The Ghosts of Avalon

The Battle of Camlan according to Geoffrey of Monmouth:

While King Arthur is on campaign against the Romans in Gaul he entrusted the governance of Britain to Mordred. Mordred took the crown for himself and was living adulterously and out of wedlock with Queen Guinevere, who had broken the vows of her marriage. In his own words, Geoffrey prefers to say nothing further on this matter, however he does describe the battle which King Arthur fought against his treacherous nephew. Geoffrey says he heard this from Walter of Oxford, the man he claims gave him a certain ancient book in the British tongue that he translated into Latin for his ‘History of the Kings of Britain’ (Historia Regum Britanniae, c.1138).

Gallos, Tintagel

Geoffrey’s story continues: On hearing of Mordred’s usurpation Arthur quickly set sail for Britain. Mordred inflicted great slaughter on Arthur's army as they attempted to land at Richborough in Kent. Auguselus, The King of Albany and Gawain, the King's nephew, were among those that perished that day. Eventually Arthur's men secured landfall and forced Mordred's army to flee.

Mordred's army regrouped and marched on Winchester the following night. On hearing this Queen Guinevere fled from York to the City of the Legions (Caerleon) and took the vows of the nuns at the church of Julius the Martyr and promised to lead a chaste life.

After burying his dead soldiers on the third day after landing Arthur marched on Winchester and besieged his nephew Mordred who had taken refuge there. Mordred refused to abandon his plans and pitched battle ensued with his uncle, the King. Having suffered heavy losses Mordred once again fled from the battlefield and made for Cornwall by ship.

Arthur followed him to the River Camblam where Mordred’s forces  was waiting for him. Mordred drew his men into battle order, now determined to either win or die. Mordred still had sixty thousand men under his command from which he mustered six divisions. In each he placed six thousand, six hundred and sixty six armed men. From the remainder he formed one single division which he placed under his own command, having assigned leaders to each of the others.

Arthur was also marshalling his army. He divided his men into nine divisions of infantry, each drawn up in a square, with a right and left wing, appointing a commander to each.

Combat commenced with great slaughter on both sides. Arthur with a single division of 6,666 men charged at the squadron where he knew Mordred was. They hacked their way through with their swords as Arthur continued to advance, inflicting terrible slaughter as he went. At this point Mordred was killed and many thousands of his men with him.

The others in Mordred's army did not flee but carried on fighting and massed together under their leaders to stand their ground. Arthur himself was mortally wounded and was carried off to the isle of Avalon, so that his wounds might be attended to. He handed the crown of Britain to his cousin Constantine, the son of Cador Duke of Cornwall, this in the year 542.1

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And so Arthur enigmatically disappears from Geoffrey's Historia as mysteriously as his arrived; from his conception at Tintagel, as a result of the magic arts of Merlin, to his mortal wounding at Camlan, Geoffrey gives Arthur a mythical dimension and created an immortal national hero. 

Later Geoffrey elaborated on the death of Arthur in his poem Vita Merlini (c.1151), in which the King is taken to a mystical Otherworld island paradise the 'Island of Apples' which he undoubtedly meant to be the same place as the 'Isle of Avalon' of his main history, to be healed of his wounds by his kinswoman Morgan where she lives with her sisters. But in this later poem Geoffrey does not actually name Avalon. Thus, Arthur disappears to this mysterious island, mortally wounded but there is no grave for Arthur.

The River Camel
Clearly Geoffrey has taken the name of the third and final battle between Arthur and Mordred from  the 10th century Welsh Annals (Annales Cambriae) which recorded the battle in which Arthur and Mordred fell in the year AD 537. Geoffrey placed Camlann on the River Camblam in Cornwall where both Arthur and Mordred perished in this most savage conflict. 

Camlann entry in Annales Cambriae

The chronicle entry in the Welsh Annals merely states “The battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut fell: and there was plague in Britain and Ireland”. Any further elaboration is due entirely to Geoffrey’s imagination and his ability as a creative writer to embellish snippets of history with fantastic stories. From the entry in the Welsh Annals we cannot even be certain that Arthur and Mordred were on opposing sides, let alone in a love triangle involving Arthur’s queen.

