APPENDIX I DEPLORABLE STATE OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE LAND'S END DISTRICT OF CORNWALL ON NE purpose of this book, which I trust has been made apparent in its pages, has been to call attention to the inestimable wealth of prehistoric and historic remains in the west district of Cornwall. No part of England is so rich in them, and yet in no part of England have they been so neglected, mutilated, and even destroyed. I attempted some time ago to call attention to this important matter, and did so by means of a letter I wrote to the Press, and which appeared in the Morning Post, Queen, Academy, Pall Mall Gazette, Western Morning News, Western Daily Mercury, Antiquary, Morning Leader, Cornish Post, Cornish Telegraph, and other journals. I cannot do better than here reproduce that letter (as I do not think I can improve upon it), only hoping, nay, sincerely trusting, that some national effort will at once be made to preserve for posterity the invaluable relics of the past of which we are merely the trustees. The trust should be a sacred one, and it behoves us to pass it on unimpaired to future generations. This is the letter which appeared in or about May, 1908, in the journals mentioned : "I have recently visited nearly all the ancient monuments in the Land's End district of Cornwall, many of them in very inaccessible corners of the county. I regret to say that they sadly need attention with a view to preservation. Many of them are becoming quite buried and dilapidated, and in a few years will disappear altogether. They are all of immense archæological value, many being of inestimable prehistoric interest. I venture to assert without fear of contradiction that no part of England possesses such a wealth of antiquarian remains within so small a portion of earth surface. Surely it is not asking the nation too much to preserve, even at some considerable cost, those that are left for the benefit of our successors, who will probably value them much more than we seem to do. A glance at the Ordnance Map of Penzance, sheets 351 and 358, shows an extraordinary number of ancient British villages, 66 cromlechs, stone circles, logan rocks, barrows, hut circles, giant's rocks, quoits, earthen or walled castles, sacred wells, chapels and crosses. I have closely inspected nearly all of these from Land's End to St. Ives, from Cape Cornwall to Lelant and Penzance, and can only tell a sad tale. In the first place many of the stone circles-so marked on the Ordnance Map-have ceased to be. In vain have I searched for some of the logan stones and menhirs. They have long ago been used up for gateposts or building purposes. The stones in the ancient chapels are rapidly disappearing one by one. The ancient British villages,' as they are called, are without exception simply buried beneath masses of destructive briars and fern. The beehive huts are similarly overgrown and almost undiscernible. Even locally I have had, in many instances, much difficulty in finding them. The neighbouring farmers are forgetting their existence, and labourers living close by, perhaps purposely, don't know where they are. These priceless relics of the past history of our country should, in my opinion, be preserved from vandalism and predatory attacks of those ignorant of their value and the levelling friction of wind, rain, and storm. A few of the prominent ancient monuments in the more accessible spots are more or less preserved (such as the Logan Stone, Lanyon Quoit, the Nine Maidens, the Blind Fiddler, and, speaking generally, the churchyard Celtic crosses), but the historic and prehistoric relics in the out-of-the-way and wild parts of Penwith, of quite equal value and importance, are allowed to go to destruction, or have already gone. "The remarkably fine ancient British village of Chysauter is so buried up with ruinous vegetation as to be difficult to find. The beehive hut near Crows-an-wra-the most perfect specimen remaining-may well be taken for a heap of stones collected from the surface of the field whence it rises, overrun with rank vegetation, and actually trees of a fair size growing out of its walls. Tree roots in the natural process of growth are deadly enemies of ancient buildings. The ancient British village' near by is similarly hidden with bramble and fern. The very interesting old chapels fare no better. Chapel Downs, in Sancreed parish, once protected by iron railings by a late rector not many years ago, is now most dilapidated and the railings in fragments. Chapel Uny, in the same parish, is practically non-existent, and the well of the saint has now only two stones remaining showing any traces of carving. Bosence Chapel, also in Sancreed parish, is a rank mass of unkempt vegetation in the corner of a field, and was difficult to find. The ancient dwellings of Bollowall, near Carn Gluze, St. Just, are APPENDIX I. AN APPEAL 455 similarly dilapidated, most of the stones are already gone, and in a short time will be filled up and obliterated with debris from the neighbouring mine. It is common knowledge that some of the most ancient carved bench-ends have gone to make pigsty doors and other articles of domestic use. St. Helen's Oratory, Cape Cornwall, is also already nearly non-existent, and so I might go on-the facts are all more or less equally painfully monotonous. I merely have mentioned a few concrete instances, and probably many of your readers could give more. "Now the parsons of Cornwall, even if they be not all antiquaries, are all keenly desirous of preserving these ancient monuments of past civilisation, which are certainly not of parochial but quite national interest, but they lack funds. Many of them are poor men, and can do nothing at all. I have in my travels through the Land's End district of Cornwall more than once been asked how to preserve these monuments; whether it were better to scrape or recut rich Celtic crosses; whether to paint or distemper old fonts; how best to preserve old tracery on arches, windows, and tombs. I was glad to find such a genuinely active spirit of preservation abroad, for it shows the keenness of the clergy in the district to aid in the preservation of the memorials of the past of which they are tenants for