New PDF release: CORNISH CHARACTERS AND STRANGE EVENTS

A publication identify "Cornish Characters and weird Events"
Author through S. Baring-Gould

PREFACE

Cornwall, peopled quite often through Celts, yet with an infusion of English blood, stands and constantly has stood except the remainder of England, a lot, yet in a much less measure, as has Wales. That which introduced it into extra intimate organization with English suggestion, pursuits, and growth used to be the lack of the previous Cornish tongue.

The isolation during which Cornwall had stood has tended to increase in it a lot originality of personality; and the wildness of the coast has bred a hardy race of seamen and smugglers; the mineral wealth, furthermore, drew millions of guys underground, and the underground lifetime of the mines has a weird impression on brain and personality: it really is cramping in lots of methods, however it has a tendency to advance a great deal of non secular enthusiasm, that sometimes breaks forth in wild types of fanaticism. Cornwall has produced admirable sailors, males who've gained deathless renown in battle at sea, as "Old Dreadnought" Boscawen, Pellew, Lord Exmouth, etc., and bold and adventurous smugglers, like "The King of Prussia," who mixed nice non secular fervour with complete absence of scruple within the subject of defrauding the king's profit. It has produced males of technological know-how who've made for themselves a world-fame, as Adams the astronomer, and Sir[Pg viii] Humphry Davy the chemist; males who've been benefactors to their race, as Henry Trengrouse, Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, and Trevithick. It has despatched forth a minimum of one striking painter, the miner's boy Opie, and a dramatist, Samuel Foote, and an exceptional singer in his day, Incledon. however it has no longer given to literature an excellent poet. Minor rhymes were produced in nice amounts, yet none of significant worthy. Philosophers have issued from the mines, as Samuel Drew, eccentrics many, as Sir James Tillie, John Knill, and Daniel Gumb. And Cornwall has contributed a definite variety of rascals—but fewer in quantity than virtually the other county, if we exclude wreckers and smugglers from of rascality.

Strange superstitions have lingered on, and one very curious tale of a woman fed for years via fairies has been wear record.

It is a bit of striking that Cornwall has produced no musical genius of any notice; and but the Cornishman is such as the Welshman and the Irishman.

Cornwall has definitely despatched as much as London and Westminster very capable politicians, as Godolphin, Sir William Molesworth, and Sir John Eliot. It offered Tyburn with a victim—Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, an odd mix of money-grasping, enthusiasm, and humour.

It has been the thing of the writer, to not retell the lives of the best of the sons of Cornwall, for those lives might be learn within the Dictionary of nationwide Biography, yet to chronicle the tales of lesser luminaries touching on whom much less is understood and little is well obtainable. during this manner it serves as a companion[Pg ix] quantity to Devonshire Characters; and Cornwall in no specific falls in need of Devonshire within the number of characters it has despatched forth, nor are their tales of much less interest.

The writer and writer need to thank many for variety aid: Mr. Percy Bate, Mr. T. R. Bolitho, Rev. A. T. Boscawen, Mr. J. A. Bridger, Mr. T. Walter Brimacombe, Mr. A. M. Broadley, Mr. R. P. Chope, Mr. Digby Collins, Mr. J. B. Cornish, Mrs. Coryton of Pentillie fortress, pass over Loveday E. Drake, Mr. E. H. W. Dunkin, f.s.a., Mr. J. D. Enys of Enys, the Rev. Wm. Iago, Mrs. H. Forbes Julian, Mrs. de Lacy Lacy, the Rev. A. H. Malan, Mr. Lewis Melville, Mr. A. H. Norway, Captain Rogers of Penrose, Mr. Thomas Seccombe, Mr. Henry Trengrouse, Mr. W. H. ok. Wright, and Mr. Henry younger of Liverpool—and final, yet no longer least, pass over Windeatt Roberts for her admirable Index to the volume.

The writer needs me to assert that he could very like to find the whereabouts of a full-length portrait of Sir John name, with a view of Bodmin Gaol within the background.

S. BARING-GOULD.