Cornwall (England)
"By Tre- Pol- and Pen-, will you know the Cornishmen"
There lingers in many Cornish fishing coves and villages a sinister suggestion of a smuggling past - a ghostly shadow glimpsed at the window, a whisper of waiting hooves (or was it the wind?), an eerie echo of muffled oars on a dark moonless night…..or merely a knowing twinkle in a weather-beaten eye.
Tales abound of smugglers’ tunnels that run directly from cove to cellar, secret rooms for storing illicit goods, wreckers’ lights on the coast, and plundering pirates on the high seas. In Penzance, a pirate is still to be seen crawling over the roof of the Admiral Benbow Inn, pistol at the ready………………
The colourful and sometimes romanticized history of the smugglers is in stark contrast to the meagre, dull and often dangerous existence of the Cornish tin-miners, who were in fact responsible for the famous and ubiquitous Cornish Pasty.
The tin-mining process exuded arsenic, so the men took a pasty to eat down the mines, with their initials or mark pressed into the pastry for identification. They held the pointed ends in their contaminated fingers, then threw away the poisonous crusts.
Sometimes a pasty would contain a savoury filling in one end and a sweet one in the other, thus providing a convenient take-away two-course meal. Competition is still hot for The Best Pasty / The Best Recipe / The Original Pasty / etc, although now more aimed at the visitors.
Fishing is synonymous with the rugged Cornish Coast, with crabs, lobsters and pilchards being hauled in daily, whether by small fleets like the nine brightly coloured boats of tiny Cadgwith Cove or in the big-scale vessels of Padstow. Protestant Cornwall was said to have been pro-Pope, as Catholic no-meat Fridays provided a lucrative export business of salted pilchards from Cornwall to Italy for over 100 years.
Another ‘export’ for which migrating Cornish men were responsible was the card game of Cut-Throat Euchre, played by both the fishermen and the miners, and introduced by them to Australia and elsewhere.
Each fishing village has a folklore of fishing tales, sea disasters and lifeboat rescues, often regaled in the pub and sometimes interspersed with spontaneous local singing. In Mousehole, a Stargazey Pie (a fish pie with heads and tails sticking out of the crust) is baked annually to celebrate the story of a local fisherman who saved the village from starvation by risking his life to go out fishing in a raging storm.
Cornwall, claiming a milder climate, more sun and clearer light than the rest of Britain, with varied and sometimes almost tropical vegetation, has long been a magnet for artists. St Ives and Newlyn became well-known as artists’ colonies, and both still thrive today on this reputation, although Newlyn is also a major fishing port.
This fascinating background, overlaid by modern-day comfort and Cornish friendliness, was a fruitful environment for my own painting, albeit constantly allowing for variable weather despite it being summer – England is not green for nothing!!!!!!
My senses were assailed by day with colourful fishing boats and bright flower boxes at cottage windows, with fishy smells and screeching gulls, with textures of old slate and weathered stone, the feel of smooth pebbles or cool wet sand underfoot and with blustery salty winds. Late summer evenings drifted into night, more stories to hear, more locals to meet in the pub.
And what of the gnarled, timeless character in the corner, who listens and nods, smiles silently into his pint…. what has he seen, what does he know? … and just how long has he been there…..?