life. Still, it always struck me that such queries should not require to be put. The nation should have rendered such questions unnecessary. σε The clergy of Cornwall, I feel sure, will welcome any way that leads to the preservation of their monuments and aid any system that may be inaugurated to effect that end. The spirit truly is willing, but the pocket is empty. As it is, most of the fine old Celtic crosses in the churchyards have been placed there-rescued from serving other purposes, such as brook bridges, stepping-stones, gateposts-through the local parson's energies. These deliverances should be a national matter, and not left to the haphazard knowledge or ability of even a zealous set of men who have much else to do in other directions. The nation should awake to its responsibilities and take over the care of all these ancient monuments and remains, when perhaps signposts and fences will indicate where many of them are to be found. Local antiquarian societies do what they can, but their funds naturally are very limited and quite inadequate to cope with the pressing and urgent necessities of the case. "Yours, etc., "Oxford and Cambridge Club, Pall Mall,” "J. HARRIS STONE. THE APPENDIX II THE ELDER TREE AND ITS STORY (Page 51) THE elder tree, which nowadays is usually considered rather a nuisance in gardens because of its rank and rapid growth, was formerly held in high repute, amounting in many instances to veneration. In certain places where it was not held in honour it was ofttimes feared. So that in one way or another, honourably and dishonourably, the tree has attracted much attention. It is about the last tree one would have suspected to be associated with a halo of romance. An enormous amount of mysticism and folk-lore centres around it, and that too from very early historic times. From making the popgun of our childhood far back in time to the adoration of multitudes, the elder has a history of quite as much interest as any tree in the world. No tree is connected to such an extent with the follies and foolish imaginings, the absurd fancies and the old-wives' tales of mankind. And curiously enough, the association of the tree with the feelings, ailments, and desires of the human race is not peculiar to England. The tales and occult powers of Sambucus nigra are common among several other nations. The tree is geographically widespread. It is the bourtree of Scotland, and is found generally all over Europe, the north of Africa, Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Southern Siberia. The young trees furnish a brittle wood which contains a large quantity of pith, and the wood of the trees when older is white, hard, and close-grained, which polishes well, and is used commercially for shoemakers' pegs, combs, skewers for butchers, mathematical instruments, and turned articles. From the ease with which the pith can be removed from the young elder branches, in former times the wood was much used for making pipes and even musical instruments.1 In England there are two species of the plant-Sambucus nigra, the common elder, and S. Ebulus, the genus belonging to the Caprifoliaceæ. It has come in for an immense amount of adoration, for the cross of our Lord is said to have been made from its wood. One result of the belief is that in some parts of England the poor people look carefully into the faggots before burning them, for 1 The primitive musical instrument, the Sambucus, may have given its name to the tree, or vice versâ, it is uncertain which. APPENDIX II. ELDER TREE 457 fear there should be any elder wood in them. And yet I think any wood more unsuitable than elder wood to make a cross for crucifixion would be hard to find. It is now quite impossible to say what circumstances led to the tree being thus distinguished. On the other hand, the tree has a terribly bad reputation, derived from the alleged fact that Judas hanged himself on an elder tree. This superstition is at least as old as the fourteenth century. Sir John Mandeville,1 in his description of Jerusalem (1322), after speaking of the Pool of "Siloe" (Natatorie Siloe), adds: " And fast by is yet the Tree of Elder that Judas hanged himself upon for despair that he had when he sold and betrayed our Lord." In commenting upon this remark of Sir John Mandeville, a writer in the Quarterly Review (Vol. CXIV, 1863, p. 233) says: "It is probable that the piece of English folk-lore had its roots in the old heathenism of the North, and is not unconnected with a curious superstition about the elder still general in Denmark. On the border of the wood, with its white clusters glimmering through the dusk, the elder has an especially ghost-like and mysterious appearance; and it is held in Denmark that the tree is protected by a powerful being called the Elder-mother, without whose leave it is not safe to gather the flowers." Ben Jonson, Shakspere," and other writers record the common mediæval tradition that Judas ended his life on the tree, showing. how universal was the story. Shakspere, in Cymbeline (Act IV, sc. 2), mentions "the stinking elder" as a symbol of grief :-- 66 Arviragus. Grow, patience! And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine His perishing root with the increasing vine.” As is well known, the elder is devoid of heart-wood, but is full of pith, so perhaps the legend of Judas's association with the tree arose from the fact that the elder may be called the heartless wood. It was a heartless deed to betray so good a Master. Piers Plowman in the Vision has : "Judas he japed With Jewish siller And sithen on an elder tree 1 There are strong grounds for belief that his name is fictitious, and that "Mandeville" is to be identified with Jean de Bourgogne, who died at Liège in 1372, and who is credited by D'Outremeuse with assuming the alias of Mandeville. It is probable that the writer of the Travels took most of the details from books existent at the period (see Dict. of National Biog., Mandeville, Sir John). 2 Page 175, Bohn's ed. Halliwell's ed., 1839, p. 93, with a quaint woodcut of Judas hanging from a conventional tree, most unlike an elder. N. and Q., 1, S. VII, p. 334. 3 Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, sc. 2: "Judas was hanged on an elder." |