the summer months. Their situation has nothing to recommend it, for the coastline here is quite bald and uninteresting, and the country immediately in the rear is for the most part treeless downs. Downderry is the largest of these settlements. Those who merely follow the coast-road through Downderry will never appreciate the exquisite appropriateness of that name. The gradients that way are not steep. But let Downderry be approached from the direction of St. Germans, and the steep two-miles' descent shall prove there to be something in a name. At the same time, it is but fair to add that the name did not derive from the hills, but from Dun-derru, i.e. "Oak Bank."

Beyond Downderry the road descends to a marshy valley crossed by a small stone bridge, at the point where a stream hesitates between percolating through the sands and running back upon itself to convert the marshy vale into a lake. This is marked on the maps "Seaton," but for town or village, or even hamlet, the stranger will look in vain. From this point it is a long four miles into Looe, and I can honestly say that, whichever way you go, by the road leading inland, and incidentally as steep as the roof of a house, or by the cliffs, in places considerably steeper, you will wish you had gone the other way. For indeed both ways are deadly dull. Coming on a first occasion by road the reverse way, from Looe, an old man, indicating the way, remarked that it would be a very good road "ef 'twadden for th' yills. Ye goo up th' yill, and ye tarn" (I forget where you turn), "an' then ye goo straight down th' yill to Satan."

As one had not at that time heard of Seaton, this final descent had a certain awful speculative interest.

Even the cliff route into Looe ends at last. There, almost hanging over the brink of Looe, as it were, you realise for the first time, in all the way from Rame, that you are really in Cornwall, for the coast has hitherto lacked the rugged beauty that is found almost everywhere else. But Looe makes an honourable amende. It might not unfittingly typify Cornwall. Conceive two closely-packed little towns down there (for there are two Looes, East and West), fringing the banks of an extremely narrow and rocky estuary, widening as it goes inland; and imagine just offshore on the further side a craggy island, and there you have the seaward aspect of the place. Looe has been considerably altered during the last few years, but it can never be a typical seaside place; its physical peculiarities forbid that. It has no sea-front, and possesses only the most microscopic of beaches, just large enough to hold a few boats and to launch the lifeboat. The life of the Looes, East or West, is all along the streets and quay beside the estuary. The place is, as it were, a smaller Dartmouth, but with the added convenience of a bridge crossing the Looe River, half a mile from the sea.

The Looe River is partly an actual river, but very much more of a creek: a lakelike creek at high water, dividing above the bridge into two creeks, into which freshwater streams trickle from Liskeard and the Bodmin moors. Looe, in fact, takes its name from these lakelike estuaries. It signifies "lake," and has a common ancestry in the Welsh "llwch" and the Gaelic "loch." Thus in speaking of Looe River "we admit not only a redundancy but actually a contradiction. There are two Looes, or lakes, the East and the West, just as there are the two towns so-called. Between these two waters, three miles inland, is the rustic village of Duloe, whose name is supposed to have originally been "Dew Looe," i.e., the Two Looes. "But there has always been great variety of opinion about this, and old writers on Cornwall have variously considered it to be "Du Looe," or "God's Lake," or "Du Looe" (spelled the same way), "Black Lake." A resourceful antiquary has, in addition, pointed out the difficulties of finding the true origin of place-names by advancing no fewer than six other possible origins:—

Dehou-lo = south pool.

Dour-looe = water lake.

Dewedh-looe = boundary lake.

Du-low = black barrow.

Dewolow = the devils.

Du (or tu) looe = Lake-side.

LOOE.

The "black-barrow" or "devils" derivations, it is said, might come from the remains of a prehistoric stone circle still existing at Duloe, where eight stones from four to ten feet high, are still standing. They may have once formed an awe-inspiring sight to the early peoples who gave names to places.

The foregoing is, however, only an exercise in possibilities, intended as a warning to those who make certain of meanings; the probabilities rest with "Dew Looe."

East Looe, formerly called Portuan, as its old borough seal shows, is the larger of the twin towns. It has a Town Hall, retaining the porch of an older building with the old pillory; and a church whose only old part is a singularly sturdy and clumsy tower. It is equally puzzling to find the church and the tiny beach of Looe in the maze of narrow alleys. West Looe has also its church, very much of a curiosity, in a humble way. Its slender campanile tower, properly introduced into a view, makes a picture of the brother town across the water. Years ago, this church was desecrated in many ways. Among other uses it was made to do duty for a town hall and as a room for theatrical entertainments.

Along the West Looe water is the lovely inlet of Trelawne Mill, just above the bridge, with dense woods clothing the hillsides and mirrored in the still waters. Here is Trelawne, seat of the Trelawny family since the time of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards successively of Exeter and Winchester, one of the Seven Bishops sent to imprisonment in the Tower of London by James the Second in 1688. The "Song of the Western Men," written by Hawker, using the old refrain, "And shall Trelawny die?" refers to that occasion:—

"A good sword and a trusty hand!

