So soon as Petrock considered that he knew as much as could be taught
him by his master, he resolved on returning to Cornwall, and embarked
on the same boat which had borne him to Ireland twenty years before--a
great vessel of wicker-work, covered with three coatings of hide, and
with a leathern sail.
Petrock and his companions came ashore in the Hayle, or saltflats, by
Padstow. He was ill received on his arrival by a party of harvesters,
who refused him water. In fact, the north of Cornwall had suffered so
severely from the Irish, that the natives looked with suspicion on
anyone coming from the Green Isle.
Petrock landed, and inquired whether any religious man lived in the
neighbourhood, and was told that Samson was there. This was Samson who
afterwards became Bishop of Dol. His chapel was demolished when Place
House, above Padstow, was built. At Padstow, Petrock remained for
thirty years with his disciples, one of whom was Dagan, who disputed
with Laurence, Archbishop of Canterbury (597-604) and other Roman
missionaries. He refused not only to eat with them, Bede tells us, but
even to be under the same roof with them. The story of Petrock's
pilgrimage to the East is full of myth, but the account of the reason
why he undertook it is probably true.
There had been a rainy season. One day Petrock assured his disciples
that next day the rain would cease, and it would be fine. But on the
morrow the rain came down in streams. Petrock was so disgusted at his
prophecy having failed, that he left the place, and resolved on
visiting the East.
The rest is mere romance.
He went to India. There he saw a silver bowl floating on the sea. He
stepped into it, whereupon the silver bowl carried him far away to a
certain island in which he spent seven years, living on a single fish
that he caught daily, and which, however often eaten, always returned
sound to be eaten again next day.
At the end of the seven years the shining bowl reappeared. He stepped
into it again, and was conveyed back to the coast whence he had
started. There he found a wolf that had kept guard over his sheepskin
and staff which he had left on the shore seven years before.
Clearly we have here ingrafted into the history a Cornish myth relative
to the man in the moon; for the silver bowl cannot be mistaken--it is
the latter--and for the dog of the modern version, we here have a wolf.
Through the rest of his journeyings the wolf attended Petrock. On his
return to Cornwall he had some unpleasantness with Tewdrig, the king,
who had opposed the landing of the Irish at St. Ives, and had killed
some of them. He remonstrated with him for some of his barbarities, and
Tewdrig had sufficient grace to make him grants of land.
Petrock now moved to Bodmin, and thence he made many excursions through
Devon, founding churches and monasteries. The date of his death was
about A.D. 575.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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