Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall

It has frequently occurred to my thoughts that the events which have befallen me since my collation to this wild and remote vicarage, on the shore of the billowy Atlantic sea, m...

[31] It may be said that the first editions of some of Hawker’s poems are on the grave-stones in Morwenstow churchyard. Other verses of this kind are those “On the Grave of a Ch...

“So I did, sir, sure enough. My text on such subjects was, ‘_Ask not, and you shall never receive_.’ First of all, I had the vicarage of Percombe, up towards the moors. This cam...

Another “merrie jest,” but with a lowlier scene and an humbler _dramatis personæ_, raised the laugh of many a common-room and wine-party about the same period of my own undergra...

Satisfied with his fare, the merchant now inquired for the dwelling-place of his guide. It was not far off. The parents of the shepherdess inhabited a thatched hut in the villag...

I was hardly prepared for the result when I “struck the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.” The association came back; the words called up the scene among the swine;...

Such was the solace that arrived to soothe the dreary path of Daniel Gumb. He wooed and won a maiden of his native village, who, amid the rugged rocks and appellatives of Cornwa...

[160] Hawker’s account (on p. 11) of the discovery of the piscina in the chancel wall at Morwenstow is, however, very circumstantial. If “the jumbled carved work and a crushed d...

“The cause wherefore this old gentleman was thus moved by my applications was this: He had a first-born and only son--a child who, but a very few months before, had been not unw...

It is said that one Christmas-eve the fire languished in the Hall. A boy with an ass had been sent to the woodland for logs, and the driver loitered on his homeward way. Lady Gr...

The traditionary name of this well-remembered character on the Tamar-side is Black John. He lived from the commencement to the middle of the eighteenth century in the household...

“The story long told is that a party were hunting the wild boar in Trewartha Marsh. Whenever a hunter came near the Cheesewring a prophet--by whom an Archdruid is meant--who liv...

The chancel wall one day sounded hollow when struck; the mortar was removed, and underneath there appeared an arched aperture, which had been filled up with jumbled carved work...

Hawker’s prose sketches appeared originally as contributions to various periodicals, and in 1870 they were published for him in book form by Mr. John Russell Smith, as “Footprin...

In the following year a new and another wreck was announced in the gloom of night. A schooner under bare poles had been watched for many hours from the cliffs, with the steersma...

Lady’s fine Bed-chamber and planching 35 0 0 9 shash windows at 10/6 and 2 at 11/6 5 17 6 no. 27 y^e winscott w^{th}out y^e chimney and door casings 11 13 0 6 squares of Planchi...

Amid such scenes Coppinger pursued his unlawful impulses without check or restraint. Strange vessels began to appear at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were duly fla...

Another time Uncle Tony said to me, “Sir, there is one thing I want to ask you, if I may be so free, and it is this, Why should a merry-maid” (the local name for mermaid), “that...