water—" having a pen'orth of sea," they call
it—or in boating parties with music.

On the west side of Mount's Bay, the crow
visits the village of Mousehole, because there, in
1778, aged one hundred and two, died old
Dolly Pentreath, the last person who habitually
spoke Cornish, which almost exactly resembled
the Celtic of Wales, the Highlands, and Britany.
There are no printed books in Cornish.
Dr. Moreman, of Menheniot, in the reign of
Henry the Eighth, was the first who taught
his parishioners the Lord's Prayer in English.
In 1640, at Feock, near Truro, the Sacrament
was administered in Cornish; and in 1678
sermons in Cornish were preached near the
Lizard Point. In 1700 the language was still
spoken by the tinners and fishermen of St.
Just, and round Mount's Bay. In 1758 the
language had ceased to be spoken, and in 1776
there were but four or five persons living who
could speak the language.

Almost every cove and headland round the
Land's End has its legend. One of the wildest is
told of Porthcurnow Cove, near the Logan stone.
It is a lonely cove, where St. Levan once dwelt,
and still contains the ruins of a small oratory.
A spectre ship—a black square-rigged
unearthly craft—is often seen here, usually
followed by a boat. It comes in from sea about
nightfall, when the mists rise, glides up over
the sands towards Bodelan, and vanishes at
Chygwiden. No crew are visible in the spectre
ship, and bad fortune follows those who see the
phantom vessel. At St. Ives, on stormy
nights, a lady with a lantern is seen moving
over the rocks on the east side of the island.
They say it is the ghost of a lady who, long
ago, lost her child in a wreck, but was herself
saved.

The most weird legend, however, is that of
Porth Towan. They tell you there that a
fisherman, walking one still night on the sands,
heard a voice from the sea exclaim, three
times:

     The hour is come, but not the man.

At the third cry, a black figure appeared on
the top of the hill, paused for a moment, then
rushed down the cliffs over the sands, and was
lost at sea.

And now one flight more brings the crow
to Pedn-an-Laaz, the LAND'S END, that great
pile of granite that thrusts itself forward,
the very bowsprit of England, into the Atlantic
waves. Its great cliffs are darkened with
the salt spray of the sea mists, its caverns
moan ceaselessly as with the voices of
imprisoned spirits. Gulls and cormorants watch
on its ledges and clefts for the bodies of the
drowned that are cast on shore. Those strange
rocks, the Shark's Fin and the Armed Knight,
rise breast high in the yeasty sea like giants
wading out to the cluster of rocks where the
Longships Lighthouse raises its beacon star.
On a clear morning from the Land's End a
keen eye can just distinguish the islands of
Scilly, nine leagues distant, like faint blue
clouds in the horizon. Between these
Cassiterides of the Phœnicians, who came to
Cornwall to trade for tin, and the Land's End, lies
the buried Lyonesse, the country that King
Arthur hunted over. There used to be a horse-
shoe cut on the edge of the precipice to the
left of the Land's End, to commemorate a
narrow escape which occurred there. An officer,
quartered at Falmouth, and on a visit to
Penance, laid a bragging wager that he would ride
to the very extreme point of the Land's End.
He was already far along the dangerous, lofty,
and narrow path, when his horse, frightened by
the feather in his master's cap, began backing
obstinately towards the yawning precipice. The
rider leaped off, but the bridle caught in the
buttons of his coat, and he was dragged to the
very brink of the rocks before his companions
could disengage him. The horse rolled over
and was dashed to pieces on the beach.

And now the crow, turning again for a quick
flight back to the gold cross upon St. Paul's,
from whence he must soon venture forth
eastward, strikes out his black wings, upborne by
the west wind fresh from the Atlantic, for his
sooty home in the great city.

     A POOR MAN ON A TENDER SUBJECT.

  I SING a song of a publican,
     A wicked man was he,
   And he kept the Goat and Compasses
     For thirty years and three.

  To all the people round about,
     He sold no end of beer:
  Very strong beer it was, I wot,
     "In the season of the year."

  We drank it, drank it, night and day,
     I and my mates, each one,
   Though we little knew what kind of a brew
     Came out of the landlord's tun.

  It put strange fancies in our heads
     Leastways it did in mine:
  Except when I happened to fall asleep,
    Unconscious as a swine.

  I found the secret out at last,
     I need not tell you how.
   He served the beer as they serve the milk,
     By the help of the iron cow.

  And had it been no wuss than this,
    It were a cruel sin,
   But he made it wuss a wery great deal
     By the pisons he put in.

  He made it strong with deadly drugs,
     The bigger fools were we,
   To drink and pay for such rascal stuff
     For thirty years and three.

  But, as I've said, I found him out,
     And vowed to drink no more,
   Lest I should stand in the felon's dock,
     Or knock at the workhouse door.

  Dick who drank it for ten long year,
     Murder'd his blessed wife:
   Which he wouldn't ha' done unless for the beer,
     For he loved her more than life.

  And Tom went wrong, and Dick went dead,
     And Joe went out of his mind,
   While Bill and Sam ran right away,
     And left their wives behind.

  And many other fine fellows I knew,
     Grew old afore their time,
   Or could not get a job of work,
     To keep their hands from crime.