excuse the editor of the English translation when
he adopts a system which has superseded all
others in the British schools."

             CRUEL COPPINGER,

A RECORD of the wild, strange, lawless
characters that roamed along the north coast of
Cornwall during the middle and latter years of
the last century would be a volume full of
interest for the student of local history and
semi-barbarous life. Therein would be found
depicted the rough sea-captain, half smuggler,
half pirate, who ran his lugger by beacon-light
into some rugged cove among the massive
headlands of the shore, and was relieved of his
freight by the active and diligent "country-
side." This was the name allotted to that
chosen troop of native sympathisers who were
always ready to rescue and conceal the stores
that had escaped the degradation of the
gauger's brand. Men yet alive relate with glee
how they used to rush, at some well-known
signal, to the strand, their small active horses
shaved from forelock to tail, smoother than any
modern clip, well soaped or greased from head
to foot, so as to slip easily out of any hostile
grasp; and then, with a double keg or pack slung
on to every nag by a single girth, away went the
whole herd, led by some swift well-trained mare,
to the inland cave or rocky hold, the shelter of
their spoil. There was a famous dun mare—
she lived to the age of thirty-seven, and died
within legal memory—almost human in her
craft and fidelity, who is said to have led a bevy
of loaded pack-horses, unassisted by driver or
guide, from Bossinney Haun to Rough-tor
Point. But, beside these travellers by sea,
there would be found, ever and anon, in some
solitary farm-house inaccessible by wheels, and
only to be approached by some treacherous footpath
along bog and mire, a strange and nameless
guest—often a foreigner in language and
apparel—who had sought refuge with the native
family, and who paid in strange but golden
coins for his shelter and food; some political
or private adventurer, perchance, to whom
secresy and concealment were safety and life,
and who more than once lived and died in his
solitary hiding-place on the moor.

There is a bedstead of carved oak still in
existence at Trevotter—a farm among the midland
hills—whereon for long years an unknown
stranger slept. None ever knew his nation or
name. He occupied a solitary room, and
only emerged now and then for a walk in
the evening air. An oaken chest of small size
contained his personal possessions and gold of
foreign coinage, which he paid into the hands
of his host with the solemn charge to conceal it
until he was gone thence or dead—a request
which the simple-hearted people faithfully
fulfilled. His linen was beautifully fine, and his
garments richly embroidered. After some time
he sickened and died, refusing firmly the visits
of the local clergyman, and bequeathing to
the farmer the contents of his chest. He
wrote some words, they said, for his own
tombstone, which, however, were not allowed to be
engraved, but they were simply these: "H. De.
R. Equees & Ecsul." The same sentence was
found, after his death, carved on the ledge of
his bed, and the letters are, or lately were, still
traceable on the mouldering wood.

But among the legends of local renown a
prominent place has always been allotted to a
personage whose name has descended to our times
linked to a weird and graphic epithet:—"Cruel
Coppinger." There was a ballad in existence
within human memory which was founded on the
history of this singular man, but of which the
first verse only can now be recovered. It runs:

      Will you hear of the Cruel Coppinger?
          He came from a foreign kind:
       He was brought to us by the salt water,
          He was carried away by the wind

His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was
signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm
came up Channel from the south-west. The
shore and the heights were dotted with watchers
for wreck—those daring gleaners of the harvest
of the sea. It was just such a scene as is sought
for in the proverb of the West:

       A savage sea and a shattering wind,
       The cliffs before, and the gale behind.

As suddenly as if a phantom ship had loomed
in the distance, a strange vessel of foreign rig was
discovered in fierce struggle with the waves of
Harty Race. She was deeply laden or water-logged,
and rolled heavily in the trough of the sea,
nearing the shore as she felt the tide. Gradually
the pale and dismayed faces of the crew became
visible, and among them one man of herculean
height and mould, who stood near the wheel with
a speaking-trumpet in his hand. The sails were
blown to rags, and the rudder was apparently
lashed for running ashore. But the suck
of the current and the set of the wind were too
strong for the vessel, and she appeared to
have lost her chance of reaching Harty Pool.
It was seen that the tall seaman, who was
manifestly the skipper of the boat, had cast off
his garments, and stood prepared upon the deck
to encounter a battle with the surges for life
and rescue. He plunged over the bulwarks,
and arose to sight buffeting the seas. With
stalwart arm and powerful chest he made his
way through the surf, rode manfully from billow
to billow, until, with a bound, he stood at last
upright upon the sand, a fine stately semblance
of one of the old Vikings of the northern seas.
A crowd of people had gathered from the land,
on horseback and on foot, women as well as
men, drawn together by the tidings of a
probable wreck. Into their midst, and to their
astonished dismay, rushed the dripping stranger;
he snatched from a terrified old dame her red
Welsh cloak, cast it loosely around him, and
bounded suddenly upon the crupper of a young
damsel who had ridden her father's horse down.
to the beach to see the sight. He grasped her
bridle, and, shouting aloud in some foreign
language, urged on the double-laden animal
into full speed, and the horse naturally took his