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CHAPTER XXI

MADRON, ST. MADRON'S WELL, BLEU BRIDGE, GULVAL, LUDGVAN, MARAZION

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ADRON is a simple, pretty, thoroughly typical English village with a church situated in a fine position. From it is seen Mount's Bay, spread out in a panoramic view right away to the low-lying, flat, tablelandlooking Lizard Point. St. Michael's Mount lies at our feet, connected with the shore, for the tide is low, with a causeway, and all around are fertile fields, elm - shaded and surrounded by the characteristic Cornish hedges-stone walls with vegetation on their sides and top.

The church is certainly imposing, not only by reason of its unique position (350 feet above the sea), but also architecturally. It looks grand, and, like all real grandeur, is simple in its greatness. The well-proportioned square church-tower shows a grand gilt clock-dial with the motto "Watch and Pray, Time hastes away," and inside a tablet tells us that the "Clock in this tower was given by Thomas Robins Bolitho, of Trengwainton, to commemorate Queen Victoria's Long and Happy Reign of 60 years. Completed June 20th, 1897. The Clock was set going 26th November, 1898." In the tower are six bells, so that the parishioners of Madron are loudly summoned to services.

The east end is remarkable. It is a genuine early English portion of about 1260, and the church was enlarged in the fifteenth century.

The interior is large, lofty, imparting a feeling of spaciousness. The arches are pointed. The wooden statuettes of coloured angels with conventional wings-some holding coats of arms coloured blue and gold-support the ends of the beams of the roof, at least they are supposed to, probably they do not. The arch at the opening below the tower is painted with a diagonal pattern in blue and red, small

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MADRON CHURCH

209 circles of red, a dot in the middle of each, being between the teeth. Several coats of arms on diamond-shaped boards adorn or disfigure, some may say-the walls above the windows. On each side of the chancel a small, narrow archway shows that once Madron Church possessed a rood-loft. A piscina and sedile are worthy of more than a passing notice, and so are some old brasses on the south wall at the east end. An old tomb of a well-modelled man and woman kneeling and facing each other on the south-east of the east window is well preserved. The font is a fine one of the Norman period.

The church has one or two bench-ends, well carved but falling into decay unpleasantly rapidly. One represents the arms of Henry VIII, France and England quarterly surrounded with the garter and ensigned with a large crown. On the left a greyhound argent, collared gules, for Somerset. Öne bench-end has carved, in complete relief at the top, some animal with pointed head looking upwards in a very curiously strained attitude.

On the north wall of the church, of course outside, is a large gilt, rather gorgeous sundial with these words upon it: "Thy Days are Like a Shadow that declineth."

In the churchyard I noticed a peculiarly old short Celtic cross, with defaced figure representing the crucifixion on the side facing the church and a plain Latin cross on the reverse abutting on the roadway. The names on some of the tombstones of Madron, as is so usual in the Land's End district churchyards, are in many instances not common. I came across here, for instance, a Melchisedec James." Another tomb here bears a quaint life-history thus concisely told :

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"Belgium me birth, Britaine me breeding gave,
Cornwall a wife, ten children and a grave.

The church of Madron is reputed to have been bestowed on the Knights Templar by Henry Pomeroy.

Who Madron, St. Madron, or St. Madern was is now unknown. Some speak of one Madan, a Celtic king who ruled here before the Romans came. Others say St. Madron was a female saint, like the patron of St. Buryan. Not improbably the saint or saintess hailed from the Emerald Isle, like he of Sennen and she of Buryan. In the entries

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of the taxation of Pope Nicholas, A.D. 1291, Madron is called "Ecclia Sci Maderni,"

Sir Humphry Davy was born at Penzance on December 17th, 1778; and the parish register of Madron (the parish church) records: "Humphry Davy, son of Robert Davy, baptized at Penzance, January 22nd, 1779."

After visiting the church I told the driver of our wagonette to take us to visit the famous well associated with this saint. Through pleasing lanes and amid rural scenery of the picturesque, homely kind we drove, till we came to a gate a considerable distance north of the church and a little to the west. The driver informed us the well was somewhere through there, but where he could not remember, as, he said, with a significant smile, he had not been there for many years and had quite forgotten. Only girls, he added, went there to drop pins in. But from his own showing, before he was married he too must have visited the oracular precincts, and doubtless had tried his fortune, like the rest of young men and maidens.

Pushing open the gate, we entered on some marshy ground, and after some searching and following various tracks through dense thickets of bramble and bracken, at last struck the right one, and about a quarter of a mile from where we left the trap came on the wishing well so renowned to local fame.

The "well" is actually a stone trough of granite slabs, roughly three feet long by a foot and a half wide and sixteen inches deep, situated on a nearly level spot amid the moorland. The water trickles in at the far side, and overflowing makes the ground around boggy. At the bottom was a sediment of fine dark deposit, and plunging my arm in, I soon found some pins. Singular to relate, on one at least I found impaled on the point two little pieces of grass, evidently purposely and carefully so adjusted that when the pin entered the water it would take a perceptible time to sink to the bottom of the well. The wish, to be effective, must take place during the time the pin sinks, and no doubt this simple contrivance was to give time for a good long wish. So do trusting mortals hope to cheat destiny! Information may also be derived from watching how, in what manner, the pin sinks. Suddenly, going head first to the bottom, or point

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