"A droll! A droll! Tell me a droll!" Cornish Folktales, Legend and Lore ~ Katherine Bone

The Cornish are descendants of Druids, Celts, and the Welsh, ancestors typically referred to as the ‘old ones’ with a fifteen hundred year history of mining ore, copper, and tin. Living and working in harsh conditions—influenced by Welsh saints who settled throughout Cornwall, and later Methodist Evangelist John Wesley—the Cornish were enthralled by supernatural folklore, tales of ghosts and legend. Nights spent around a hearth of blazing furze and turf was never wasted. Especially if a droll teller—a storyteller traveling hamlet to hamlet across the moors to tell stories, play the fiddle, and sing old ballads about Cornwall's past—ventured near.

“In Cornish dialect a ‘droll’ is an oral story.” Visits by a droll teller—or ‘old crowder’ because they attracted a crowd—happened but once or twice a year as a means of keeping the old ways alive.

Our Cornish drolls are dead, each one;

The fairies from their haunts have gone:

There’s scarce a witch in all the land,

The world has grown so learn’d and grand.

~ Poet Henry Quick

In Cornish Folk Tales by Mike O’Connor, droll teller Anthony James of Cury and his son traveled throughout Cornwall in the late 18^th- to early 19^th Centuries to pass on legends and lore.

The Legend of Tamara offers a theory on how Cornwall became distinct from England. The tale also offers two interesting morals. The first, beware those who live in darkness. Second, a warning to allow young people to make their own decisions.

The Legend of Tamara

"Once there was a bad-tempered troll who lived high up on the moors in the north of Cornwall. This troll had a beautiful daughter called Tamara. Now this old troll hated the light, so he slept during the day and would only venture out of his cave at night time. And Tamara, she was forbidden to go out during the day and only allowed out after sunset. But you’ll soon learn about young women! You will find they are independent and inquisitive, just like many other people, perhaps more so. Well, Tamara was like that. One bright day, when her father was fast asleep, she crept out of the cave to see what it was like.

As soon as she came out of the cave she was enchanted by the bright light, the colours, the reflections. There was the blue of the sky, the brilliance of the sun, the rich green of the moors, the silver streams and the sparkling, shimmering sea. And on the side of the hill there she found two young giants enjoying a friendly wrestling match, and I can tell you she was even more enchanted by these two strong, handsome young men.

And those two young men were friendly and courteous. They introduced themselves as Davy and Terry, and Tamara enjoyed their wit and their good company. She was fascinated by their knowledge of the world that lay beyond her close horizons. So next day she joined them again, and the next day, and the day after. And gradually she realized she was falling in love, not only with her young giants, but with life outside the cave, life in the light.

One day Tamara was sitting in the sunshine on the hillside between her two young friends. She was wondering which, if either, she preferred when she heard a howl of rage. She looked towards the entrance of the cave and there was her father. The old troll had woken and found that his daughter was gone. From the shadows of the cave entrance he ordered Tamara to come back to the darkness at once. Tamara looked at the dark cave and her angry father. Then she looked at the bright land outside the cave and the two genial giants. Finally, weeping with fear, Tamara refused to do what the old troll said. Then her father’s rage was so great that he was almost incapable of speech. Finally, screaming with anger, he uttered a great curse in a tongue no one else could understand.

Then Tamara felt her blood run cold and her limbs become stiff. Tears began to flow from her eyes as she realised that the curse was turning her into stone. Soon she was a lifeless rock, but from that rock the tears still flowed. At the base of the rock formed a pool of tears, tears that flowed forever, forming first a brook, then a stream, then a river that flowed down to the sea.

Then Davy cried out for the bad-tempered old troll to undo his terrible curse. At first the troll refused. Davy was insistent. But then the troll admitted that the curse could not be undone. So Davy threw himself to his full height and demanded that he too should be cursed, so that he could suffer the same fate as his sweetheart and share her course to the sea. So for a second time, and now himself trembling with fear, the troll uttered his great curse. Then Davy too felt his blood run cold and his limbs become stiff. Tears flowed from Davy’s eyes as he was turned to stone by the troll’s curse. From that stone the tears continued to flow. At the base of the rock formed a pool of tears, tears that flowed forever, forming first a brook, then a stream, then a river that flowed down to the sea; a river that joined with his beloved Tamara and flowed with her to the sea, far away to the south.

