Ictis. Dinsul. Mons Tumba. Cult of St. Michael. Pre-Norman origin of the monastery. Examination of Charters and Domesday extracts. Identification of St. Michael’s lands. The Meneage. William of Worcester. APPENDICES A. EXTRACT FROM _VITA SAMSONIS_ 169 B. EDWARD THE CONFESSOR’S CHARTER 172 C. THE COUNT OF MORTAIN’S CHARTER 173 D. ERECTION OF ST. MICHAEL’S PRIORY BY ABBOT BERNARD 175 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CORRIGENDA p. xv, last line but one, for “Each” read “All.” p. 48, line 22, for “but which, as” read “when.” p. 48, line 24, omit “is.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL I COINCIDENCE AND RESEMBLANCE The tyranny of observed coincidence and resemblance over the human mind is very remarkable, especially when coincidence and resemblance are associated with traditional sayings and superstitions. Thirteen persons sit round a dinner table. When dinner is over the discovery is made that they were thirteen in number and the diners reflect that, according to the ancient fiction, one of them at least will die within the year. During the year one of them dies, as an insurance agent would have told them was extremely probable. A succession of such coincidences does not lead them to study the insurance tables, or to calculate the expectation of life; it only helps to confirm the superstition. The sight of one magpie by the road-side alarms: the sight of two encourages. At the end of the day the single magpie is recalled when reckoning up the day’s disappointments. The devout Christian believer is not more prone to superstition than others. A man lay dying of consumption at St. Just. He was a crack rifle shot, an unbeliever and inclined to suicide. He insisted upon having his rifle by him as he lay in bed and, for the sake of peace, his wife allowed it. A single magpie came and perched daily on the hedge outside his bedroom window. One day seizing his weapon and steadying it on his knee as he lay there, he shot the magpie. The death of the solitary bird brought peace and all thought of suicide was banished and forgotten. The above are examples of superstition in the sense in which the word is here used. But the shepherd’s proverb: “A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd’s warning: A rainbow at night is the shepherd’s delight.” and the fisherman’s “When the wind is in the south It blows your bait into the fish’s mouth.”