A sunken forest near Clement's Isle

Saint Clements Isle with Christmas light on!  © Copyright Rod Allday and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"Six miles south of St Michael's Mount waved, from Clement's Isle to Cudden Rock, a wood."

Hunt 1903
 

Map - Saint Clement's Isle

Map - Cudden Point

Black Rock in Falmouth - a sunken island

Black Rock is now marked by a tower to protect shipping.  © Copyright Rod Allday and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"The Black Rock in Falmouth Harbour is stated to have been a large island, which was surrounded by the sea only at high-water."

Hunt 1903

Map - Black Rock

The sunken valley from Rame Head to Looe

Towards Rame Head from Portwrinkle, part way to Looe.  © Copyright Trevor Rickard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"From Rame-head to the two Looes very fertile valleys are stated to have extended at least a league southwards, over a tract now covered with sea; and around the coast in many places, we are assured, in twelve feet of water, trees are to be seen in the sea."

Hunt 1903

Map - Looe
Map - Rame Head

The Lost Land of Lyonesse, or Lethowsow - Part 7

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "..."The flats, which stretched from one island to another, are plain evidences of a former union subsisting between many now distinct islands. The flats between Trescaw, Brêhar, and Sampson are quite dry at a spring-tide, and men easily pass dry-shod from one island to another over sand-banks (where, upon the shifting of the sands, walls and ruins are frequently discovered), upon which, at full sea, there are ten and twelve feet of water. From the southern side of St Martin there stretches out a large shoal towards Treacaw and St Mary's; and from St Mary's a flat, called Sandy-bar, shoots away to meet it; and between these two shoals there are but four feet of water in the channel called Chow Sound,--all strong arguments that those islands were once one continued tract of land, though now, as to their low lands, overrun with the sea and sand. 'The Isles Cassiterides' (says Strabo, Geo., lib. 5) 'are ten in number, close to one another. One of them is desert and unpeopled; the rest are inhabited.' But see how the sea has multiplied these islands; there are now one hundred and forty. Into so many fragments are they divided; and yet there are but six inhabited."--An Account of the Great Alteration which the Islands of Scylley have undergone, &c., by the Rev. Wm. Borlase, M.A., F.R.S., Phil. Trans., vol. xlviii. part i.

"The Cornish land, from Plymouth, discovers itself to be devoured more and more to the westward, according to the aforesaid tradition of the tract of the Lionesse, being encroached upon above half the present distance from the Land's End to Scilly; whence it is probable that the low isthmus once joining Scilly and the Lionesse was first encroached upon in the same manner. The projecting land being exposed to the concurrence of the tides from the Irish, the Bristol, and British Channels, by whose violence and impetuosity, increased by the winds, the loose earth of the Gulf-rock might be worn away, leaving the resistible substance behind, standing as it is in the middle way betwixt Scilly and Cornwall."--A Natural and Historical Account of the Islands of Scilly, by Robert Heath."

Hunt 1903

Map - Longships

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly

Map - Saint Michael's Mount 

Map - Saint Mary

Map - Saint Martin

Map - Brhyer

Map - Tresco

Map - Sampson 

The Lost Land of Lyinesse, or Lethowsow - Part 6

  The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "..."That Cornwall once extended further west may be inferred from hence, that about midway between the Land's End and Scilly are rocks called in Cornish Lethowsow; by the English, Seven-stones.

"The Cornish call the places within the stones Tregva, -- i.e., a dwelling;--and it has been reported that windows and other stuff have been fished up, and that fishermen still see tops of houses under water. From the Land's End to Scilly, a tract of thirty miles, is an equal depth of water, and the bottom of the sea a plain, level surface. St Michael's Mount is called in Cornish, Careg cowse in clowse--i.e., the hoary rock in the wood. Large trees with roots and bodies have been driven in by the sea of late years between St Michael's Mount and Penzance; and tradition says that at the time of the inundation which made the separation, one Trevelyan swam from thence on horseback; and in memory thereof the family, now in Somersetshire, bears gules a horse argent, from a less wavy argent, and azure, issuing out of a sea proper,"--Gough's Camden, vol. 1. p. 15...... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly

