CHAPTER VII. CALLINGTON A town with a past--The principality of Gallewick--A royal residence--The Boy and the Mantle--Caradock and Tegau--Arthur and Guenever--Southill--S. Samson--Callington Church--The Borough--Dupath Well--Hingesdon Hill--S. Ive--Linkinhorne--Story of S. Melor--The Cheesewring--Camp--The Hurlers--Trethevy stone--S. Cleer--The Tamar--Arsenic manufacture--Poisoning--Production--Pentillie. Callington is a town with a past; whether it has a future is problematical. Its past is remote; and if it has a future, that will be equally distant. Issachar was a strong ass couching between two burdens; and Callington lies low between the great bunches of Caradon and Hingesdon, two huge masses of moor said to be rich in minerals. In the times of Callington's prosperity it throve on these lodes of tin and copper. But now the mines are abandoned and the population has leaked away. Should the two mountains be again worked, then the profits will go to Liskeard, seated on a railway, on one side, and to Gunnislake, planted on the Tamar, on the other. [Illustration: CALLINGTON] Callington occupies the site of the royal residence of the kings of Cornwall as princes of Gallewick. Here Selyf and his wife S. Wenn had their residence, and here S. Cuby was born. Here it is asserted that Arthur once had his court. And here also at one time was Caradoc Freichfras with his wife Tegau, the most honest woman in Arthur's court. Who can say that it was not here that the boy appeared with the mantle, the ballad concerning which is in _Percy's Reliques_, though indeed in that it is said to have occurred in Carlisle? "'Now have thou here, King Arthur, Have this here of mee, And give unto thy comely queen All-shapen as you see. "'No wife it shall become That once hath been to blame.' Then every knight in Arthur's court Slye glaunced at his dame. "And first came Lady Guenever, The mantle she must trye. This dame, she was new-fangled, And of a roving eye. "When she had tane the mantle, And all was with it cladde, From top to toe it shiver'd down, As tho' with sheers beshradde. "Down she threw the mantle, She longer would not stay; But, storming like a fury, To her chamber flung away." So one lady after another attempted to wear the mantle, and it curled and became contracted on each, and all were shamed in the sight of Arthur and the whole court.