Isles of Scilly Folk Tales E-Book

Mike O'Connor

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 269

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Scilly has been its own unique land for centuries, separate from England and cut off from Cornwall by twenty-five miles of rough sea – yet until now its folk tales have been poorly documented. Let Anthony the droll-teller and his companions guide you on this voyage around the wonderful Isles of Scilly: a place of smugglers and shipwrecks, pirates and privateers, legends and long lost tales.

Leseprobe

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Mike O’Connor, 2020

The right of Mike O’Connor to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9534 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

About the Author Adro dhe’n Awtour

Introduction Raglavar

Prologue

1 Flight into the Ocean

2 The Night’s Arc of Stories

3 The Mill of History

4 St Mary’s

5 St Martin’s

6 The Northern Islands

7 Tresco

8 Bryher

9 Samson

10 St Agnes and the Western Rocks

11 The Tail of the Tale

12 Setting Sail

Principal Sources of Stories

Historical References

Mike O’Connor OBE is an expert in both the folklore and the ancient music of his home of Cornwall.

Mike is known for his work for the TV series Poldark, selecting and arranging the historical music and writing lovely songs for Demelza. But among folklorists he is known as a great storyteller and for his research of the world of travelling storytellers in Cornwall, a world described in his best-selling Cornish Folktales and Cornish Folktales for Children and revisited in this book.

Mike is a storyteller, fiddler and singer, as is Anthony James, one of this book’s central figures. Sometimes writer and character are hard to separate!

When reading this book it’s as if the reader, like the writer before, is travelling the lanes in the footsteps of Anthony and his son Jamie, swapping stories as the miles flow past.

This book tells tales from and about the Isles of Scilly and surrounds them with folklore, history and geography. Historical tales concerning the islands are up to 2,500 years old, saints’ tales 1,500 years and literary romances 900 years.

Systematic recording of Cornish folk tales began in the nineteenth century. In 1851 Henry Whitfield, a Buckinghamshire parson staying in Penzance for his health, visited the Isles for three months and wrote The Isles of Scilly and its Legends. This was a pioneering enterprise, commendable in many ways. But Whitfield lacked the local knowledge and common touch of native writers. He wrote that ‘popular superstitions’ were few and attributed the lack of ancient material to cultural discontinuity. He commented:

The whole population dates no farther back than from the days of Cromwell. It is entirely modern, having its tales of horror indeed, but relating only to smuggling, and wrecking, and disasters akin to them. The most remote of these dark scenes scarcely amounts up to a period of a hundred years ago.

So, whilst Whitfield did collect tales, with skill he also created fictional ‘legends’ of his own, for which he was later criticised in folkloric circles.*

But others did know local tales. Notable was Emma Jenkin Tiddy (1880–1962), a native of St Mary’s and author of Maze of Scilly. She wrote that most of her tales were based on historical events. This prompts the question, when, if ever, does a historical narrative become a folk tale? On Scilly many factual events have lodged in community consciousness and have been retold many times, a folkloric process giving birth to variants and elaborations. Such tales include the St Agnes Tragedy, noted by Leland (c.1540), the Wreck of the Association (1707) and the Ghost of Rosevear (1784). Tiddy’s tales date from 1707 to 1862. She was born in 1880 and it is probable that her stories were mainly orally transmitted. They show local knowledge and reflect tradition. History and folklore exist in parallel.

The tales in this book are told as the fictional travelogue of blind Anthony James, a travelling ‘droll-teller’, i.e. storyteller from Cury on the Lizard. Anthony, guided by his son Jamie, walked through Cornwall living on tales, songs and tunes. Like Anthony, most of the ‘supporting cast’ in this book are real. However, for reasons that will become apparent I have artificially placed both Robert Heath and Henry Whitfield in the book’s early nineteenth-century timeframe.

It’s easy to wander the islands imagining the way things were centuries ago. There is open ground where visitors can roam freely and there are well-signed lanes and paths. Scillonians are friendly and welcoming, but there is farmland and private property to be respected. The tides and currents are swift and can be hazardous. Take local advice on swimming; do not try to wade between the islands except under supervision. Respect the wildlife. Enjoy the knowledge and skill of the boatmen. Above all, let the atmosphere, the beauty and the history of the place wash over you, and enjoy its story.

* Folklorist M.A. Courtney wrote of Whitfield, ‘his legends are for the most part purely fictitious, and its title, Scilly and its Legends, a little misleading.’

It was a blissful spring morning on the island of St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly. The warm sun sparkled on the water and small boats bustled here and there. On a bench outside the Union Inn sat three storytellers.

There was Anthony James, a blind travelling droll-teller from Cury on the Lizard, his son Jamie, and Lizzie Tregarthen, the daughter of an old Scillonian sea captain. Lizzie wore a curious necklace made of irregular beads and hairy string.

‘Lizzie,’ said Anthony, ‘We’ve a present for you.’

‘Thank you,’ cried Lizzie, unwrapping the parcel. Then she laughed with delight: inside was a book. The title was Folk Tales of the Isles of Scilly and the authors’ names were Eliza Tregarthen, Anthony James and James Vingo James.

‘That’s me!’ she screamed, ‘But I didn’t write anything.’

