French fishers who caught a conger, and were in bodily fear of their lives at the other end of the boat, thinking they had caught some water-devil, till the beast jumped out, when they cut the line and gave up fishing for evermore.
I was sorry not to catch more than one sort of skate that night, as there are here, I believe, two species of skate, besides the ray, and what is called the Calbijana ray. I do not know what this last is. The fishers do not get the rays as large as the skates, which run from one to two or three hundredweight, and occasionally, as in the Eddystone skate (to which I alluded before), to a still larger size, reminding us of stories of krakens and live floating islands in the North Seas, with which Bishop Pontoppidan and many a Norsk fisherman regale us. The Land’s Enders are too practical to have belief in many sea-superstitions; to them seals are seals,—not enchanted princes, as in Irish legends, or mermaidens, as in Norse folk-lore,—and a “school” of porpoise or grampus is not there eagerly mistaken for a sea-serpent playing on the surface. Like other sailors, they have a wholesome dread of “Davy Jones” and “Old Nick ;” but there is nothing like Nipen the fog-spirit, Mölnir, the demon in the surf, or Uldra, the water-spirit, who must have victims from time to time.
I think most of the wild superstitions that remain in Cornwall are connected with the mines, where “the Jews are heard knocking” with the old flint and deer-horn tools, which are found sometimes. The legend is, that after the taking of Jerusalem many thousand Jews were sent to work the mines, some of which (as Botallack) were then at work. People quote the name of Marazion, or Market-Jew, as meaning “the bitterness of Zion,” and others say that Perran-Zabuloe (i.e., in sabulo) is a Hebrew word. Be that as it may, there are many legends about the Jews among the people, which may be accounted for by the fact that the Jews in early English times certainly flocked here to trade in the tin and copper.
The inhabitants of Sennen Cove have fewer legends of any sort than those of the surrounding villages, which arises probably from this, viz., they are said by the others, and hardly deny the accusation, to be a mixed colony from other parts with many un-Cornish elements among them, e.g., Flemish, from the time that a Flemish colony was planted in Pembrokeshire; nevertheless they have many fine old Cornish names among them, such as Penrose, Pender, Trewhella, Trudgeon, and others: these no doubt are old native families. Though I have shown that there is not much real folk-lore to be picked up among them, nor yet much historical legend,—for they keep no dim remembrance of the days when Cornish insurgents, led by a Land’s Ender, fought the King on Blackheath for young Perkin Warbeck, A.D. 1497; nor of the song of Trelawney; nor the loss of Sir Cloudesley Shovel and the British fleet at Scilly; not even whence came the cannon in the sand of the Cove over which they run their boats to the sea,—yet they will tell many a story of more modern life, as you sit smoking on the beach, or at the slack tide out at sea. Then is the time to hear for the hundredth time the story of the wreck on the Brissons, when they took out the life-boat from the Cove, and to have it explained by the actors in that scene how the captain’s wife was dragged through the water at the wrong moment and drowned, and how any of them would have done it better and saved her life. Then you hear how an India ship broke up on the shore, with all hands lost, and how they were buried close by in the turf, by some very apocryphal Government order. Or how all the fishers were caught in a storm and driven to Scilly for three days, while the women in the Cove were mourning the loss of all their husbands and sons at once; how son Billy took the old shag’s nest, or caught a loon, and another was dragged along by a huge sunfish in the net. All this and more of fish-talk and sea-stories pass the time very pleasantly, till some big fish sets you all to work again. So it happened when we were out this night, for I was lucky enough to hook a very large conger, which thoroughly woke us all up. In hauling up I was inclined to think it was another shark from its weight, but the pull was too steady. A shark gives quick darts from side to side, and acts in the water (as if he were what he resembles a little) like a magnified mackarel. A skate, when he first takes the bait, scuds away among the rocks at the bottom, and, to judge from the jerks of the line, must have a hard time of it below bumping over the stones; but when the skate is some way from the ground, then his resistance is indeed desperate. He keeps himself flat against the water so as to offer the greatest possible amount of resistance, occasionally giving a rush back, and giving the fisherman hard work to recover the lost ground. A conger, on the other hand, gives a long steady strain, occasionally, as I have said, swimming up rather faster than you are pulling. This particular Grandfather of congers, after pulling frightfully hard for a long time, came rushing up at last to the surface, and leaped about there. In the general excitement the fisherman had neglected to bring the big knife from the other end, and there was not time to get it, for our fish might give a great leap and get the hook out or break the line. Between us we got him in, but he instantly knocked over the fisherman with his tail, and left me holding on to his throat and the line, about a foot from the mouth. Of course the fish and I fell down in the boat, the fish dashing about, and I holding on to prevent a leap, and carefully holding his head away as far as possible. These congers have terrible jaws, and a large one like this could have bitten off a man’s arm. I must do them the justice to say that they only seem in a horrible fright, and not at all disposed to attack; but I have seen men’s hands very nastily torn, who got too near a conger which had been left for dead. Billy soon came up with the knife, and released me from the slimy embrace, and we got the beast’s head down on a thwart and cut through the back-bone. This conger was the biggest which they had seen for some time in those parts; it measured exactly six feet six inches in length, and was very thick, being about twenty inches round the neck. The weight was about one hundred pounds.
