PERRANZABULOE It is said to have been on the coast here that Trevelyan's horse landed him, when he escaped from the inrush of the sea across Lyonesse. Perranzabidoe (6 m. N.W. of Truro) is really Perran-in-sabulo, and the name has a very true meaning. The parish includes Per- ranporth, on the coast about 2 miles distant — an already popular resort, which, when united by railway to Chacewater, will lose some of that isolation which is now its charm. St. Piran is supposed to have reached this sandy coast of Cornwall some time near the close of the fifth century, arriving on a mill-stone. He is then popularly believed to have founded his cell, the oratory that still remains in much mutilated ruin among the drifting sand-towans of Perran. Tradition is of course wrong — the oratory is at least two centuries later than St. Piran, but it may mark the site of the original cell. Equally wrong is the tradition that Piran was the dis- coverer of tin, for that metal had been worked long before the Christian era ; yet he became the patron of the tinners in Cornwall, and his festival as such has been observed to quite modern times. Accepting the statement that Piran really visited Cornwall, we must believe that the ancient Perranzabuloe oratory was raised about the seventh century, but that it probably received something in the way of restoration before it became buried by the sands. It may have been in the tenth century that it was found necessary to build a second church, a little further inland ; and this church 213