No doubt drawn by the name of the river Camel in Cornwall this place was identified by antiquarians and historians long ago as the site imagined by Geoffrey to be Camblam. This is perhaps unsurprising as in his Historia Geoffrey provides Arthur with a close connection to Cornwall: he is named in the Prophecies of Merlin (Book VII of the Historia) as the Boar of Cornwall; he is conceived at Tintagel by Merlin’s magic arts; Cador, Duke of Cornwall, was his trustiest adviser who was also father of Arthur's chosen heir and cousin Constantine; his mother Ingerna was Duchess of Cornwall; and his wife Ganhumara (Guinevere) was said to be of Roman stock and raised in Cornwall by Cador. And then Geoffrey’s story turns full circle and Arthur is mortally wounded in Cornwall at the river Camblan only a few miles from the place of his conception.2   

According to local legend the battle took place on the River Camel at a place today named Slaughterbridge, Camelford, presumably in memory of the carnage. Nearby, on the bank of the River Camel at the water’s edge lies an ancient stone known as King Arthur Stone, or Arthur’s Tomb, first recorded by the Cornish antiquarian Richard Carew in 1602. The stone was recorded in the 18th century as having been used as a footbridge at Worthyvale from where it was removed and placed in its present location as a feature in Lady Falmouth’s secret garden. Today this stone is registered as an ancient scheduled monument and currently included on the at risk register owing to its location on the river bank where it is susceptible to water damage from high water levels.

The 3m long stone has survived in remarkably good condition with its inscription apparently complete. The main inscription is in Latin and there is also an Ogham script on one side making it one of only six such memorial stones in south west England. The Ogham inscription, first recorded in 1875, occurs on Christian monuments of the 5th - 6th centuries AD. The use of inscriptions in both Latin and Ogham, and the formula employed in the Latin inscription combined the style of the lettering suggests a 5th-6th century to 8th century date. 

The Latinus Stone

Back in the early 17th century, no doubt inspired by Geoffrey’s account of the battle of Camlann, Carew claimed the inscription on the stone bore Arthur's name. The final two letters 'M….AR...' has led to interesting theories based on the interpretation as representing 'Magni Arturi', or Arthur the Great.

Lewis Thorpe visited the site in 1960 and describes the stone as having partially defaced lettering in mixed classical and rustic capitals, the letters straggling and irregular. However, Thorpe was still able to decipher the inscription: ‘LATIN. . .IIC IACIT FILIVS M . . . AR. . .’  for which he offers the possible translation: ‘Latinus hic iacet filius Merlini Arturus’.3

Unfortunately, these are both misreadings of the last three letters as this stone has nothing to do with King Arthur. Historic England interpret the Latin inscription as:

`LATINI [H]IC IACIT FILIUS MA. . . RI' = `the body of Latinus lies here, son of Ma'.4

Latinus was possibly an unknown local Celtic chieftain, otherwise unrecorded. Ma was possibly of full name Macari or Macarus, again unknown

However, according to Geoffrey, Arthur was not buried at Camlann, but thereafter taken to Avalon, which may be nearer the battle site than we think.

The First Avalon?
Today this site is part of the themed visitor centre now known as ‘The Vale of Avalon’, formerly the Arthurian Centre, off the B3314, at Slaughterbridge, Cornwall, about 4 miles south-east of Tintagel.5

The Centre hosts an indoor exhibition of Arthuriana and Cornish history with gift shop, but appears to be permanently closed and said to be open only on Heritage Open Days 2026 (*see note 6). The area next to the Centre is known as Camlann – purportedly the legendary site of King Arthur's last battle. 

From the exhibition centre you can walk through the grounds, past the remains of the deserted medieval village, across the battlefield, down to a viewing platform above the river Camel to view the main attraction; the 6th century Arthur Stone lying on the bank close to the water’s edge.

