DEATH OF MR. WILLIAM BOTTRELL, OF ST. LEVAN.—“OLD CELT.”

“One poor moment can suffice

To paralyse the lofty and the low.

We surf the Sea of Life. A calm was finds,

And now a tempest. And, the voyage o’er,

Death is the quiet haven of us all.

If more of my condition ye would know,

St. Levan was my birthplace, and I sprang

Of Cornish parents. Sixty years and five

Lived I; then yielded to a slow disease.”

After a protracted weakness, which was in itself pain, and six weeks of final and great suffering, “Old Celt” was taken from the kind house he had found at St. Ives, and is gone to the ancestors and the old folk, of whose lives he was so proud and whose memories and deeds he has rescued from oblivion. And on Wednesday his remains were taken, in the quiet way he loved so well, to the picturesque churchyard in St. Levan’s vale where his forefathers sleep—that home of the dead which he has pictured for some of his ghost stories, and described so graphically that those who read may intimately know it if they see it not. The friends who followed him thither were few but chosen. If only those whose harmony or imagination, or a commingling of both, created for Cornishman and Cornwall-loving people could but have borne him to his peaceful rest, what a throng we should have had! The giants of our cairns and castles—from seven-leagued Bolster of St. Agnes to huge but gentle Denbras of Towednack, from the playful monsters of Carn Galver to the double-jointed and six-fingered heroes of Trink and Trecrobben—would be there, with moans which would reach the ear of Tregagle of Gwenvor and be re-echoed from Whitesand Bay. The knackers from the depths of the mine and the piskies and all tribes of small people from ferny dell and furzy croft; ghosts and goblins from the haunted chambers he has told us of; Trewoofe Levelis and Treen I’ans, pellars and charmers, white witches and droll-tellers, demon masons and gossiping tinners; Bet of the Mill (with her silent crowde) and Duffy Trenance (of mincing gait); fair Nancy Trenoweth of Ailsia Mill, her pretty cheeks tear-bedewed, and the strong man of Escols, with bent head; staid Uncle Billy and sprightly Bobby Griglans; free-traders of Long Rock, privateers of Buryan, and pirates of Pengersec; Uter Bosence and Pee Tregear; buccas innumerable and piskey-led travellers; Honney Chygwens, the mayor of Market Jew, who if any mourners quarrelled would make them drink it out, or fight it out, or take the basting of his tough blackthorn—what a long procession of diversified Cornish characters, the whole brought up by the immortal Betty Toddy, with crape over the gown which displayed portraits of all the animals that entered the ark and of many that didn’t. These could not assemble around the place of “lasting quiet,” unless Spiritualism be true and local sympathy enduring; but the author who has made them live again, and live evermore for the student of ancient traditions and old Cornish drolls, goes to his resting-place to the regret of many a reader—hereabouts and far away.

“Old Celt” was born at Raftra, March 7th, 1816; and, his father being a yeoman of some means and he an only child, a very good education was given him, including so much of the classics and mathematics as the neighbourhood gave or he chance to take,—at any rate so much as to make him fond of them to the last,—and he was intended for the Church. From boyhood he was fond of the talks of the old folks and never tired of listening to them and treasuring them in his memory, but without a thought of the interest they would one day have for others or of scattering them again in print. Of St. Levan himself—his intercourse with his flock, his blessings and curses, his pathway to the favourite fishing-rock—he heard what the parish had to say. He noted the tradition that Porthcurno was once the chief port of the west and Treryn a market-town. The legends of Porthchapel Well came to him at guldise and of Porthgwarra at Christmastide. And he viewed with juvenile awe and curly faith the very stile between Padz-jigga and Goon-proynter where bucca appeared to the old lady. Through many changeful experiences and in varied climes his ear and mind were open to traditional yarns, and he was versed in Spanish as well as Cornish lore of this kind.

Mr. Bottrell, in the course of our long intimacy with him, referred only incidentally to his travels and troubles. He made but one allusion to a great and a somewhat mysterious trial, and his apparent reticence was respected by us and we seldom asked questions. We cannot, therefore, give even the main events of “Old Celt’s” history in due sequence. He had lived in Spain, in Canada, and in Australia. Of his stay in the first-named country—his garden and its flowers, fruits, and herbs—we have heard him speak with pleasure. Nature tried her best to compensate him for other disappointments. He invested a large sum in confiscated Church property in Spain, but, when the former owners regained power, he suffered from a second confiscation which deprived him of all. Nevertheless, Mr. Bottrell had no dislike to the Roman Catholic creed; the politeness of educated priests, who sympathized with his studies, and the childlike trust of the peasantry in the creed taught him, somewhat counterbalancing his dislike of unquestioned power or hollow pretensions. He read Spanish, and at one time spoke that language and French fluently. From Spain he went to Quebec, where he became English master in a College and made many friends amongst men of letters. We believe also he went into the backwoods and was overseer or clerk for some timber-merchants. A mutual friend of his and ours tells us that he then migrated to Australia and lived some years there, “but, like many other clever, educated men, had no success, in commercial enterprise; indeed, never did good fortune in any form come within his grasp.” Here he lost his wife and this added to his many former trials and disappointments.

Returning from Australia he led the life of a recluse at Hawke’s Point, Lelant. The friend to whom we have referred writes:—“Here he lived in a hovel and cultivated a little moorland. He had a black cat called ‘Spriggans’ and a cow and a pony. These animals would follow him down the almost perpendicular cliff, over ‘a goat’s path,’ and no accident ever happened to either. The spring of water, from which they drank, at the base of the cliff, is very pure and refreshing. In these days Mr. Bottrell was a favourite with the tinners, who were pleased to tell him of their ancient legends and hearthside stories.” He has sketched these tinners for us and acknowledged his indebtedness to them for tales, “well-attested and well-believed.” After their core below at disembowelling the earth these industrious men cleared the moorland and, for holiday, “drolled away the time” with the Hawke’s Point hermit. Mr. Bottrell says they had intelligence, mother-wit, and memories, and he garnered from the ample harvest.

Only a few years more and most of these interesting tradition would have been lost. Under the advice of the present writer some of the local yarns were first published in the newspaper he managed, and, their value and popularity being ascertained, were collected, revised, added to, and republished in three volumes of “Traditions and Hearthside Stories,” which appeared from 1870 to 1880. Far and wide, as well as at home, these Cornish drolls were appreciated. While the third volume was going through the press, the author was stricken with paralysis, and the Rev. W.K. Lach-Szyrma wrote its touching preface. Mr. Bottrell rallied from the first attack, mentally but not physically. His mind became clear again and remained so for more than a year and to the last, but the frame gradually decayed, until his was a death in life. For six weeks nothing passed his lips but a little weak tea; for five weeks he had no more nourishment than could be drawn from a moistening of those lips; yet intelligence remained, until at 10 on Saturday morning he peaceful slept his last. To use similes of which Mr. Bottrell was fond he had become:

“A sun-dial pillar left alone,

On which no dial meets the eye;

A black rail-wheel with grass o’grown,

That bears no water trickle by;

Dark, padded moss of sever’d rock,

Deaf, blind, and near to sun and rain;

A shafier’s gravestone’s time-worn block

That only shows in honoured name.”

Among students of old-world, and especially of Cornish, lore Mr. William Bottrell will always have name and fame.