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erlin appeared in his path. The magician raised his hand and summoned the elements to his aid. The earth began to heave and the rocks to split; waters came rushing into immense fissures and yawning chasms. Mordred and his men turned back horror-stricken, attempting to flee from this upheaval of nature; but the ocean was too quick for them. Where there had been smiling acres of pasture and tillage, valley and moorland, waves were now seething and foaming; there was no refuge to the east or to the west; the breakers overtook them on all sides. But while they were thus overwhelmed in the ruin of Lyonesse, the followers of Arthur stood on land that had been spared. This far-west cluster of hill-summits had been changed into a group of islets; and in this home of refuge that was miraculously left to them, the fugitives settled into peaceful residence, building houses and churches. Such, the story says, is the ancestry of the Scillonians. All this belongs to the region of romance; history knows nothing of it. Even the name of Scilly is a puzzle, though perhaps the best authorities think that it derives from the widespread tribe of the Silures. Strictly speaking, the name Scilly only attaches to one small islet lying off Bryher, but somehow it has affixed itself to the whole group. Many derive it from _silya_ or _selli_, meaning conger-eels, a favourite Cornish dish; others suggest the Celtic _sulleh_, or "sun-rocks," denoting the old sun-worship. It is interesting to note that there is a Sully isle lying off Glamorgan, south of Cardiff, and there may have been some connection between the two names, for Scilly was sometimes spelt Sully; there is also a Scilly in Ireland. The Romans usually called the islands _Sillinae_, but Sulpicius Severus used the form _Sylinancis_, which Sir John Rhys associates with the _Silulanus_ of an inscribed stone at Lydney. Another name was _Silura_; Richard of Cirencester wrote of the _Sygdilles_, "also denominated the Oestromenides and Cassiterides"; the Danes spoke of the _Syllingar_; and in French charts the isles are "_les Sorlingues_." The whole question is very difficult, and this is hardly the place in which to discuss it. It is almost certain that the isles cannot have been the Cassiterides, or tin-islands; they present only slight traces of tin-working, and it is far from likely that the tin-workers of Cornwall would have shipped their metal to this isolated spot in order to find a mark
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