This verse occurs : "The three septs of Tuellin without blemish, In a fragment of historical manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin, known as The Yellow Book of Lecain, it is said that Erca, monarch of Erin, being captivated by a banshee, drove his queen, her children and friends out of the palace of Cleitech, on the Boyne. So they fled to St. Caernech, who took them under his protection, and thereupon he cursed the palace; but when the queen and her friends departed to their own country, he gave them his blessing, and appointed three insignias for their war standards. One of these was the famous Cathack or Book of Battles, containing a copy of the Psalms, written out by St. Columba. This relic was afterwards encased in a silver shrine, and carried to battle, so late as 1497, by the O'Donnells to insure their victory. The history of this curious and valuable memorial has been brought down to our own day, as it remained in the possession of the O'Donnells; but in the last century, one Daniel O' Donnell gave it in charge to a monastery in Belgium, for safety, with instructions to keep it till claimed by a true descendant of the O'Donnell's house. In 1816, an Irish lady when travelling abroad, by chance discovered it, and reported the fact to Sir Neal O'Donnell, the recognised chief of the clan, who sought and obtained the relic, and whose son, Sir R. O'Donnell placed it for exhibition (1874) in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. The silver shrine bears several dates and inscriptions, and has at various times been enriched with ornamenttation. Within is the document, containing fifty-eight leaves of fine vellum written over on both sides with very ancient characters, and some rough attempts at illumination. Some leaves are gone, and the latter part of the Psalter from the 106th Psalm. There is an epistle written by St. Patrick, still extant, addressed to the soldiers of a chieftain called Carocticus, who was nominally a Christian; but, landing on the shores of Ireland at the head of a piratical horde of followers, he committed many outrages, and carried off numbers of the baptised, and sold them as slaves. It is supposed that this was St. Carantoc's father, whose country, in his old age, was overrun by hordes of the Irish, in fierce retribution for the wrongs he had inflicted on their forefathers, and the knowledge of which may have induced the saint to refrain from a conflict on behalf of his father and country. Concerning St. Carantoc's after-career, we are told that he obtained a grant of land from King Arthur, near Guillot, and then built a church called Caerum, or Carrow. The church was, no doubt, that of which Leland speaks in his Lives of Cambro-British Saints, and says: "Karantocus constructed an Oratory in a place called Guereth Karantocus, and it occupied the spot where the parish church now stands. There the saintly old man spent the evening of his days, planting the Church of Christ amongst the Britons on the Cornish coast; and we may be sure, from what we know of his previous history, that he took a prominent part in that great work, and deserved the place he now holds as a canonised saint". Setting aside legendary lore, which, as in other cases, is found to be but the embellishment of historic facts with which the poetic or religious fancy of a superstitious age adorned the lives of saints and martyrs, we may take it as proven that a holy man known as Saint Carantoc (or, as latinised, "Quarantoc") was living in the sixth century; that he dwelt for a time on the very spot where the present church now bears his name; and that here he first founded a religious cell, the nucleus of a flourishing collegiate church, which, in the time of Edward the Confessor was well endowed, and remained so through the centuries until the general dissolution, when it was despoiled, and the community dispersed, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. That there were secular canons at St. Carantoc in King Edward the Confessor's time is proved in the Exeter Domesday (Fol. 189); the canons being therein said to hold "a manor called Langarroc, the same which the Saint Karantocus held; on the day King Edward died". ("Terra Sancti Carantochi Canonici Sancti Carantochi habent unam mansionem quæ vocatur Langaroc quam tenuit idem Sanctus eà die quà rex Edwardus fuit vivus et mortuus".) In this connection I will quote the account given by Bale, who, although not always a veracious chronicler, is in this instance confirmed by reliable statements of other authorities, and who writes to this effect : "This collegiate church (St. Carantoc) had great revenues belonging to it, since it is rated in the Pope's Annat (Domesday) higher than any other church in Cornwall. The nine prebends extant