‘You told most of the stories and you were a wonderful guide to the islands. This book tells how we came to the Isles of Scilly and all the adventures and stories we shared. Jamie wrote them down and I helped.’

As Lizzie looked at the book she fingered the beads of her necklace. A tear ran down her cheek. ‘It’s all the stories in my story necklace, they’ve come back to life.’

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

Gustav Mahler

The sun was on the western horizon. A golden pathway stretched across the sea and shadows lengthened. In the ocean the islands floated in a shimmering dream of light. Captain Tregarthen led them from a world of shadow up onto Buzza Hill. There a fire was burning; around it were logs and benches. The last light hovered over the land, gently welcoming the first stars. From the gathering darkness other figures appeared. Old and young, men and women, all were welcomed to the fireside.

Then came a quiet voice, ‘As it says in the Good Book: in the beginning was the word!’

Then the stories began.

CREATION

First God created the heavens and the earth.

‘Let there be light,’ he said, and there was light, and so it was that he created day and night.

Then he saw the earth was without form, so the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

It was the greatest of works, forming firmaments and deeps and dry lands, and after the second day of labour the Lord was feeling a little weary. As he was carrying a great shovel-full of earth and rock to make Ireland, his attention was distracted. His grip on the shovel wavered and some little bits of rock fell from the shovel into the sea, and they formed the Isles of Scilly.

The Lord heard the splash and looked at the little group of islands and saw that it was good.

Eventually, when mankind got there, they also saw that it was good, so they stayed.

The proof of this tale is in the animals you find here. When St Patrick drove out all the snakes and venomous reptiles from Ireland, out of some ancient geographical sympathy those animals were also banished from Scilly. You won’t find any poisonous snakes here at all, so it must be true.

Of course, the good Lord knew that unintentional island creation due to weariness was not desirable, so he decreed that on every seventh day we should no longer labour. So it is that we have the Isles of Scilly to thank for our day of rest. To this day it is a fine place to take your ease, and move as nature intended, with the rhythm of the tides and the stars.

THE ISLANDS

Long ago the island of Ennor was severed from Cornwall.

Then the ice grew strong and brought flint and stone to Ennor’s northern shore.

But when the sun grew strong the ice retreated.

The sea carved a channel that took Agnes and Annet from their mother; they were the first of the children of Ennor.

Next, the sea reached out and held Ennor by the waist, leaving only a narrow causeway between north and south.

Finally, the sea drew his hand across Ennor and the water flowed where his fingers had traced. Sampson, Bryher, Tresco, St Helen, Teän, St Martin: these are the next of the children of Ennor.

Ennor, mother of the islands, was christened Mary after the mother of God.

To the west are the Western Rocks.

To the east are the Eastern Isles.

These are the Isles of Scilly.

THE ANCESTORS

We are children of the Islands.

We are people of the sea.

Our fathers were one with wind and wave.

They spoke the old tongue; we call it Cornish.

They fished and farmed, kept cattle and sheep.

They dug for flint, they found tin and lead.

They set up standing stones; they made labyrinths; they worshipped long-forgotten gods.

On hilltops and headlands they lie in tombs of stone.

On the moor are their workings. In the sea caves are the scars of their axes. Their blood still stains the ocean.

These are our ancestors.

THE TRAVELLERS

The first great travellers were the Phoenicians. Five hundred years before Christ they built biremes, ships with two banks of oars and a great square sail. They traded all over the Mediterranean and founded the city of Carthage, now in Tunisia.

In those days tin was rare and precious. There were tales of islands in the north where it could be found, but even the great Greek historian Herodotus was uncertain of their location or even their existence.

But at the other end of the Mediterranean, Carthaginian sailors had heard of the western islands, the Oestrymnides. There a proud-spirited tribe plied the tempestuous ocean in hide-covered boats and traded tin and lead. So the Phoenician admiral Himilco set out to find them.*

After four months at sea he succeeded. But the Greeks envied the Phoenicians; they too wanted tin. So they asked him about the voyage. But Himilco was a storyteller; he said this:

‘Friends, we all want swords, shields and bright metalware so we must have bronze. To make bronze we need tin. But tin comes only from the tin islands, beyond the end of the earth.

‘This is no voyage for mortals. The journey is long and the dangers are many. In truth the first to guide us to the Tin Island was none other than Melkarth, the god of the sea.

‘One bright morning, while our people were still slumbering beneath the citadel, we made our oblations to Melkarth. Leaving the outer harbour of Carthage, we stayed inshore, using the land breeze to avoid the currents with which the gods keep mortals east of the Pillars of Hercules. But beyond the Pillars there is sea without end and the dangers are legion. Without Melkarth we would surely have failed.

‘Beyond Gades** no breezes blow. To make progress, the oarsmen must have the strength of oxen.

‘Even so, near Cape St Vincent, although the rowers worked mightily, the ship’s motion ceased. I looked over the side. Seaweed completely encased the hull. We tried to cut it away but the ship was trapped. We could go neither forward nor backward. We would have starved to death in the midst of the ocean, but great Melkarth saw our peril and tore away the weed.

‘North of Corunna great storms blew. The waves were as tall as the mast. We thought we would be overwhelmed, but Melkarth stilled the waves.