A Book of Cornwall by S. Baring-Gould

Author:S. Baring-Gould [Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII.

THE TWO LOOES

East Looe--Church--Narrow and picturesque streets--A fair--A strolling company--West Looe--Looe Island--The Fyns--Smuggling--The East Looe river--Duloe--S. Keyne's Well--Liskeard--Menheniot--The West Looe river--Trelawne--The Trelawny ballad--Polperro--Privateers--Robert Jeffrey--Tom Potter--Lanreath.

East and West Looe, separated by a tidal stream, the Looe (the same as Liffey from Welsh llifo to flow, llif a flood [16] ), and united by a long bridge, at one time returned four members to Parliament.

East Looe is the more considerable place of the two, and possesses a new and respectable Guildhall, and some quaint old houses and an ancient picturesque market-house. The church is modern and poor of its kind--one of those structures that do not convey an idea to the mind of either beauty or of ugliness, but are mediocre in conception and execution. It occupies the site of an earlier church dedicated to S. Keyne, but it is now dedicated to S. Anne, who formerly had a chapel on the bridge.

The streets are narrow and full of quaint bits. As I first saw Looe it struck me as one of the oddest old-world places in England. A man had been there selling paper flags and coloured streamers also of paper, and the children in the narrow alleys were fluttering these, and had hung them from the windows, and were dancing with coloured paper caps on their heads or harlequin sashes about their bodies, whilst an Italian organ-grinder played to them. From the narrow casements leaned their mothers, watching, laughing, and encouraging the dancers. A little way back was a booth theatre, hardly up to the level of that of Mr. Vincent Crummel's, enclosed in dingy green canvas. Reserved seats, 6 d. ; back seats, 3 d. and 1 d. The répertoire comprised blood-curdling tragedies. I went in and saw "The Midnight Assassin; or, The Dumb Witness."

Next evening was to be given "The Vampire's Feast; or, The Rifled Tomb." The tragedy was followed by Allingham's play, "Fortune's Frolick" (1799), adapted to the narrow capacities of the company. It was performed in broad Cornish, and interspersed with some rather good and, I fancy, original songs. But surely nowhere else but at Looe could such a reminiscence of the old strolling company-show of fifty or sixty years ago be seen.

But this is not all. A stranger having seen something I wrote about puppet-shows in a paper, wherein I said that the last I had sat through was sixty years ago, wrote to me:--

"At West Looe, far more recently, at the annual fair, which commences on the 6th May, I saw a show in which the figures were all moved by strings manipulated from above. I regret that I am unable to remember the subject of the play, but the droll antics of the puppets, the rapidity of their movements, and the cleverness of the whole thing, remains distinctly impressed on my mind."

I believe that venerable amusements we old folks saw in our childhood are "resurrected" at West Looe at that 6th May fair. Therefore, if you want to see funny things, go there.

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