Pixy-led in North Devon. Old facts and new fancies

Preface

. FOR the facts contained in the following pages their chronicler is indebted to the authentic documents of all sorts and conditions of writers ; and to such history as is to be found in words and in customs. The former are too many to remember, or enumerate ; but among the more important are Risdon, Westcote, Sir William de la Pole, Hone, Mrs. Dent, of Sudeley Castle ; Professors Brewer, Borlase, Sayce, and Rhys ; the Revs. G. F. Maclear, G. Tugwell ; and Messrs J. R. Chanter, Worth, and Ridd. Appendix IV is due to the courtesy of Mr. Incledon Webber, of Braunton ; the subjects of the initial letters of most of the chapters to the kindness of friends. All the fancies or guesses at truth, (if thoughts which come unbidden are such,) have preceded a knowledge of the facts which have gathered round each idea so naturally that the author — of this little collection of such — ventures to believe in their absolute verity.

No statement has been strained in the very least to meet any preconceived theory : for happily, magna est veritas et prœvalebit. Z. E. A. W. Ilfracombe. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. WOOLACOMBE-TRACV AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD : OR THE GOLDEN SANDS OF PICKWELL BAY . I II. BARNSTAPLE IN I IO4 A.D. : OR CHAMBERS OF IMAGERY ....... 43 III. COMBMARTIN : THE "OUT OF THE WORLD" MART IOI IV. THE MOORSTONE COVERING OF WILLELME DE TRACE . . . . . . . .127 v. a patron in ham ; and the font of st. george's, morthoe ..... 157 vi. the chapel called " tracyes " . . . 160. vii. morthoe ........ 177 viii. morte stone ; the bed of death : a passe VAREK ........ 189 IX. MORE MOR-STONES ...... 201 X. TRACES OF THE TRACES ..... 225 XI. " ARMORIES " . . . . . . . 243 XII. " PLEASE THE PIGS," OR PIXIES : PLACE AU PIGA 267 APPENDICES I VI . . . . . . •

Chapter I

Woolacombe-Tracy and its neighbourhood : or the Golden Sands of Pickwell Bay. B Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands : Courtsied when you have and kissed The wild waves whist. The Tempest, Act I, Sc. 2. Come on, sir ; here's the place : stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low ! The crows and choughs that wing the mid-way air Show scarce so gross as beetles : the murmuring surge, That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high. King Lear, Act iv, Sc. 6.

CHAPTER I. WOOLACOMBE-TRACY AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD

' OR THE GOLDEN SANDS OF PICKWELL BAY. HE somewhat scattered village of Morthoe, five miles w.s.w. of Ilfracombe, and covering two thousand five hundred acres, is picturesquely placed, some eight hundred feet above the sea, in an indenture of the wild rocky coast of North Devon, which, i taking the form of an oblong crescent, extends from Bull Point (on which stands the light-house, built forty years ago,) to the promontory of Bagg, or Baggy. The bay is known as that of Morte, Woolacombe, or Pickwell. The last name is the most comprehensive and descriptive, even if Morthhold, besides suggesting the name of an early "she-saint," should also mean "the great fast ness," or the A'alley below claim to be the combe of a Gaelic tribe who called themselves Yhula, Ygohal, or Youghala ; and there is a Wheeler's stone in the bay, which may contain the name of some of the miners of ancient days.

Devon was part of the " West Waellas " of the Saxons, and it is usually said that by it they meant " foreigners," calling a people this whom they found very much at home. " If then I know not the meaning of the voice, he that speaketh will be a barbarian unto me." Even in the Domesday the B inhabitant of Mullacot (Ilfracombe) is set down as paganus, or countryman. Under the Heptarchy the county was called by the West Saxons Devonscyre, from the British Deunan and Deuffhaynt, which are supposed to mean " deep valleys " ; though as a matter of fact the Britons, like all early settlers, preferred heights for their abode. It seems more in the fitness of things to assume that an ancient name was passed on by the Teutons, especially when we remember that mines in Cornwall are called Wheal and Huel still.

