Cornwall (England : County) -- Description and travel
The old name of Marazion was Market-jew, and the two together certainly
make most people imagine there is some Israelitish association; but this
is unfounded. Marazion is "the market by the seaside," and Market-jew
"the market on the side of the hill." Some have supposed the Mount to
have been the Ictis of the ancient tin trade, where the merchants from
far met the inhabitants to barter for tin. "When they have cast it [the
tin] into the form of cubes, they carry it to a certain island adjoining
Britain called Ictis. During the recess of the tide the intervening
space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin in carts"
(Diodorus Siculus). Many other islands have been suggested to fit this
account, even the Isle of Wight; but the bed of the sea must have
changed very quickly if people could in historic times pass over to it
on foot at low tide!
The legend of the fair land of Lyonnesse is supported by the evidence of
a submarine forest in Mount's Bay, noted by Borlase in 1757. This seems
to have been a wood chiefly of hazel, but with alders, oaks, and other
trees, and is by no means the only case of a submerged forest being
found around the shores of Cornwall. Great trunks have been disclosed,
and even hazel-nuts and twigs; but it is a big step from the subsidence
of some parts of the shore and the consequent submergence of forest
land, to the story of the overwhelming of such a land as Lyonnesse,
reaching out as far as Scilly and containing many villages and churches.
To return to Penzance. The town is very irregular, its meandering
streets meet at all angles, and here and there are linked by narrow,
passage-like cross-cuts, ofttimes as steep as wynds. There is a very
noticeable prevalence of Nonconformist places of worship, and these
show, as most of their kind do, a hideous lack of architectural beauty,
a sort of defiance of the pride of the eye. The Cornishmen since
Wesley's crusade have been strongly Nonconformist, notwithstanding the
fact that Wesley himself was a son of the Church. They probably find the
rigidity of the Established Church too formal for their fervent souls.
Nonconformity appeals to them as it does to their cousins the Welsh, and
it is a curious thing that St. Mary's, the most ancient of the churches,
should be the opposite of this, with ritualistic services, whence the
smell of incense is wafted into the uncompromising streets.
[Illustration: NEWLYN]
The greatest son of Penzance is Sir Humphry Davy, who was born here in
1778. He belonged to an old Cornish family. His statue stands at the
head of the sloping Market-jew Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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