Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine > Volume 5

The Trellan Mystery. 83
While the continuous rocking roar was yet
O'ercrashed a moment as the roofs fell in.
And week by week the faces that remained
Grew greyer, ghastlier; and her soldiery
Dropped at their posts, and mangled limbs were strewn
On their own hearths, and, as the shells came through,
Her little children in their mothers' arms
Were torn to pieces, and her babes were born
Between the boomings as their fathers died.
W^t Crellan Jilssterg.
I WAS staying in the south of Cornwall some few years ago,
when I heard the following strange, and I was told authentic
tale, which may be of interest to some of our readers:—
In one of the wildest and most romantic parts of the
south coast of Cornwall, where the rocks are grandest and
most dangerous, may be seen a little weather-beaten church,
built close to the edge of a somewhat shelving cliff, and
forming the centre of a small inlet in the coast. So near is it
to the sea, that the rude walk of its graveyard is often
dashed by the breakers in a rough gale, and the building
itself looks as if battered by many storms. A rough stony
track leads up from the church to a small fishing village,
whose one street is composed of irregularly - built grey
houses, their homely faces here and there brightened by a
little whitewash. In the centre of the street is a small inn,
hardly more pretentious than its neighbours, and only to be
distinguished by its signboard, gay with the arms of the house
of Trellan.
There are no gardens in front of the cottages; the doors
open on to the road, giving the dusty traveller on a hot
August afternoon a sense of glare and heat, and a longing
for something green and shady, which, however, we must
not expect to find nearer than the woods of Trellan Hall,
which lie down in the hollow, a mile away from the village.
Fifty years have brought but few changes to this quiet
hamlet by the sea; and little imagination is required to
picture it as it was when my story opens on a cloudless
August day half a century ago. Groups of women are
standing in the street, bare-headed in spite of the hot mid¬
day sun, and here and there a knot of fishermen may be
seen, tempted from the alehouse parlour, or from their nets