Then Terry roamed the hills seeking solace or diversion. But, wherever he went, he was haunted by the memories of his brother and his friend. Eventually from far across the moors he gave a great cry, demanding that he too should share the same fate. And far away the old troll heard his cry borne on the wind and for the last time uttered his terrible curse. In turn Terry heard the troll’s faint words on the wind. Soon Terry felt his blood run cold and his limbs become stiff. Tears flowed from his eyes as the third curse turned him to granite; a stone that like the others wept an eternity of tears. At the base of the rock formed a pool of tears, tears that flowed forever, forming first a brook, then a stream, then a river. But he was far away across the moors, so his river did not flow to the south and join Tamara and Davy. Instead his river flowed to the north, eventually joining the Bristol Channel.

That’s how the granite kingdom of old Cornwall defined its borderlands—three curses, three tears and three rivers: the Tamar, the Tavy, and the Torridge. That’s what they call them now."

Cornwall. Corn stems from the Iron Age tribe Cornovii, later pronounced ‘Kernow’, possibly meaning people of the horn. Wall comes from old English, ‘w(e)alh’ meaning foreigner. Corn Walum dates back to 891 A.D.

From sunbathed paradise to Jurassic coastlines, Cornwall according to Peter Grego in Cornwall’s Strangest Tales, Extraordinary but True Stories, is ‘a land of dream and mystery’. A land of Arthurian legend, an unconquerable fortress where smugglers reigned, where naval fleets sailed off to victory and folk tales spoken around a hearth prevent the loss of the old ones.

The Cure for What Ails You ~ Cornish Remedies via Katherine Bone!

Mortal are we and subject to diseases,

We must all die, even and when God pleases,

Into the world but one way do we come,

A thousand ways from thence we are sent home.

Modern medicine has played a significant part in the longevity of people living in the 21^st Century. Given the resources at our disposal; family doctors, hospitals and emergency rooms, local pharmacies, and extended life expectancy, it’s difficult to understand how people dealt with common ailments like influenza, disease, and catastrophic injuries long ago. Especially when people died for reasons that were oftentimes classified as 'just rewards'.

In Cornish Sayings, Superstitions and Remedies, I’ve discovered how the Cornish people dealt with what ailed them. What I found is astounding! Given that Cornwall is a country unto itself, its people the descendants of Druids, Celts, Welsh, hearty fishermen and miners with ties to the earth, it makes perfect sense their way of life relied on legend, lore and superstition.

But before we look deeper into how Cornish people remedied maladies, let’s take a look at how long it took for penicillin to reach the general population.

Quick history of the discovery of Penicillin:

·         In Egypt, Greece and India, moulds were used to treat infections.
·         In Russia, warm soil healed infectious wounds.
·         In 150 BC Sri Lanka, soldiers prepared for war by cooking oil cakes for days and preparing poultices made from the cakes for battle injuries.
·         In 1600s Poland, wet bread mixed with cob webs was applied to wounds.
·         In 1640, the King’s Herbarian, John Parkinson, records the benefits of using mould in medicine.
·         In 1870 United Kingdom, the founder of St. Mary’s Hospital, Sir John Scott Burdon-Sanderson, discovers mould produces no bacteria.
·         In 1871, Joseph Lister, an English surgeon tests contaminated mould urine samples, describing the action on human tissue as Penicillium glaucum, for the first time.
·         In 1874, William Roberts studies moulds for bacterial contamination and notes bacteria is absent in Penicillium glaucum cultures.
·         In 1875, John Tyndall demonstrates Burdon-Sanderson’s Penicillium fungus’s antibacterial action to the Royal Society.
·         In 1923, Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming cultivates mould and names the resulting culture, penicillin.

“Gurty milk an’ bearly-bread no lack,

Pudden-skins an’ a good shaip’s chack,

A bussa o’ salt pelchers, ’nother o’ pork,

A good strong stummick and a plenty of work.”

~ Old Cornish Rhyme

Cornish people are strong, stout-hearted survivors who believe in ghosts, ghouls and goblins. They’ve long believed giants will return to reclaim the moors, piskeys own the fields and mermaids rule the oceans. And they’ve used a mixture of herbs and lore to treat infections, disease, and maladies with superstition and remedies passed down through generations.

If penicillin isn’t handy, here are some Cornish remedies to soothe what ails you:

