The Bells of Is

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 146, 10 September 1927, Page 26 (Supplement)

The Bells of Is

(Written for THE SUN by

D.W.O. FAGAN

■ UT beyond the castellated crags of Land’s End, in the middle distance of the wide picture, beyond the spires of weather-worn granite, ten miles off shore, the blue Atlantic breaks into white smothers of foam and jetting spouts of spray around the black rocks of the Seven Sisters. Farther yet, dim on the horizon, misty in the August haze, we catch a glimpse of St. Mary’s, where, with Tresco and other islands of the Scillies, it lifts its head above the flood. Mountain tbps these of that lost Lyonesse, that once stretched its peninsula far out into the Atlantic, a wide tongue of land, reaching from Land’s End almost beyond the parallel of West Ireland. Lyonesse, that with its cities, hamlets, farmsteads and broad pastures, went down in sudden cataclysm and, on a night of storm and horror, eight hundred years ago, was sunk beneath the sea. There, scarce a mile off shore, once stood a battlemented city—a city of castle, keep and minster, the royal city of Is. And, hark! Faint and far away, above the drone of bees in the heather, sounding through the wash of waves on the rocks, comes the sound of bells. Now slow and rhythmic, a 3 calling the people to worship, now breaking into merry carillons of joy. . . The bells of Is, calling from beneath the sea—calling, as they have called through eight long centuries. Romance? Why not? It is a land of Romance, this of the West Countree, where history and legend so move hand-in-hand through its annals that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. A laud grey with the ghosts of forgotten eld. Hither came the men of Tyre and Sidon —Phoenicians, mining tin for the building of Solomon’s Temple. Hither, later, came the Romans for copper from the Cassiterrides.. Hither, flying from persecution, after the crucifixion of the Christ, came Joseph of Arimethea to journey inland and found his Abbey of Glastonbury and plant the thorn tree that still blooms and blossoms under his name. St. Mullion was patron Saint of Is and her sister city of Sangrael. St. Malo, Magliore, Meliarne, Maclou, Mullion —he has left his mark in many place-names on the shores of neighbouring seas. Normandy, Brittany, Cap Finisterre knew him well, as also his native Cornwall. A notable sou of the Church Militant, he must have been, who extirpated the ancient Baail worship from the land and whose banner is still preserved in the chancel of St. Mullion Parish Church. Here reigned Arthur Pendragon, King of Cornwall and England, who drove the Saxon and Danish pirates from the coasts, kept the land inviolate, and — Thrust the heathen from the Roman wall And shook him through the North. Yearly, at the Feast of Midsummer, Arthur and his court made pilgrimage to Is, to open jousts and tourneys. A goodly company. Knights of the Round Table, Queen Guinivere and her ladies, Launcelot, Percivale, Bedivere, Tristram, Gawain and Galahad, Iseult, Elaine, Linnette and Etarre. A gay cavalcade in the leafy June lanes, sun glinting on gilded casque and burnished armour, crimson sarcenet and snowy lawn, as they rode down from Camelot. A noble sight and goodly company! No wonder the burgesses

of Is set the joy-hells ringing to welcome their King. But the bells were destined to ring to a sterner note. There came a night of November, in the year 1089, when, out of the black north-west there came, leaping, a mighty wind. Nothing nearer than Labrador broke Jhe sweep of the hurricane. It caught the ocean in its grip and hurled it in shattering billows against the devoted land, while across the gloom the bells of Is clanged out a tocsin of terror and dismay. Alas for St Mullion! What then availed past prayers of consecration? The belfry shook to the blows of the seas. It tottered in the rising waves. The great "shoulders of the wind pushed against the walls and buildings, the invading sea sapped the foundations and the city of Is crumbled and fell. The hills and mountains dissolved in ruin, till, with a Tending crash, a despairing shriek from the people, the land broke from its junction with the solid earth. The sea now rolls sixty and an hundred fathoms deep where once lost Lyonesse spread broad meadows to the sun.

Only one man survived the horror of that night. To Hugh Trevellian had come a premonition of evil. He kept his horse saddled in readiness to escape, while others laughed and jeered him coward. As the sea swept over the land he mounted and rode, Eastward! Eastward! The yelling wind tore at him. He was buffeted by stinging spray and hurtling masses of foam. The night was black as the pit—impalpable darkness held him. There was nothing in Heaven and Earth but rushing wind and foaming sea. Water to his saddle girths. Up, up, good horse! The night roared around him, the lingers of the wind snatched at him, the noise of bells went swooping by and all the world was in the sea. Caught in an eddy of the fierce current, something white swirled against his knee and he caught and lifted it to saddle-bow. It was the body of a maiden, naked, drenched, snow-pale in the darkness. The double-burdened horse sank lower and snorted with fear. The water washed around the man’s waist. “Mater Dei, ora pro nobis.” The loom of cliffs broke through the night and the man shouted for joy. “Once more, goou horse, once more! Up, up!” The brave steed whinnied in answer and fought through the foam. At last, its hoofs struck shelving rock and, with a plunging scramble it brought its double burden to safety. There, hard by, in Sennen Cove, you can see the place where Hugh Trevellian and his horse, Jasper, came ashore. But the girl was not dead. Hugh carried her to the priest’s house and, in the morning, he and Jennifer Penarth were wedded at St. Sennen’s Shrine and from the union there sprang, in after years, the great Cornish family of the Trevellians. And the tocsin still sounds from the belfry of Is. The bells still ring their warning, as on that' night of despair and death. Before the cloud wrack piles up in the nor’-west; before the sun hides its face and the sea flecks itself with long lines of foam and changes from blue to steely grey; before the wind-flurries herald the coming storm in spiteful whirlwinds of spray, the bells of Is send warning to the fishers on that iron-coast. Storms rise sudden and sharp, with a scarce few* mintes’ grace, and never' in the

long centuries has the message of the bells failed in the giving, and never yet has it been disregarded. Let the boats be out on the far grounds, after pollock, or conger. The sun may be shining from a cloudless sky, the fishing may be, likely, of the best, but old Pascoe Grenfell, doyen of the fleet, becomes uneasy. He scans the horizon. looks troubled to sea and sky, and, hauling in his lines, bends an ear to the water. “Iss, sure,” he will say, “I hear the bells, you. Us had better up sail and home along afore the blow strike us.” Anchors are lifted, up go the great brown lugs and the boats go racing shorewards like a flock of homing pigeons. A quarter of the distance is scarce covered, when, with a scream and a roar, the storm is upon them. The calm sea becomes a seething maelstrom of foam, as the great billows thunder shoreward. The boats toss like corks in a millrace. To leeward a boil of spray and foam mark where the teeth of the Seven Sisters await their prey. “Luff, luff!” Bending masts, straining cordage and two men struggling at each tiller. Lucky the boats that escape those waiting fangs of death. Lucky those that reach the safety of a port and luckier yet, those who win to their own home cove, as with a parting scream and whoop the gale kicks them into harbour and the men whisper a blessing on the bells of Is.