Again, the Saxons added scyre to Devon : is not that British for the Cross, rather than a piece of land shorn from the rest ? All these words are very probably those which the Picts used, and suggest the miners, " a covered people," and in a partially Christianized state. Pickwell, " the well of the pixies," indicates one of the spots chosen by these Deisii, of the Phen_ invasion, who called the present Aberdeen Devana, its river, the Dee : another (or the same) in Buchan they named the Deverou, and part of West Wales, Devon. The shores of Devana and Devon were trodden, any time between the third and eighth centuries, by these " sons of God."* Aberdeen was the northern capital of such Phene, who are yet remembered in the last syllable of its modern name, and who left a trace of a route they took in a river not very far from Chester.

These Scots came to this fair county of Devon by way of Bristol and Youghal. In the moss of Loch Lundy, Buchan, on a high level, is a factory of the weapons of war of the Stone Age, just such as existed at Croyde : and in the north country the Pictish, or Irish, word Buller (Bullean) is found. Not only Bull Point shares it, but the spot now called Compass Hill (Ilfracombe). This latter was not a map name, and contains the proper name of a Norman possessor, Campus. Mormaer was the title of the chief man of those now called Picts, and the grave of one of these is yet on the slope of Morthoe. * Devon, the rivers Dee and Parret, are alike accounted " divine." This so-called cromlech has doubtless had other uses during the long interval of many centuries. Many and varied are the points of interest all around this outmost bit of the " utmost corner of the West," and its pure bracing air is health-giving and invigorating.

At each step is some reminder of " How many lives we live in one, And how much less than one in all." By roaming a little afield the archæologist can amuse himself at one of the earliest manufactories of our island home, the pre-historic one at Croyde, in which flint imple ments, the earliest specimens of man's handiwork, have been found in great numbers. The learned in such things came to the conclusion that Cridhold, like Northam, where they also abounded, had been a place in which ancient weapons were made. And, as flint is only found in chalk or in greensand, and since there is neither the one nor the other in or near these spots, the inference was that it must have been carried thither for manufacturing purposes. There was also found " beneath the greensward terrace of Cridhold," a specimen of the oldest pottery in existence, a rude cinerary urn, eight inches in diameter, with a pro jection for a handle.

With this was a rough celt or stone hatchet, bearing marks of the action of fire. Both weapon and vessel indicate an ancient grave in which they had been placed together : and these relics were two or three feet below the surface of the ground, on the top of a raised beach, forty feet above the sea-level. At Northam, on the contrary, celts were found in, or with, the roots of a sub merged forest. It may tax geologists not a little to tell how this is, or to account for the variety of pebbles at Rockham, for the shell beach of Barricane, or even for the solitary stones in the Northfield, Lee, (Ilfracombe), and near Twitchen House (Morthoe). It has been said that Croyde takes its name from a Danish source, — though even so it would be more correct to speak of Norwegian visitors to the south-west coast, — and one Crida is suggested for sponsor.

It would be just as correct, or the reverse, to say it was called after the great Anglian king of that name, the grandfather of Penda, who, claiming descent from Woden, founded the kingdom of Mercia in 584 a.d. Cridhold or Cridstow, here as elsewhere, may point to the emblem of salvation, and it had been turned into this when Sancredus found place in the great survey of 1087 a.d., and when the church of St. Cross had been founded in Crediton. Yet an Irish missionary, Credhe, can put in a good claim to the honour of giving her name to the spot set down in the Domesday as Crynton, now called Croyde. In Newton St. Cyres, where she best can have planted the Cross, a similar story to that told in Braunton about a dream guiding St. Brannock to a site for his church on a spot where he would find a litter of pigs, still lingers.