Today the area is known as Worthyvale but the Domesday Book of 1086 record the name of the manor that this site lies on as – GUERDEVALAN. This is a Cornish word derived from the word for "Vale of Apples" and is claimed by the Arthurian Centre as the earliest reference to ‘Avalon’.

However, it need be little more than a reference to an orchard as there is no known mystical association with the place. Certainly this is not the place Geoffrey had in mind for Avalon as he elaborates on the mythical island in the Vita Merlini.

Unsurprisingly, given the purported local connection with Arthurian legend, the Cornish ‘Latinus’ stone is seen as a relic of the battle of Camlann. However, the original location of the stone is unknown; it has clearly been moved from its place of origin. An alternative argument associates the stone with a battle fought in AD 825 at a place called Gafulford, which has been interpreted as an earlier form of the name Camelford. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle simply records for that year "The Westwealas (Cornish Britons) and the Defnas (Men of Devon) fought at Gafulforda" without naming the victors - however it has been suggested that the battle secured the south-west border of Wessex. The date of the battle being close to the dating of the Latin inscription on the Latinus stone.

The site of the battle of Gafulford is unknown. The problem with the ‘Gafulford = Camelford’ proposal is that Camelford is deep in Cornwall and unlikely to be the site of a border conflict with an expanding Wessex. Thus, Galford, near Lewdown in Devon is considered the most likely in the context of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. In conclusion the stone may simply be a memorial unconnected to any battle.

Alas, the Latinus stone has as much to do with Arthur as Camelford has with Camlann and we should reject both in any serious search for Arthur’s last battle.

Notes & References
1. Here I follow Lewis Thorpe’s translation of the Historia Regum Britanniae from Camb. Univ. Libr. MS.1706 as printed by Acton Griscom in 1929]. Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Lewis Thorpe, Penguin Books, 1966, pp.257-261.
2. O J Padel, CMCS, No 8 Winter 1984, pp.1-29.
3. Thorpe, pp.259-60.
4.  Historic England: An early Christian memorial stone 380m south east of Worthyvale Manor
5. ‘The Vale of Avalon’ formerly the Arthurian Centre, off the B3314, at Slaughterbridge, Cornwall.
6. At the time of posting The Vale of Avalon (The Arthurian Centre), Slaughterbridge, was NOT listed as an event on The Heritage Open Day page (Cornwall). 

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Dozmary Pool: Nothing but Waves...

Top Ten Arthurian Locations: No 10

“On either side of the road the country stretched interminably into space. No trees, no lanes, no cluster of cottages or hamlet, but mile upon mile of bleak moorland, dark and untraversed, rolling like a desert land to some unseen horizon. No human being could live in this wasted country.” - Mary Yelland's description of Bodmin Moor, from Daphne du Maurier's novel Jamaica Inn.

The Lady of the Lake
Following the battle of Camlann, King Arthur and his loyal knight Bedivere arrive at the shore of a pool of water. Grievously wounded Arthur awaits for a barge to arrive to ferry him to Avalon, he commands Bedivere to return his sword Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake.

But Bedivere could not bring himself to throw such a magical sword into the water and hid Excalibur under a tree. He returned to the king who asked him what he saw. Bedivere said he saw nothing but “waves and wind”. Knowing Bedivere was lying the king commanded him to return to the lake and do as he commanded. Again, Bedivere could not waste such a noble sword, and hid it once more.

Again Arthur asked him what he saw. Bedivere said he saw nothing but the “waters wap and waves wan.” King Arthur questioned how such a noble knight could betray him twice? Once more the king  ordered the knight to go the waters edge and throw the sword into the lake.

Finally Bedivere “threw the sword as far into the water as he might; and there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water. So Sir Bedivere came again to the King, and told him what he saw.”

Bedivere took the King to the water's edge where a “barge arrived with many fair ladies in it, and among them all was a queen, and all they had black hoods, and all they wept and shrieked when they saw King Arthur.” Arthur was then taken into the vale of Avilion to heal of his grievous wounds.
- Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur, Book XXI, Chapter V.

