En Cornoualle n’a parroise Ou la novele n’en angoise Que, qui porroit Tristan trover Qu’il en feïst le cri lever.
Ogrin, as a man of sense, advises the Queen to return home, and himself undertakes the delicate task of reconciling the lovers to King Mark.
Throughout the narrative he is represented as a man of God. It does not seem to have occurred to the romancer that there is something slightly incongruous in selecting a hermit for a shopping expedition to the market of St. Michael’s Mount, where, for the fair Iseult:
Assés achate ver et gris Dras de soie et de porpre bis, Escarlates et blanc chainsil, Asez plus blanc que flor de lil, Et palefroi souef amblant Bien atorné d’or flanboiant.
The hermit, as a man of affairs, may have been familiar to those for whose ears the romance was intended. It is difficult, otherwise, to assign a reason why the writer exaggerated his character beyond the bounds of recognition. The position which the hermit occupied in the popular estimation, august as it undoubtedly was, was not more exalted than that which was voluntarily conceded to him by those who were highly placed. To this fact must doubtless be attributed the more or less successful attempts to perpetuate the office when its occupant was removed by death. It is therefore possible that in the hermit of Colemanshegg, mentioned in a Roll of 1258, we have a reference to one of Ogrin’s successors.[101] Of this latter personage we know nothing save that Richard hermit of Colemanshegg received 50s. yearly to find a chaplain to celebrate divine service for the soul of Catherine the King’s daughter.
But for this mention of Richard of Colemanshegg the earliest notice of a Cornish hermit after the Norman Conquest would have been that contained in the Assize Roll of the 30th year of Edward I (1301-1302) in which it is recorded that _Thomas de Penmargh noctanter intravit domum Andreae Paugan heremitae infra capellam Divi Justi et eum occidit. Johannes filius Andreae heremitae primus invenitor_. The entry is under the heading of the hundred of Penwith. Penmargh is doubtless Penmarth in Wendron. Pagan, of which Paugan may be a variant, is not uncommon as a personal name in early records. We are not told why Thomas of Penmargh killed Andrew, or how long it was before John discovered the dead body of his father, but it looks as if Andrew had been seen alive the day before his death and found dead by his son the day after. Where was the hermitage? It is described as below the chapel of St. Just, but St. Just was not a chapel (_capella_). It was a church (_ecclesia_), and the terms are never used indiscriminately. If it be allowable to render the passage “below a chapel of St. Just,” that is, below a chapel in the parish of St. Just, the record is very significant.