Canon Diggens Archive
Ancient Customs etc.Ancient Customs. C.S. Gilbert.
The Sector of St. Keverne by ancient usage and prescription claims a right (which is always admitted) of sending a horse into a certain field in the parish of Landewednack, whenever it is cropped with corn, and taking away as many sheaves as the horse can carry on his back.
Tenancy
Several tenants in St. Keverne hold their Lands for a period of 99 years, determinable on the decease of the longest liver of three lives, named by the taker, who paid the Landlord an immediate fine, calculated to fourteen years value. On the death of the first of the three lives it was usual to add a new one in his room to the two remaining,
The renewal fine generally amounted to three years value for one life, and seven years value for two lives, without any alteration in the conventionary reserved in the original Lease
Clotted Cream
(Fires. Drink. Beds. Ballad. Nick-Names)
Some Antiquaries affirm that the Phoenicians introduced clotted cream when they came to Cornwall for tin, and quote the authority of modern travellers who say that the same kind of clotted cream is now very common in Syria, One very ancient writer questions if the butter placed before the Angels was this very cream. Genesis 19 chapter 8 verse.
The Cornish complained that "it was not neighbourly of Devonshire to steal her cream, and call it Devonshire cream when ail the world knew the trick was caught from the Phoenicians who brought it into Cornwall". Not even the Devonshire Association has ventured to claim that the Ships of Tyre and Sidon brought their scald pans up the Dart or up the Tamar.
