On that day the tinners pick out
the sleepiest boy in the neighbourhood and send him up to the highest
_bound_ in the works, with instructions to sleep there as long as he
can. And by immemorial usage the length of his nap will be the measure
of the tinners' afternoon siesta for twelve months to come.
Now, this first week in March is St. Piran's week: and St. Piran is
the miners' saint. To him the Cornishmen owe not only their tin, which
he discovered on the spot, but also their divine laziness, which he
brought across from Ireland and naturalised here. And I learned his
story one day from an old miner, as we ate our bread and cheese
together on the floor of Wheal Tregobbin, while the Davy lamp between
us made wavering giants of our shadows on the walls of the adit, and
the sea moaned as it tossed on its bed, two hundred feet above.
* * * * *
St. Piran was a little round man; and in the beginning he dwelt on
the north coast of Ireland, in a leafy mill, past which a stream came
tumbling down to the sea. After turning the saint's mill-wheel, the
stream dived over a fall into the Lough below, and the _lul-ul-ur-r-r_
of the water-wheel and fall was a sleepy music in the saint's ear noon
and night.
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