It is a very common notion amongst the peasantry, that a just retribution overtakes those who wilfully destroy monuments, such as stone circles, crosses, wells, and the like. Mr Blight writes me—“Whilst at Boscaswell, in St Just, a few weeks since, an old man told me, that a person who altered an old Holy Well there, was drowned the next day in sight of his home, and that a person who carried away the stones of an ancient chapel, had his house burned down that very night.” We hope the certainty of punishment will prevent any further spoliation. Cannot we do something towards the preservation of our antiquities? I quote from a local paper the following:—
“If the attention of the members of the Penzance Antiquarian Society were directed to the state of the ‘Holy Well’ at Laneast, and the remains of the Old Chapel Park, St Clether, they might perhaps induce the proprietors of these ‘remnants of antiquity’ to bestow a little care on the same, and arrest their further ruin and destruction. Many other ‘objects of interest’ are in a sad state of neglect, and fast ‘fading away.’ Slaughtor Bridge, near Camelford, has completely vanished. This is much to be regretted, and is a double loss—first, to those who delight in these ‘memorials of the past,’ and also to the town and neighbourhood, depriving them of an attraction that has induced many strangers of taste to pay them a visit.”
“There is a place within The winding shore of Severne sea On mids of rock, about whose foote The tydes turne—keeping play. A towery-topped castle here, Wide blazeth over all, Which Corineus ancient broode Tintagel Castle call.”
“For there was no man knew from whence he came; But after tempest, when the long wave broke All down the thundering shores of Bude and Boas, There came a day as still as heaven, and then They found a naked child upon the sands Of wild Dundagil by the Cornish sea; And that was Arthur.”
The scarcity of traditions connected with King Arthur is not a little remarkable in Cornwall, where he is said to have been born, and where we believe him to have been killed. In the autumn of last year (1863) I visited Tintagel and Camelford. I sought with anxiety for some stories of the British king, but not one could be obtained. The man who has charge of the ruins of the castle—was very sorry that he had lent a book which he once had, and which contained many curious stories, but he had no story to tell me.