'Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore; Strike it when the powder's running low; If the Dons sight Devon, I'll quit the port of Heaven, An' drum them up the Channel, as we drummed them long ago.'
A short distance below the Abbey, the Tavy, now broadened into a wide but still shallow stream, ripples and hurries over the pebbles in a deep valley between wooded hills. Returning to Tavistock and going up the river, one arrives at the pretty and very remote village of Peter Tavy. The houses are scattered about in an irregular group, a stream runs through them to join the Tavy, and just above the wide bridge the brook divides, flowing each side of a diamond-shaped patch, green with long grass and cabbages. A steep slope leads up to the little church, which stands back, and a tiny avenue of limes leads up to it from the lichgate. The tower is battlemented, and the church must have been partly rebuilt, for parts of it are early English and the rest late Perpendicular. Within are slender clustered columns, supporting wide arches, and different designs are sculptured on the sides of the granite font.
Close by is a glen, which Mrs Bray says, 'I have ventured to name the Valley of Waterfalls, on account of the vast number of small but exquisitely beautiful falls seen there.' A narrow lane with high hedges leads round the shoulder of the hill to the steep little valley, where the Tavy jostles against obstructive boulders, and a high, narrow, unstable-looking bridge of tarred timber (sometimes called a 'clam' bridge) crosses the stream. Climbing up on the farther side, the road soon reaches the village of Mary Tavy. In reference to these villages a very old joke is told of a Judge unacquainted with these parts who, in trying a case, not unnaturally confused the names with those of witnesses, and ordered that Peter and Mary Tavy be brought into court. Mary Tavy has not the unusual attractiveness of Peter Tavy. It looks barer, and is overshadowed by that peculiarly comfortless air always given by chimneys or machinery of mines. The church stands above the road, and beside it a large old tree, whose lower branches are so abundantly covered with polypody that the fronds hang like long fringes from either side of each branch. The porch has a white groined ceiling, crossed with fragments of the old timber roof, on which are bosses carved in different designs.