Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/276

270 THE CORNWALL COAST of the remains of the dead. The feast-day of St. Piran falls on the 5th of March, and is not yet quite forgotten ; it was once an occasion of such merry-making as to furnish a local saying — " As drunk as a Perraner." There is an unhappy tradition that St. Piran himself died in drink, which we may connect with the other rumour that he discovered Cornish tin in an effort to distil Irish whisky. We have reason to believe that Celtic saints were very human, but we need not credit every idle legend. The saint seems to have been something of a farmer, possessing many horses and cattle. We may question the statement that he lived to the age of two hundred, and then dug his own grave in the sand; but the possibility that the large skeleton found here was really his has some support from the fact that it was headless when discovered, and this tallies with an entry in the will of Sir John Arundell of Trerice : " To provide honourable protection for St. Pieran's head, the sum of 40s." Those who wish to find the ancient oratory had better first reach the site of the second church, marked by a high granite cross; from this the older remains lie about a quarter of a mile westward, towards the sea. Another pldn-an-guare, resembling that of Redruth, lies near the hamlet of Rose {ros, a moorland) ; it is about 130 feet in diameter, and has faint traces of seven tiers of seats, which afforded accom- modation for two thousand spectators. Originally it was probably a natural subsidence, strengthened by artificial earthworks ; and whatever its first use may have been, it became a popular amphi- theatre for public performance of miracle-plays. There are many water-mills in this district, and they provide a feature not common in Cornwall.