Map - Saint Michael's Mount 

Map - The Seven Stones  

The Lost Land of Lyinesse, or Lethowsow - Part 5

  The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "..."Strabo expressly tells us that the Cassiterides (so called from the Greek name of tin, there produced) were in his time only ten in number; whereas they are now divided into a hundred and forty rocky islets. Solinus also makes mention of a large and respectable island, called Silura, evidently the Scilly of present times, lying on Damnonian or Cornish coast, and separated from the mainland by a strait turbulent and dangerous--a character which sufficiently marks the compression of its waters. And William of Worcester, an author of our own country, thirteen centuries after Solinus, states, with a degree of positive exactness, stamping authenticity upon its recital, that between Mount's Bay and the Scilly Islands there had been woods, and meadows, and arable lands, and a hundred and forty parish churches, which before his time were submerged by the ocean. Uninterrupted tradition since this period, which subsists to the present day vigorous and particular, authenticates his account, and leaves no doubt upon the wind that a vast track of land, which stretched anciently from the eastern shore of Mount's Bay to the north-western rock of Scilly (with the exception of the narrow strait flowing between the Long-ships and Land's End), has, since the age of Strabo and Solinus, and previous to that of William of Worcester, been overwhelmed and usurped by the waves of the sea. . . . The depth of the water at the Land's End is about eleven fathoms; at the Long-ships, eight; to the north of them, twenty; to the south, thirty; and twenty-five, twenty, and fifteen fathoms between them and the north-west of Scilly. The shallowest water occurs in the mid-space between Cornwall and the Isles. "--A Tour through Cornwall in the Autumn of 1808, by the Rev. Richard Warner.

"Yet the cause of that inundation, which destroyed much of these Islands (the Scilly Islands), might reach also to the Cornish shores, is extremely probable, there being several evidences of a like subsidence of the land in the Mount's Bay. The principal anchoring-place, called a lake, is now a haven, or open harbour. The Mount, from its Cornish name, we must conclude to have stood formerly in a wood, but now, at full tide, is half a mile from the sea, and not a tree near it; and in the sandy beach betwixt the Mount and Penzance, where the sands have been dispersed by violent high tides, I have seen the trunks of several large trees in their natural position."-- Borlase, Phil. Trans., vol. xlviii. part I..... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Longships

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly

Map - Saint Michael's Mount 

The Lost Land of Lyonesse, or Lethowsow - Part 4

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "...and, to increase the wonder, a gentleman, accidentally on horseback, is carried by this animal to the neighbouring shore of Whitsand Bay, or twenty miles further off, to Perranuthnoe, through a sea which had swallowed an entire country, and from which the largest of modern vessels could not possibly have escaped. This idle tale, related by one writer after another, has almost reached our own times. The editor remembers a female relation of a former vicar of St Erth who, instructed by a dream, prepared decoctions of various herbs, and, repairing to the Land's End, poured them into the sea, with certain incantations, expecting to see the Lionesse country rise immediately out of the water, having all its inhabitants alive, notwithstanding their long submersion. But

'Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith she swerved.'

No country appeared, and although the love of marvellous events, and of tales exciting the passions, seems not to have diminished in recent times, yet the editor is unaware of any subsequent attempt having been made to rescue those unfortunate people from their protracted state of suspended animation."--The Parochial History of Cornwall, by. Davies Gilbert, vol. iii.pp. 109, 110.

"Although a sweep of ocean, twenty-seven miles in breadth, separates at present the Land's End from the Scilly Islands, there can yet be little doubt of their having been heretofore united to each other by the mainland. The records of history indeed do not rise so high as the era when this disjunction was first effected; but we have documents yet remaining which prove to us that this strait must have been considerably widened, and the number of the Sciilly Islands greatly increased within the last sixteen or seventeen centuries, by the waters of the Atlantic (receding probably from the coast of America) pressing towards this coast of Britain, accumulating upon Bolerium, and overwhelming part of the western shores of Cornwall...." [cont.]

