A Book of Cornwall. Baring-Gould Sabine
the innocent, and in putting down barbarous customs.
S. Erc-in Cornwall Erth-made use of his influence to prevent the king of Connaught from baptising his new lance, after pagan custom, in the blood of an infant; S. Euny his in rescuing a boy from being tossed on the spears of some soldiers. Again, finding after a battle that it was the custom to cut off the heads of all who had fallen, and stack them at the king's door to be counted, he with difficulty induced the victors to take turves instead of the heads.
I do not think we at all adequately appreciate the service the saints rendered to the Celtic nations in raising the tone of appreciation of woman.
Next to founding their own monastic establishments, they were careful to induce their mothers or sisters to establish communities for the education of the daughters of the chiefs and of all such maidens as would be entrusted to them.
The estimation in which woman had been held was very low. In the gloss to the law of Adamnán is a description of her position in the house. A trench three feet deep was dug between the door and the hearth, and in this, in a condition almost of nudity, the women spent the day cooking, and making candles out of mutton suet. In the evening they were required to hold these candles whilst the men caroused and feasted, and then were sent to sleep in kennels, like dogs, outside the house as guardians, lest a hostile attack should be made during the darkness.
The current coin seems to have been, in Ireland, a serving-maid, for all fines were calculated by cumals-that is, maidservants-and the value of one woman was the same as that of three cows.
A brother of one of the saints came to him to say that he was bankrupt; he owed a debt of seven maidservants to his creditor, and could not rake so many together. The saint paid the fine in cows.
Bridget's mother was sold as a slave by the father of Bridget to a Druid, and the father afterwards tried to sell his daughter; but as the idea had got about that she was wasteful in the kitchen, he could not find a purchaser.
But this condition of affairs was rapidly altered, and it was so through the influence of the saints and the foundation of the great schools for girls by Bridget, Itha, Brig, and Buriana.
Till the times of Adamnán women were called out to fight as well as the men, and dared not refuse the summons. Their exemption was due to this abbot. He came on a field of battle and saw one woman who had driven a reaping-hook into the bosom of another, and was dragging her away thereby. Horror-struck, he went about among the kings of Ireland and insisted on the convocation of an assembly in which he carried a law that women were thenceforth exempted from this odious obligation.
I have but touched the fringe of a great subject, which is one that has been unduly neglected. The early history of Cornwall is inextricably mixed up with that of the saints who settled there, or who sprang from the native royal family. We have unhappily no annals, hardly a Cornish record, of those early times. Irish, Welsh, Bretons, have been wiser, and have preserved theirs; and it is to them we are forced to appeal to know anything of the early history of our peninsula. As to the saintly lives, it is true that they contain much fable; but we know that they were originally written by contemporaries, or by writers very near the time. S. Columba of Tir-da-Glas, whom I take to have been the founder of the two Columbs in Cornwall and Culbone in Somersetshire, caught one of his disciples acting as his Boswell, noting down what he said and did, and he was so angry that he took the MS. and threw it in the fire, and insisted on none of his pupils attempting to write his life.
S. Erc was wont to retire in Lent to jot down his reminiscences of S. Patrick. The writer of the Life of S. Abban says, "I who have composed this am the grandson of him whom S. Abban baptised." But about the eleventh century a fashion set in for rewriting these histories and elaborating the simple narratives into marvellous tales of miracle, just as in James I.'s reign the grand simple old ballads of the English nation were recomposed in stilted style that robbed them of all their poetry and most of their value.
Now it is almost always possible to disengage the plain threads of history from the flourish and frippery that was woven in at this late period. The eye of the superficial reader is at once caught by all the foolery of grotesque miracle, and turns in disgust from the narrative; but if these histories be critically examined, it will almost always be found that the substratum is historical.
Surely it affords an interest, and gives a zest to an excursion into Cornwall, when we know something of the founders of the churches, and they stand out before us as living, energetic characters, with some faults, but many virtues, and are to us no longer nuda nomina.
CHAPTER II
THE HOLY WELLS
S. Patrick in Ireland-A pagan holy well-S. Samson-Celtic saints very particular about the water they drank-S. Piran and S. Germoe-S. Erth and the goose-eggs-S. Sithney and the polluted well-Dropping of pins into wells-Hanging rags about-Well-chapel of S. Clether-Venton Ia-Jordan wells-Gwennap ceremony-Fice's well-Modern stupidity about contaminated water.
The system adopted by S. Patrick in Ireland was that of making as little alteration as he could in the customs of the people, except only when such customs were flatly opposed to the precepts of the gospel. He did not overthrow their lechs or pillar-stones; he simply cut crosses on them. When he found that the pagans had a holy well, he contented himself with converting the well into a baptistery. It is a question of judgment whether to wean people gently and by slow degrees from their old customs, or whether wholly to forbid these usages. S. Patrick must have known perfectly what the episcopal system was in Gaul, yet when he came into a land where the Roman territorial organisation had never prevailed, he accommodated Christian Church government to the conditions of Celtic tribal organisation.
He found that the Irish, like all other Celtic peoples, held wells in great veneration. He did not preach against this, denounce it as idolatrous, or pass canons condemning it. He quietly appropriated these wells to the service of the Church, and made of them baptisteries.
What Patrick did in Ireland was what had been done elsewhere.
When S. Samson was travelling in Cornwall between Padstow and Southill, and visited his cousin Padarn on the way; at a place called Tregear he found the people dancing round an upright stone, and offering it idolatrous worship. He did not smash it in pieces. He contented himself with cutting a cross on it.
Now the Celtic saints were mighty choice in their tipple. They insisted on having the purest of water for their drink; and not only did they require it for imbibing, but they did a great deal of tubbing.
One day S. Germoe paid S. Piran a visit; after they had prayed together, "It is my tubbing time," said Piran. "Will you have a bath too?" "With the greatest of pleasure," responded Germoe. So the two saints got into the tub together. But the water was so cold that Germoe's teeth began to chatter, and he put one leg over the edge, intending to scramble out. "Nonsense!" said Piran; "bide in a bit, and you will feel the cold less sharply."
Germoe did this. Presently Piran yelled out, "Heigh! a fish! a fish!" and, between them, the two nude saints succeeded in capturing a trout that was in the vat.
"I rejoice that we have the trout," said Piran, "for I am expecting home my old pupil Carthagh, and I was short of victuals. We will cook it for his supper."
Some of the saints had the fancy for saying their prayers standing up to their necks in water.
There is a story of S. Erc, the S. Erth of Land's End district, to the purpose, but I admit it is on late authority.
Domnhal, king of Ireland, sent his servants to collect goose-eggs. They found a woman carrying a black basket on her head piled up with the eggs of geese. The king's servants demanded them, but she answered that they were intended as a present to Erc, who spent the day immersed to the armpits in running water, with his Psalter on the bank, from which he recited the psalms. In the evening he emerged from his bath, shook himself, and ate an egg and a half together with three bunches of watercress.
However, regardless of the saint's necessities, the servants carried the eggs away.
When S. Erc came out of the river, dripping from every limb, and found there were no eggs for his supper, he waxed warm, and roundly cursed the rascals who had despoiled him, and those who