The Moorland Pool
Many lakes have been cited as the place where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was thrown to the Lady of the Lake. Dozmary Pool high on the wild, remote and desolate Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, just 10 miles from the sea, is one such site; this is an atmospheric spot on the Cornish Moor, often described as isolated and eerie. In the dim light of evening as the sun goes down it is easy to imagine many things at Dozmary Pool.

Local tales claim that Excalibur rests at the bottom of this pool. According to the local lore, after breaking the sword drawn from the stone, it is here that Merlin and Arthur rowed out on the water and received a sword held above the water by a hand and arm clad in white. According to Malory, the Lady of the Lake appeared calling to them to row out and collect it. And mortally wounded, Arthur was to return the weapon to the water Goddess. The motif has clear Celtic undertones, as attested by the votive deposits found in many lakes across north-western Europe.

No one knows when Dozymary Pool became associated with the Arthurian legend; it is often omitted from Arthurian works such as Mike Ashley's Mammoth Book of King Arthur (Robinson, 2005) and more recently the Matthews' The Complete King Arthur (Inner Traditions, 2017) but features strongly in local Cornish books. Yet the nearest Camlann battle site is some 10 miles distant at Slaughter Bridge, Camelford, a further 5 miles west lies the famed Arthurian Tintagel Castle.

Dozmary Pool is a small lake, barely 500 yards across, a mile in circumference, once said to be bottomless, but is in fact only 4 feet deep. Other tales claim it is linked underground to Falmouth Harbour. The saucer like depression on the moor has its origins in the post-glacial period, providing an important record of vegetation since the last Ice Age; consequently in 1951 the pool and surrounding area was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSI).

The pool outflows into Colliford Lake and as such one of the sources of the River Fowey. However, since the construction of the Colliford reservoir on Bodmin Moor, its importance as a water source has declined.

Ghosts and Smugglers
The pool is just over a mile from the famous Jaimaca Inn at Bolventor, midway between Launceston and Bodmin where the A30 crosses the Moor. The coaching Inn, built in 1750, was made famous by Daphne du Maurier's novel of the same name featuring smugglers and wreckers who lured ships toward the rugged Cornish coast by lighting beacons on the shore.

Dozmary Pool, Bodmin Moor

Ships that strayed on to the rocks had their cargo looted by the wreckers, brought ashore and then stashed at the Inn. It is said that half the brandy smuggled into Britain was landed along the Cornish and Devon coasts. Smuggled rum from the Caribbean was no doubt also stored at the Inn, however it is said to be named after the local Trelawney family, who served as Governors of Jamaica during the 18th century. Today the Inn is home to the Smugglers Museum which features the story of the wreckers and smugglers over the past 300 years.

Dozmary Pool is also well known for the tale of Jan Tregeagle who was charged by the spirits for his misdemeanours and sentenced to bail out Dozmary with a leaking limpet shell. Tortured by the endless futility of the task, Treageagle escaped to Roche Rock before being set another task, weaving ropes from the sand of Gwenor Cove. At the end of his life, he was damned to the bottomless Dozmary Pool, where his soul is tormented to this day; it is said that Tregeagle's ghost can still be heard howling across the moor.

If you are travelling to Cornwall you must visit Dozmary, leave the A30 at Bolventor and park opposite Jamaica Inn for a short walk to the pool. Follow the lane opposite the Inn signed for Dozmary Pool and walk down the path for about a mile or so to the shore. It is possible to walk around the pool on the shore line and partially on tracks but some ground can be very marshy.

It's all just legend of course.

Yet in the late summer of 2017, a schoolgirl pulled a mysterious 4ft long sword from Dozmary Pool.

A medieval sword pulled from the very same lake that King Arthur's legendary sword Excalibur is said to have been thrown into; could the legend be true?

Unfortunately the sword is thought to be only about 20 or 30 years old and probably deposited during a modern pagan ritual.