Hunt 1903











Map - Perranuthnoe

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly
Map - Whitesand's Bay
Map - Bolerium

The Lost Land of Lyonesse, or Lethowsow - Part 3

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "...Solinus (cap 22) applies Siluria to the country lying west of the Land's End. His words are, "Siluram quoque insulam ab ora quam gens Britanna Dunmonii tenent, terbidumn fretum distinguit."

"There is a tradition that there formerly existed a large track of land between the Land's End and the Scilly Islands, called the Lioness, which was destroyed by an inundation of the sea. One of the family of Trevilian now residing in Somerset, but originally Cornish, saved himself by the assistance of his horse at the time of this inundation; and it is reported that the arms of this family were taken from his fortunate escape, to commemorate his providential preservation. "--Drew and Hitchin's Cornwall.

"A cave is pointed out in Perranuthnoe, where the ancestor of the Trevelyans is said to have been borne on shore, by the strength of his horse, from the destruction of the Lionesse country west of the Land's End. The Trevelyan family are too old, too honourable, and now too much distinguished by science, for them to covet any addition of honour through the medium of fabulous history.

"It is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle that, in the year 1099, there was so very high a tide, and the damage so great in consequence, that men remembered not the like to have ever happened before, and the same day was the first of the new moon. Stow, who wrote his History of England about the year 1580, notices the great tide of 1099, when he says, 'The sea brake in over the banks of the Thames and other ryvers, drowning many towns and much people, with innumerable numbers of oxen and sheepe; at which time the lands in Kent, that sometime belonged to Duke Gociwyne, Earle of Kent, were covered with sandes and drowned, which are to this day called Godwyne Sandes.' On the slender foundation of these alluvial, catastrophes, Florence of Worcester either invented, or, with more than monkish credulity, received the tale of a whole district being engulfed, not at some remote geological period, but in what may be considered as the recent times of authentic history, after the existence of systematic registers and records; a district covered, as he states, by a city and by a hundred and forty churches, with their accompanying villages, farms, &c., an event that must have shaken the whole of Europe;..."  [cont.]

Hunt 1903










 Map - Perranuthnoe

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly

The Lost Land of Lyonesse, or Lethowsow - Part 2

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

[cont.] "...A small, but very ancient, oratory, "Chapel Idne," or the "Narrow Chapel," formerly stood in Sennen Cove. It is said to have been founded by one Lord of Goonhilly, who owned a portion of the Lyonesse, on the occasion of his escape from the flood. By this war of waters several large towns were destroyed, and an immense number of the inhabitants perished.


In the absence of full traditional evidence, it will not be uninteresting to gather together the fragmentary statements which exist in the writings of historians and others -
 
"The number of parish churches lost is so astonishingly great as to baffle the power of evidence, to preclude the possibility of conviction. I, therefore, take upon me to reduce the number from 140 to 40, -- to cut off what any dash of Worcester's pen might casually have created, the first figure."--Whitaker's Supplement to Polwhele's History of Cornwall.

The Saxon Chronicle says the Lionesse was destroyed on the 11th of November 1099.

"On the third of the Nones of November (1099) the sea overflowed the shore, destroying towns and drowning many persons and innumerable oxen and sheep."--The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, translated by Thomas Forester, A.M. Bohn, 1854.... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Sennan cove

The Lost Land of Lyinesse, or Lethowsow - Part 1

The Scillonian ferry regularly crosses the waters above the legendary Lyonesse.  If you wish to use my photo please attribute this blog!

"THOSE who may stand on the extreme point of the Land's End, and, looking over that space where the waters of the Atlantic mix with those of the British Channel, see in the far distance the Scilly Islands, will have to call upon their imagination to conceive that these broad waters roll over a country which has existed within historic time.

A region of extreme fertility, we are told, once united the Scilly Islands with Western Cornwall. A people, known as the Silures, inhabited this tract,--which has been called the Lyonesse, or sometimes Lethowsow,--who were remarkable for their industry and their piety. No less than 140 churches stood over that region, which is now a waste of waters; and the rocks called the Seven Stones are said to mark the place of a large city. Even tradition is silent on the character of this great cataclysm. We have only one hint--and we know not its value--which appears to show that the deluge was comparatively gradual. One of the ancestors of the Trevilians is said to have had time to remove his family and his cattle; but at last he had to fly himself with all the speed which a fleet horse could give him. From this it might appear that, though gradual at first, the waters, having broken down the barriers, burst over the whole at last with uncontrolled fury. ... [cont.]"

