A supplement to the first and second books of the History of Cornwall / [by R. Polwhele] ; containing remarks on St. Michael's Mount, Penzance, the Land's End, and the Sylleh Isles. By the historian of Manchester [i.e. J. Whitaker].

  • Richard Polwhele
Date:
1804
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A supplement to the first and second books of the History of Cornwall / [by R. Polwhele] ; containing remarks on St. Michael's Mount, Penzance, the Land's End, and the Sylleh Isles. By the historian of Manchester [i.e. J. Whitaker]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    7^ / ZO SUPPLEMENT, minated the City of Lions * Thus do remains, tradition, and pofitive hiftory, all combine their powers together, irrefiftibly to prove an extraordinary preffure of the Atlantick, upon the Ifles of Sylley and the continent of Cornwall.”f But when did this commence > Dr. Borlafe engages in the enquiry; yet begins it without hope, and ends it without fatisfa&ion. “ When this inundation happened,” he confefles, “ we may be “ willing to know, but muft be without hopes of knowing with any certainty.” He therefore, after fome hefitation between the time of Plutarch, when he finds the ifles round Britain, not overflowed (as his reafoning requires they fhould have been), but un-/ieo/iledy (a circumftance to- tally impertinent here); a great inundation of the fea in Britain itfelf, under the year 1014; and another in Suflex, under the reign of Edward the Firft; he pitches upon one in “ the Irifh annals,” under 830, “ which might probably have” both “ affetted the fouth of Ireland, and at the fame “ time reached Scilly and the coaft of Cornwall.”! He thus beats about for the chronology of an event, when the chronology is plain from evidences at his foot. The ravages made by the fea are not, as they are naturally imagined at firft, and as I once fuppofed them to have been,§ merely the filent encroachments and the flow depredations of the water upon the land; but, as tradition unites with hiftory to flrow, a fudden impreflion given to the whole weight of the Atlan- tick, in fending it with a hafty violence upon our fouth-weftern coafts at one particular period, and in keeping it to bear with a regular violence upon them ever fince. Thus all the low lands of Sylley were overwhelmed, by a burft of the fea at once ; and the hills have been gradually corroded by the fea ever fince. || “ Hence as the (fouthern) ftiore” of Cornwall “ wheels round “ to the north,” cries Camden, advancing eaftward from the coaft of Burian parifh, “ a lunar “ haven is formed that is denominated Mount’s Bay; in which, fays a prevailing tradition, the “ ocean breaking in with a violent courfe, drowned the land.”]f Yet St. Michael’s Mount appears from the charter of the Confeflor, to have been only “ near ” the fea then. The inundation might then have taken place, and the fea have begun the ravages that it has ever fince been making. A portion of the original diftance between the ocean and the Mount, might then have been overflowed ; and the Mount brought fo “ near to” the fea, as to have no longer fix or five, or perhaps four miles interpofing between them. But the fea has ever fince been working fo pow- erfully * Mr. Gwavas, in a letter from Penzance, 12th April, 1735, to Mr. Tonkin, now in my pofieffion, writes thus: “ Tre- «« veilgian, the fea-towne, contrafled into Trevilian ; this, I think, agrees beft with the hiftorical part, relating to the family, « that at an inundation, when Scilly was cut off,” thrown off farther, “ from the Land’s End, he did fwime on his horfe in “ the fea, from the city of Lyons, then m being, and landed within Mount’s Bay. f The name of Lethas, or Lelhowfow, naturally attra&s the attention of an antiquary here. Yet it has never been at- tempted to be explained. Nor is an explanation eafy. But 1 will venture upon one, to complete the evidence concerning the country of Lioneffe. Lh d-ymil (Welfh) is the coaft or border of a country (Lhuyd under Ora,) Leithe-meal (irifh) is the fame, Llydaw (Weifh and Cornifh) of or belonging to a Jhore, Llydaw (Welfh) Bretagne in France, and Armuirc Icethana in the middle ages (Ufher 429), Lctewicion (Nunnius xxiii), Lidwiccium (Sax. Chron. p. 88, 115), Leteoc, Lcrti, Letavienfes CUfher ibid.) the inhabitants of Bretagne. The ifland Silura, therefore, was called by the Cornifh of the Land's End, juft as Bretagne was called by all the Cornifh and the Welfh, Lhydaw, Lethas, or Lethoufow, the Jhore. Looking upon it as immediately oppofed to their eye, they denominated it the Jhore in general. Their anccflors had even carried this fami- liar ufe of the word fo far, as to call the only coaft of France to which they at firft trafficked, that of Bretagne, by the fame name of Llydaw, or the Jhore. So we have Lethcgas at prefent, the name of fome rocks immediately fouth of St. Agnes’ Ifle. t Scilly Ifles, 95, 99. § Hift. of Manchefter, ii. 177, oflavo. || Borlafe’s Scilly Ifles, 88. Camden, 130. “ Hinc fenfim in Auftrum circumaflo littore,” where Auftrum is plainly amif-print for Bnream, though both Gibfon and Gough take the text as it ftands, and fo make Camden contradift the very geography of the coaft, “ finus “ lunatus admittitur, Mount’s Bay vocant; in quo oceinum, avido meatu irruentem, terras demerfifTe fama obtinet.”
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