Copyright © 2017 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/

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Charles Thomas, Tennyson and Arthur

The Passing of Arthur

“Back to to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse - 
A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,
And the long mountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.”

- Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

“The background to this Idyll is, to say the least, mysterious,” writes Charles Thomas in Exploration of a Drowned Landscape (Batsford, 1985. pp.265-267). He continues:

“The earlier poem, Morte D' Arthur, according to Hallam Tennyson completed by 1835, appeared in the famous 1842 collection. Tennyson's devotion to the Arthur theme began in boyhood, with his discovery of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Significant facets were then lodged for ever in his mind, as when in a youthful MS note (1833) he could write how, in 'the latest limit of the West in the Land of Lyonnesse, where, save the rocky Isles of Scilly, all is now wild sea, rose the sacred Mount of Camelot.'

Morte D'Arthur by Daniel Maclise

"In the  Morte D' Arthur the great king, mortally stricken, is carried from the battlefield by Sir Bedivere to a little chapel by the seaside; this is drawn directly from Malory's version. Here, after twice prevaricating, Bedivere hurled the sword Excalibur into the water, where an arm in white samite rose to grasp it. Here too a barge with ladies clothed in black arrived to take the dying king to Avilion The water, stirred by winds and waves, is implicitly the open sea in Sir Thomas Malory's recital, and the barge with its Dark Queens moves slowly away. Insofar as the nearby Last Battle was located at all closely, Malory placed the event somewhere by the south coast, on a down near Salisbury that was also not far from the English Channel shores.

"Tennyson, however, decided that Arthur departed from Cornwall; in 1835 and 1842 he was specific. The chapel nigh the field of the battle

'stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.'

"This great water is fringed with juts of pointed rock, crags, reeds and bullrush beds, and a margin with many-knotted waterflags. It is fresh water, and the dark strait is barren because it consists of pebbles. The side which is not the ocean is a lake or mere. Even its true orientation is given. When the barge approached across this lake, and goes again with Arthur, Sir Bedivere stands to watch

'till the hull
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.'

"Clearly then the barge was departing eastwards, across a lake which was bounded on its western side by firstly a pebble bar and then the sea. Only one place in Cornwall fulfils these conditions: the remarkable freshwater lake, Loe Pool, on the western shore of the Lizard peninsula. It is fed by the river Cober which flows into it just below Helston, and is penned by the massive shingle barrier, Loe Bar, now pierced by an outflow tunnel.

Loe Bar, according to Tennyson, where the barge departed for Avallon

"The northern side of the Pool near the Bar has low jagged cliffs with pines; there is some vegetation along the water's edge. Looking inland, north-east,  from the Bar itself, the vista is not only romantic and impressive, somehow reminiscent of the Lake District or perhaps Austria rather than of Cornwall, but also suggests an inland water-stretch much longer than it really is.

"Tennyson's Morte D' Arthur, published in 1842, was re-used with virtually no alterations as the core of The Passing of Arthur; the much longer Idyll. Last of 12, published in 1869. In the interval the poet has twice toured Cornwall. The first occasion, May to July of 1848, was a solitary visit; he went to Bude, Tintagel, Camelford, the Land's End and the Lizard, enjoying long coastal walks. At Morwenstow he met the idiosyncratic Robert Stephen Hawker, whose own interests included matters Arthurian.”

Anthony Charles Thomas

 Historian, archaeologist and Cornishman
26 April 1928 - 7 April 2016 

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Tales from the Tin Mines

Archaeological evidence indicates that the mineral resources of Cornwall and West Devon have been exploited for over 3,500 years. The Romans extracted the ore from tin streams to supply the Empire across northern Europe. Extraction continued in early and later medieval times reaching its peak in the 18th and early 19th centuries, when, as a result of the rapid growth of pioneering copper and tin mining, the landscape of Cornwall and West Devon was dramatically transformed. Its deep underground mines supplied two-thirds of the world’s copper. The substantial mining remains seen today in the south west of England make this is a unique landscape. The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape was given World Heritage Site status by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in July 2006. Legends from the mines have become indelibly written into the lore of the land which bears testimony to the past as much as the engine houses that survive across the south western peninsula of England.

