30th Mar 2022
Cave paintings, rock art and stone carvings give incredible insight into ancient lives. You might not know that there are (relatively) modern examples of rock poems found on Cornwall's coast1. What do they reveal about the nature of rural - and coastal - storytelling and memory?
CHILD OF THE SEA
It is commonly believed that many years ago, a young woman and her horse2 got into difficulty on a Cornish beach. At low tide, a young woman's portrait appears on the rock face of the beach with the following inscription:
'Mar not my face but let me be,
Secure in this lone cavern by the sea,
Let the wild waves around me roar,
Kissing my lips for evermore.' 3
The voice that we hear is not the young woman but that of her likeness etched into the rock. There is fear that the woman's likeness, and with it her story, will suffer the same fate as its original. That it will be lost and forgotten forever. Straight away the tidal wave of grief implores readers (and the sea) to preserve the young woman's memory.
With the rhythmic ebb and flow of the tides, the young woman's portrait disappears and returns in an everlasting cycle. The deliberate choice of location indicates an unwillingness to accept death as an ending4. In this we can sense the love and loss felt by another person. Someone else should have been "[k]issing [her] lips". We must assume that this grief-stricken lover is the poet-writer. A feeling of wasted potential and lost time pervades the final line, of what could have been instead of what was.
The most intriguing part is the imagined tenderness, alongside the hostility, of the sea. You would be forgiven for thinking this story might act as a warning against the ocean. This meaningful detail tells us much about the Cornish people's relationship with that most powerful element of nature. The sea with its natural strength, power and endurance seems to help the poet-writer process the depth of their grief.
With its metaphorical and physical connection to the ocean, the poem establishes the young woman as part of the coastal landscape. Her spirit, her memory and her story belong with the sea and the rocky cliffs alone.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
In a secluded cave by the sea, the fragment of a carved poem survives on its craggy roof:
'But, as thou walk’st should sudden storms arise,
Red lightnings flash, or thunder shake the skies,
To Sharrow's friendly grot in haste retreat,
And find safe shelter and a rocky seat.5
By this, and exercise, here oft endured
The gout itself for many years was cured.' 6
The story goes that Navy Lieutenant James Lugger was suffering with gout. He dug the coastal grotto in the 1780s and soon after engraved his verse on the ceiling.
This handmade coastal construction might seem like an extreme solution to his pain. Yet the 'sea cure' was prescribed by doctors in the eighteenth century for all manner of ailments. A widespread belief in the sea air and water's medicinal properties resulted in the boom of seaside holiday resorts. Lugger might have wanted to take his medicine without hundreds of people watching him.
The seclusion of the cave is central to the medicinal process of healing. As a 'safe shelter', it is not intended for the masses to enjoy but rather for the few who happen to stumble upon it. Lugger's poem reaches out to these kindred souls - 'as thou walk'st' - who find the grotto while they are, metaphorically or otherwise, fleeing the storm. He wants to share the success of his recovery with those who may be in need of hope after he is gone. Carving it into the stone goes some way towards ensuring its survival beyond his lifetime.
Lugger's verse is conversational, optimistic and upbeat, giving us a glimpse at his state of mind when he spent time in the grotto. Its message may have provided comfort if not a cure to those who came across it on their travels.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In two very different poems exist one common thread. That is, the natural relationship between Cornish poetry and the landscape. Both of these poems are so physically and figuratively ingrained in the rocky, coastal landscape that their words and stories provoke a sense of the eternal. They rely on the rural landscape as a means of enduring beyond individual human lives. The poems are touchstones that connect people across different times and backgrounds. They also remind us how much we count on the landscape to support us. Now is the time to find new ways of giving thanks to these magnificent environments.
Notes
1 Both of the following examples are in hazardous areas and should not be sought out.
2 There is also a carving of a horse, but it is a much later addition to the original poem and portrait.
3 Inscriptions have been checked against several sources.
4 Some people believe that the poet-writer suggests the woman survives in the "cavern by the sea". However, the narrative perspective seems to be from her carved likeness which resides in the cavern, rather than from the young woman herself.
5 Sometimes 'seat' is recorded as 'sea', which does not make fit the context and rhyme of the sentence. Presumably the carved letters are difficult to read due to natural erosion.
6 This is where the carved poem becomes illegible due to natural erosion. It would have been longer than what we have left now to remember.
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