Now, I suspect that the friend to whom I am indebted for this story introduced a few grace-notes into his report. But it is a moral story in many respects, and I give it for the sake of the one or two morals which may be drawn from it. In the first place, absurd as these people appear, their ignorance but differs by a shade or two from the knowledge of certain very learned people of my acquaintance. That is to say, they know about as much concerning the religion of this corner of England to-day as the archaeologists, for all their industry, know concerning the religion of Cornwall before it became subject to the See of Canterbury in the reign of Athelstan, A.D. 925-40; and their hypotheses were constructed on much the same lines. Nay, the resemblance in method and in the general muddle of conclusions obtained would have been even more striking had these good persons mixed up Plymouth Brethren (founded in 1830) with the Pilgrim Fathers who sailed out of Plymouth in 1620, and are already undergoing the process of mythopoeic conversion into Deucalions and Pyrrhas of the United States of America. Add a slight confusion of their tenets with those of Mormonism, or at least a disposition to lay stress on all discoverable points of similarity between Puritans and Mormons, and really you have a not unfair picture of the hopeless mess into which our researchers in the ancient religions of Cornwall have honestly contrived to plunge themselves and us. It was better in the happy old days when we all believed in the Druids; when the Druids explained everything, and my excellent father grafted mistletoe upon his apple-trees--in vain, because nothing will persuade the mistletoe to grow down here. But nobody believes in the Druids just now: and the old question of the Cassiterides has never been solved to general satisfaction: and the Indian cowrie found in a barrow at Land's End, the tiny shell which raised such a host of romantic conjectures and inspired Mr. Canton to write his touching verses:-- "What year was it that blew The Aryan's wicker-work canoe Which brought the shell to English land? What prehistoric man or woman's hand, With what intent, consigned it to this grave-- This barrow set in sound of the Ancient World's last wave?" "Beside it in the mound A charmed bead of flint was found. Some woman surely in this place Covered with flowers a little baby-face, And laid the cowrie on the cold dead breast; And, weeping, turned for comfort to the landless West?" "No man shall ever know. It happened all so long ago That this same childless woman may Have stood upon the cliffs around the bay And watched for tin-ships that no longer came, Nor knew that Carthage had gone down in Roman flame."