CORNISH CREAM.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13835, 22 February 1909, Page 3

CORNISH CREAM.

CHARACTERS AND EVENTS. The following review of "Cornish Characters ana Strange Events," by S. Baring-Gould, is taken from a Home paper:— Black cliffs churned by Atlantic waves wind-driven from Labrador; granite tors covered with liut-circies and dangerous witli mine-shafts; deep valleys buried in sub-tropical foliage; cliff-castles built by prehistoric man; mines with shafts wiiere the miners hear the roar of the sea overhead; the Hashing of the Lizard lights and the i tide moaning on the dreaded Manacles; such is Cornwall, land of strange contrasts in every way, but more especially in its people. For not only are there two distinct breeds of Cornishmen—the fair, slow, gigantic men of the type of Anthony Payne, the huge serving-man of the Grenvilles, and the tiny, swarthy, narrow-headed folk, oldest probably of all the peoples found ill this island; but the philosophic, taciturn, underground man of the mine differs widely from the talkative, humorous man of the farm or the fishing smack, especially in his superstitions. A BRITISH BRITTANY.

Cornwall, the county with which Mr Baring-Gould's book deals, is a land where every "up the country chap" is a foreigner. Cornwall, with its sister Devon, supplies two-thirds of the seamen of the King's Navy—the Brittany, in fact, of these islands. Accordingly, we find many sailors among these sons of Cornwall, as we should expect: but after that we enter on a region of surprises. For in such a beautiful county, inhabited mainly by Celts, we should naturally look to find many artists. Yet Cornwall has produced hut one painter in the past, but one actor, and ' no poet of any importance. Instead we find scientists, several of whom have added lustre to the great roll-call of inventors or discoverers, though, of course, the majority have been the patient investigators on whose labours rest the achievements of more original minds. Yet a curious fate seems to have dogged the footsteps of these Cornislimen', for theyliave constantly seen others carry off the fame they ought to have gained. Hence Cornwall is not, like Oxford, the home of lost causes, but of lost glories. Such was the story of John Couch Adams, tiie farmer's son who learnt the magic of the world of stars on the bare Bodmin Moors, and became the discoverer of Neptune, only to have his record of the discovery promptly pigeou-holed by the Astronomer Royal,

until Leverrier electrified the world by the announcement of the planet. SAVED FROM THE SEA. One of the most interesting chapters of the book is the account of Trengrouse, the inventor of the life-sav-ing rocket apparatus, which since 1870 has saved nearly 9000 lives—and is not yet used as it ought to be, and as the inventor intended it to be —from the decks of vessels, whence it would have the wide objective of the land itself, instead of the mark of a stormtossed ship. Trengrouse ruined himself in the attempt to get the Board of Trade to make it compulsory on all vessels to carry the apparatus, and failed, only to be rewarded by the Tsar of Russia with a diamond ring, which he had to pawn! Although Mr Bar-ing-Gould gives full credit to Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, who solved the problem "that baffled Stephenson by inventing the steam-jet to utilise the waste steam to drive the engine, ho

gives but a cursory word to Trevithick, the co-inventor with Stephenson of the steam-engine itself. Among the patient investigators two most interesting Cornislimen are numbered —John Ilalfs, the botanist, whose friendship with a little child is one of the idylls of the book, and George Bignell, the naturalist, who is still alive. In the hiss of the rocket apparatus and the roar of the steam-eugine the Cornwall of British saints and pilchard seiners, of pixies and dandy dogs, seems at first sight to vanish. Yet that Cornwall lives, too, in this book, in curious juxtaposition with more everyday records; one quaint chapter is concerned with Anne Jeffries, who was supposed to be fed for six months by the little men in green, and who cured diseases by their help. Another tells the story of that prince of smugglers, •' the King of Prussia," who never failed his customers in supplying contra band lace and brand}', and wiio prided himself on liis strict honesty—to all save the Revenue officers. How near the modern Cornish are to-day to the old smuggling times is shown by the ract that stones pierced with holes are still called " Roscoff pebbles" from the principal French port for contraband trade. They were used to keep the Kegs from jarring on the ponies' backs up a cliffside. Pirate 'J'relawny, of •' Cornish Characters," was, indeed, a buccaneer, fitted both by his brutality and beauty to carry on the old tradition of Cornwall as a wrecking stronghold. •■DEVON, GLORIOUS DEVON!" But there are uncommonly few knaves in this frank record, far fewer than in the pages of the companion book of Devon worthies. True, there are some historical rascals, such as Noye, the Attorney-General, who invented the ship-money tax ; and Hugh Peters, the chaplain to Cromwell, who seems to have been a false-hearted Face-both-ways. But, on the whole, the devil seems to have kept himself out of Cornwall, perhaps for tin; old reason, lest he should find himself put in a pasty, and to have entered into Cornish bfood only when it had crossed the Tamar. Thus, Samuel Drew, the shoemaker, who discoursed on the immortality of the soul, is far more characteristic of the Cornish genius than Sam Foote, the buffoon, whose inspired mimicry put all London in a. roar, or lhari Kit Hawkins, the dealer in rotten boroughs, though, alas! 'tis true (bat their stories are far more entertaining than Drew's. In the records of a county where

almost every local preacher and most of the speakers at a mine audit dinner are. humorists, it is strange to find that one kingls jester, and only one more modern wit—Hicks, of Bodmin, of whom as many tales are told as were of Dr Budd, in the next county. Hicks it was who had himself announced to the company at a public reception as "The Mayor of Bodmin —and the Corporation " —for he was of Falstaffian proportions. He jested as easily as he breathed, and, being courted by the maids of Salisbury, said, " Tidn't no use, my dears, I shall only go home and call you all Salisbury plain girls."

If "Cornish Charucters" is weak in humorists, it is particularly strong in tales calculated to make the flesh creep. In all Elizabethan literature there is nothing more gruesome than the Bolielland tragedy, a tale of bloodshed by niglit under the most terrible conditions. Cornwall has produced besides, the best-attested dream story extant, as well as that most perfect thrillraiser, the story of the Botathen ghost Society estimates that there lis one which was laid by Parson Ruddle.