Part 2 (1/2)
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CHAPTER 4
Antiquarian Researches and Ministry, 1843-6
Another thing which raised my name in and beyond the county was the ”Lost Church” at Perranzabuloe There was an old British church existing in some sand-hills in the parish, and it was said to be entire as far as the four walls The hill under which it was buried was easily known by the bones and teeth which covered it The legend said that the patron saint, St Piran, was buried under the altar, and that close by the little church was a cell in which he lived and died This was enough I gotit up After some days' labour we came to the floor, where we discovered the stone seats, and on the plaster of the wall the greasy marks of the heads and shoulders of persons who had sat there o We found the chancel step, and also the altar tomb (which was built east and west, not north and south) It was fallen, but enough reht of it
I put a notice in the newspapers, inviting people to come and see the old church which had been buried for fifteen hundred years In the presence of many visitors, clerical and lay, we removed the stones of the altar, and found the skeleton of St Piran, which was identified in three ways The legend said that he was a h; the skeleton ain, another legend said that his heart was enshrined in a church forty miles away; the skeleton corresponded with this, for it was headless
Moreover, it was said that his mother and a friend were buried on either side of him; we also found skeletons of asatisfied on this point, we set the inal shape and size, using the sao We ranite slab
On this I traced with er, in rude Roman letters, ”SANCTUS PIRanus” The mason would not cut those crooked letters unless I consented for hiree to this, so his apprentice and I, between us, picked out the rude letters, which have since (I have heard) been copied for a veritable Roman inscription
My name was now up as an antiquary, and I was asked to be the secretary (for the West of England) to the Archaeological Society I was supposed to be an old gentleman, and heard myself quoted as the ”venerable and respected Haslah to settle a knotty point beyond doubt I was invited to give a lecture on the old Perran Church, at the Royal Institution, Truro, which I did; illustrating it with sketches of the building, and exhibiting so, which are now preserved in the h their chairman) to printin literary enterprises, I added a great deal of otherfor the press There was much in the bookabout early Christianity and ecclesiastical antiquities I iined that this parish was, in British and Druidic times, a populous place, and somewhat iareat many sepulchral mounds on the hills, the burial-place of chieftains I supposed that St Piran caes) to preach the Gospel, and then built hi or well, where he baptized his converts Close by, he built this little church, in which he worshi+pped God and prayed for the people
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”The Church of St Piran” Published by Van Voorst
+ This little building still remains entire, under the sand Some pieces of British pottery and limpet-shells were found outside the door
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The words of the poet Spenser do not inaptly describe this scene of other days:--
A little, lowly here it was, Downe in a dale-- Far from resort of people, that did pas In treveill to and fro: a litle wyde There was a holy chappell edifyde, Wherein the hers each ently play, Which, from a sacred fountaine welled forth away
Here then, o, people called upon God; and when their little sanctuary was overwhelmed with the sand, they removed to the other side of the river, and built themselves another church; but they still continued to bury their dead around and above the oratory and resting-place of St Piran
When my book was published, there ensued a hot controversy about the subject of it; and some who came to see the ”Lost Church” for the more than ”a modern cowshed;”
others would not believe in the antiquity I claimed for it: one of these even ventured to assert his opinion in print, that ”it was at least eight centuries later than the date I had fixed;” another asked in a newspaper letter, ”How is it, if this is a church, that there are no others of the same period on record?”
This roused me toin the registry at Exeter a list of ninety-two churches existing in Cornwall alone in the time of Edward the Confessor, of which Lam-piran was one With the help of another antiquary, I discovered nine in one week, in the west part of the county, with foundation walls and altar toical Journal” This paper set other persons to work, who discovered similar remains in various parts of the country; and thus it was proved to demonstration that we had more ecclesiastical antiquities, and of earlier date, than ere aware of
Next, my attention was directed to Cornish crosses; about which I also sent a paper, with illustrations, as a good secretary and correspondent to the same Journal My researches on this subject tookRo like those in the Catacombs near Rome--these were evidently Christian; but I found crosses also a, ”Where did the Druids get this sign?” Froyptians ”Where did they get it?” Then I discovered that the cross had coarden, a woman, a child, and a serpent, and that the cross was always represented in the hand of the second person of their trinity of Gods This personage had a human mother, and slew the serpent which had persecuted her
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These traditions cayptians from an ancestor who had come over the flood with seven others
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Here was a wonderful discovery! The inal tradition, handed down froation, it was evident that the substance of Hindoo y came from the same source; as also that of the Greeks, Chinese, Mexicans, and Scandinavians This is how the Druids got the cross also: it was in the hand of their demi-God Thor, the second person of their triad, who slew the great serpent with his famous hammer, which he bequeathed to his followers
I was beside itated state I then ies, and when placed side by side, it was quite clear that they were just one and the saical forms, and that the story was none other than that of the Bible