Inhabitants of the Mines
St Just is the most westerly town in mainland Britain and the nearest to Land's End, and although the identity of the Saint has long been forgotten, the legacy of this mining centre of the Penwith peninsula lives on with disused engine houses littering the coastline of Cape Cornwall. Miner's were superstitious men and many strange beliefs grew around the copper and tin mines of Cornwall.

Cornwall's deepest mine is 1,000 metres deep and some run for great distances under the sea bed, some levels so close that miners claimed to be able to hear the rumbling of boulders being moved by the tides above their heads. Copper and tin have been extracted from Cornwall since the Bronze Age, some 4,000 years ago and it would seem that since prehistoric times the act of removing this material was considered a ritual act. Tales of the supernatural arose around mines and miners as people who were revered in the act of entering the earth, the abode of the gods, and retrieving the ore of these precious metals to manufacture high quality weapons, cauldrons and ornamental metalwork, over many, many hours and days to be later cast into wetlands and rivers as votive offerings to underworld deities.

The chimneys of Levant Mine from Pendeen Watch.

(Sheila Russell - Wikimedia Commons)

Most, if not all, underground mine workings possess tales of supernatural entities. Most mines are said to be haunted by the spirits of the victims of the many accidents that were commonplace when mining was a crude, labour intensive activity. The Cornish mines are no exception, acquiring tales of hauntings right up to recent times. At Wheal Vor, near Breage, north west of Helston, a forewarning of accidents would occur in the appearance of a white hare. This white hare normally appeared above ground in one of the engine houses but the miners never managed to catch it. Small black dogs were also said to haunt the place. Following the death of a man and boy who were sinking a shaft when a charge of explosive blew up prematurely. There bodies were so badly mutilated that they were no longer recognisable and were hastily shovelled into the furnace of the engine. Since then the small black dogs started to appear.

The sprites of Cornish mines, particularly in the Land's End peninsula, are known as the 'Knockers'. Miners treated the Knockers with respect and it was believed that anyone who was disrespectful to them would suffer bad luck. When a mine closed it is believed that the Knockers lived on in the abandoned mine. The activities of Knockers is recorded at Ballowall and Balleswidden mines near St Just, and the Rosewall and Ransom mines at St Ives. Generally the Knockers were benevolent and their tapping guided human miners toward productive lodes provided they received a portion of the miners lunch, usually the “hoggan” from his pasty, or “fuggan”, a piece of his cake. Some believed they were the spirits of Jewish miners, introduced into the Cornish mines since the time of the crucifixion, as they were never heard working on the Jewish sabbath. Others claimed they were not the spirits of Jewish miners but of those who had crucified Christ who could be heard gently singing in the mines on Christmas Day, Easter Day, All Saint's Day and the Jewish Sabbath.

According to an account by Wiliam Bottrell in A Tinner's Fireside Stories, the faery miners who worked in Ballowall mine were; “miserable, little, old, withered, dried up creatures; the tallest of them no more than three foot six or thereaway, with shanks like drumsticks, and their arms as long, or longer, than their legs. They had big, ugly heads, with grey or red locks, squinting eyes, hook noses and mouths from ear to ear. The one older and uglier than the rest seemed to take the lead in making wry faces and all sorts of mocking tricks. When he put his thumb to his nose and squinted at Tom, all those behind him did the same. Then all turned their backs, stooped down, lolled out their tongues and grinned at him from between their spindle shanks.”

The miner Tom Trevorrow had insulted the Knockers by refusing to leave the hoggan for them. The old miners had told Tom that the levels he was working on were more infested with “knackers” than any other part of the mine. These mischievous sprites were seen on many occasion running around the blacksmith's shop and going down the Buck Shaft that entered the current level he was working in. The shaft was so named because of a black buck-goat, or Bucca in the shape of one, was seen to go down the shaft but never found below. The term Bucca can mean hob goblin, or imp and corresponds to the Irish “puca”, English “puck” or Welsh “pwca”.

