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)
Caradoc and his true wife Tegau were laid hold of by the Anglo-Norman
romancers. They could not understand his nickname, and rendered it
“Brise-Bras,” and supposed that his arm was wasted away, whereas the
Celtic title implies that it was brawny. To explain the wasted arm they
invented a story. They told of an enchanter who made a serpent attach
itself to the arm of Caradoc, from whose wasting tooth he could never
be relieved until she whom he loved best should consent to undergo the
torture in his stead. The faithful Tegau, on hearing this, was not to
be deterred from giving him this proof of her devotion. As, however,
the serpent was in the act of springing from the wasted arm of the
knight to the lily-white neck of the lady, her brother Cado, Earl of
Cornwall, struck off its head with his sword, and thus dispelled the
enchantment.[8]
If Tegau was actually the sister of Cado, then we may flatter ourselves
that Cornwall presented the two noblest and purest types of womanhood
at the Arthurian period--Tegau and Enid, the wife of Geraint.
Two miles out of Callington is the parish church--Southill--one of
the many instances of an ecclesiastical settlement at a respectable
distance from the secular _caer_ or tribal centre, that each might live
its own life and have its own independent organisation.
Southill was founded by S. Samson. As we have already seen, he had
landed on the north Cornish coast and made his way to Petherwin, where
he had visited his first cousin Padarn. On his way, he passed through
the district of Trecor, now Trigg, deriving its name from three notable
caers or camps,--Helborough, Warbstow, and Launceston. As Samson was in
this district, he found the people performing idolatrous rites about a
tall upright stone, and this with the sanction of their chief, who was
called Gwythian. Samson did not throw down the menhîr; he contented
himself with cutting a cross upon it.
I wonder whether this is the stone that still stands at Southill, on
which is cut the cross of Constantine. It is an inscribed stone to one
Connetoc, and is of the period of S. Samson.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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