A merry heart and true!

King James's men shall understand

What Cornish lads can do.

And have they fixed the where and when?

And shall Trelawny die?

Here's twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why."

The "Jolly Sailor" Inn at West Looe is perhaps the most picturesque building in the little town, whose long steep street goes staggering up towards Talland, and its toppling chimney is a familiar object. It is not so much an accidental as an intentional slant, designed to counteract the down-draught of the winds.

THE "JOLLY SAILOR," LOOE.

Talland, situated on the hill overlooking the solitary bight of Talland Bay, is just a church, a vicarage, and the old manor-house of Killigarth. The church is one of the six in Cornwall which have detached towers. The others are St. Feock, Gunwalloe, Mylor, Lamorran, and Gwennap. Part of Talland church is Early English, the rest Perpendicular. It contains, among other memorials, a monument to "John Bevyll of Kyllygath," 1570, with an effigy of him carved in relief on slate, and a long metrical epitaph, full of curious obsolete heraldic terms. If you seek to know anything of the marryings and intermarriages of the Bevill family, be sure that this monument sets them forth in full detail; and the fine bench-ends take up the story, and tell it abundantly in shields of many quarterings.

TALLAND CHURCH.

Talland was in the old smuggling days exceptionally notorious for the frequent landings of contraband on the lonely little beach below the church, and "Parson Dodge" was a famous devil-queller and layer of spirits, far and near. But he could not, or would not, lay the mischievous sprites who haunted his own churchyard, and were, in fact, not supernatural beings at all, but smugglers in disguise, whose interests lay in making Talland a place to be shunned at nights. There is a great deal of smuggling history connected with Talland, and among the grotesque epitaphs in the churchyard there is even one to the memory of a smuggler, who was shot in an encounter with the Preventive Service.[A]

The cliffs between Talland and Polperro are in places fast crumbling away, and no one seems in the least concerned to do anything; perhaps because anything that might be done would presently be undone again by the sea. "Ye med so well throw money in the sea as spend et on mending they cliffs," is the local opinion. At Polperro itself the cliffs are of dark slate, and seem almost as hard as iron.

I suppose no one will deny Polperro the dignity of being the most picturesque village on the south coast of Cornwall. The place-name means "Peter's Pool," and the sea does indeed exactly form a pool in the little harbour at high water, retreating entirely from it at the ebb. The entrance from the open sea is a narrow passage between headlands of dark slate, whose characteristic stratification produces weird spiny outlines and needle-like points, inclined at an angle to the horizon. On the western of these two headlands formerly stood a chapel dedicated to St. Peter, the peculiar patron of fishermen. Instead of anything in that sort, the cliffs now exhibit a monster black and white lattice hoarding, as though a mad Napoleon of advertising had proposed to celebrate some one's pills and soap, and had been hauled off to a lunatic asylum before he could complete his project. A similarly hideous affair infests the cliffs by Talland, a mile away. They are, however, not advertising freaks, but structures placed by the Admiralty to mark a measured mile for the steam-trials of new vessels. The artist-colony at Polperro, a large community, is rightly indignant at this uglification, but fortunately it is not seen all over Polperro.

The little town is in every way a surprise and a curiosity, and in most ways a delight. The stone piers that project from either side of the entrance to the harbour leave a space for entrance so narrow that it is commonly closed in stormy weather by dropping stout baulks of timber into grooves let into the pier-heads. The chief industries of Polperro are the pilchard-fishery and the painting of pictures, and it is because of the commercial, as well as the æsthetic, interest of the artistic community, in preserving the old-world picturesqueness of Polperro, that the wonderful old place remains so wonderful and retains its appearance of age. The rough cobble-stones that have mostly disappeared from other fisher villages are left in their wonted places, and when the local authority a little while ago removed some, in the innovating way that local authorities have, the loud cries of protest that were made speedily caused the replacement of them. I do not think there is any other place, even in Cornwall, which is situated in so sudden and cup-like a hollow as Polperro, and with houses so closely packed together and staged so astonishingly above one another. Port Loe nearly approaches it, but that place is much smaller.

OLD BRIDGE, POLPERRO.

The time for sketching and seeing Polperro at its best is in the sweet of the morning, before the tender light of the sun's uprising has given place to the fierce sunshine of the advancing forenoon. A pearly opalescent haze then pervades the scene, in which the shadows are luminous. Then the smoke from the clustered chimneys of Polperro ascends lazily from the sheltered hollow: breakfast is preparing. Polperro is unquestionably in many ways old England of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, surviving vigorously into the twentieth. The artist, sketching here, is startled at frequent intervals by glissades of slops, flung by housewives, adopting the "line of least resistance," over the rocks into the harbour. It is a custom that makes him nervous at first, but he gets used to it. At Polperro, it is always well, in seeking a picturesque corner, say half-way down, below any houses, to make quite sure (if in any way possible to make sure), that one is not in the line of discharge of any liquids or solids that in more conventional places are deposited in the ash-bin or thrown into the sink.