The Tinners' Way, known as the Old St Ives Road, is thought to have been an ancient trackway
traversing some of West Penwith's loneliest and wildest uplands. Thought to start at the Neolithic axe factory at Kenidjack castle cliff, running to the trading port of St Ives and the Hayle estuary, tin and copper ore were no doubt transported along this track which passes many ancient Cornish sites.

Carn Kenidjack, The Hooting Cairn
By St. Just, not far from Cape Cornwall and the sea, is a flat, sinister tract of land between Chun Castle and Carn Kenidjack. Known as The Gump (Cornish for 'moor', we are told), a place said to be haunted by witches and demons, a place where the piskies used to hold their merrymakings andnlead mortals astray. It is here that An' Pee Tregger encountered the pisky on her way home to Pendeen from Penzance market on Hallan Eve, the nearest Sunday to Halloween.

Carn Kenidjack from JT Blight

A tale of The Gump tells of a strange light seen on the rocks of Carn Kenidjack by two miners on their way home across the moor from the now abandoned Morvah mines. As the sun was setting the two miners decided to take the shorter route past the Carn. Darkness had quickly fallen by the time they had reached the rocks. Lights flickered amongst the rocks and the miners could see large forms moving about the Carn and heard a demonic three-men's song ending with a piercing hoot. A hooded horseman on a black horse rode up behind them and told the miners he was going up to the Carn to watch the wrestling. Some strange force compelled them to follow the horseman.

They didn't know the horseman but recognised the manky black horse from their mine. On reaching the Carn they found themselves amongst giants with painted faces who formed themselves into a circle. Two of the giants stepped forward to wrestle when someone called out for a light. The horseman, now seated on the ground, pulled back his hood to reveal his eyes ablaze with light. The two miners realised it was the devil himself who had led them there. One of the wrestlers was hurt in a fall and lay motionless on the ground. The crowd hailed the victor while the two miners tended the loser. As he lay dying they said a prayer for his soul when suddenly the hill was plunged into total darkness. A strong wind blew around the petrified men, which then suddenly stopped and returned the Carn back to moonlight. The giants had all disappeared. The men could see a huge black cloud rolling out to sea, in its midst the eyes of the devil continued to shine brightly. The two men could not find their way off the hill until sunrise the next morning.

The Tregeseal Barrow is an oval mound of an unusual entrance grave type known as a Scillonian Chambered Tomb. The Scillonian group of entrance graves is so called because the greatest concentration of the tombs is found on the Isles of Scilly. Similar entrance graves, consisting of a narrow entrance leading into a rectangular burial chamber covered by a small round stone cairn, are also known in Brittany and the Channel Islands.

Overlooking the rugged granite cliffs to the south of Cape Cornwall, facing west toward the setting sun, is the prehistoric funerary cairn known as Ballowall Barrow.

Ballowall Barrow
Ballowall Barrow, or Carn Gluze or Gloose, is one of the largest and most complex of the prehistoric funerary monuments that cluster along the West Penwith coastline. Situated one mile west of St Just it is thought the barrow was constructed by local communities to provide a striking tomb for the dead with a spectacular sea-cliff vista.

Ballowall Common has been heavily exploited by miners for the many lodes of tin which underlie this area, and the monument was long been concealed and thus protected beneath mine waste. The large, multi-phased monument is unique. No other monument of this type has so far been identified in Cornwall although during the 19th century the Cornish antiquarian William Copeland (WC) Borlase mentioned the excavation of another cairn nearby which showed some similarities in construction. Unfortunately no trace of this second cairn now survives.

It is probable that a conventional Neolithic Scillonian Chambered Tomb was the first structure here, followed in the middle-Bronze Age by a central cairn and cists. Finally, a collar was incorporated into the original mound and chamber of the entrance grave. The top of the cairn is now missing but persists to a height of almost 10ft. The barrow was lost after being used throughout the Neolithic and Middle Bronze Age. The 67 ft diameter cairn lie hidden for generations under the spoil from local tin mining activity.

