Legends of Parishes, etc. g i a moment, like a spectre or a ghost." For this he quotes the following verse : — " Will you hear of the cmel Coppinger ? He came from a foreign kind ; He was brought to us from the salt water, He was carried away by the wind." The one thing certain about him is, that at one time he amassed money enough by smuggling to buy a small freehold estate near the sea, the title-deeds of which, signed with his name, still exist. But in his old age, I have been told, he was reduced to poverty, and subsisted on charity. That in those bygone days smuggling was thought no sin every one knows. And who has not heard the oft-quoted apocryphal anecdote of the Cornish clergyman, who — when he was in the middle of his sermon and some one opened the church door and shouted in, " A wreck ! a wreck ! " — begged his parishioners to wait whilst he took off his gown that they might all start fair. The following is, however, a genuine letter of the last century from a vicar in the eastern part of the county to a noted smuggler of that district: — " Martin Rowe, you very well know, That Cubert's vicar loves good liquor, One bottle's all, upon my soul. You'll do right to come to-night ; My wife's the banker, she'll pay for the anker." To the same jovial vicar is credited this grace, given to his hostess' horror at her table after he had dined out several days in succession, and had rabbits offered him, a dish he detested : — ■ " Of rabbits young and rabbits old. Of rabbits hot and rabbits cold. Of rabbits tender, rabbits tough, I thank the Lord we've had enough." Inland from Breage is the small hamlet of Leed's-town (called after the Duke of Leeds, who has property in Cornwall). It is the seat of the following short story : — " The Leed's-town ghost runs up and down stairs in a house during the night, and then sits in a corner of the room weeping and sleeking her hair. It