Both tales, like that told of Croyland Abbey (only there the animals were wild) will indicate the presence of Christian (female) missionaries, — the pige or piga of Norse languages, — though they may point to a farther-off time still, and to a worship of the spirits of the dead. So Pickwell keeps the memory of more than one state of things : and, whether or no the first syllable has to do Avith the Picts of the later time, the second does suggest the early Christian teachers from Ireland, who always chose a site near a well for their little sanctuaries : that in Braunton existed till within the last sixty years. While Crediton — anciently Credianton — and the river Creedy, retain their designations, the Irish saint is not for gotten. Her name was well known, and so were those of Mor and Canice, when " Kerton was a borough town, When Exon was a vuzzy down, and it will be so long as that of the town and river last : and while such words as Kennerleigh, Kennicott, Kenton, Kenwyn, Kentisbury, and the like, with Morchard, are not far from the route which, commencing at the mouth of the Taw, went through the second seat of the bishopric in Devon on to Exeter. * Are not such names those which surround the Coplanston ? which can hardly prove to be other than an Ogham stone, the work of the visitors from Erin, who came long ago to the western shore of Alban.

That may Avell have been a centre of worship ; and the twin figures, missionaries of the same period, the two ladies Avho brought Christian teaching to Ilfracombe. Coming in a boat, these were wrecked somewhere on the coast of DeAron. The figure on horseback, on the upper panel of the monolith, tells that these messengers of peace came in the train of im-aders. A sculptured stone found in Fife tells the same story. Although no Celtic cross sur mounts the Copplestone now, yet such ornament is needed for the finish of the monument, and will have been there before the place could be Morchard-Cruys. There is mention of the Coplanston in a charter of king Eadgar, 974 a.d., and it must have been then old to haA'e given name to the spot on which it stood. " Crocker, Morchard and Copplestone, When the Conqueror came were all at home," is one reading of an old distich (another A-ersion has Cruys for the second word), Avhich may mean that old Saxon families, severally so called, held the land on which they lived :f it certainly asserts that the monolith and the vanished cross, and a Saxon house of prayer, a crog-earn, were ex isting in 1066 a.d. Coleridge also tells of a Kil (or Cil) in the neighbourhood.

In North Scotland there is a Mhor Mount, or Big Hill, against which the mariner is warned : " Keep Mormond Hill a handspike high." Like the eminence in Morthoe, it is 800 feet high, but, unlike that, it rises from a level country-side : it is covered Avith dark heather, out of * Archbishop Plegmund constituted the see of Crediton in 909 a.d. t Morchard was Morchard Cruys at some period, Morchard Bishop at another. Pixy-led in North Devon. 8 which are carved the figures of a white horse and a stag, and these are filled in with pebbles. In Cornwall Credhe appears in masculine form as St. Sancredus (the twice-holy), and St. Grade : in the former dress it is the only saint mentioned in the Domesday. The Irish missionaries are spoken of sometimes as of one sex, sometimes of the other. What matters such clerical error while it is written, " There can be no male or female, for ye are all one (man) in Christ Jesus."

Curiously enough, the Cornish emissary of the Cross was famous for " curing all distempers in pigs, Avhich formerly were used to be brought from all round the country." Did such a tale, and the Avell-known one in Braunton, Avhich at first sight borders on the comic (that St. Brannock must build a church where he found a litter of pigs), spring from the fact that the early teachers of the Cross, on the coast of North Devon, were wise enough to grasp the fact that the medical missionary would — throughout all time — be the truest and most successful follower of Him to whom were brought any that had ailment. " That is not first Avhich is spiritual, but that Avhich is natural." " He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen."* How pigs came into these stories has been already suggested ; yet the first meaning of such tales may be that heathen rites were abolished, and the spirits of ancestors held of account no longer, through the preaching of the Cross.

In x753 A-D-> someone, -writing about the Cornish parish of St. Creed, remarked : " An idle story prevails among the vulgar, that this saint Crida had a sister (also a holy virgin) who disputed with her Avhere the church should be built. They agreed at last to be determined by the cast of a stone, from the hand of one of the giants that were supposed to * Had the pigs any connection with the Horg, a heap or high place, the sacrificial altar of the Norsemen ? Brahmins creep beneath a golden hog in India. live in those days ; accordingly a stone Avas thrown with such surprising force that it was like to have rolled out of the parish, and this Avas the reason of ye church being built in the corner of the parish." A similar story is told of Georgeham ; and the name of Pickwell, or Pitchwell, kept, if it did not suggest, the tale into which the St. Aubyns of the place are brought, instead of the giants of an older and a forgotten day.

