Legend Land, Vol. 1 | Page 3

comes to an end at last, and good St.
Cleer saw something more than words was needed to lead his people
into the right way. And so it happened one Sunday morning, in the
midst of a hot tussle on Craddock Moor, the outraged St. Cleer arrived
in search of his erring flock.
He bade them cease their game at once and return to church. Some of
them obeyed, wandering sheepishly off down the hill; some were
defiant and told the worthy man to go back to his prayers and not to
come up there to spoil sport.
Then St. Cleer spoke in anger. Raising his staff he told them in solemn
and awful tones that it should be as they had chosen. Since they
preferred their game on the moor to their service in church, on the moor
at their game they should stay for ever. He lowered his staff and to the
horror of all onlookers the defiant ones were seen to be turned into
stone.
Many centuries have passed since then. Time, wind and rain have
weathered the stone men out of all semblance of humanity. Some have
been destroyed, but most still remain as an awful example to impious
Sabbath profaners. And there you may see them silent and still, just as
they were struck on that grim Sunday in the dark long ago.
The glorious moorland, rugged and wild, stretches all about them--a
wonderful walking country, where one may escape from all cares and
wander for hours amid the bracken and sweet-smelling grasses and find
strange prehistoric remains seldom visited by any but the moorland
sheep and the wild birds. It is a country of vast spaces and far views.
You may see on one hand the Severn Sea, on the other the Channel; to
the east the upstanding blue hills of Dartmoor and to the west the
rugged highlands by Land's End--and then trudge back at night weary
but happy to Liskeard, described as "the pleasantest town in Cornwall,"
and find it hard to believe that only five hours away is the toil and
turmoil of London.

[Illustration: "The Hurlers," St. Cleer]
[Illustration]

HOW ST. PIRAN CAME TO CORNWALL
Some sixteen hundred years ago, so tradition tells, there lived in the
South of Ireland a very holy man named Piran. Such was his piety that
he was able to perform miracles. Once he fed ten Irish kings and their
armies for ten days on end with three cows. Men sorely wounded in
battle were brought to him to be cured, and he cured them. Yet the Irish
grew jealous of his power and decided he must be killed.
And so one stormy, boisterous morning the pious Piran was brought in
chains to the summit of a high cliff, and with a huge millstone tied to
his neck his ungrateful neighbours hurled him into the raging billows
beneath. This horrible deed was marked, as the holy man left the top of
the cliff, with a blinding flash of lightning and a terrifying crash of
thunder, and then, to the amazement of the savages who had thus
sought to destroy him, a wonderful thing happened.
As man and millstone reached the sea the storm instantly ceased. The
sun shone out, the waves and the wind died down, and, peering over the
edge of the cliff, the wondering crowd saw the holy man, seated
peacefully upon a floating millstone, drifting slowly away in the
direction of the Cornish shore, some hundreds of miles to the
south-east.
St. Piran's millstone bore him safely across the Atlantic waves until at
length--on the fifth day of March--it grounded gently upon the Cornish
coast, between Newquay and Perranporth, on that glorious stretch of
sand known to-day as Perran Beach. Here the Saint landed, and, taking
his millstone with him, proceeded a little distance inland and set
himself to work to convert the heathen Cornish to Christianity.
He built himself a little chapel in the sands and lived a useful and pious
life for many years, loved by his people, until at last, at the great age of

two hundred and six, he died. Then his sorrowing flock buried him and
built over his grave St. Piran's Chapel, the remains of which you can
see to-day hidden away in the sandhills of the Penhale Sands.
Although Cornwall can boast many saints, St. Piran has greater right
than any other to be called the patron of the Duchy. To him the Cornish
in the old days attributed a vast number of good actions, among them
the discovery of tin, the mining of which has for centuries formed one
of the chief Cornish industries.
This came about, according to the old story, from the saint making use
of some strange black stones that he found,