churches, between the Land's End and Scilly was called, and where, according to the Poet Laureate, King Arthur met his death-wound:
"So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
Among the mountains by the winter sea,
Until King Arthur's Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur . . . . ."
is reputed to have been suddenly overwhelmed by a great flood. Only one man of all the dwellers on it is said to have escaped death, an ancestor of the Trevilians (now Trevelyan). He was carried on shore by his horse into a cove at Perran. Alarmed by the daily inroad of the sea, he had previously removed his wife and family. Old fishermen of a past generation used to declare that on clear days and moonlight nights they had often seen under the water the roofs of churches, houses, &c., of this submerged district.
Whether the memory of this flood is perpetuated by the old proverb, "As ancient as the floods of Dava," once commonly current in West Cornwall, but which I have not heard for years, I know not, as I have never met with any one who could tell me to what floods it referred.
Old folks often compared an old-fashioned child to St. Michael's Mount, and quaintly said: "She's a regular little Mount; St. Michael's Mount will never be washed away while she's alive."
Tradition also tells of a wealthy city in the north of Cornwall, called Langarrow, which for its wickedness was buried in sand, driven in by a mighty storm. All that district as far west as St. Ives is sand, known as "Towans," and the sand is always encroaching.
There is a little church now near Padstow, dedicated to St. Enodoc, which is often almost covered by the shifting drifts. It is in a solitary situation, and service is only held there once a year, when a path to it has to be cut through the sand. It is said that the clergyman, in order to keep his emoluments and fees, has been sometimes obliged to get into it through a window or hole in the roof.
About eight miles from Truro is the lost church of Perranzabuloe, which for centuries was supposed to have been a myth, but the shifting of the sand disclosed it in 1835.