in the church were thus rated. They were John de Woolrington, John de Cottelyn, Nicholas Strange, John de Ingham, Ralph de Trethewick, David de Monton, William de Pateford, John Lovell, John de Glasney. The rates in all were £19 3s. 4d. The first endowed college in England (or Europe, as Camden saith), was Balliol College in Oxford (1260); next, Merton College (1274); and yet he contradicts himself, and tells us that there was a college of priests at Launceston, or St. Stephens, before the Norman Conquest; another at St. Germans, founded by King Canutus, A.D. 1002, as our chronologers tell us-and as sure I am, there was another at St. Neots long before; also another at Burgan, A.D. 930; and, to speak uprightly, this college of Crantock may pretend to as much antiquity as any college in Oxford, since it appears to have had great revenues at the time of the inquisition before-mentioned, viz. in 1294, though it had been so unfortunate as not to have been so long-lived, by reason of the great quantities of sea-sand blown up from the Gannell Creek by the wind (as Hollingshead saith), the place where it stood is now scarce discernable-only a consecrated arched well bears the name of St. Ambrose's Well, contiguous therewith. The vicarage church of Crantock is commonly called Lan-Guerra, or Lun-Gorra : that is to say, the Bay Temple or church, and is suitable also to its name, situate upon a large meadow of very rich land, containing about three acres, where, by ancient custom, the vicar's cattle depasture over the dead bodies interred there. "The manors of Cargall and Ryalton being given over by our Earls of Cornwall before the Norman Conquest to the Bishop of Badman, or Cornwall, or prior thereof, some of them were founders and endowers of this college of Crantock out of the lands and revenues thereof."1 As to St. Ambrose's Well above mentioned, I may remark that I have learned with regret that it has now (1898) totally disappeared; although the site was known some years ago, as several old people in the neighbourhood say they remember drawing water from that well in their youth, but had not intelligence or interest enough to be able to say exactly where it was. No traces of it can now be found; and it seems probable that a shed, now used as a pigstye, covers the site of the once holy well, scene of many a prayer and pilgrimage in the days of faith in the efficacy of its healing waters. There is in the vicinity another holy well, in Perran Bay, a very beautiful spot, in former times visited on Ascension Day, which was celebrated for the blessing received by those who went there on that holy day. The cavern is worth a pilgrimage even now, for the sake of the beautiful effect of colouring when the sun shines in upon the lime-coated rocks on a late summer's afternoon.2 It is, however, time to revert to the church, which I have digressed from; and I may first quote the words of a very ancient village worthy, who remarked to a visitor : "Iss, shure, ee es an ould church. Brave an' old, ee es. They do saay as ther was but two or thray left after the Flood, an' thes es wan of 'em." The gray old church stands on a bleak hillside, overlooking Lan-Carrow, with its background of blue sea. Through the old lych-gate, and the sloping graveyard 1 The site of the College was near St. Ambrose Well. Certain cottages always bore the name of the College Houses: and in the next meadow, by tradition called the College Cemetery, stone graves containing human remains have been found. 2 Perran Cross is still standing, and is a fine specimen, but I have been unable to procure a description or photo. of it. dotted with ancient tombstones, the path leads upwards to the quaint and somewhat rudely-designed edifice. As to the exterior, its rugged outlines give it an appearance of even greater age than its present walls can boast. There is the south porch, with this inscription : "Ego sum janua per me qui intrabit servabitur." This and the tower up to the belfry are Early English. The foundation of the church is certainly very ancient, dating as far back at least as Saxon times, though only in the buttresses and the bases of Norman piers on each side of The the chancel arch can the earliest part of the present building be seen; and they indicate that the present transept arches have replaced much earlier ones. choir arches and aisles bear traces of great age, but were apparently remodelled in the fourteenth century, and perhaps later. The windows of the nave and part of the walls are fifteenth-century work, probably dating from the restoration after the fall of the belfry, which occurred in the year 1412, when it sunk upon the nave and reduced it to ruins. According to Stafford's Register (vol. i, fo. 163), the bishop, on the 11th of August in that |