Hunt 1903

Map - Land's End

Map - Isles of Scilly
Map - The Seven Stones

Robert Hunt on the lost lands of Cornwall and West Devon

Sand and mermaid - Some rights reserved by zakwitnij

"The notion of cities and extensive tracts of cultivated country being under the waters of the ocean and of lakes appears to have existed from all time. In the "Arabian Nights," we have constant references to lands under the sea; and in the traditionary stories of all Celtic people the same idea presents itself in some form or other. Mr Campbell appears to confound stories of mermaids with those traditions which have their origin in actual physical changes. They appear to me to have little relation to each other. (See West Highland Tales, by J. F. Campbell. Vol. iii. p. 410. )

In addition to the traditions given of large tracts of land which have been lost in the sea, I have given those which relate to cities, or towns, or churches which have been buried in the sands. These traditions are of the same general character.

This subject deserves a much more careful investigation than it has yet received. I hope simply to draw attention to the subject, and to show that those dim traditions point to some buried truth. They are like the buried lights which are supposed to indicate the resting-places of the dead."

Hunt

Sunken Lands off Land's End

The Scillonian - a boat that often crosses this stretch of water - © Copyright Chris Walpole and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

 

"Between Land's End and Scilly rocks
Sunk lies a town that ocean mocks.
Where breathes the man that would not weep 

O'er such fine climes beneath the deep?"

Historical Records of Ancient Cornwall
--THOMAS HOGG." 

in Hunt 1903

The Cock-crow stones of Cornwall

The Cheesewring at St Cleer is on the left of the photo.     Image by © Copyright Eric Foster and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"A ROCK of white marble (?) with many rock basins on its surface lies in Looe harbour, under Saunder's Lane, and is now -covered by every tide. This stone once stood on the top of an elevated rock near it, and when in this position, whenever it heard a cock crow in the neighbouring farmyard of Hay, it turned round three times.

The topmost stone of that curious pile of rocks in the parish of St Cleer known as the Cheesewring is gifted in like manner. Even now the poultry-yards are very distant, but in ancient days the cocks must have crowed most lustily, to have produced vibrations on either the sensitive rock or the tympanum of man."

Hunt 1903

Map -  Looe Harbour.  (I cannot find Saunders Lane or Hay farmyard)
Map - Hay Lane, Looe
Map - The Cheesewring

King Arthurs Stone

Goss Moor - © Copyright Tony Atkin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"In the western part of Cornwall, all the marks of any peculiar kind found on the rocks are referred either to the giants or the devil. In the eastern part of the county such markings are almost always attributed to Arthur. Not far from the Devil's Coit in St Columb, on the edge of the Gossmoor, there is a large stone, upon which are deeply-impressed marks, which a little fancy may convert into the marks of four horse-shoes. This is "King Arthur's Stone," and these marks were made by the horse upon which the British king rode when he resided at Castle Denis, and hunted on these moors. King Arthur's beds, and chairs, and caves, are frequently to be met with. The Giant's Coits,--and many traditions of these will be found in the section devoted to the giant romances--are probably monuments of the earliest types of rock mythology. Those of Arthur belong to the period when the Britons were so far advanced in civilisation as to war under experienced rulers; and those which are appropriated by the devil are evidently instances of the influence of priestcraft on the minds of an impressible people."

Hunt 1903

Map - Goss Moor (King Arthur's Stone no longer seems to exist - correct me if I am wrong!)

Map - Castle Denis

Did the Devil go to Cornwall?

The Devil's Quoit near Saint Columb Major. Image  © Copyright Michael Murray and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"In St Columb Major, not far from the ruins of what is generally considered to be a British fortification, Castele-an-Dinas, stands a tumulus known as the Devil's Coit. It is curious to find one tradition directly contradicting another. We are told, on the one hand, that--

The devil never came into Cornwall.

