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