Cornwall: The Cornish Bird Blog

The night after I put the Cornwall gazetteer out as a finished draft, I received a “like” on the blog from a Cornish folklore and photography site, called The Cornish Bird. I’d like to recommend it, because its writer has walked to many of the places described in the gazetteer, and her photographs are great aids to visualising the landscape.

I’ve just re-read all of her blog entries, and made a few notes to be added to later iterations of the Cornwall Gazetteer.

In a few posts the author (whose name I’ve not picked up: I’m hopeless with names) mentions some things she’s found on the shore. A jellyfish with a gigantic body might be statted up as a monster. A coconut might act as an Arcane Connection to the shore from which it travelled. A polished blob of sea glass might be the link to a lost magician’s laboratory, or to ‘Lyonesse, give the rarity of glass in the Twelfth Century.

The same post also mentions the wreck of the Brig Victoria, laden with wine, where locals swarmed the wreck to steal the cargo until the Riot Act was read to them. That’s a story seed, perhaps with the grogs and villagers pushed on by a Merry Devil, or two in competition.

Hireth is the name she gives for the Cornish sense of place: the yearning for home. This could be a Personality Trait, and it could be couples with the odd Cornish power of sending your ghost to pass on a final message. Maybe you can only send it home? There may be a minimum score. It may also define covenant loyalty for the servants of the magi.

There’s a hedge (a stone wall) made by a giant from Lerryn to Looe. I did read about it, but didn’t include it because I couldn’t see a story hook. The hook is this: the hedge marks the side of the oldest road in Cornwall. It was perhaps a Roman road, although it doesn’t have their straight character, and it must have been faerie trod. That it ends so close to one of the suggested covenant sites (Looe) and the other is so close to Lostwithiel (and the old throne of the King of Cornwall at Restormel Castle) makes it useful for player characters who can travel the twilight roads. Lerryn is also a likely site for a Bjornaer covenant. It’s the River from the Wind in the Willows. While I was in university, I read William Hornwood’s sequels, and often thought that the main four could be magi, in an idyllic little regio.

The author notes that the Cornish word for a “sea giant”, like a sea serpent, is “Morgwar“. I’m sure this will come in handy as a monster name, or a species. I’ve been trying to work up the Irish Whale-Eater as a Bjornaer elder for a while, and this may give her a name. I’ll write to her and ask if, in Cornish, the w is sounded as long o, like in Welsh.

It’s noted that the hair of Cornish mermaids can be very long: eight ot ten feet in one example. Vis source? Bit of colour? Enchantable in fabric crafts?

There are five Roman milestones in Cornwall. I’ve not mapped them, but that may be valauble, because some players suggest the Roman road network is vital to House Mercere’s magic and work.

The mystery lady of Crantock is a piece of art that far postdates the game period. but a similar thing could be found in any mine or cave that had given rest to an inspired mortal.

Saint Keyne’s well and chair have been mentioned on the blog, but the photographs may inspire detail in your stories.

Lanivet is the centre of Cornwall: it even has a carved cross to mark the spot. Why would you need to put a carved cross, and so a Dominion aura, on the centre of Cornwall?

Langarrow is described, but from the same sources I used, for the most part. That being said, one of the illustrations on the page is a book called Amorel of Lyonesse by Walter Besant. It doesn’t seem relevant to the game, but in searching for its plot I did find this paper : “THE LOST LANDS OF LYONESSE: Telling stories of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly” by Marea Mitchell, which I’ve not yet gone through but requires a deeper look. I’d note it comes from a journal called Shima, which is about maritime cultures, which I’ve not heard of before. I must hunt that up too.

There’s a note about how china clay is found abundantly in Cornwall. It’s not used in the C12th, but it might be if the player characters discover its use. I’d like to flag that some people (well, the QI elves) suggested that fine Chinese porcelain slowed down the technological development of that country, indeed much of that continent. Europe, instead, went for glass, and through glass to spectacles and optics. The Chinese knew about glass, but liked porcelain more. The player characters have a chance to seriously alter the course of history if they make china clay porcelain popular, particularly because magi can probably make it easily enough once they discover it to be granite that has decayed. You could limit that by making it the ashes of dead earth elementals or something like that, I suppose.

The author mentions a pre-Roman burial in a mine: that’s a plot hook. Ghosts, the restless dead  and so on.

The discovery of Neptune is mentioned. In the real world this happened in 1846: but given that we have a bunch of missing astrologers, and Neptune is the lord of things that flow, might they have seen it earlier?  Might they have, more frighteningly, caused it to be formed? On a related issue: I’d not heard of the Nebra Sky Disc before, and it seems to be made with Cornish gold. It seems a useful thing to add to the game, even if in the real world it was only discovered in 1999. I like that some of the aqdded gold comes from the Carpathian Mountains, where various forms of spookiness occur.

The Montol Festival in Penzanze is their midwinter festival, so it would be happening when the Aegis is raised. I’m not sure it goes back to period. In a later post on Venton Bebilbell, the well of the little people, the author notes the Montol and the well have a shared custom of using toys to represent spirits, in the later case with people baptising dolls.

The Randigal Rhymes contain a little glossary of Cornish words, which I might lift, to give grogs a touch of local speech, to differentiate them from outsiders. I also need to check the rhymes for useful folklore.

Figgy Dowdy, mentioned many times in the gazetteer, has a well named for her.  Her name gets jostled about a bit, so Figgy can become her surname, and she’s sometimes Maggy, or Margaret. Her surname is sometimes Daw.  Now this means “Margery Daw” is one of her names, and the author links that to the nursery rhyme “See Saw Margery Daw / Johhny Shall have a new master” well, she says “Jacky” and the internet tells me I was raised with an odd variant. I’d note that a “jacky daw” is a bird, using the odd customer of adding human names to species (much as a maggie pie is a bird, or a robin redbreast.) That version is 18th century.

I’d also flag that Opie and Opie give an earlier version as

See-saw, Margery Daw,

Sold her bed and lay on the straw;

Sold her bed and lay upon hay

And pisky came and carried her away.

For wasn’t she a dirty slut

To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?

“Slut” has no sexual connotation in the period: it means a dishevelled person, and tends to be used for servants. The author of the Cornish bird suggests she was an early saint or goddess.

The author has heaps of posts on fuggous. One of them has a Piksie Hall.

She also has photographs of the Hooting Cairn, where demons wrestle.