Sabine Baring-Gould - A Book of the West. Volume I Devon

In this "Book of the West" I have not sought to say all that might be said relative to Devon and Cornwall; nor have I attempted to make of it a guide-book. I have rather endeavoured to convey to the visitor to our western peninsula a general idea of what is interesting, and what ought to attract his attention. The book is not intended to supersede guide-books, but to prepare the mind to use these latter with discretion.

In dealing with the history of the counties and of the towns, it would have swelled the volumes unduly to have gone systematically through their story from the beginning to the present; it would, moreover, have made the book heavy reading, as well as heavy to carry. I have chosen, therefore, to pick out some incident, or some biography connected with the several towns described, and have limited myself thereto.

My object then must not be misunderstood, and my book harshly judged accordingly. There are ten thousand omissions, but I venture to think a good many things have been admitted which will not be found in guide-books, but which it is well for the visitor to know, if he has a quick intelligence and eyes open to observe.

In the Cornish volume I have given rather fully the stories of the saints who have impressed their names indelibly on the land. It has seemed to me absurd to travel in Cornwall and have these names in the mouth, and let them remain nuda nomina .

They have a history, and that is intimately associated with the beginnings of that of Cornwall. But their history has not been studied, and in books concerning Cornwall most of the statements about them are wholly false.

I have not entered into any critical discussion concerning moot points. I have left that for my "Catalogue of the Cornish Saints" that is being issued in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall .

There are places that might have been described more fully, others that have been passed over without notice. This has been due to no disregard for them on my part, but to a dread of making the volumes too bulky and cumbrous.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to many kind friends who have assisted me with their local knowledge, as Mrs. Troup, of Offwell House, Honiton; the Rev. J. B. Hughes, for some time Head Master of Blundell's School, Tiverton, and now Vicar of Staverton; Mr. R. Burnard, of Huckaby House, Dartmoor, and Hillsborough, Plymouth, my alter ego in all that concerns Dartmoor; Mr. J. D. Enys, whose knowledge of things Cornish is encyclopædic; Messrs. Amery, of Druid, Ashburton; Mr. J. D. Prickman, of Okehampton; and many others.

Lew Trenchard House, Devon

June, 1899

Ethnology of the Western Folk – The earliest men – The Ivernian race – The arrival of the Britons – Mixture of races in Ireland – The Attacottic revolt – The Dumnonii – The Scottic invasion of Dumnonia – The story of the Slave of the Haft – Athelstan drives the Britons across the Tamar – Growth of towns – The yeomen represent the Saxon element – The peasantry the earlier races – The Devonshire dialect – Courtesy – Use of Christian names – Love of funerals – Good looks among the girls – Dislike of "Foreigners" – The Cornish people – Mr. Havelock Ellis on them – The types – A Cornish girl – Religion – The unpardonable sin – Folk-music – Difference between that of Devon and Cornwall and that of Somersetshire.

It is commonly supposed that the bulk of the Devonshire people are Saxons, and that the Cornish are almost pure Celts.

In my opinion neither supposition is correct.

Let us see who were the primitive occupants of the Dumnonian peninsula. In the first place there were the men who left their rude flint tools in the Brixham and Kent's caverns, the same people who have deposited such vast accumulations in the lime and chalk caves and shelters of the Vézère and Dordogne. Their remains are not so abundant with us as there, because our conditions are not as favourable for their preservation; and yet in the Drift we do find an enormous number of their tools, though not in situ , with their hearths, as in France; yet sufficient to show that either they were very numerous, or what is more probable, that the time during which they existed was long.

This people did not melt off the face of the earth like snow. They remained on it.

We know that they were tall, that they had gentle faces – the structure of their skulls shows this; and from the sketches they have left of themselves, we conclude that they had straight hair, and from their skeletons we learn that they were tall.

M. Massenat, the most experienced hunter after their remains, was sitting talking with me one evening at Brives about their relics. He had just received a volume of the transactions of the Smithsonian Institute that contained photographs of Esquimaux implements. He indicated one, and asked me to translate to him the passage relative to its use. "Wonderful!" said he. "I have found this tool repeatedly in our rock-shelters, and have never known its purport. It is a remarkable fact, that to understand our reindeer hunters of the Vézère we must question the Esquimaux of the Polar region. I firmly hold that they were the same race."

A gentle, intelligent, artistic, unwarlike people got pressed into corners by more energetic, military, and aggressive races. And, accustomed to the reindeer, some doubtless migrated North with their favourite beasts, and in a severer climate became somewhat stunted.

It is possible – I do not say that it is more than possible – that the dark men and women found about Land's End, tall and handsome, found also in the Western Isles of Scotland and in West Ireland, may be the last relics of this infusion of blood.

But next to this doubtful element comes one of which no doubt at all exists. The whole of England, as of France, and as of Spain, was at one time held by a dusky, short-built race, which is variously called Iberian, Ivernian, and Silurian, of which the Basque is the representative so far as that he still speaks a very corrupted form of the original tongue. In France successive waves of Gaul, Visigoth, and Frank have swept over the land and have dominated it. But the fair hair and blue eyes and the clear skin of the conquering races have been submerged by the rising and overflow of the dusky blood of the original population. The Berber, the Kabyle are of the same race; dress one of them in a blue blouse, and put a peaked cap on his head, and he would pass for a French peasant.

The Welsh have everywhere adopted the Cymric tongue, they hug themselves in the belief that they are pure descendants of the ancient Britons, but in fact they are rather Silurians than Celts. Their build, their coloration, are not Celtic. In the fifth century Cambria was invaded from Strathclyde by the sons of Cunedda; fair-haired, white-skinned Britons, they conquered the North and penetrated a certain way South; but the South was already occupied by a body of invading Irish. When pressed by the Saxons, then the retreating Britons poured into Wales; but the substratum of the population was alien in tongue and in blood and in religion.

It was the same in Dumnonia – Devon and Cornwall. It was occupied at some unknown time, perhaps four centuries before Christ, by the Britons, who became lords and masters, but the original people did not disappear, they became their "hewers of wood and drawers of water."

Then came the great scourge of the Saxon invasion. Devon remained as a place of refuge for the Britons who fled before the weapons of these barbarians, till happily the Saxons accepted Christianity, when their methods became less ferocious. They did not exterminate the subject people. But what had more to do with the mitigation of their cruelty than their Christianity, was that they had ceased to be mere wandering hordes, and had become colonists. As such they needed serfs. They were not themselves experienced agriculturalists, and they suffered the original population to remain in the land-the dusky Ivernians as serfs, and the freemen, the conquered Britons, were turned into tenant farmers.