CHAPTER XV ST. JUST, BALLOWAL CAIRN, INVERTED URNS 1 NT. JUST is a little, quiet, neat, well-to-do Cornish, particularly clean-looking, grey market town, the parish containing 5646 inhabitants, and possessing a capital Literary Institution, some good shops, a church of more than ordinary interest, the most perfect old Cornish amphitheatre which remains to remind us of the ancient miracle plays, and is the centre for visiting a great many objects of interest to the antiquary and also to the lover of fine, wild, coast scenery. The country-side around St. Just is honeycombed underneath the surface with the galleries of tin mines. Above ground the natural and visible signs are many. The ugly remains of the tall, square engine-houses, much dilapidated and disembowelled-their contents having years ago been sold for old iron-surrounded by heaps of untidy debris and mine refuse, meet the eye wherever it is turned. So accustomed have the majority of the Cornish people become to these ruins, that as they pass along the commons or on the road they take no heed of them. On strangers, however, they must always leave a lasting impression--an impression, I am sorry to say, of indescribable melancholy. Mine after mine is passed, each blazoning abroad, plain for all folks to see, that it is a total failure. Thus they stand, no sign of life about them, most eloquently mute. Sad memories are they of past human energy and enterprise, intellectual and physical-all passed away, useless and forgotten. The natural thought is, what has become of the numerous mining population who wrought there mighty works, delved in the bowels of the earth, and by the sweat of the brow won treasure in the form of tin? What has become of the proud race of stalwart tinners of whom we read that in ancient days they formed a separate caste 1 In 1841 the population of the parish was 7048. above the common tillers of the soil, and who lived under direct royal protection with special laws of their own? The answer is well known. You may seek them where mines pay all over the world-in South America, the States, South Africa, Burmah, and elsewhere. The descendants of tinners for over two thousand years, at least, have had to leave their own native country because it could not support them, just as their Celtic cousins in Connemara have had to do, but not for the same reason. All over this part of Cornwall the selfsame tale is readable the tale of an industry which for the present, at least, has gone, if not for ever. You may have travelled in a country devastated by recent war; you may have seen Strasburg and France in 1871, as I did; you may have witnessed the terrible effects which an earthquake in ten seconds produced; you may have seen the blackened ruin of a city after a swift consuming conflagration passed over it; but none of these experiences is to the thoughtful person (as distinguished from the emotional) so calculated to depress the passer-by as the sight of a country mutely suffering under the desolating effects of a decaying and decayed industry-more especially as here, where the decay arose not from within, but from without; not from feebleness or senility on the part of the workers, or from antiquated methods of working, but from external circumstances over which there is no control and from the effect of which there is no remedy. Though most people regard those ruined and dilapidated engine-houses and mine-works as eyesores, some think otherwise. A German lady, for example, who travelled through this district, said she mistook them for the fine ruined castles of Cornish barons—a remark one quite understands, for they look not at all unlike the ruined castles one sees on the Rhine. The recent appreciating value of tin and copper may have temporarily led to adventurers restarting a few of these old mines, but I very much fear the wave of prosperity will not attain any volume or be at all likely to last. History is rather doubtful as to who St. Just was. Some authorities, or writers posing as such, say he was really St. Justus, who was sent to England by Pope Gregory, A SAINTLY STORY 149 A.D. 596, along with St. Augustine and other monks, to convert the people. Possibly he was an Irish saint, and a compatriot and friend of St. Sennen and the rest of the little coterie from the Emerald Isle which undertook the Christianising of Penwith. At any rate, one story is extant of the patron which in these days does not appear to add to his sanctity. But perhaps in his day such doings were little thought of. The standard of saintliness probably varies with each epoch. A man who is a saint in one century might well have been a hopeless sinner in another. Irishmen are notoriously quarrelsome amongst themselves, and as likely as not St. Keverne, of the Lizard, was a countryman of St. Just's. Having determined to pay St. Keverne a visit, St. Just set off south and was hospitably received and entertained at the Lizard. He seems to have been much taken with the abundance of plate his southern confrère possessed. Some people say relics, but I rather think plate would possess far greater attraction, relics in those days being plentiful. St. Just thought some of this valuable plate would be nice to take away with him as a memento of his pleasant visit. So he packed up some in his wallet, girded up his cassock, and stepped out northward as fast as his understandings could take him; but of course not with unsaintly haste. No sooner was the loquacious and plausible visitor gone than St. Keverne missed his valuables, and with some reason jumped to the conclusion that his pious brother had feloniously abstracted them from his treasury. The possibility of his brother saint having taken them as souvenirs of a charming companion and host seems not to have occurred to him just then, for in the heat of the moment and discovery he picked up some loose rocks on Crouza Down of a quarter of a ton weight each, put them in his pocket (his pocket, no doubt, expanding to receive them, or the stones for the time being conveniently and considerately contracting) and started off at a quick trot in pursuit. St. Just had expected this, for he had quite forgotten to explain the memento idea before leaving, and so had pushed on as fast as he could, and had got as far as Germoe, a little beyond Breage, before his angry and injured brother overtook him. When charged |