t
capital of Finland, was called _Turku_, which is the Swedish word _torg_,
market. Adam of Bremen, enumerating the various tribes adjoining the
Baltic, mentions _Turci_ among the rest, and these _Turci_ were by others
mistaken for Turks.(81)

Even after such myths have been laid open to the very roots, there is a
strong tendency not to drop them altogether. Thus Mr. H. Merivale is far
too good an historian to admit the presence of Jews in Cornwall as far
back as the destruction of Jerusalem.(82) He knows there is no evidence
for it, and he would not repeat a mere fable, however plausible. Yet
Marazion and the Jews' houses evidently linger in his memory, and he
throws out a hint that they may find an historical explanation in the fact
that under the Plantagenet kings the Jews commonly farmed or wrought the
mines. Is there any contemporary evidence even for this? I do not think
so. Dr. Borlase, indeed, in his "Natural History of Cornwall" (p. 190),
says, "In the time of King John, I find the product of tin in this county
very inconsiderable, the right of working for tin being as yet wholly in
the King, the property of tinners precarious and unsettled, and what tin
was raised was engrossed and managed by the Jews, to the great regret of
the barons and their vassals." It is a pity that Dr. Borlase should not
have given his authority, but there is little doubt that he simply quoted
from Carew. Carew tells us how the Cornish gentlemen borrowed money from
the merchants of London, giving them tin as security (p. 14); and though
he does not call the merchants Jews, yet he speaks of them as usurers, and
reproves their "cut throate and abominable dealing." He continues
afterwards, speaking of the same usurers (p. 16), "After such time as the
Jewes by their extreme dealing had worne themselves, first out of the love
of the English inhabitants, and afterwards out of the land itselfe, and so
left the mines unwrought, it hapned, that certaine gentlemen, being lords
of seven tithings in Blackmoore, whose grounds were best stored with this
minerall, grewe desirous to renew this benefit," etc. To judge from
several indications, this is really the passage which Dr. Borlase had
before him when writing of the Jews as engrossing and managing the tin
that was raised, and in that case neither is Carew a contemporary witness,
nor would it follow from what he says that one single Jew ever set foot on
Cornish soil, or that any Jews ever tasted th