and other furniture belonging to the royal family, bound for France, broke from her moorings, and ran ashore on the rocks of Godrevy Island, where all on board, about sixty persons, were drowned, except one man and a boy."—G. S. Gilbert's Cornwall.
The name of Armed Knight has been transferred to another pile of rocks off the Land's End. The "stone figure" thrown down was most probably a natural formation, as one of the rocks there now bears the fanciful name of Dr. Johnson's Head, from a supposed likeness. Other versions of this legend say "that the Armed Knight was only ninety feet high, with an iron spire on its top."
Porthgwarra in olden times was known as Sweetheart's Cove from the following circumstance: The daughter of a well-to-do farmer loved a sailor, who was once one of her father's serving-men. Her parents, especially her mother, disapproved of the match; and when the young man returned from sea and came to see his sweetheart, he was forbidden the house. The lovers however met, and vowed to be true to each other, Nancy saying, "That she would never marry any other man," and William, "That, dead or alive, he would one day claim her as his bride." He again went to sea, and for a long time no tiding came, neither from nor of him. Poor Nancy grew melancholy, and spent all her days, and sometimes nights, looking out seaward from a spot on the cliff, called then Nancy's Garden, now Hella Point. She gradually became quite mad; and one night fancied she heard her lover tapping at her bed-room window, and calling her to come out to him, saying: "Sleepest thou, sweetheart? Awaken, and come hither, love. My boat awaits us at the cove. Thou must come this night, or never be my bride." She dressed, went to the cove, and was never seen again. Tradition says that the same night William appeared to his father, told him that he had come for his bride, and bade him farewell; and that next day the news arrived of his having been drowned at sea. Bottrell gives a full account of this legend under the title of "The Tragedy of Sweet William and Fair Nancy."
Not far from the parish of St. Levan is a small piece of ground—"Johanna's Garden,"— which is fuller of weeds than of flowers. The owner of it was one Sunday morning in her garden gathering greens
