From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
We had to leave it,--the mysterious Titanic ruin with its bracken
blowing in the wind, the sheep, chained in couples, that prick their
silly noses on nettles and furze, the old church, where bells tolled
without ringers on the day that Arthur fell, the old wayside cross,
the old stone dovecote in the vicarage garden, but not the cliffs and
the sea. For we drove up the coast to Boscastle, pausing on the
way--and that was our mistake--to see the little church of Forrabury.
This is the church that longed for a peal of bells to rival those of
Tintagel, but when the vessel that brought the bells was waiting for
the tide to take her into the harbour, and the pilot was thanking God
for a fair voyage, the captain laughed and swore that it was only
their own good seamanship they had to praise, whereupon a mighty
billow, far out at sea, swept down upon the ship and overwhelmed
her, only the devout pilot escaping with his life. And ever
since--so ballad and guide-book assured us--the tower of Forrabury
church has stood voiceless, though a muffled knell, when a storm is
coming up, is heard beneath the waves. What then was our righteous
wrath on finding this venerable edifice all newly done up in pink
frescoes,--yes, and with an ornate bell-rope of scarlet twist hanging
beneath the tower!
The harbour of Boscastle is a rock-walled inlet somewhat resembling
that of Pasajes in the north of Spain. Curving promontories shut in a
tidal stream that runs green in the sun and purple in the shadow.
Swift lines of creaming foam glint across where the river yields
itself up to the strong currents of the sea,--a sea which, as we saw
it that brilliant September afternoon, twinkled with myriad points of
intolerable light.
How can the pen cease from writing about Cornwall? And yet it must.
There is a devil--a printer's devil--that counts our idle words. I may
not tell of wind-swept Morwenstow, where Tennyson and Hawker roamed
the wave-fretted cliffs together and talked of the Table Round, nor of
lofty Launceston, with its ivied Norman keep and great granite church
whose outer walls are covered with elaborate carving. The sculptured
figure of Mary Magdalen at the east end, lying on her face in an
attitude of extreme dejection, is regularly stoned by the boys for
luck, and flints and shards were lodged, when we saw her, all over her
poor back. I may not tell of Bodwin, either, with its memory of a
mayor who took a prominent part in the West Country revolt against the
reformed service. As a consequence, when the agitation was over he was
called upon to entertain the royal commissioner, who hanged his host
after dinner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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