Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/235

FROM LAND'S END TO ZENNOR 229 so beautiful a voice that this mermaid came all the way up from the sea-beach to hear him, Sunday after Sunday. How she did it is not explained ; but at last her importunity prevailed, and the youth went away with her. She had lured him to the " Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep Where the winds are all asleep ; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream." The dial on the tower also bears the figure of a mermaid. There must have been some origin for such a legend ; perhaps some youth was drowned off the coast, and it was imagined that a mermaid had beguiled him away. The same sea-lady appears to have been heard of later, for it is said that "a long time after, a vessel lying in Pendour Cove cast her anchor, and in some way barred the access to a mermaid's dwelling. She rose up from the sea and politely asked the captain to remove it. He landed at Zennor, and related his adventure, and those who heard it agreed that this must have been the lady who decoyed away the poor young man." But why poor? The connection may have been a happy one ; the mermaid was evidently courteous in manners, though her representation on the Zennor bench-end is not exactly beautiful. Zennor Hill or Beacon rises to 750 feet in desolate grandeur, and on this high land, often haunted by foxes and badgers, is the great Zennor Quoit or cromlech, thought to be the finest in Britain. Its slab, 18 feet in length, has slipped from its rest. It is an immense titanic monument, whose story no one