The surname, which first appears as Onibtz-Sanctis, may be freely rendered Toussaints, or All- Saints, i.e., of Tours and Georgeham : united with it is that of William Albini, of the Strong-arm, who married the widoAv of Henry I, soon after 1135 a.d. It was before the time of bishop Leofric, 1050 a.d., or even 910 a.d., that Tawton had given place to Crediton, as the centre of church work in North DeA'on : and who can say that the town on the Creedy was not chosen, as its predecessor on the Taw had been, on account of holy memories surrounding it ? that it had these because the attention of the early heralds of the Cross was drawn first to places conspicuous for the heathen worship of the spirits of the dead ? It was to this most ancient cult, rather than that of Baal, and such like worship, that the Irish saints of the fifth and sixth centuries opposed themselves.

The latter Avas the practice of their own people, and they dealt Avisely with the usages they understood and with the prejudices of the Celt, Avhose thoughts they shared, and into whose mental difficulties they could enter. They kney that the Sun of Righteousness Avould, at His rising, eclipse the material luminary in the regard of men, and speedily absorb all that was not of eternal A*alue in their system. History, as ever, repeated itself, and old things slowly merged into new. The name of Putsborough (Croyde) has, Avithout any foundation, been attributed to some Norseman, Putta, possibly because of the Bloody Cliff near, and of the fields so named in Woolacombe. The word of sanguinary sound Pixy-led in North Devon. 10 is usually taken to indicate the presence of the so-called Danes (Nonvegians rather), who harassed the coast for more than two centuries ; although it is not unlikely that it has a far pleasanter meaning, indicating broad cornfields.

The second bishop of Exeter, Putta, may have taken name from his birthplace, wherever that was ; and it is not recorded that he came from the west coast of Devon ; but a greater than he named the place in question. Putsborough has been called Patsborough ; and seeing that the sound represented by the twenty-first letter of the alphabet finds its Avay into a vast number of Devonshire words, as in Braunton, Saunton, Mullacott, and Murdeford,* — often, as in the last two, replacing the initial letter of the alphabet, and sometimes only in sound, as in Bovey, f — St. Patrick (whether that indicates a man or an order of men) will be meant. Padstow, among other similarly-named places, was surely Patrickstow ; and Patsborough, showing some association with the patron of Ireland of 387 — 475 a.d., will have been the original designation of this holding.

" From Padstow Point to Lundy Light, Is a watery grave, by day or night," is a Cornish rhyme which Devon can truthfully appropriate. St. Patrick would be quite among friends with SS. Mor and Credhe, and many another of the Phene, or Fene, near. There is a spot called Scotland on the route to Crediton, and when it was named, the name-giver Avas thinking of England's sister island farther west. A spot near Bovey Tracey is Bridget, the patroness of Ireland was this St. Bride of the fifth century, " the Mary " of that country. St. Patrick's name joined to the two just given would form one of the triads so dear to Celtic church feeling, which recognised the fact that a threefold cord is not easily broken. * Into the name of Taunton, also ; a trace of the old Tuatha. t Pronounced Buvvey by those to the manner (manor) born.

In Norman times, Croyde was held by Erchembald, or Archembald, the Flemming, who also possessed Alverdis cot, the Aluredscot of the Winchester Roll (Henry II). Recollecting that in old time the letters u and . Avere one and interchangeable, and that the sixth letter of the alpha bet was their substitute, the early name of the place called in modern days Alscot, once meant " Alfred his cot." Here Alured (Alvred, Alfred), a Breton, at some period cup bearer to a king — either to Edward the Confessor, to William of Normandy, or to Rufus, — settled down. A similar word is concealed in Ilfracombe (also in Ulfred Point between that town and Lee), in conjunction with the more ancient Celtic Hele ; and in the case of the favourite summer resort it may be right to claim Alfred the Great as a namesake for a short time, and to believe that his golden-haired grandson, Athelstan, gave the name.

