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Piran, the patron saint of tinners, would hardly have called down such a curse, though he might have done so if greatly provoked. But if not metalliferous, much of the parish is exceptionally fertile and verdant, in contrast to the barrenness of the Goonhilly Downs.
In one place is the intervening cleft called Gue Graze, which may be scrambled across or skirted, leading to the precipice that rises above the cavernous Pigeon Hugo; this cave can only be approached from the water, and then very rarely. Fields of buttercups and clover come near to the shore, but inland lies the moorland waste of Pradanack and Goonhilly Downs.
She had crossed the Goonhilly Downs where the moonlight, spreading far and wide with vast unearthly brightness, filled all the vision with immensities of space and brought memories of strains from Schubert's symphonies, silver monotonies of never-ending sound.
Kevern, one of the guardian saints of the Lizard, are both giants; and Cornishmen a few years since would tell how St. Just came from his hermitage by Cape Cornwall to visit St. Kevern in his cave on the east side of Goonhilly Downs; and how they took the Holy Communion together; and how St. Just, tempted by the beauty of St.
From heights, where the car seemed to poise like a bird in mid-air, one saw the tranquil blue of the sea. The woods were veiled in young green and the hedges thickly starred with blackthorn. Over the great Goonhilly Downs a silvery sheen trembled with impalpable colour and the gorse everywhere was breaking into gold. It was a day of azure, illimitable distances; of exultation and delight.
The breed seems now to be extinct, though there are doubtless living descendants; and Goonhilly remains an almost treeless table-land, broken by streamlets where it meets the sea.
Leland speaks of "a wyld moor, called Gunhilly, wher ys brood of catyle"; perhaps the cattle were the once-famous Goonhilly nags referred to by Norden.
There are traditions of buried treasure here, as well as of wrecked dollars; and in both cases much time and money have been spent by treasure-seekers. It is possible that the Goonhilly Downs, which occupy the high-lying and barren interior of this Lizard district, really embody a corruption of the name of Gunwalloe, though the name is generally explained as meaning "hunting down."
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