·         Snake bite? No problem. Adder bite is easily treated with plantain and salad oil. Or simply lay the bruised dead body of the adder on top of the bite as an infallible cure.
·         Catch a cold? Poor dearie. What you need is a drought of boiling water over a handful of herbs and swallowed while hot. If that doesn’t work, you could also bath your feet in mustard water and drink boiled cider or whisky with hot water and sugar. Elder tea made from dried elder flowers or leaves might do you good. Or drink juice from turnip slices with sugar in between.
·         Feverish? You need elderflower.
·         Got a cough? Find some Horehound.
·         Queasy, sick to your stomach? Chamomile and elder tea will purge what ails you.
·         Whooping Cough cramping your style? Slice an onion and layer it in a basin, alternately with brown sugar. Allow mixture to stand overnight. Just 2 tsps. of this syrup 3-4 times a day will chase your cough away. Children, sick with whooping cough, should run with sheep or tie a muslin bag full of spiders around their necks to ward off coughing spells.
·         Not getting enough Vitamin C? Treat your scurvy with extra burdock burs.
·         Aches and pains got you down? Use an ointment of mallow for your inflammations.
·         A south-westerly wind too breezy? Earaches are best remedied by applying a piece of cooked onion in a stocking to the affected ear.
·         Never underestimate the supernatural power of poultices.
·         Having trouble breathing? Treat your pneumonia with hot fomentations.
·         Don’t underestimate the power of a dead man’s tooth. Carry this infallible charm in your pocket.
·         Colic a problem? Stand on your head for fifteen minutes.
·         Can’t believe you ate the whole thing? If heartburn has gotten you down, use this cure of drying and powdering black spiders.
·         It ain’t over until the sick woman sings. Cut a live pigeon in half and lay the bleeding parts at her feet.
·         Bubble, bubble, boils are trouble. To cure a boil, creep on your hands and knees beneath a bramble grown into the ground at both ends. If that doesn’t work, you can always bore a hole in a nutmeg and tie it round your neck then nibble, nine mornings fasting.
·         Find an unusual lump? Place the hand of a man who committed suicide on your tumor and it will go away.
·         Bleeding much? Apply a church key to the wound to stop bleeding or use cobwebs.
·         Can’t breathe? Here’s a cure sure to ease your asthmatic symptoms. Roll spider webs into a ball and swallow them.
·         Got tuberculosis? This is very important. Take a spoonful of earth from the grave of a newly interred virgin, dissolve in water, and drink, fasting to cure decline.
·         Shingles a problem? Take blood drawn from a cat’s tail and smear it over the affected area.
·         Can’t stop bleeding? Draw a sign of the cross on wood, stone, or metal and bind over the wound, whether you be man or beast. And if your nose is bleeding, drop a key down your back.
·         Stye in the eye? Stroke the eye nine times with a wedding ring or a Tom cat’s tail.
·         Can’t get rid of your hiccups? Spit on the forefinger of your right hand and cross the front of the left shoe three times saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards. Scaring the affected person also helps.

When all else fails, visit a white witch, a peller, for traditional remedies that come in the shape of a wind charm. Though the Cornish language is nearly all but gone like wolves that used to cry and weep over the grassland, their love of life and the miracle of each sunrise and sunset lives on.

Resources:

Cornish Sayings, Superstitions and Remedies

Cornwall and Its People by A. K. Hamilton Jenkin

Cornish Folk Tales by Mike O'Connor

History of Penicillin

Cornish Ghosts and Legends

What are some of your family remedies?

Guest Susanna Kearsley--Dangerous Loyalties: The Jacobites in Cornwall

Linda Banche here. My guest today is Susanna Kearsley and her knock-your-socks-off time travel back to 1715 Cornwall, The Rose Garden. Here she tells us about the politics of the time.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win the copy of The Rose Garden which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Susanna will select the winner. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winner within a week of selection, I will award the book to an alternate. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winner Susanna selected is Harvee! Thanks to all for coming over, and Susanna said she appreciates you coming over, and she enjoyed reading your comments.

Welcome, Susanna!

Susanna Kearsley:

Say “Jacobites”, and most of us think “Scotland”, but the truth is there were many on the English side as well who held the true heir of the throne to be King James III, a Catholic, not his Protestant half-sisters, who had ruled in turn since their joint father, James II, had been chased across the Channel into exile by his daughter Mary and her husband, William, Prince of Orange.

Politics then was as divided as it is today, and Britain’s parliament was split between the Whigs—who believed the monarch’s role should be strictly limited, and that progressive social and political reform was necessary—and the Tories, who stood for tradition, the old church, and a strong monarchy. Just as the Whigs had opposed the openly Catholic James II’s right to the throne, many of the Tories had supported him, and continued to consider him the true king even while they served his daughters in their parliaments.

When James II died in 1701, the Jacobites transferred their loyalty to his young son, James III. And when Queen Anne herself died in 1714 without a child to succeed her, Jacobites on both sides of the Scottish border felt the time had come to bring her brother back from exile to assume his rightful crown.

The Whigs, who did not believe in the hereditary right of kings, had found their own candidate for the royal succession. The Prince of Hanover, who despite being only distantly related (more than fifty Catholic relatives of Anne, besides her half-brother, had better claims) and speaking no English at all, was crowned King George I of Great Britain in October of 1714.

