The eighth of May in Helston is Flora or Furry Day, and is possibly a relic of the old May Day saturnalia. The young people go (_fadgy_) into the country singing:
"_Robin Hood and Little John, They both are gone to the fair, O! And we will away to the merry greenwood And see what they do there, O!_"
They return garlanded with flowers and dance through the houses and gardens of the town, singing the Furry Song. The dance follows a set formula, the procession going in at the front door and out at the back, and being supposed to bestow some sort of benefit upon the houses thus visited. The refrain of the song, to the numerous verses of which topical allusions are often added, is as follows:
"_God bless Aunt Mary Moses[5] With all her power and might, O, And send us peace in Merry England Both by day and night, O._"
Charles Kingsley was at the Helston Grammar School when the headmaster was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the second master was the Johns who wrote "A Week at the Lizard." It is unlikely the scholars were allowed to take part in the Furry Dance, but he may have watched it time and again, and given his schoolboy contribution.
This is a beautiful stretch of fresh water that winds like a river through the forked and wooded valley and widens as it comes within sight of the sea, from which, like the Swan Pool--a smaller lake on the other side of the promontory--it is separated by a bar of sand and shingle. Until recently the Mayor of Helston was wont to present two leathern purses containing three half-pence each to the lord of Penrose and ask leave to cut through the bar and release the surplus waters. The old cutting of the Loe Bar used to tinge the sea with yellow as far as the Scilly Isles. Now, however, the quantity of the water is regulated by sluices and the ceremony has fallen into disuse.
After the more exposed northern and western shores of Cornwall, the airs of the south are balmy. There is no fear, as the farmer put it, that "the bullocks will be blown off the cliff pasture into the sea, the wheat off the land, and the turnips out of their sockets." In the Morrab Gardens at Penzance palms grow in the open, while in Falmouth strange spiky, spiney plants, whose home is in desert sands far south of Britain, are to be seen. But the Meneage (stone), as the Lizard district is called, though mild, is exhilarating, and on Goonhilly Downs the wind can be sufficiently keen. This district is of a peculiar geological structure, consisting of a moderately elevated tableland, deeply carved at the edges by valleys and richly wooded except at the southern extremity. The rocks are generally dark-coloured and of fine grain, and everywhere they are worn by the action of the water into fantastic and beautiful forms. They are well known all the world over as serpentine, and it gives the traveller a strange feeling to see the valuable rock being used as building material and even for the repair of roads. A considerable trade is done in polishing this stone, especially at the Lizard, and the very sands are dark with the detritus. It causes a sensation of vast wealth to go on to the beaches and from the scattered millions select your own pebbles for the polisher. The more red in your chosen fragments, the more iron, and the harder they will be to polish; while a handsome piece of entirely red ore may be altogether beyond their powers, for serpentine is a rock not a pebble, and the local appliances are crude. The Lizard is also the paradise of the botanist, for the Cornish heath (_erica vagans_), the sea asparagus, the henbane, and many other plants grow abundantly in this district. From Helston to the Lizard is a pleasant scrambling walk along the fine black cliffs. At Gunwalloe the church rises from the edge of the cliff, its belfry being built into the solid rock about 14 ft. away. In Mullion Church is some admirable wood-carving, and on the west face of the tower a well-cut crucifixion, and at Kynance are some curious rocks known as "The Bellows" and "The Post Office," which are as interesting to the geologist as they are wonderful to the ordinary visitor.