Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/272

266 THE CORNWALL COAST a giant. But who shall establish the identity of a mouldering skeleton ? Only a fragment of gable, a half-buried inscribed slab, and some loose rugged stones, have been left to speak of what may be the earliest religious foundation in England ; but even in this matter of antiquity there are competitors. We may suppose that ,the present oratory was raised over Piran's original cell somewhere about the eighth cen- tury ; and about two centuries later it was found that the encroaching sands rendered its further use impossible. It was deserted, and a second church raised a little further inland, of which the site is now marked by a cross. Visitors may be warned that both sites are very difl&cult to discover without a guide. This second church became collegiate in the time of the Confessor, with a dean and canons, being enriched by the offerings of pilgrims who came from all parts of Cornwall to the shrine of St. Piran. The establishment was presented by Henry I, to the canons of Exeter. We may judge that at this time the first chapel was entirely buried in the sands. In 1420 the second church was rebuilt ; the older church, even its site, was forgotten. At the close of the eighteenth century the second church itself was threatened by the same peril ; the planting of reed-grass was not then understood as a means of binding the sand. This time the parishioners moved their church to a greater distance, establishing their church town at the present Perranzabuloe, where the materials of the second church were largely used in the erection of a new one ; they also carried thither an old hexagonal font, which is thought to have come from the original oratory. In