Our Lady of Gwithian
Arthur Quiller-Couch
"Mary, mother, well thou be!
Mary, mother, think on me;
Sweete Lady, maiden clean,
Shield me from ill, shame, and teen;
Shield me, Lady, from villainy
And from all wicked company!"
~Speculum Christiani.
Here is a little story I found one day among the legends of the Cornish Saints,
like a chip in porridge. If you love simplicity, I think it may amuse you.
Lovey Bussow was wife of Daniel Bussow, a tin-streamer of Gwithian Parish. He
had brought her from Camborne, and her neighbours agreed that there was little
amiss with the woman if you overlooked her being a bit weak in the head. They
set her down as "not exactly." At the end of a year she brought her husband a
fine boy. It happened that the child was born just about the time of year the
tin-merchants visited St. Michael's Mount; and the father--who streamed in a
small way, and had no beast of burden but his donkey, or "naggur"--had to load
up panniers and drive his tin down to the shore-market with the rest, which for
him meant an absence of three weeks, or a fortnight at the least.
So Daniel kissed his wife and took his leave; and the neighbours, who came to
visit her as soon as he was out of the way, all told her the same story--that
until the child was safely baptised it behoved her to be very careful and keep
her door shut for fear of the Piskies. The Piskies, or fairy-folk (they said),
were themselves the spirits of children that had died unchristened, and liked
nothing better than the chance to steal away an unchristened child to join their
nation of mischief.
Lovey listened to them, and it preyed on her mind. She reckoned that her best
course was to fetch a holy man as quickly as possible to baptise the child and
make the cross over him. So one afternoon, the mite being then a bare fortnight
old, she left him asleep in his cradle and, wrapping a shawl over her head,
hurried off to seek Meriden the Priest.
Meriden the Priest dwelt in a hut among the sandhills, a bowshot beyond St.
Gwithian's Chapel on the seaward side, as you go out to Godrevy. He had spent
the day in barking his nets, and was spreading them out to dry on the short turf
of the towans; but on hearing Lovey's errand, he good-naturedly dropped his
occupation and, staying only to fill a bottle with holy water, walked back with
her to her home.
As they drew near, Lovey was somewhat perturbed to see that the door, which she
had carefully closed, was standing wide open. She guessed, however, that a
neighbour had called in her absence, and would be inside keeping watch over the
child. As she reached the threshold, the dreadful truth broke upon her: the
kitchen was empty, and so was the cradle!
It made her frantic for a while. Meriden the Priest offered what consolation he
could, and suggested that one of her neighbours had called indeed, and finding
the baby alone in the cottage, had taken it off to her own home to guard it. But
this he felt to be a forlorn hope, and it proved a vain one. Neither search nor
inquiry could trace the infant. Beyond a doubt the Piskies had carried him off.
When this was established so that even the hopefullest of the good-wives shook
her head over it, Lovey grew calm of a sudden and (as it seemed) with the calm
of despair. She grew obstinate too.
"My blessed cheeld!" she kept repeating. "The tender worm of 'en! But I'll have
'en back, if I've to go to the naughty place to fetch 'en. Why, what sort of a
tale be I to pitch to my Dan'l, if he comes home and his firstborn gone?"
They shook their heads again over this. It would be a brave blow for the man,
but (said one to another) he that marries a fool must look for thorns in his
bed.
"What's done can't be undone," they told her. "You'd best let a two-three of us
stay the night and coax 'ee from frettin'. It's bad for the system, and you so
soon over child-birth."
Lovey opened her eyes wide on them.
"Lord's sake!" she said, "you don't reckon I'm goin' to sit down under this?
What?--and him the beautifullest, straightest cheeld that ever was in Gwithian
Parish! Go'st thy ways home, every wan. Piskies steal my cheeld an' Dan'l's,
would they? I'll pisky 'em!"
She showed them forth--"put them to doors" as we say in the Duchy-- every one,
the Priest included. She would have none of their consolation.
"You mean it kindly, naybors, I don't say; but tiddn' what I happen to want. I
wants my cheeld back; an' I'll have'n back, what's more!"
They went their ways, agreeing that the woman was doited. Lovey closed the door
upon them, bolted it, and sat for hours staring at the empty cradle. Through the
unglazed window she could see the stars; and when these told her that midnight
was near, she put on her shawl again, drew the bolt, and fared forth over the
towans. At first the stars guided her, and the slant of the night-wind on her
face; but by and by, in a dip between the hills, she spied her mark and steered
for it. This was the spark within St. Gwithian's Chapel, where day and night a
tiny oil lamp, with a floating wick, burned before the image of Our Lady.
Meriden the Priest kept the lamp filled, the wick trimmed, year in and year out.
