The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 4 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 4 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
X. The Cornish tongue hath mostly resided for some ages past in the
names of the people, the gentry chiefly, and in the names of places,
observed to be significant mostly as to the site, &c. or for some
things eminent about them. Concerning both these, I must take liberty
to shew how the speech has been invaded, and eaten up by intrusion,
much of which hath been about churches and their sites, as well as by
neglectful inobservation; for those Saxon saints have hungrily eaten
up the antient names, which, when they could not well digest for
hardness of the words, many catched up others from those whom they
fieigned to be the tutelaries of those places, churches, and
fountains, and supposed miracles wrought thereabouts, as St. Kaine,
St. Gurrion, St. Tudy, St. Ive, St. Endellion, St. Kue, Landulph, St.
Ust, St. Just, St. Marthren, &c. Of St. Mardren’s Well,[38] (which is
a parish west to the Mount) a fresh true story of two persons, both of
them lame and decrepit, thus recovered from their infirmity. These two
persons, after they had applied themselves to divers physicians and
chirurgeons for cure, and finding no success by them, they resorted to
St. Mardren’s Well, and according to the ancient custom, which they
had heard of, the same which was once in a year, to wit, on Corpus
Christi evening, to lay some small offering on the altar there, and to
lie on the ground all night, drink of the water there, and in the
morning after, to take a good draught more, and to take and carry away
some of the water, each of them in a bottle, at their departure. This
course these two men followed, and within three weeks they found the
effect of it, and by degrees their strength increasing, were able to
move themselves on crutches. The year following they take the same
course again, after which they were able to go with the help of a
stick; and at length one of them, John Thomas, being a fisherman, was,
and is able at this day, to follow his fishing craft. The other, whose
name was William Cork, was a soldier under the command of my kinsman,
Colonel William Godolphin, (as he has often told me) was able to
perform his duty, and died in the service of his majesty King Charles
I. But herewith take also this: one Mr. Hutchens, a person well known
in those parts, and now lately dead, being parson of Ludgvan, a near
neighbouring parish to St. Mardren’s Well, he observing that many of
his parishioners often frequented this well superstitiously, for which
he reproved them privately, and sometimes publicly in his sermons; but
afterwards, he the said Mr. Hutchens, meeting with a woman coming from
the well with a bottle in her hand, desired her earnestly that he
might drink thereof, being then troubled with cholical pains, which
accordingly he did, and was eased of his infirmity. The latter story
is a full confutation of the former, for if the taking the water
accidentally thus prevailed upon the party to his cure, as it is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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