Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/364

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292
PENZANCE


worked into one of the gateways. The old house has its stewponds and a few fine trees about it.

On the Marazion road, west of Millpool, in the hedge, are the impress of the devil's knees. One day, feeling the discomfort and forlornness of his position, his majesty resolved on praying to have it changed ; so he knelt on a slab of granite, but his knees burned their way into the stone. Then he jumped up, saying that praying superinduced rheu- matics, and he would have no more of it. The holes are not tin-moulds, for the latter are angular and oblong, but are very similar to the cup-markings found in many places in connection with prehistoric monuments. Some precisely similar are at Dumnakilty in Fermanagh.[1]

A strange circumstance occurred in 1734 at Skewis, close to the line from Gwinear Road Station to Helston.

Skewis had been for many generations the freehold patrimony of a yeoman family of the name of Rogers. There were two brothers. The elder married and lived on the farm, but without a family. The younger brother, Henry Rogers, was married and had several children. He carried on for several years in Helston the trade of a pewterer, then of considerable importance in Cornwall, although it is now at an end. A large portion of the tin raised was mixed with lead and exported in the form of pewter made into dishes, plates, etc., now superseded by earthen- ware. At the first introduction of earthenware,

  1. Figured in Wood-Martin, The Rude Stone Monuments of Ireland, 1888, p. 154.