A lesser than the king can serve for the hamlet on the bank of the Taw ; for " Alured Pincerna, under the earl of Moreton, held Madford." Of this the plain English is that some Alfred, cupbearer to a monarch, possessed Muddiford, or Murdiford, near Barnstaple, holding it under Robert Mor tain (the brother of the Norman Conqueror), who was dispossessed and banished by his nephew Rufus, about 1095 A-D- Robert held Ilfracombe, and the Pincerna could have been his sub-tenant there, but the place was already set down, according to some, Alfriencoma in the Domesday : others call it Alferintone. Either way the word has an older and more Germanic form than has Aluredscot ; yet, if Ilfracombe may not claim the name of England's greatest and best-loved king, it need not be content Avith that of the Breton, or of a Saxon earl, one of whom — the prede cessor of Edric — was Alfer or Alfgar ; nor with that of Alfreda***' de Sap, for the " little " Bride of Erin had been its godmother centuries before any of these were born.

The appearance of the fourth letter of the alphabet, in all the * Coming from Wales she was known as Ifread. Pixy -led in North Devon. 12 later A-ariations of the name of the queen of western water ing-places, may be due to a mistake of transcription for the letter n ; and it is not impossible that the sense of peace and security which the haven under the hill gave to the tempest-tossed suggested to some that it led to a combe of perfect rest— to The All-peaceful Vale. Although the mighty Norman, who was so liberal with the possessions of other folk, did not exactly divide the choice bits of North Devon among his " butcher and baker and candlestick maker," he did parcel some of them out to his surgeon, or barber, to a cup-bearer, and to his squire or equerry. This last, was Gualtier Giffart (Walter Giffard), third earl of Longueville, afterwards earl of Buckingham, who died in 1102 a.d. He was one of three brothers, and was the possessor of eighteen manors, and of the territorial honor of Giffard, consisting of lands and lordships in fourteen different counties, Avho appears on the Bayeaux tapestry.

Stemma Giffardorum, says his tomb. William Chicure, or Capra, whose name disappeared in 1159 (remembered in Cheriton and Cheribridge), will haA'e been the bearer of the lancet, and of the cup as well as the basin. He is now represented by the Duke of Norfolk, who is also Master of the Horse. The post of Pincerna Avas long the heritage of the St. Aubyns, who made an early home in Georgeham as well as in Lynton. Through one of them, Avho married Adelicia of Louvain, or Brabant, and from this peerless knight and dame, the premier duke of England inherits the right of these men to pledge each new monarch of England, on the day of coronation, and to keep the golden cup then raised to royal lips. Alured the Breton was associated with Judhel of Totnes and of Barnstaple ; both had much property in and around the latter town, and, as the last named possessed Ilfracombe under the half brother of William I, until the closing years of the eleventh century, it is likely that Alured preceded him there as else- Avhere.

He was the ancestor, that is the antecessor, of Henry Tracy of 1146 a.d. in the fair county which the Elizabethan poet commemorated as Debon's-shayre. Hele, the ancient name of Ilfracombe, lingered in it until 1309 a.d. when bishop Stapeldon visited the town and wrote it Ylfredcomb. Ham, the old designation of Georgeham, is a word applied to lands that are at times overflowed by the sea ; and East, West and North Hams formed the ancient divisions of Devonshire. Of this particular ham possession was long kept by the descendants of Hertembald of the eleventh century, and of Archembald the Flemming, of 1146A.D., or of Stephen Flandrensis, brother, kinsman, or fellow-countryman ; and their cognizance and baron's cap, with the knot called by their name, may be still seen on the altar-like tomb in Ilfracombe churchyard, as well as in the parish church of Youghal, co. Cork.

The surname of some who came here from Flanders is on it : also on the inner north wall of the sanctuary hard by, on a slab of the seven teenth century. The coat of arms is, or was lately, to be found on North Morte Farm. The family who owned these things commenced with Balwyn de Sap, kinsman to William I, and the husband of his daughter, Alfreda. It was well known in Ireland and in North Devon as the barons of Slane and Dundalk ; and it would seem that the descendants of the original Flemmings, on either side of St. George's Channel, at some early period took their name of Gorges from the " ham " whence their early rights came, to which some one had added the name of the patron saint of England. They were important folks in Ilfracombe until the close of the seventeenth century ; and bequeathed much land to that town, the part called Ropers, among other spots.

