The charge for this privilege was
one penny and one halfpenny, which had to be presented in a leather
purse; but this ancient ceremony was afterwards done away with and a
culvert constructed. On this pebble bank one of the King's frigates was
lost in 1807.
[Illustration: A STREET IN HELSTON. (_Showing the running stream of
water at the side of the street._)]
There is a passage in the book of Genesis which states that "there were
giants in the earth in those days"--a passage which we had often heard
read in the days of our youth, when we wished it had gone further and
told us something about them; but Cornwall had been a veritable land of
giants. The stories of Jack the Giant-Killer were said to have emanated
from this county, and we now heard of the Giant Tregeagle, whose spirit
appeared to pervade the whole district through which we were passing.
He was supposed to be the Giant of Dosmary Pool, on the Bodmin Downs,
which was believed at one time to be a bottomless pit. When the wind
howls there the people say it is the Giant roaring, and "to roar like
Tregeagle" was quite a common saying in those parts. "His spirit haunts
all the west of Cornwall, and he haunts equally the moor, the rocky
coasts, and the blown sandhills; from north to south, from east to west,
this doomed spirit was heard of, and to the Day of Judgment he was
doomed to wander pursued by avenging fiends.
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