ich covered it. The legend said that the patron
saint, St. Piran, was buried under the altar, and that close by the
little church was a cell in which he lived and died. This was enough. I
got men, and set to work to dig it up. After some days' labour we came
to the floor, where we discovered the stone seats, and on the plaster of
the wall the greasy marks of the heads and shoulders of persons who had
sat there many centuries ago. We found the chancel step, and also the
altar tomb (which was built east and west, not north and south). It was
fallen, but enough remained to show the original shape and height of it.

I put a notice in the newspapers, inviting people to come and see the
old church which had been buried for fifteen hundred years. In the
presence of many visitors, clerical and lay, we removed the stones of
the altar, and found the skeleton of St. Piran, which was identified in
three ways. The legend said that he was a man seven feet high; the
skeleton measured six feet from the shoulder-bones to the heel Again,
another legend said that his heart was enshrined in a church forty miles
away; the skeleton corresponded with this, for it was headless.
Moreover, it was said that his mother and a friend were buried on either
side of him; we also found skeletons of a male and female in these
positions. Being satisfied on this point, we set the masons to work to
rebuild the altar tomb in its original shape and size, using the same
stones as far as they would go. We made up the deficiency with a heavy
granite slab.

On this I traced with my finger, in rude Roman letters, "SANCTUS
PIRANUS." The mason would not cut those crooked letters unless I
consented for him to put his name in better ones in the corner. I could
not agree to this, so his apprentice and I, between us, picked out the
rude letters, which have since (I have heard) been copied for a
veritable Roman inscription.

My name was now up as an antiquary, and I was asked to be the secretary
(for the West of England) to the Archaeological Society. I was supposed
to be an old gentleman, and heard myself quoted as the "venerable and
respected Haslam," whose word was considered enough to settle a knotty
point beyond doubt. I was invited to give a lecture on the old Perran
Church, at the Royal Institution, Truro, which I did; illustrating it
with sketches of the building, and exhibiting some rude remains of
carving, which are now preserved in the museum there.

The a