Braunton, with its ancient fane, is not very far off. Some dozen centuries ago its church replaced one older still, if the dedication of such to christian saints gave rise to the seem ingly seriseless story about St. Brannock's dream, and the connection of pigs with the building called by his name.* That this Irish missionary preached the gospel, all the emblems about the sanctuary shoAv : and so do the details of his story, when the writing between the lines is heeded. Similar deA dees to those handed on in church ornaments in Braunton were found on a slab in the ancient chapel of St. Regulus, St. Andrew's, N.B. In the county of Angus the like stones are said to have been numerous, and to have been found as far north as Sutherland. On the shore of Pickwell Bay there are the sites of the chapels of SS.

John and Anne to be enquired for ; unless the latter name merely marked the presence of Northmen at some period ; for it is usually the equivalent of Agnes, or Haganese, Avhich does so. On Saunton Sands Avere chapels of SS. Sylvester, Michael and Helen ; also numerous palmers' crosses. Such a state of things is only to be expected in a traditionally holy place, Saunton, i.e. Sancton. There is a Sandford, or Sanford, on the Creedy also, where probably sand is not. Many old mansions dotted the shore of the bay, called indiscriminately that of Morthoe, Woolacombe, and Pickwell ; two near Potter's Hill, another beyond Pickwell Down ; one in Puttaborough ; and a fellow at North Hale. There used to be a palm cross in the churchyard of Georgeham, and another on the highway leading to Croyde. In Croyde valley there was a chapel of St. Helen ; and one in Buck land, dedicated to St. John.

The following interlude is a seventeenth-century descrip tion of the spot assigned in the Conqueror's Survey to Ted-bold, Fitz-Berner, by one belonging by marriage to Combmartin and Berrynarbor. " Sand-town, having the adjunct of Court," says Westcote, " is where the lord's court was kept. It taketh name of the situation, which joineth near the sea, on a large, plain, sandy strand, whence, in the ebb, the wind drives the sand abundantly to large heaps * If not, the present church will have been placed over some fairy ring or old monument. **> near the house, from which is daily fetched great quantity to manure the neighbouring fields, and yet never emptied or lessened, but continually again supplied by the Avind, called Sand-ton, quasi Sand-town." This plausible explanation is, one may well think, too easy an one to contain the real meaning.

It holds a truth, but not the truth. In neither of the seventeenth-century lists of the hundreds of Branton (note the spelling), or of Sherewell, does Santon occur. In that given by Risdon there is mentioned, as paying a con siderable tax, Granton, about which nothing is heard now a-days, unless it be identical with the modern Saunton. A A*ery probable early name for the spot of Westcote' s notice would be Sancton, a place made holy by the memory of the Celtic missionaries, who by the sixth and seventh centuries trod those sands of the Avestern bay which during the in tervening thousand and more years have overwhelmed hun dreds of the surrounding acres. A description of Heanton Court, Sandton, also given in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, is extant. " A sweet pleasant seat. The house is a handsome pile, well furnished with every variety of entertainment Avhich the earth, the sea, and the air can afford.

A place, whether you respect pleasure or profit, daintily situated on an arm of the sea." A more modern notice of the mansion, which is fully des cribed in The Maid of Sker, is that it was placed at the bottom of a park, and very near the river Taw ; that it had a new front of two storeys, each containing eleven windows, and was ornamented with battlements, and had a tower at either end. The same description could still be given of the old farmhouse, of which it was recorded, " The Taw wash eth the feet of Heanton Court, which John Beamond held." This man was a descendant of Rosceline de Beaumont, Viscount Maine, who married Constance, a daughter of Henry I ; and with her gained South Tawton and much more of the king's demesne. Their descendants flourished in Youlston for nearly four hundred years ; and the varieties of his name are almost endless in North Devon.