south-west for a distance of three hundred and fifty to four hundred feet, this field is entirely occupied by very considerable tin-streamers' burrows, great mounds of boulders and stone thrown up in the search for tin. At the foot of the burrows there are the ruins of two buildings, both resembling in structure and size the average blowing-house. Only one of these ruins is indicated in the Ordnance Map. No mould or mortar stones have been found, but a thorough search would involve clearing the buildings of fallen stone. A large piece of slag, weighing several pounds, was discovered this present year near the ruins, and on being broken disclosed numerous "prills" or beads of metallic tin, providing conclusive evidence of smelting. There is also a third building in the same field, probably connected with the tin workings, but doubtfully a blowing-house.

WILL OF A DARTMOOR TINNER.

1631, April 27. The Nuncupative Will of Frauncys Worth, of Walkhampton, was proved in the Court of the Archdeacon of Totnes, by Elnor Worth, daughter, executrix and residuary legatee.

The testator gave to his son Ellize and his daughter Nicholl, wife of Walter Saunder, ten shillings each-to his daughter Temperance, wife of Henry Hingston, and to his daughter Elizabeth Worth, twenty shillings each.

Witness John Warren.

Inventory by John Warren and Nathanaell Gee or Geer, 4 Feb., 1630-31, £10 ls. 8d., which included "His Tinners Tooles with other Iron Worke 3s. 4d.

Plym above Langcombe, blowing-house

Will, mouldstone

Redlake, old workings

lon. 3° 56′ 54" lat. 50° 27' 27"

lon. 4° 2′ 58′′

lon. 4° 2′ 34"

lat. 50° 29′ 2′′ lat. 50° 29′ 2′′

lon. 4° 1′ 45′′ lat. 50° 27′ 49′′

lon. 4° 1' 46" lat. 50° 28' 5"

lon. 3° 54′ 33′′ lat. 50° 28′ 9′′

Yellowmead, Sheepstor. lon. 4° 0' 37" lat. 50° 29′ 25′′

ST. URITH OF CHITTLEHAMPTON: A STUDY IN

AN OBSCURE DEVON SAINT.

BY REV. J. F. CHANTER, M.A., F.S.A.

(Read at Tavistock, 22nd July, 1914.)

In his presidential address at our Jubilee Meeting, Lord St. Cyres gave us a Devonian Common of Saints, and he added that there were many who deserved their proper offices, most of whom had received appropriate commemoration. Yes, of our Devon heroes, artists, philosophers, and writers much has been said, as the Transactions of our Society bear witness. But of our saints, save for Dr. Brownlow's accounts of St. Boniface and his companions, Devonians only by the accident of birth, how little. So I would attempt to give a proper for a Devonshire Saint, now obscure and quite unknown, yet one whose name takes us back to Devon's remotest past, even to its prehistoric age, whose cult was one of the most popular in the county through mediæval times, and even in the seventeenth century, when Risdon and Westcote were writing, the North Devon villagers still talked of her miracles and of the pilgrims who had flocked to lay their offerings at her shrine, above which our forefathers have reared one of the most stately and beautiful of all our North Devon churches.

To the present age St. Urith is all unknown, her legend and period quite forgotten, sex and even the true form of her name quite obscured. For modern Devon speaks of St. Hieritha, never of St. Urith, and modern writers on English hagiology, such as Miss Arnold Foster in her Studies in Church Dedications and Stanton in his English Menology, have turned her into a man, by identifying her with St. Herygh, St. Ercus, and St. Erth, and even Mr. Edmund Bishop, the deepest read of modern English hagiologists, in his MSS. (now in the British Museum) places her name in a list of saints of whom no day is known.

and no information can be gathered. So be it my task to attempt to restore to her place in the minds of Devon folk a Saint who in birth, life, and death is all our own, to give a date and day, and, to use the old liturgical term, a proper for the feast of St. Urith of Chittlehampton, Virgin and Martyr.

Saint-lore may seem, perchance, to many a useless study, a mere record of absurd tales and fabulous miracles, but to those who have embarked on it, is ever a most fascinating subject, for not only does it rekindle for us the life, religion, and romance of the earlier Christian ages in our land, but it also brings us to the threshold of the religious beliefs of our forefathers in a still remoter past. All pre-Christian religion in our country consisted of two main elements: one a system of nature-worship with departmental gods, of whom the sun, weather, fire, and water were the chief, the other a system of magic or druidism, as they called it. Of these, the former was a development of the religion the Kelts brought with them from the old home of the Aryans, the latter was the religion of the Ivernians, whom they found occupying the land they invaded and whom they largely absorbed. And all literature shows that the latter was the more permanent, and in Devon it has never died out; as that acute observer, R. J. King, said: "Every form of superstition and superstitious observance condemned in the Penitential of Bishop Bartholomew in the twelfth century may still be found in Devon." And again he writes: "A long string of superstitions remain and are as vigorous and lifelike at present as in the time when King Athelstan, in the midst of his Witan at Exeter, set forth his dooms against the evil practices of witches and warlocks." The old wild creeds have been handed down from generation to generation, and form the basis of our folklore, which we appoint committees to enquire into and record. The impact with Christianity shattered the old faiths, but many of their fragments have floated down the stream of time and recombined in curious figures around the persons of Christian saints and heroes.

We find over and over again in the lives of our saints miracles which are solar in origin. We see it still in lamps that are kept perpetually burning, in fires lit at Easter. It has a Christian complexion, but its heathen origin is

1 Art Standard, August 17th, 1876.

2 Sketches and Studies, p. 324.

undoubted. We see it again in the idea, so widely diffused in folk-lore, of animals friendly to men. There is scarcely one of our Westcountry saints but has his own particular animal friend which assists him in all his difficulties. St. Brannock had his milk-white cow, which gave milk to every one that required it. However frequently it was required to be milked, it was never deficient, and everybody who drank of her milk was healed of their particular complaints; from fools they became wise, from sad, happy, from wicked, good. So too he had his stags to draw the timber for his church and his pig to point out the right spot. St. Petrock had his faithful wolf that watched over his belongings.

It is clear that the idea underlying these stories goes back to a time when it seemed natural that an animal should have a human understanding and enter into men's thoughts. Trees and flowers too form part of the lives of most of our saints. St. Brannock has his miraculous tree that bore loaves of bread; St. Juthwara has her wonderful tree. So too the cult of the water deity is seen in the miraculous fountains associated with our saints. Wherever their heads fall a spring gushes out; it is told of St. Nectan, St. Sidwell, St. Juthwara, and St. Urith, which brings me back to my story, from which I have somewhat digressed.

First, let me give all the statements we have of St. Urith in Devonshire writers or those who have written of Devon :

Risdon (1580-1640)." This parish (i.e. Chittlehampton) is graced with a fair church and stately tower, and in times past hath been notable for that Hieritha (born at Hoforde,1 Com. Devon), canonized a saint, was here interred, unto whose memory the church was dedicated, and she esteemed to be of such sanctity that you may read of many miracles ascribed to her holiness in his book that penned her life."2

66

The Hamlet of Stowford . . . in this place was Hieritha, the patroness of Chittlehampton, born, who as the legend of her life makes mention, suffered the next year after Thomas à Becket, in the reign of Henry the Second, in which history the name of her parents are set down."3 I have found these words in Parker's Calendar of the Anglican Church, Murray's and other guide-books ascribed

1 A misreading of Stowford in Swimbridge parish.

2 Risdon, pp. 319, 320. Ed. 1811. 3 Risdon, pp. 323, 324.