Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/202

196 THE CORNWALL COAST immense fissures and yawning chasms. Mordred and his men turned back horror-stricken, attempt- ing to flee from this upheaval of nature ; but the ocean was too quick for them. Where there had been smiling acres of pasture and tillage, valley and moorland, waves were now seething and foaming ; there was no refuge to the east or to the west ; the breakers overtook them on all sides. But while they were thus overwhelmed in the ruin of Lyonesse, the followers of Arthur stood on land that had been spared. This far-west cluster of hill-summits had been changed into a group of islets ; and in this home of refuge that was miracu- lously left to them, the fugitives settled into peaceful residence, building houses and churches. Such, the story says, is the ancestry of the Scillonians. All this belongs to the region of romance ; his- tory knows nothing of it. Even the name of Scilly is a puzzle, though perhaps the best authori- ties think that it derives from the widespread tribe of the Silures. Strictly speaking, the name Scilly only attaches to one small islet lying off Bryher, but somehow it has affixed itself to the whole group. Many derive it from silya or selli, meaning conger-eels, a favourite Cornish dish ; others suggest the Celtic sulleh, or " sun-rocks," denoting the old sun-worship. It is interesting to note that there is a Sully isle lying off Glamorgan, south of Cardiff, and there may have been some connection between the two names, for Scilly was sometimes spelt Sully ; there is also a Scilly in Ireland. The Romans usually called the islands Sillince, but Sulpicius Severus used the form Sy- linancis, which Sir John Rhys associates with the Silulanus of an inscribed stone at Lydaey.