Cornwall: Charms and prophetic powers part 3 – light, fire and mucus

In the last third of this chapter, Hunt just throws it his research together and hopes it congeals. Let’s fossick it for roleplaying hooks.

Fire, Light, and Lightning

Hunt has various folktales about fire.  These include the spitting test for truth, seen in a previous chapter.

There’s a tradition that if people light a bonfire and form a dancing ring about it, if they can stamp it out with their feet before breaking hands, no-one in the circle will die within a year. Ill luck to whomever broke the circle first, otherwise.

In Cornwall, when sinners convert, they see lights, like Paul on the road to Damascus. Others sometimes see them too.

The sun literally does not shine on perjurers. They cannot see its light, or feel its warmth, although this does not affect those near them. They see all things dimly, as if in smoke or moonlight, and are always cold. They become pale, like an invalid kept forever inside. A magus can fabricate this sort of thing with a spell, to vex local judicial practices.

The Celtic arrowheads which elsewhere are considered the remanants of elfshot are, in Cornwall, believed to be produced by thunder. They fall from the clouds, and change colour to predict the weather.  Water in which they have been soaked also cures diseases. So, an Auram vis source with a secondary use?

Mucus

Sorry, I’m just going to quote this one. I’ve heard it before and I love it. It’s a Muto vis source, clearly, but it’s bad news for a Bjornaer magus of this type, who spends winter in a bucket or down a well.

Migratory birds

“I FIND a belief still prevalent amongst the people in the out- lying districts of Cornwall, that such birds as the cuckoo and the swallow remain through the winter in deep caves, cracks in the earth, and in hollow trees ; and instances have been cited of these birds having been found in a torpid state in the mines, and in hollow pieces of wood. This belief appears to be of some antiquity, for Carew writes in his ” Survey of Cornwall ” as follows : ” In the west parts of Cornwall, during the winter season, swallows are found sitting in old deep tynne-works, and holes in the sea cliffes ; but touching their lurking-places, Olaus Magmts maketh a far stranger report. For he saith that in the north parts of the world, as summer weareth out, they clap mouth to mouth, wing to wing, and legge to legge, and so, after a sweet singing, fall downe into certain lakes or pools amongst the caves, from whence at the next spring they receive a new resurrection ; and he
addeth, for proofe thereof, that the fishermen who make holes in the ice, to dig up such fish in their nets as resort thither for breathing, doe sometimes light on these swallows congealed in clods, of a slymie substance, and that, carrying them home to their stoves, the warmth restored them to life and flight.”

A man employed in the granite quarries near Penryn, informed me that he found such a “slymie substance” in one of the pools in the quarry where he was working, that he took it home, warmth proved it to be a bird, but when it began to move it was seized by the cat, who ran out on the downs and devoured it.

The stuff of shooting stars

There’s a glowing slime found in the quarries of Penryn at night, which folklore says is caused by shooting stars, and may contain some of their substance. Hunt says that it is frogs’ eggs, thrown up by crows, but I see no reason that should be so in Mythic Europe. At minimum it is Auram vis: at best it is stuff from beyond the lunar sphere that has antimagical properties because of its extraordinary origin.

Ill luck

It is unlucky to kill a robin or a wren, and the curse persists all the days of a person’s life, hence a local ditty “Those who kill a robin or a wran, will never propser, boy or man.” This seems odd to be, because I was boguht up on Susan Cooper, where people go guising with a dead wren in Wales. Then again, the process brings her back to life.

It’s unlucky to be born in May, and kittens born in that month are put to death.  Except if cat familiars have anything to say about it. That’s terrible.

Hens that crow at night are killed, which hardly seems fair, because cocks that crow at night, as seen in a previous chapter, don’t actually cause the angel of death to come.  They just mention his passing.

It’s bad luck to see the new moon, for the first time, through glass. Go outside, take a look, and show the moon a piece of money.

A person who does not kill the first butterfly they see for the season will have ill luck the whole year. Again,, you’d need a faerie to be behind that to make an adventure of it.

Whistling

“TO whistle by night is one of the unpardonable sins amongst the fishermen of St Ives. My correspondent says, ” I would no more dare go among a party of fishermen at night whistling a popular air than into a den of untamed tigers.”

No miner will allow of whistling underground. I could never learn from the miners whether they regarded it as unlucky or not. I rather think they feel that whistling indicates thoughtlessness, and they know their labour is one of danger, requiring serious
attention.”  It’s a sort of low-level, self imposed curse.

Random extra bits

Each town has a nickname that pokes fun at the people who live there. One village’s people are called “congers” because they threw an eel (conger) in the water to drown it. Another are called “gulls” because they threw a gull off a cliff to break its neck.Notably the people near a church called Mariadoci are called Mearageeks, “the geeks from Meara”. Apparently “geek” or “gawk” in Cornish means an awkward person.

“AN old tradition the particulars of which I have failed to recover says that a flock of sheep were blown from the Gwithian Sands over into St Ives Bay, and that the St Ives fisher- men caught them, believing them to be a new variety of fish, either in their nets, or with hook and line, and brought them ashore as their night’s catch.” Strong belief brings faeries. Does this create a merrymaid shepherdess?

 

Next time: customs of ancient days.

Photo credit: Foter.com