LOOE AND POLPERRO 45 minds of the women at home, if it should over- take their men at sea. In these aspects, at least, our shores are still primitive ; they still know the primal force of wind and waves : there is no sophisticating, no taming of these. But days are not all of storm and wreckage ; there are many times here when the waves lap peacefully against the old stone piers, when the air is soft and delicious, and when the women at their doors, engaged in their everlasting task of knitting jerseys for their men, can chatter of the happiest subjects without dreaming of storm or shipwreck. This is the calmer mood in which visitors generally find Polperro. Probably not many visitors will trouble to in- quire into the derivation of the name of Polperro ; they will be content to know that it is Cornish. There would be something to do indeed if tourists were to ask the meaning of every place-name they meet with, and if they depended on local replies their last state would certainly be worse than their first. But an intelligent inquiry into the origin of place-names is always delightful and useful. Pol, of course, is one of the recog- nised Cornish prefixes ; it is simply pool, the Welsh pwll, a creek or inlet or "pill." The perro is supposed to be a corruption of Peter, and the whole name would thus mean Peter's Pool, so called from a chapel to St. Peter that once stood on Chapel Hill. An earlier name was Porthpeyre, which neither assists nor contradicts such a derivation. That St. Peter should be the patron of an old fishing town is only natural. Leland speaks of the place : " a fishar towne with a peere." There are some who say that you really have to walk sideways in Polperro, the