Not everyone approved. Public rumblings and riots began to spread out from the capital into the countryside, becoming particularly intense in the spring, since George I’s birthday unluckily fell the day before Restoration Day—a half-century old Stuart celebration of the day King Charles II was restored to his throne after being similarly exiled in the wake of the Civil War. The festivities for George’s birthday devolved into angry protests of his coronation, and several towns and cities across England erupted in riots and bonfires.

In response, the Whig-controlled parliament passed the famous Riot Act, which gave officials the right to break up any gathering of 12 or more people. Anyone who ignored the reading of the Riot Act was guilty of treason, and they could be beaten, arrested or shot dead on the spot without any further warning or liability.

At the end of July, George I also announced the suspension of the right of Habeus Corpus, meaning his agents could arrest anyone they suspected of treason and imprison them indefinitely, without having to bring actual charges or hold a proper trial.

He did this not only because of the riots, but also because he had learned from his spies that the Jacobites—not just in Scotland, but closer to home—were preparing to rise. And one of the strongholds of highly-placed Tories and Jacobite leaders was Cornwall.

The Duke of Ormonde and Lord Bolingbroke, two of the Tories’ highest men, had been accused of treason and had fled to France, but the popular and charismatic Ormonde had been planning his return, intending to support James III’s landing in Scotland by landing himself in the West of England and leading an army from there towards London against George’s parliament.

The plans had already been set in motion, led by one of the most influential men in Cornwall, Sir Richard Vyvyan, and aided by others like powerful MP John Anstis—who was not only a cousin of King James III’s private secretary but was himself the hereditary steward of the tinners who made up a large portion of the Cornish population—and his good friend George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, whose own family had a long history of backing the cause of the Stuart kings. (Granville, an accomplished poet and playwright, had even written poems while at Cambridge about King James III’s mother, Queen Mary of Modena).

But these men had a powerful enemy in another MP, Hugh Boscawen, who through his own family connections was part of George I’s inner circle, and who had an ongoing personal rivalry with George Granville.

It only took one man to ruin the Jacobites. The Duke of Ormonde’s secretary, Colonel John Maclean, had been sent to travel down through Cornwall, seeking out supporters for the cause and letting those already faithful know of Ormonde’s plans. Known and trusted by all those connected with the uprising, and privy to their plans, he then, for reasons never specified, turned traitor. He told George I’s agents all that he knew, and in turn George I gave Boscawen instructions to raise a militia and send out his Messengers (agents who had the ability to make arrests) to take care of the men who’d been named by Maclean.

Anstis and Granville were arrested on the same day in late September, and shortly afterwards Sir Richard Vyvyan was arrested at his grand house Trelowarren, although the story goes that the Messenger sent to arrest him was purposely delayed at an inn by Vyvyan’s friends while they sent someone to warn him. He reportedly used the time, not to escape, but to destroy potentially incriminating documents. If true, this tactic seems to have worked, because although he was sent to the Tower and held prisoner there for a time, he was eventually released for lack of evidence against him.

On October 7, the day after Vyvyan was taken, a group of Cornishmen led by James Paynter proclaimed James III King of Great Britain at a gathering in St. Columb. He and his friends were arrested and taken to Newgate prison, but Paynter, like Vyvyan, eventually managed to win his freedom (though at least one of his friends wasn’t so fortunate).

When the Duke of Ormonde finally managed to cross the Channel later that month, instead of being met as he’d hoped by an army of men under Sir Richard Vyvyan, he found the whole affair in tatters. Being told of Maclean’s treachery, and learning that his best men and allies were all in the Tower of London, he gave up his hopes of a Cornish rebellion and went back to France.

Would history have been any different if Colonel Maclean hadn’t sold out his friends to the enemy? Nobody knows. But considering just how well-liked and how powerful all of the great Cornish Jacobites were, there’s no saying how much they’d have helped James III when he landed that winter in Scotland, if they had been able to raise him an army in Cornwall as well.

THE ROSE GARDEN BY SUSANNA KEARSLEY

Eva Ward is a modern woman thrown back three centuries to 1715 only to find that might be exactly where she belongs. There she finds true love with Daniel Butler, but the discord surrounding Hanoverian King George plunges the lovers into a world of intrigue, treason, and love.

About the Author
Susanna Kearsley’s writing has been compared to Mary Stewart, Daphne Du Maurier, and Diana Gabaldon. Her books have been translated into several languages, selected for the Mystery Guild, condensed for Reader’s Digest, and optioned for film. She lives in Canada near the shores of Lake Ontario. Her previous works have won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for both the UK Romantic Novel of the Year and the Romance Writers of America's RITA awards.