Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/235

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A STROLLING COMPANY
175

the figures were all moved by strings manipulated from above. I regret that I am unable to remember the subject of the play, but the droll antics of the puppets, the rapidity of their movements, and the cleverness of the whole thing, remains distinctly impressed on my mind."

I believe that venerable amusements we old folks saw in our childhood are "resurrected" at West Looe at that 6th May fair. Therefore, if you want to see funny things, go there. The place is still out of the world, but will not long be so, as a London company has bought the cliffs, and is blasting a road in them to make promenade, hotel, and bring the world and the twentieth century to Looe and rumple up the old place.

East Looe is properly in S. Martin's parish, and the church was a chapel-of-ease to it. At S. Martin's are a Norman doorway and an early font. West Looe has a little church, dedicated to S. Nicholas, that long served as town hall and as a theatre for strolling players. Here also are some quaint old slated houses; the "valleys" are not leaded, but the slates are so worked as to fold over the angles very ingeniously and picturesquely, and admirably answering the object in view of carrying off the water.

Off the coast lies Looe Island. This was for many years the dwelling-place of a man named Fyn and his sister, "Black Joan." They were son and daughter of an outlaw, who had spent his life since his outlawry on the Mewstone off Gara Point, at the entrance of Plymouth Sound. Here he and his wife lived a wild life like sea-mews, and there reared