Launceston is peculiarly rich in churches; besides the two mentioned there is St. Thomas, in the valley between, where have been discovered the ruins of a priory. From this the doorway of the White Hart Hotel in the market-place came.
Down a side street is one of the old city gates, the only one remaining to show that Launceston was once walled. The chief point of interest about this, however, is apparently the very substantial tree, which, in most mysterious fashion, has found root-hold in the stone crevices and continues to flourish many feet above the ground.
Old customs, and festivals carrying in them the germ of a meaning and significance long forgotten by those who practised them but intelligible to students of antiquity, continued to be observed in Cornwall when they had died out in most other places. There is no part of England where so many curious observances, superstitions and festivals are still observed as in Cornwall.
Midsummer Day merrymakings were long kept up in many places, especially in regard to the part played by fire, and Richard Edmonds, secretary for Cornwall to the Cambrian Archæological Association, writing in 1862, says:--"It is the immemorial usage in Penzance, and the neighbouring towns and villages, to kindle bonfires and torches on Midsummer Eve.... St. Peter's Eve is distinguished by a similar display.... On these eves a line of tar-barrels, relieved occasionally by large bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in Penzance. On either side of this line young men and women pass up and down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of folded canvas steeped in tar and nailed to the ends of sticks between three and four feet long.... On these nights Mounts Bay has a most animating appearance although not equal to what was annually witnessed at the beginning of the present century when the whole coast from the Land's End to the Lizard, wherever a town or a village existed, was lighted up with these stationary or moving fires.... At the close of fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand in hand forming a long string and run through the streets playing 'thread the needle,' heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and oftentimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have on these occasions seen boys following one another jumping through flames higher than themselves."