Contents
WILLIAM
BOTTRELL
(Old
Celt)
His
Life and Stories.
By
George Pritchard (c)
Whilst
researching my wives family, (the Vingoe's of Penwith in Cornwall) I came across
the name of William Bottrell whose grandmother on his mother's side was a
Margaret Vingoe. I knew that Bottrell was famous as a recorder of Folk-tales and
decided to see if I could trace any of his works.
I
visited the Cornish Studies Library in Clinton Road Redruth where Terry Knight,
the head librarian, pointed me in
the direction of copies of the three volumes that Bottrell had produced.
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, (series one) published in
1870, Series Two with the same title, published in 1873, and the third volume,
which was published in 1880. Bottrell had changed the title of this last volume
to Stories and Folk-lore of West Cornwall.
As I read through the first volume, it became obvious that William Bottrell was
not merely a scientific recorder of folklore, but had himself been brought up
in an atmosphere of chimney-corner tale telling which he was able to carry onto
the written page. His narrative has a leisurely rambling style, so that by the
time his tales are finished you feel that he has not only told you most of the
traditions, beliefs and practices of the country folk of West Cornwall in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but you have travelled back in time
to a Cornwall before railways, an intensely Cornish Cornwall, in which you see
the people themselves in their daily life and habit, and hear the Celtic rise
and fall of their voices as they utter words and phrases which are rarely heard
today. You have travelled down a narrow, winding lane of high moorstone hedges,
topped with many an obscuring furze-bush and bramble, through which, with a
glance over every gap and an excursion over every stile, he has taken you into
this magic country. There are times that the going is rough, even that the guide
himself become tedious; but no one who has read his tales doubts that William
Bottrell knew Cornwall and its people.
I wanted to know more about William Bottrell the storyteller and turned to the
local newspapers for information. For a man who became so well known towards the
end of his life there is very little in the way of records.
William was born at Raftra (or Raughtra) in St. Levan, within a couple of miles
or so of the Land's End, on the 7th of March 1816. He was the son of William
Vingoe Bottrell and Margaret (nee Bosence). On
his fathers side William can is descended from the Bottrell’s and Vingoe’s
Both of these are ancient Cornish lines with
the Bottrell family tracing its line back from Edward de Bottreaux ,
whose son Sir William des Bottreaux
built Bottreaux Castle in what is now known as Boscastle in Cornwall in c1086.
Whilst the Vingoe’s have held lands in the Lands-End district since time
immemorial. The same applied on his mothers side with both the Bosence and the
Andrew family being able to trace their roots in Cornwall back generations.
William’s
father was also born at Raftra
being baptised at Sennen in 1790. He was the son of Richard Bottrell, of Raftra,
St. Levan, and Mary Vingoe, the daughter of
Richard Vingoe and Mary (nee Penberthy) of
Trevilley estate Sennen. who were married at Sennen, 2 Aug.1788.
Williams father was a Yeoman Farmer of some means, so the first few years of
William's life were spent on the family farm at Raftra. It was in these
surroundings that he heard his first stories while sitting by the fire in the
kitchen with his Grandparents, Mary and Richard Bottrell. His Grandma told him
how as a young girl her own mother had died, and how she had been sent to live
with an aunt and uncle at Alverton in Penzance and had befriended Edward Pellew
(Admiral Lord Exmouth} as a young boy. Bottrell later went on to tell this story
in volume three of his Folktales. Grandma Mary had a great influence on young
William. She would take him for walks over the fields and cliffs around the
Lands End telling him stories that had been handed down from generation to
generation of Vingoe's for hundreds of years. Stories that later became the
basis of the three volumes.
William
was an only child so his parents were able to give him what was for those times
a good education. This more formal education was started at Penzance Grammar
School under William Purchase, who was the English master there, and under
Nicholas Bice Julyan until 1831, when he was sent to Bodmin School, then under
the headmastership of Leonard James Boor. William gained a love for the classics
and mathematics, which stayed with him for the rest of his life. He left Bodmin
School in 1837 and little is known of his life between 1837 and 1851 other than
like so many of his fellow Cornishmen and women he travelled the world. About
1837 he visited France and went on to invest heavily in land in the Basque area
of Spain. Later in his life he used to speak of his love for his Spanish garden
with its herbs, fruit and flowers. He also collected local Basque folk tales but
this idyllic life came to an end when his land was confiscated and given to the
Catholic Church and Bottrell returned to Cornwall a ruined man.
Within months he was on the move again, this time to Canada where he had
obtained a position as English Teacher in a College in Quebec (1847-1851). He
became unsettled with academic life and left for the forests of the interior
where he worked for a short time as an overseer for a timber
company, returning to Penzance, in 1852 where he lived at No. 4, Clare
Street.
At some stage he married and took his wife to live in Australia where she
unfortunately died. This was a black time in his life, which he refused to
discuss with anyone, but would dismiss it with the words "I lost my love
and my money so came home."
On his return from Australia he lived the life of a recluse at Hawke's Point
Lelant. A friend of his later wrote:” Here he lived in a hovel and cultivated
a little moorland, He had a black cat called "Spriggans" plus a cow
and pony. These animals would all follow him down the almost perpendicular
cliff, over a goats path, to the spring which was their water supply and no
accidents happened to either." His friend went on to tell how Bottrell
became a friend of the tinners who worked in near-by mines. They would do a days
work underground then think nothing of spending a couple of hours helping
Bottrell clear ground in order that he could create a garden. It was from these
men that Bottrell learned more of the ancient tales of west Cornwall. As they
sat by the fire in the cottage which he had made his home, one of the number
would tell a tale whilst William drew a sketch of the man. Bottrell always
acknowledged the debt he owed to these men, he said of them "they have
intelligence, mother-wit and memories and I am able to garner from the ample
harvest."
The advent of radio and the subsequent loss of the wondering story tellers meant
the if it had not been for the work which William did most of the stories which
make up the volumes of not only Bottrell's own work but also a large part of the
two volumes produced by Robert Hunt would have been lost.
Much of his work, was utilised by Hunt in his two-volume Popular
Romances of the West of England, first printed in 1865, of which upward of 50
"drolls were communicated to him by Bottrell, a help which Hunt did not
acknowledge and which caused
Bottrell to be both upset and annoyed. As a result the editor of the
"Cornish Telegraph" suggested to Bottrell that he should write and
publish the stories himself. Bottrell took the advice and his first appearance
in print was in the columns of The Cornish Telegraph of 1867, in which he gave
an account of "The Penzance of our Grandfathers." Which was reprinted
in volume one of his subsequent books. Many
articles of his appeared subsequently in this paper and in "One and
All", a particularly interesting and now rare periodical. In 1873 he
contributed to another magazine which has become a collectors item, the
"Reliquary". Of all these various articles the best were gathered
together and published in three volumes and life began to improve for William
and he moved into St Ives. Before the completion of his last volume, however, he
suffered a stroke and was paralyzed. Following his stroke he was able to speak
and although bed bound for almost a year he dictated his regular column to the
newspaper.
A
further stroke in May 1881 led to six weeks of suffering before he died at 10am
on the 27 August of that year at Dove St. St. lves. He was buried in the
churchyard he loved the most, St. Levan amongst his ancestors.
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If
you would like to purchase a C.D. and hear some of William's stories told in a
West Cornwall accent then follow this LINK.
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Last modified: Thursday January 06, 2005
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