Sabine Baring-Gould - A Book of Cornwall стр 13.

The first Parliament held there of which records remain was on September 11th, 1494; the last I have heard of was held at the close of last century.

The Cornish tinners had their Stannary Court on Caradon.

Already in Carew's time mines had been driven into the bowels of the earth. It would appear that levels were at about five fathoms under each other, and the water was raised to the surface by means of "a winder and keeble, or leathern bags, pumps, or buckets."

Dr. Borlase describes the engines that were employed just after the middle of last century. He took a mine in Illogan as typical.

There were seven shafts upon the lode, upon one of which there was a fire-engine working the pumps, and raising the water of the mine to the adit level, twenty fathoms from the surface. Another shaft had a whim upon it, and the remaining six had common winzes at their heads. The walls of the lode were supported by timber, and planks were laid on them for the deads, or unprofitable rock. Captains superintended the work. The machines employed were the water-whim, the rag and chain pump, the bobs, and the fire-engine. The whim was much the same as the common horse-whim of the present day, employed to draw up the water in kibbles or buckets. The rag and chain pump consisted of an iron chain, furnished at intervals with knobs of cloth, stiffened with leather, which on being turned round a wheel was made to pass through a wooden pump cylinder, twelve or fifteen feet long, and to heave up the water that rose in this cylinder between the knobs of rag. These pumps were worked by hand. The water-wheels with bobs worked other pumps.

The machinery seems to us clumsy and imperfect in the extreme.

The atmospheric or steam-engine of Newcomen was costly, as it consumed an enormous amount of coal; but in 1778 it began to give place to Watt's engine.

Since then the machinery employed advanced with strides till reaching perfection, when the need for any ceased in Cornwall and Devon, where nearly all mines have been abandoned. Barca tin can be raised so much more cheaply, being surface tin, that lode tin cannot compete with it in the market.

Now the mining districts of Cornwall are desolate. Heaps of refuse, gaunt engine-houses, with their chimneys, stand against the sky, hideous objects, and as useless as they are ugly. The Cornish miner has gone abroad. There he remains till he has made his little pile, when he returns home, builds a house for his wife and children, remains idle till money gets low, when away he goes again.

A good deal of discussion has taken place relative to the causes of the decline and extinction of the mining industry in Cornwall. The primary cause is that already referred to, but there is another. Into that industry too much dishonesty was allowed to intrude. Speculators became shy of embarking capital in companies to work bogus mines. The promotion of such schemes was too frequent not in the end to discredit Cornish mining altogether.

The surface tin in the "Straits" mines must come to an end shortly, and then let us trust captains in Cornwall will have learned by experience that in the end honesty is the best policy.

Formerly the metals were taken out of Cornwall for distribution over Europe. Now the coined metal is being brought into Cornwall by trainloads of tourists, by coveys of bicyclists, come to visit one of the most interesting of English counties and inhale the most invigorating air, and everywhere they drop their coin. So life is full of compensations.

CHAPTER VI

LAUNCESTON

Launceston a borrowed name-Celtic system of separation between town of the castle and town of the church-A saint's curse-Old name Dunheved-Castle-Church-Sir Henry Trecarrel-The river Tamar-Old houses-S. Clether's Chapel-Altarnon-The corn man-Cutting a neck-The Petherwins-Story of S. Padarn-Is visited by his cousin, Samson-Trewortha Marsh-Kilmar-An ancient village-Redmire-Cornish bogs-Dozmare Pool-Lewanick-Cresset-stone-Trecarrel-Old mansions-The Botathen ghost.

The most singular thing about the former capital of Cornwall is that it does not bear its true name. Launceston is Llan Stephan, the church of S. Stephen. Now the church of S. Stephen is on the summit of a hill on the further side of the river, divided from the town by the ancient borough of Newport.

The true name of the town is Dunheved. It grew up about the Norman castle, instead of about the church, and as it grew, and the colony at S. Stephen's dwindled, it drew to itself the name of the church town

Launceston is, in fact, one of those very interesting instances of the caer and the llan, separated the one from the other by a stream. According to the Celtic system, a church must stand in its own lawn, surrounded by its own tribesmen, and the chief in his caer or dun must also be without competing authority surrounded by his own vassals. Consequently, in Cornwall, churches are, as a rule, away from the towns, which latter have grown up about the chieftain's residence, except in such instances as Padstow and Bodmin, where a religious, monastic settlement formed the nucleus. Camelford, an old borough town, is over two miles from its parish church, Lanteglos, without even a chapel-of-ease in it, an ecclesiastical scandal in the diocese. Callington, the old capital of the principality of Galewig, is three miles from its church of Southill.

The church of Launceston has grown up out of a small chapel erected for the convenience of those who lived about the castle walls, hangers-on upon the garrison.

The Norman baron, and perhaps the Saxon eorlderman, liked to have his chaplain forming part of his household, and much at his disposal to say mass and sing matins in a chapel to which he could go without inconvenience, forming part of his residence. But such an arrangement was alien to Celtic ideas. Among the Celts the saint stood on an entirely independent footing over against the secular chief, and was in no way subordinate to him. The chaplain of the Norman might hesitate about reprimanding too sharply the noble who supplied him with his bread-and-butter. But the Celtic saint had no scruples of that sort. If a chief had carried off a widow's cow, or had snatched a pretty wench from her parents, the saint seized his staff and went to the dun and demanded admittance. A saint's curse was esteemed a most formidable thing. If unjustly pronounced, it recoiled like a boomerang against him who had hurled it. Once pronounced, it must produce its effect, and the only means of averting its fall was to turn it aside against a tree or a rock, which it shivered to atoms. In this the Celtic saint merely stepped into the prerogatives of the Druid.

In Cormac's Glossary of Old Irishisms-and Cormac, king-bishop of Cashel, died in 903-is a curious instance of the force of a curse in pagan times.

The wife of Caier fell in love with Neidhe the bard, her husband's nephew. Now a bard had the privilege of hurling a curse if a request made by him should be refused, but not else. So the woman, desiring to be rid of her husband, bade the bard ask of the king a knife which had been given to him in Alba, on condition that he never parted with it. Neidhe demanded the knife.

"Woe and alas!" said Caier, "it is prohibited to me to give it away."

Neidhe was now able to pronounce a glam dichinn, or curse. Here it is: -

Caier went out next morning to wash at the well, when he found that boils and blains had broken out over his face, disqualifying him for reigning, as a king must be unblemished. He accordingly fled the country, and concealed his disgrace in the dun on the Old Head of Kinsale, and Neidhe took to him the wife and throne of his uncle. Caier remained at Kinsale till he died, blasted by the curse pronounced by the bard.