Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/64

58 THE CORNWALL COAST laboured on deep waters have nestled in these riverside homesteads, these nooks and corners and precipitous byways ; they were lusty fighters and dauntless smugglers ; they rose for their old faith, they fought loyally for their king, and they molested his enemies when he was at peace with them. In general they were a tough and indepen- dent lot, with a considerable scorn of those who live "in England" — that is to say, beyond the Tamar ; and to this day an Englishman from the shires is very much of a foreigner with them. Even the man from a parish a few miles distant is looked at somewhat askance ; after long years of residence they will still think him an outsider, and they repudiate with scorn the idea that any inter- lopers can understand them or their ways. They do not easily initiate strangers into the local mysteries or bestow the freedom of their township. Such an attitude may be out of date in this cosmo- politan age, but it is not unpleasant to strike against it; it coexists with the kindest of wel- comes, the warmest of hospitalities. Yet it must be confessed that there are moods in which these Cornish folk are neither kind nor hospitable ; their roughness is very rough, their parliamentary elections are often conducted in a spirit notorious for its violence. They are not all the gentle visionary dreamers that the Celts sometimes claim to be ; indeed, there is much in their very physiog- nomy that proclaims them in large measure to be not true Celts at all, but men of still more aboriginal blood. Where then, it may be asked, shall we find the pure Celt ? Yet it cannot matter greatly, except to those who set far too much store on matters of race. The weaving of ethnologic Britain would take more skill to unravel than the