Ballowall Barrow overlooking The Land's End  (pic: author)

The excavations by WC Borlase in 1878-79 uncovered middle Bronze Age urns containing cremated bones in the cists. Borlase, a native of Penzance and great, great, grandson of the naturalist and antiquary Reverend William Borlase (1695-1772), produced his Naenia Cornubiae in 1872 from Blight's and Dr Borlase's notes, a valuable record of Cornish megalithic monuments.Yet,  unfortunately, by today’s standards, his excavation record of Ballowall Barrow is inadequate and unreliable; there are many discrepancies in the accounts of the work, and many of the finds are now lost making interpretation of the site difficult.

Local tales suggest that the mound was exposed and recognisable as such perhaps not long before Borlase’s investigation. Borlase is said to have been drawn to the site by tales from miners returning from work at night who had reported seeing strange lights burning on the neolithic Ballowall Barrow on the cliff top. These mysterious lights were interpreted as dancing faeries.

St. Helen’s Oratory
Among all these old mine works and tales of the supernatural is St Helen's Oratory, the remains of 6th century chapel at Cape Cornwall near the tip of West Penwith, in a field known as Parc-an-Chapel (the Field of the Chapel). The chapel can be seen from Kenidjack Head to the north and Carn Gloose to the south.

St Helen's Oratory, Cape Cornwall (pic: author)

Cape Cornwall was long considered to to be the “true Land's End” (Pen Kernow) until accurate mapping proved otherwise. However, it is without doubt from the Cape that the best view of Land's End is be had and without having to fight your way through the crowds.

The existing stone chapel is a Scheduled Ancient Monument situated on land recently acquired by the National Trust. Archaeological recording during conservation works in 2001 identified it as a derelict agriculture building standing on, or near, the site of a Medieval chapel or oratory. Conservation works used existing rubble to rebuild the structure we see today.

A now lost Chi-Rho marked stone found on Cape Cornwall near this location suggests a Christian site may have been in existence here from the 5th century, but it is uncertain when the first chapel was established on the site. The inscribed stone was reportedly thrown down the vicarage well in St Just, presumably where it remains. A Latin cross of 4th century type was ploughed up from the abandoned Cape Cornwall mine leat and subsequently erected on the gable of the present building.

A chapel on this site was first described by Dr William Borlase in the mid-18th century, described as 45 feet long and 12 feet across, with a window toward the altar. The dimensions and orientation of the present construction are quite different from those given by Borlase which may be due to the result of several rebuilds since the 18th century.

Borlase thought that the Cape may have originally been called "the promontorie of Helenus" named after Helenus, son of Priamus, who arrived here with Brute and was buried on the Cape but the sea washed away his sepulchre long ago. Understandably, Borlase seems to have (erroneously) based his reasoning on classical cultures of the east Mediterranean as was topical at the time. However, it is possible that the name 'Helen' may derive from a missionary who founded the site; the island of St Helen's (Enys Elidius) in Scilly also has an early Christian chapel named for St Elidius.


Copyright © 2015 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


References
J T Blight, Week at the Land's End, 1861. (Reprint 1989).
William Bottrell,Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Vol. 2, 1873.
William Copeland Borlase, Naenia Cornubiae, 1872. (Reprint, 2010).
CW Dymond, Cornwall's Ancient Stones: a Magalithic Enquiry, Oakmagic, 1999.
Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 1903. (Reprint 2012).
John Michell, The Old Stones of Land's End, Garnstone Press, 1974.
Craig Weatherhill & Paul Devereux, Myths & Legends of Cornwall, Sigma,1994.
Craig Weatherhill, Belerion, Alison Hodge, 1981.
Craig Weatherhill, Cornovia, Alison Hodge, 1985.
St Helen's Oratory: Archaeological Recording during repair works, LUDU, Cornwall Council and the National Trust, 2011.

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