Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/204

198 THE CORNWALL COAST Mary's gave him timely warning of a mutiny among his seamen ; Olaf crushed the mutiny, but received a severe wound. He was carried to the monastery at Tresco, and consented to be baptized ; after which he became a saint himself, and churches were dedicated to him — there is one such at Exeter. Longfellow has told us of "His cruisings o'er the seas, 'S^^estwa^d to the Hebrides, And to Scilly's rocky shore;" and he was probably not the only Norse Viking whose keel touched here. Other saints have left their mark on Scilly : Samson of Glamorgan came hither, about the middle of the sixth century, after founding a church near Fowey ; he is the same Samson that we find at Guernsey, who afterwards became Bishop of Dol. The island that bears his name, rendered familiar to many delighted readers by Besant's Arjnorel of Lyonesse, is no longer inhabited, but bears many marks of its former population. Traces of old habitation abound ; there are many barrows and one perfect kistvaen. Among other saints, Teilo seems to have been at St. Helen's. St. Agnes, like the parish so named on the mainland, is almost certainly a dedication to the Celtic Ann, It was natural that Tresco should become the ecclesiastical centre of Scilly. The abbey and all the churches of the islands were granted by Henry I. to the monks of Tavistock ; at the Dissolution the abbey reverted to the Crown, and passed to the Godolphins, whose name sur- vives at Dolphin Town. It is likely that the private history of the isles was romantic and exciting enough, but there is little to record until the days of the Civil War, when they became a