But he, good man, after remembering Lovey in his prayers, was laid asleep and
snoring within his hut, a bowshot away. The chapel-door opened softly to Lovey's
hand, and she crept up to Mary's image, and abased herself before it.
"Dear Aun' Mary," she whispered, "the Piskies have taken my cheeld! You d'knaw
what that means to a poor female--you there, cuddlin' your liddle Jesus in the
crook o' your arm. An' you d'knaw likewise what these Piskies be like; spiteful
li'l toads, same as you or I might be if happen we'd died unchristened an' hadn'
no share in heaven nor hell nor middle-earth. But that's no excuse. Aun' Mary,
my dear, I want my cheeld back!" said she. That was all Lovey prayed. Without
more ado she bobbed a curtsy, crept from the chapel, closed the door, and
way-to-go back to her cottage.
When she reached it and struck a light in the kitchen she more than half
expected to hear the child cry to her from his cradle. But, for all that Meriden
the Priest had told her concerning the Virgin and her power, there the cradle
stood empty.
"Well-a-well!" breathed Lovey. "The gentry are not to be hurried, I reckon. I'll
fit and lie down for forty winks," she said; "though I do think, with her
experience Mary might have remembered the poor mite would be famished afore
this, not to mention that the milk in me is beginnin' to hurt cruel."
She did off some of her clothes and lay down, and even slept a little in spite
of the pain in her breasts; but awoke a good two hours before dawn, to find no
baby restored to her arms, nor even (when she looked) was it back in its cradle.
"This'll never do," said Lovey. On went her shawl again, and once again she
faced the night and hurried across the towans to St. Gwithian's Chapel. There in
her niche stood Our Lady, quite as though nothing had happened, with the infant
Christ in her arms and the tiny lamp burning at her feet.
"Aun' Mary, Aun' Mary," said Lovey, speaking up sharp, "this iddn' no sense 't
all! A person would think time was no objic, the way you stick there starin',
ain' my poor cheeld leary with hunger afore now--as you, bein' a mother, oft to
knaw. Fit an' fetch 'en home to me quick. Aw, do'ee co', that's a dear soul!"
But Our Lady stood there and made no sign.
"I don't understand 'ee 't all," Lovey groaned. "'Tiddn' the way I'd behave in
your place, and you d'knaw it."
Still Our Lady made no sign.
Lovey grew desperate.
"Aw, very well, then!" she cried. "Try what it feels like without your liddle
Jesus!"
And reaching up a hand, she snatched at and lifted the Holy Child that fitted
into a stone socket on Our Lady's arm. It came away in her grasp, and she fled,
tucking it under her shawl.
All the way home Lovey looked for the earth to gape and swallow her, or a hand
to reach down from heaven and grip her by the hair; and all the way she seemed
to hear Our Lady's feet padding after her in the darkness. But she never stopped
nor stayed until she reached home; and there, flinging in through the door and
slamming to the bolt behind her, she made one spring for the bed, and slid down
in it, cowering over the small stone image.
Rat-a-tat! tat!--someone knocked on the door so that the cottage shook.
"Knock away!" said Lovey. "Whoever thee be, thee 'rt not my cheeld."
Rat-a-tat! tat!
"My cheeld wouldn' be knockin': he's got neither strength nor sproil for it. An'
you may fetch Michael and all his Angels, to tear me in pieces," said Lovey;
"but till I hear my own cheeld creen to me, I'll keep what I have!"
Thereupon Lovey sat up, listening. For outside she heard a feeble wail.
She slipped out of bed. Holding the image tight in her right arm, she drew the
bolt cautiously. On the threshold at her feet, lay her own babe, nestling in a
bed of bracken.
She would have stooped at once and snatched him to her. But the stone Christling
hampered her, lying so heavily in her arm. For a moment, fearing trickery, she
had a mind to hurl it far out of doors into the night. . . . It would fall
without much hurt into the soft sand of the towans. But on a second thought she
held it forth gently in her two hands.
"I never meant to hurt 'en, Aun' Mary," she said. "But a firstborn's a
firstborn, be we gentle or simple."
In the darkness a pair of invisible hands reached forward and took her hostage.
When it was known that the Piskies had repented and restored Lovey Bussow's
child to her, the neighbours agreed that fools have most of the luck in this
world; but came nevertheless to offer their congratulations. Meriden the Priest
came also. He wanted to know how it had happened; for the Piskies do not easily
surrender a child they have stolen.
Lovey--standing very demure, and smoothing her apron down along her
thighs--confessed that she had laid her trouble before Our Lady.
"A miracle, then!" exclaimed his Reverence. "What height! What depth!"
"That's of it," agreed Lovey. "Aw, b'lieve me, your Reverence, we mothers
understand wan another."
THE END.