Note 9 — LEGENDS OF PARISHES, ETC.

We have now reached the town of Penzance, and through its streets folks of the last generation often heard rumbling at midnight an old-fashioned coach drawn by headless horses; or saw a procession of coffins slowly wending its way to the churchyard. It was unlucky to meet this, as death was sure soon to follow, and tradition speaks of a woman who accidentally struck against one and died in the same night. A coach with headless horses and coachman, also just before Christmas, went through the streets of Penryn; this coachman had the power of spiriting away people who met and stared at him, unless they turned their heads and averted the evil by some mystical signs. In Penzance town were many haunted houses, but space will only allow of my noticing a few. One in Chapel Street (formerly Our Lady’s Street) was tenanted by the spirit of Mrs. Baines, an eccentric old lady. At the back of her house was a very fine orchard well stocked with fruit-trees, which the boys were too fond of visiting. She determined at last that her gardener should watch for them, armed with an old blunderbuss, charged with peas and small shot. She gave him strict orders should he see any one, to say one, two, three, and then fire. He watched two nights, but the boys were too cunning for him, and still the fruit went. On the third, Mrs. Baines, thinking to catch him napping, went herself into the garden and began to shake the apples down from one of the trees. Some say that the man recognised his mistress, and, vexed at her suspecting him, said one, two, three, as quickly as he could utter the words, and fired; others, that he was sleeping, and awakened by the noise she made, shot her by mistake, exclaiming, “I know-ee, you thief, I do; now I’ll sarve-ee out, I will.” Terrified after he had done the deed, he ran off into the country and there hid himself for some days. The poor old lady was more frightened than hurt, and all the shot were successfully extracted by her doctor; but very soon after this adventure she died. From this time her house and grounds began to have an evil reputation; Mrs. Baines’s ghost, dressed in antiquated garb, a quaint lace cap on her powdered hair, lace ruffles hanging from her sleeves, and a short mode mantle over her shoulders, was often seen walking in the gardens or standing under an apple-tree, leaning on the gold-headed cane she always carried. Indoors, too, her high-heeled shoes were plainly heard night after night tapping on the floors as she paced up and down the rooms, which noise was often varied by the whirring of her spinning-wheel. For some time the house was unoccupied, now it is divided into two, and the ghost has been laid to rest. But long after Mrs. Baines ceased to appear her wheel was heard. At last it was discovered that some leather, which had been nailed around a door to keep out draughts, was loose in places, and that the whistling of the wind through this made the peculiar sound. Mr. Bottrell says “that her spirit was laid by a parson, whose name he thinks was Singleton, and he succeeded in getting her away to the Western Green (west of Penzance), which was then spread over many acres of land, where the waves now roll.9 Here this powerful parson single-handed bound her to spin from the banks, ropes of sand for the term of a thousand years, unless she, before that time, spun a sufficiently long and strong one to reach from St. Michael’s Mount to St. Clement’s Isle (across the bay).” About a stone’s throw from Mrs. Baines’s house, on an eminence above Quay street, stood in her days Penzance Chapel of Ease (for Penzance was then in Madron parish), called our Lady’s or St. Mary’s Chapel. On the same site was built, in 1835, the present parish church of St. Mary’s. Here, in the memory of a few who still survive, a gentleman in the early part of this century did penance, and afterwards walked from thence through the streets to his house, wrapped in a sheet, with a lighted taper in his hand. It was usual then, as now, for the Mayor and Corporation of Penzance, with the mace-bearers and constables, to go once a month in state to church. Before the reading of the first lesson the mace-bearers left, and visited the public-houses, in order to see that they were shut during service time. When the sermon began they came back and returned to their seats in order to be in readiness to escort the Mayor home. Quay street was once the most fashionable part of Penzance, but the large houses are now divided into smaller tenements; in some of them bits of finely-moulded ceilings, &c., still exist. One of the houses reputed to have been haunted was torn down in 1813, when the skeleton of a man was found built into a wall. It was, of course, put down to be the sailor’s whose spirit was so often seen there, and who (tradition said) had been murdered in that house for the sake of his money. It was well known that he had brought back great riches from foreign parts. There is a myth that Sir Walter Raleigh landed at Penzance Quay when he returned from Virginia, and on it smoked the first tobacco ever seen in England, but for this statement I believe there is not the slightest foundation. Several western ports, both in Devon and Cornwall, make the same boast.