Because, when he crossed the Tamar, and made Torpoint for a brief space his resting-place, he could not but observe that everything, vegetable or animal, was put by the Cornish people into a pie.

He saw and heard of fishy pie, star-gazy pie, conger pie, and indeed pies of all the fishes in the sea. Of parsley pie, and herby pie, of lamy pie, and piggy pie, and pies without number. Therefore, fearing they might take a fancy to a "devily pie," he took himself back again into Devonshire.

On the other hand we find, amidst the rocks of the shore and the hills, numerous devil's coits, plenty of devil's footsteps, with devil's bellows, devil's frying-pans, devil's ovens, and devil's caves in abundance. Of course, on Dartmoor, since the devil remained in Devonshire, we might expect to find such evidences of his presence. The devil's frying-pan at Mistor is well known, and nearly every granite Tor preserves some impression of this melancholy, wandering wicked one."

Hunt 1903

 

Map - The Devil's Coit

Map - Torpoint

Map - The Devil's Frying-pan, Mistor

The Pipers Holes

Piper's Hole on Tresco, Isles of Scilly. Image © Copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"On the banks of Peninnis, in St Mary's, is Piper's Hole, which communicates, as tradition saith, with the island of Tresco, where another orifice known by the same name is seen. Going in at the orifice at Peninnis Banks in St Mary's, it is above man's height, and of as much space in its breadth, but grows lower and narrower farther in a little beyond which entrance appear rocky basins, or reservoirs, continually running over with fresh water, descending as it distils from the sides of the rocky passage. By the fall of water heard further in, it is probable there may be rocky descents in the passage. The drippings from the sides have worn the passage, as far as it can be seen, into very various angular surfaces. Strange stories are related of this passage, of men going so far in that they never returned; of dogs going quite through, and coming out at Tresco, with most of their hair off; and such like incredibles. But its retired situation, where lovers retreat to indulge their mutual passion-, has made it almost as famous as the cave wherein Dido and Aeneas met of old. Its water is exceeding good.

[from] Heath's "Scilly Isles."  

These stories of Piper's Hole are still told, and many of the ignorant inhabitants regard it with superstitious dread. The Fugoe Hole, at the Land's End, has yet to be spoken of in the Witch stories. Several who have attempted to penetrate this hole have escaped only by great luck --" by the skin of their teeth," as the saying is."

Hunt 1903

 

 

Map - Pipers Hole on St Marys

Map - Pipers Hole on Tresco

[I cannot locate the Fugoe Hole]

The Devil's Doorway

Polperro - image by © Copyright Alan Fleming and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"In the slate (Killas) formations behind Polperro is a good example of a fault. The geologist, in the pride of his know­ledge, refers this to some movement of the solid mass--a rending of the rocks, produced either by the action of some subterranean force lifting the earth-crust, or by a depression of one division of the rocks. The gray-bearded wisdom of our grandfathers led them to a conclusion widely different from this.

The mighty ruler of the realms of darkness, who is known to have an especial fondness for rides at midnight, "to see how his little ones thrive," ascending from his subterranean country, chose this spot as his point of egress.

As he rose from below in his fiery car, drawn by a gigantic jet black steed, the rocks gave way before him, and the rent at Pol­perro remains to this day to convince all unbelievers. Not only this, as his Satanic majesty burst through the slate rocks, his horse, delighted with the airs of this upper world, reared in wild triumph, and, planting again his hoof upon the ground, made these islands shake as with an earthquake; and he left the deep impres­sion of his burning foot behind. There, any unbeliever may see the hoof-shaped pool, unmistakable evidence of the wisdom of the days gone by."

Hunt 1903

Map - Polperro

The Irish Lady - a ghostly rock - Part 2

The Irish Lady is in the bottom right of the picture, Land's End is top right. Image by © Copyright Graham Horn and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

[cont...] "...Sir Humphrey Davy wrote a poem on this tradition. The following is an extract from it:--

"Where yon dark cliff  o'ershadowa the bltte main,

[ - A rock near the Land's End called the "Irish Lady."]

