PROCEEDING westward from St. Levan's Well we pass the next inlet, called Parleddan (Wide Cove), and arrive at Pargwarra or Pargwartha (Higher Cove), which is one of the most secluded and picturesque nooks that may anywhere be found. Old folks also called this place the Sweethearts' Cove, from a tradition of its having been the scene of a tragical love-story, which is best known to me from fragments of a quaint old 'copy of verses,' entitled— The Tragedy of Sweet William and Fair Nancy. This composition of a forgotten western bard related that, far back in old times, the son of a fisherman, who dwelt at Pargwarra, lived many years—off and on from a boy—in service with a rich farmer in Roskestal, and courted his master's only daughter, who, almost from her childhood, loved the young serving-man with a strength of affection beyond her control. The youngster, being of a roving turn, often went to sea for many months in summer, and although he was then most wanted on the farm, his master always took him back again when sailors were paid off and merchant ships laid up during the stormy winter season. It was his old master's and Nancy's great delight of winter's nights, to be seated with neighbours around the fire and hear Willy tell of strange things he had beheld on the ocean and in foreign lands; they wondered at what he related of waterspouts, icebergs, and northern lights, of whales, seals, and Laplanders. And they listened with awe and surprise to what he told them of burning-mountains, where he said he had seen, from a distance, the very mouths of hell vomiting clouds of sulphurous smoke, flames, and rivers of fire. And when sailing[150] as near these dreadful regions as anyone dared venture for the heat, and for fear of having their vessel drawn ashore, where all the nails would be pulled from her planks by the load-stone rocks that bordered these lands; of nights, he had heard high over-head, devils shouting, "the time is come but such and such a one isn't come;" soon after, one would hear doleful cries and behold black clouds of doomed spirits driven to the burning-mountains by troops of demons. He had seen the wreck of Pharaoh's chariots on the beach of the Red Sea, which, he assured them, had retained the hue from which it took its name ever since the Egyptian hosts were slain and overwhelmed, where their bones are still bleaching on the sands. But all that was easily believed by his simple hearers, and mere nothing to the marvels he related from shipmates' stories when he told them of those bold mariners who had been farther east and seen the Dead Sea across which no bird could fly—how they had plucked from trees that bordered its black waters apples full of ashes that were tempting to the eye; they had touched Lot's wife turned to salt, and brought home some of her fingers; that was often done, he said, for with the next tide's flow they sprouted out again.