Innocent Reflections (17/2021) - I met a traveller from an antique land,
Dear Friends,
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
So goes the poem Ozymadias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
The other day I was on a walk around a section of Bodmin Moor - the granite outcrop in the middle of Cornwall where the Fowey springs up and runs down to the sea. We started at Bury Castle, an iron age hill fort which, from its ramparts, commands the surrounding country. You can see right down into the Fowey valley, a glimpse of blue shows the distant sea, and gaze over to the Alp-like peaks of old China Clay tips to the South West. Who built the fort, and for what purpose, remains a mystery lost in time, although such remains populate the Cornish countryside. This one is particularly impressive, with an almost unbroken circle of banks and ditches rising over 4 meters above the ground.
From there, we continued onto the open moor, until we reached the abandoned works of the Glynn Valley China Clay pit - open until the early 20th Century. I crawled through an old chimney, lying on its side among the scattered stones of the moor, the black soot still marking the inside. Past the tip, the old pit is now flooded, providing some welcome relief from the sunshine as I swam around what is now an extensive, deep lake, looking at the ruins of the buildings as I swam through the copper red weeds out into the middle of the lake and the open water.
From there we skirted the red and white bollards marking the extent of the rifle range where the army have practised shooting since at least the second world war. We could hear the sound of distant gunfire and the red flags flying, telling us not to venture any further.
Just by the A30, with the cars rushing by on the dual carriageway, I swam in another China Clay pit - this one with only a few old earthworks to suggest it is anything other than a moorland tarn. The sun warmed up the water beautifully.
We headed for St Bellarmin's Tor, the way marked by an ancient stone row. Stone Rows are long lines of megalithic standing stones. This one is 380 meters long, with at least 11 standing stones. Although some are now fallen, the ones which remain stand tall above the landscape. Their ritual purpose is a mystery, but they can be found on moors and uplands throughout the Celtic world.
St Bellarmin's tor, a rocky outcrop of granite, is named after St Bartholomew, the original dedication corrupted over time. In the scattered scree of the downward slope it's possible to make out the outline of a medieval chapel, by a Holy Well now lost.
Over the hill and back to the car, the tower of St Meubred's Church protruded from the lowlands beneath us: the church where I was baptised and confirmed, and had gone to Communion that morning. It's origins were probably the oratory of St Meubred, the small cell where Meubred, a Welsh or Irish missionary or hermit, lived and prayed. We know little about his life, except that in a window of nearby St Neot's Church he is depicted holding his head, so we assume he was martyred. Over time a cult developed around him and people were buried around the oratory. In the churchyard there are two ancient Cornish crosses, one marking the burial of some ancient chieftain. The oratory became a church, and the present one was built in the 1500s. As I looked on the tower it struck me that of all the ancient and mysterious monuments I had passed, this was the one still used for something like its original purpose. We can imagine St Meubred saying Mass in his oratory in the 6th century in a way not entirely dissimilar to the celebration I had attended that morning, and we believe that Christ was present in the bread and wine then as now. And in some kind of answer to Shelley's poem, the great subversive hymn of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Magnificat, has been sung there for well over a thousand years:
- For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
- And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations.
- He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
- He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.
- He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.
With love and prayers,
Fr Ben
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