A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County)
Sir Redvers Buller told me a story. He was on his way with a regiment
of soldiers to Canada. Off the entrance to the S. Lawrence the vessel
was enveloped in fogs and delayed, so that provisions ran short. Now
there was a station on an islet there for shipwrecked mariners, where
were supplies. So Sir Redvers went ashore in a boat to visit the store
and ask for assistance.
When he applied, he found a woman only in charge.
“No,” said she; “the supplies are for those who be shipwrecked, not for
such as you.”
“But this is a Government depôt, and we are servants of the Crown.”
“Can’t help it; you’m not shipwrecked.”
Now there was a very recognisable intonation in the woman’s voice. Sir
Redvers at once assumed the Cornish accent, and said, “What! not for
dear old One and All, and I a Buller?”
“What! from Cornwall, and a Buller! Take everything there is in the
place; you’m heartily welcome.”
Gunwalloe is a chapelry in the parish of Cury. It has a singular tower
standing by itself against the sandhill at the back. There is a holy
well on the beach, but the tide has filled it with stones. It was
formerly cleared out on S. Gunwalloe’s Day, but this, unfortunately, is
one of the good old customs that have fallen into neglect.
About Cury a word must be said. It is dedicated to S. Corentine, a
saint of Quimper, in Brittany, and this is probably a place where
Athelstan placed one of the batches of Bretons who fled to him for
protection in 920, but whom he could not have planted in Cornwall till
936. That Cornwall should have received refugees from Brittany was but
just, for Brittany had been colonised from Devon and Cornwall to a very
considerable extent. As the facts are little known, I will narrate them
here.
The advance of the Saxons and the rolling back of the Britons had
heaped up crowds of refugees in Wales and in Devon and Cornwall, more
in fact than the country could maintain. Accordingly an outlet had to
be sought.
The Armorican peninsula was thinly populated.
In consequence of the exactions of the decaying empire, and the ravages
of northern pirates, the Armorican seaboard was all but uninhabited,
and the centre of the peninsula was occupied by a vast untrodden
forest, or by barren stone-strewn moors. Armorica, therefore, was a
promising field for colonisation.
Procopius says that in the sixth century swarms of immigrants arrived
from Britain, men bringing with them their wives and children. These
migrations assumed large dimensions in 450, 512-14, and between 561 and
566.
So early as 461 we hear of a “Bishop of the Britons” attending the
Council of Tours. In 469 the British settlers were in sufficient force
at the mouth of the Loire to become valuable auxiliaries against the
invading Visigoths.
The author of the _Life of S. Winwalloe_ says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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