Many odd old cottages remain here, some of them with outside staircases, and most roughly built of granite and slate, and whitewashed. The chief industry of Polperro is evident, not only in the fishy smells, or in the fishing-boats and the appearance of the people; but its specialised character is hinted at by the sign of the humble "Three Pilchards" inn on the quay, near the old weigh-beam. Good catches of pilchards or bad make all the difference here, where these peculiarly Cornish fish are largely prepared and packed for export to Italy. An Italian packing-house has indeed an establishment on the quay. The salted pilchards, long since known among the Cornish as "Fair maids" from the Italian "fumadoes"—the original method of preserving them having been by drying in smoke—are the chief source of the Polperro fishermen's livelihood. Thus the time-honoured toast of these otherwise sturdy Protestants:

"Here's a health to the Pope; may he never know sorrow,

With pilchards to-day and pilchards to-morrow.

Good luck to His Holiness; may he repent,

And add just six months to the length of his Lent;

And tell all his vassals from Rome to the Poles,

There's nothing like pilchards for saving their souls."

POLPERRO.

Others beside the fisherfolk rejoice when the fishery is good. I refer to the gulls. Nowhere is the seagull happier than in Cornwall, if immunity from attack and the certainty of plenty to eat constitute happiness in the scheme of existence as it is unfolded to gulls. The Wild Birds' Protection Act is scarcely necessary for the protection of gulls in Cornwall, and the birds are so used to this affectionate tolerance that it might almost be denied that they are wild, except technically. I am afraid the gull presumes not a little upon all this. He seems to know that the fishermen dare not punish him, if sometimes they feel inclined, for to ill-treat a gull is notoriously the way in Cornwall to bring bad luck; and although they are incredibly ravenous eaters of fish, it is one of the fisher-folk's most deeply rooted convictions that the boats are lucky in proportion to the numbers of gulls that accompany them. There is, of course, a good reason at bottom for this, because the gulls are the first to note the whereabouts of the fish, and scream and swoop down upon the shoals long before any human eye can detect their existence. The gulls go out with the boats and come back with them, and often they are the first to return; the winged couriers who awaken the little port with news of the home-coming of its men.

When the boats are in harbour, the gulls are at home, too. Every roof-ridge is alive with them, and they even take an intelligent interest in the domestic cooking. It is one of the most ridiculous sights to observe a gull perched on the edge of a chimney-pot smelling the odours that come up from cottage chimneys. When the tide is out, the gulls quest diligently in the ooze and scavenge all the offal that is plentifully flung into the harbour, for there is nothing nice in the feeding of a gull. Dead kittens and dogs come as handy and as tasty morsels as potatoes and cabbage-stalks. I have even seen a gull steal and bolt a pudding-cloth; but what happened to him afterwards I don't know. There are, indeed, few things a gull will not steal. The dogs and cats in Polperro have even developed a way of furtively glancing up at the roofs, for the gulls swoop down like lightning when the cats' dinners are put outside, and their food is gone on the instant. Thus you will notice the cats run to cover with their meal, while the dogs do the like, or are careful to place one paw on their bone, lest it be snatched away in a twinkling. Nay, worse; the gull ashore will kill rabbits, rob nests, steal chickens, and poach young pheasants; and the "jowster" who hawks fish through the villages not infrequently finds his stock depleted through the same agency. And yet the gull is suffered gladly. He is the most privileged and the hungriest thief in existence.

A valley road leads inland from Polperro to the hamlet of Crumplehorn, a pretty spot whose name originated I know not how. The coastwise road goes through Lansallos to Fowey.

"A bit of a nip" they call the sharp road on the way to Lansallos, by which you see that the old word "knap," for a hill, is degenerating. Lansallos church tower, in rather a crazy condition, is a prominent landmark. The coast-line beyond Lansallos juts out at Pencarrow Head, a "cliff-castle" promontory, whose name comes from "Pen-caerau," the fortified headland. There are several shades of meaning in "caer," of which "caerau" is the plural form. It may indicate a town, a castle, a dwelling, or a camp, just as a dwelling in remote times was of necessity fortified against attack.

Lanteglos, inland from Pencarrow, is like Lansallos, lonely, but it is tenderly cared for, after long neglect. The full name of it, "Lanteglos-juxta-Fowey," sounds urban. The tall granite, fifteenth-century canopied cross, standing by the south porch, was discovered some eighty years ago, buried in the churchyard. Among the brasses in the church is one for John Mohun and his wife, who died in 1508 of the "sweating sickness."

Polruan, the "Pool of St. Ruan," at the foot of the steep road leading down from Lanteglos, is a sort of poor relation of the prosperous town and port of Fowey over there, across the so-called "Fowey River," which here and for five miles up inland is a salt estuary, with smaller divergent creeks. The beauty of Fowey and its river unfolds with new delights at every stroke of the oars, as the ferry-boat, gliding through the translucent green sea-water, brings one across to the town quay.