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WHAT'S IN A NAME?

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position for such a memorial, and then spoil the whole effect by placing a depressingly inartistic cab-shelter and other conveniences right in front of it?

The municipal offices, the Masonic Hall, and the Museums are all housed under one roof in a fine building in the centre of Penzance, just where the road starts for Land's End. Everyone at all interested in the antiquities of this part of Cornwall should certainly visit the Museum there of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society. An instructive object lesson is there afforded of the general appearance of some of the Celtic remains in which Cornwall is so rich. The collection contains some admirably executed models to scale of the most noted prehistoric monuments, and also some of the actual finds. I desire to thank the courteous Hon. Secretary, Mr. J. B. Cornish, for permission to photograph any of these objects for the purposes of this book.

Thomas Freeman, the epigrammatist, a Gloucestershire man, in 1614 thus wrote in praise of Penzance :

"Whatever Marketjew pretends
Upon some musty old record,

For noblest hearts and truest friends
Penzance shall ever have my word;
No little town of like account,

On this side nor beyond the Mount."

C. S. Gilbert says, "Penzance is a large, respectable market-town, and the most western corporation in England. The etymology of the name Penzance, according to Camden and Carew, means the Saint's Head, and the town gives the head of John the Baptist for its arms; but Mr. Tonkin conceives the name to originate from its situation at the head of Mount's Bay. It lies two hundred and eighty-three miles west of London, and ten miles east of the Land's End, and is particularly noted for its plentiful fish-market and its fruit gardens. It has also been distinguished for the mildness and salubrity of its air, so that it may be termed 'the Montpellier of England,' which, with the fertility and openness of its vicinity, have of late greatly increased the building and population." I may, however, mention that the railway guide gives Penzance as 305 miles from Paddington, and the name is, as the old Cornish historian says, a Celtic name meaning Holyhead or Holy Headland.

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Penzance ("Pensantia" of Ray and Willoughby), or Pensans, was probably so named on account of a chapel dedicated to St. Anthony, which once stood on a projecting point of land near the south pier. Some say, with hasty conclusiveness, that the name is derived from the head in a charger on the town seal-the head of John the Baptist -but this device was only chosen in the seventeenth century as the town arms.

A fine esplanade has been constructed westward of the pier, which is now a fashionable promenade. Good hotels and excellent lodgings abound. Penzance is a mixture of Bath, Cheltenham, and Torquay rolled into one.

Its chief charm to most travellers lies in its centralness. It is the hub of a most variedly interesting wheel. The Scilly Isles can be visited from its harbour in a few hours without trouble. Land's End, the Lizard, and the enormous wealth of Celtic and other antiquities lie at its doors. Churches of historic interest and great architectural beauty invite short walks, carriage drives, or easy cycle tours. Walks of beauty abound in every direction.

Penzance, therefore, as it now is, needs no eulogium from me, and indeed there are plenty of local guide-books setting forth its charms and attractions with a plethora of detail.

Before the salubrity of the Canary Islands, Madeira, Switzerland, Egypt, and other foreign places was discovered and those spots made accessible, Penzance was much resorted to by invalids and others hoping to prolong life in the salubrious climate of this part of England. The churchyard consequently contains many monuments of those who were not inhabitants of the town.

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Stockdale (1824) says, Owing to the improvements made of late years, Penzance is now become a very populous and highly respectable place, and altogether possesses as many claims as any watering-place in the Kingdom." The same author says that the town was long noted for the pleasantness of its situation, the salubrity of its air, and the beauty of its natives." This part of England's Riviera would, I am sure, benefit many persons far more than that of the South of France, where they flock at present. I must say I did not notice any exceptional beauty amongst the inhabitants of Penzance during my many visits,

THE PENZANCE OF OLD

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but at the same time ugly persons of either sex seemed to me rare. Halliwell seems to have made very much the same observation. He says: "It is, however, to be observed that, while a very beautiful woman is a great rarity in western Cornwall, an ugly one is of an equally unusual occurrence. There is hardly a girl to be met with, in however humble a guise, who has not a pleasing countenance, an air of innocence, good-humour and intelligence lighting up an almost universal type of face distinguished by its roundness of form and pallid delicacy of colour."