Theora died amidst the stormy waves,
And on its feet the sea-dews wash'd her corpse
And the wild breath of storms shook her black locks.
Young was Theora; bluer was her eye
Than the bright azure of the moonlight night;
Fair was her cheek, as is the ocean cloud
Red with the morning ray.

" Amidst the groves,
And greens, and nodding rocks that overhang
The gray Killarney pans'd her morning days,
Bright with the beams of joy.

"To solitude,
To nature, and to God, she gave her youth;
Hence were her passions tuned to harmony.
Her azure eye oft glisten'd with the tear
Of sensibility, and her soft cheek
Glow'd with the blush of rapture. Hence she loved
To wander 'midst the green wood silver'd o'er
By the bright moonbeam. Hence she loved the rocks,
Crowu'd with the nodding ivy, and the lake
Fair with the purple morning, and the sea
Expansive, mingling with the arched sky.

"Dark in the midnight cloud,
When the wild blast upon its pinions bore
The dying shrieks of Erin's injured Sons,
She 'scaped the murderer's arm. 

[The Irish lady was shipwrecked at the Land's End about the time of the massacre of the Irish Protestants by the Catholics, in the reign of Charles the First. So says Davy--the tradition is very old.]

"The British bark
Bore her across the ocean. From the west
The whirlwind rose, the fire-fraught clouds of heaven
Were mingled with the wave. The shatter'd bark
Sunk at thy feet, Boleriutn, and the white surge
Closed on green Erin's daughter."

-- PARIS's Life of Sir Humphrey Davy, p. 38

This kind of tradition is not uncommon."

Hunt 1903




Map - The Irish Lady

The Irish Lady - a ghostly rock - Part 1

The Irish Lady is in the bottom right of the picture, Land's End is top right. Image by © Copyright Graham Horn and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"Near Pedn-men-dw, the "Headland of Black Rock," is a curiously-shaped rock, known as the Irish Lady. In days long ago some adventurous sailors from Ireland were shipwrecked at night on this rock, and every soul perished, save a lady, who was seen in the morning sitting on the top of the rock. The storm was still raging, and it was quite impossible to render this solitary sufferer any assistance. Days and nights passed away the people watched the dying woman from the shore, but they could not reach her. At length they saw that her sufferings were at an end; and at last the dead body was washed into the sea. Often, when the winds and waves are high, the fishermen see a lady tranquilly sitting on this rock, with a rose in her mouth; to show, it may be presumed, her perfect indifference to the ragings of tempests..." [cont...]

Hunt 1903

The Armed Knight

The Armed Knight, or An Marogeth Arvowed. Image  © Copyright Tony Atkin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

"AT low water there is to be seen, off the Land's End, towards the Scilly Island (probably so called from the abundance of eel or conger fishes caught there, which are called sillys, or lillis), for a mile or more, a dangerous strag of ragged rocks, amongst which the Atlantic Sea and the waves of St George's and the British Channel meeting, make a dreadful bellowing and rumbling noise at half-ebb and half-flood, which let seamen take notice of to avoid them.

"Of old, there was one of those rocks more notable than the rest, which tradition saith was ninety feet above the flux and reflux of the sea, with an iron spire at the top thereof, which was overturned or thrown down in a violent storm, 1647, and the rock was broken in three pieces. This iron spire, as the additions to Camden's "Britannia" inform us, was thought to have been erected by the Romans, or set up as a trophy there by King Athelstan, when he first conquered the Scilly Islands (which was in those parts); but it is not very probable such a piece of iron, in this salt sea and air, without being consumed by rust, could endure so long a time. However, it is or was, certain I am it commonly was called in Cornish, An Marogeth Arvowed, i.e., the Armed Knight; for what reason I know not, except erected by or in memory of some armed knight; as also Carne-an-peul, i.e., the spile, spire, or javelin rock. Again, remember silly lilly, is in Cornish and Armoric language a conger fish or fishes, from whence Scilly Islands is probably denominated, as elsewhere noted." (Hal; in Gilbert's History of Cornwall," vol iii. p. 43). Mr Blight says this rock is also called Guela, or Guelaz,--the "rock easily seen."

Hunt 1903

Map - Rocks off Lands End

Map - Isles of Scilly