At the end of the fifteenth century the Purgatory in Lough Derg was
destroyed by orders of the Pope, on hearing the report of a monk of
Eymstadt in Holland, who had visited it, and had satisfied himself that
there was nothing in it more remarkable than in any ordinary cavern. The
Purgatory was closed on St. Patrick's Day, 1497; but the belief in it
was not so speedily banished from popular superstition. Calderon made it
the subject of one of his dramas; and it became the subject of numerous
popular chap-books in France and Spain, where during last century it
occupied in the religious belief of the people precisely the same
position which is assumed by the marvelous visions of heaven and hell
sold by hawkers in England at the present day.

THE CORNISH WRECKERS

From 'The Vicar of Morwenstow'

When the Rev. R.S. Hawker came to Morwenstow in 1834, he found that he
had much to contend with, not only in the external condition of church
and vicarage, but also in that which is of greater importance....

"The farmers of the parish were simple-hearted and respectable; but the
denizens of the hamlet, after receiving the wages of the harvest time,
eked out a precarious existence in the winter, and watched eagerly and
expectantly for the shipwrecks that were certain to happen, and upon the
plunder of which they surely calculated for the scant provision of their
families. The wrecked goods supplied them with the necessaries of life,
and the rended planks of the dismembered vessel contributed to the
warmth of the hovel hearthstone.

"When Mr. Hawker came to Morwenstow, 'the cruel and covetous natives of
the strand, the wreckers of the seas and rocks for flotsam and jetsam,'
held as an axiom and an injunction to be strictly obeyed:--

"'Save a stranger from the sea,
And he'll turn your enemy!'

"The Morwenstow wreckers allowed a fainting brother to perish in the
sea before their eyes without extending a hand of safety,--nay, more,
for the egotistical canons of a shipwreck, superstitiously obeyed,
permitted and absolved the crime of murder by 'shoving the drowning man
into the sea,' to be swallowed by the waves. Cain! Cain! where is thy
brother? And the wrecker of Morwenstow answered and pleaded in excuse,
as in the case of undiluted brandy after meals, 'It is Cornish custom.'
The illicit spirit of Cornish custom was supplied by the smuggler, and
the gold of the wreck paid him for the cursed abomination of drink.