The visitor to Penzance will even, at the present day, notice the quaintly clad old fisherwomen carrying their fishing baskets of a curious shape. The cowal, or cowel, is placed on their back, and a band passing round the body of a small straw hat tightly pressed on the head supports the weight.

Dr. Davy gives us a graphic description of Penzance and the neighbourhood as they were about 1780: "Cornwall was then without roads. Those which traversed the country were rather bridle-paths than carriage roads; carriages were almost unknown, and even carts were very little used. I have heard my mother relate that when she was a girl there was only one cart in the town of Penzance, and if a carriage occasionally appeared in the streets, it attracted universal attention. Packhorses were then in general use for conveying merchandise, and the prevailing manner of travelling was on horseback. At that period, the luxuries of furniture and living, now enjoyed by people of the middle class, were confined almost entirely to the great and wealthy, and, in Penzance, where the population was about two thousand persons, there was only one carpet. The floors of the rooms were sprinkled over with sea-sand, and there was not a single silver fork. The only newspaper which then circulated in the West of England was the Sherborne Mercury, and it was carried through the country, not by the post, but by a man on horseback especially employed in distributing it."

In the year 1800, “The Cornish coach to London was a van or covered waggon, which conveyed the few who travelled on wheels.” There was a one-horse chaise kept specially for the use of Mr. Watt (Watt and Boulton, of low

pressure steam-engine celebrity) when he visited this Cornwall district on business. Trevithick's wife "has spoken of drives with her husband in this much-envied postchaise. It was kept for the aristocracy by Mr. Harvey, who lived opposite Newton's Hotel in Camborne. It was the only comfortable carriage to be let on hire, fit for gentlefolk, in the West of England, to supply the twenty or thirty miles of country from Truro to the Land's End."1

Penzance must then have been a small place. Even in 1851 the population was only 9214, whereas now it is 13,123. Tradition asserts that Sir Walter Raleigh smoked his first pipe of tobacco in England, after his return from America, in Penzance. "The nasty habit," remarks Mr. J. O. Halliwell, “is still in vogue amongst the Penzancians, if that be any evidence of the accuracy of the tradition."

The first news of the great victory, and Nelson's death, which this county received arrived at Penzance Quay. That was a memorable day for Penzance, and also for England.

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CHAPTER VIII

RED HAIR

UST as one man's meat is another man's poison, so an expression which in some places may be quite harmless in others may become a term of derision or even of opprobrium. Here is a concrete instance. In Cornwall, particularly the Land's End district, it is not advisable to dub a person "a red-haired Dane," though in most parts of England, especially inland, the expression would as likely as not provoke no comment at all, or be regarded as simply frivolous. As an example of the inopportuneness of using this singular phrase, I may mention that it led to a policecourt case being heard in 1867 at Penzance Town Hall. It came out in evidence that the defendant had called the complainant "a red-haired Dane," and this naturally (in this part of the country) led to an assault-no one was surprised. Though it is now some forty years ago since the case was tried, the strong repugnance of Cornishmen to be dubbed by this strange appellation is nearly as strong as ever.

The origin of the singular local dislike to red-haired people is capable of quite a plausible explanation, which in default of a better is worthy of some credence at least.

The Celtic nations hated the Danes, and were always fighting them, and not only in Cornwall, but also all along our coasts where the Danes or Norsemen made their ravages, this deep-rooted prejudice against people with red hair, "red-headed," more or less remains ingrained in the national character.

I once had a practical illustration of this aversion in Celtic Ireland, which caused me annoyance and much inconvenience. In Achill Island, off the west coast, where the people are very Celtic, it is to this day considered most unlucky and unfortunate to meet a red-haired person when about to embark on any important undertaking. I wanted to go deep-sea fishing off Achill Head, where very deep is

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