'THERE are numerous versions of this legend, and sundry statements I made as to the man who is supposed to have achieved the no very envious immortality which he enjoys.
One or two of these may interest the reader.
The following very characteristic narrative, from a much-esteemed correspondent, gives several incidents which have not a place in the legend as I have related it, which comprehends the explanation given for the appearance of Tregeagle at so many different parts of the county.
The Tregeagle, of whom mention occurs in the writings of Cornish legendary authors, was a real person: a member of a respectable family, resident during the seventeenth century at Trevorder, in the parish of St Breock, and identical probably with a John Tregeagle whose tombstone may yet be seen in the parish church there, close to the chancel.
Lingering one day amid the venerable arches of that same church, the narrator, a native of the parish, encountered, near a small transept called the Trevorder aisle, the sexton, a man then perhaps of about eighty years of age. The conversation turning not unnaturally on the "illustrious dead," the narrator was gratified in receiving from the lips of the old man the following characteristic specimen of folk-lore, the greater part of which has remained clearly imprinted in his memory after a Iapse of many years; though [he thinks he has had to supply the very last sentence of all from the general popular tradition] here and there he may have had to supply a few expressions:
"Theess Jahn Tergagle, I 'ye a heerd mun tell, sir, he was a steward to a lord.
"And a man came fore to the court and paid ax rent: and Jahn Tergagle didn't put no cross to az name in the books.
"And after that Tergagle daied: and the lord came down to look after az rents: and when he zeed the books, he zeed this man's name that there wasn't no cross to ut...' [cont.]
Hunt 1903
