Saint Piran of Cornwall
The fifth of March is the feast-day of Saint Piran, the foremost patron saint of Cornwall. Legend has it that he was the discoverer of the method by which tin is smelted. The tale of Saint Piran’s discovery inspired the white-on-black cruciform flag of Cornwall, with white veins of tin flowing in the form of a cross from the midst of black Cornish rock. The fifth of March is still kept as a popular holiday in Cornwall.
Saint Padrig, being the patron saint of Ireland, was in fact of Brythonic stock; in precisely the same way, the patron saint of Cornwall derived from the nation of the Gæls. Piran [also Peran, Perran or Piranus] is traditionally given an Irish heritage in the hagiographies, though his actual origins are fairly obscure. It seems that in his youth he must have spent some time in Wales. There is still a chapel in Cardiff that is dedicated to Saint Piran, which he may have had a hand in founding. He probably studied under Saint Cadog the Wise, and there made the acquaintance of Saint Fionnán, later the founder of Clonard Monastery. The Irish monk and the at least half-Irish student got along incredibly well together, to the point where Piran returned with Fionnán to Ireland and settled at Clonard for some time. The association between these two men has led some hagiographers of early Britain, including David Nash Ford, to entertain as likely the possibility that Saint Piran of Cornwall is in fact the same person as Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, who is venerated on the ninth of September.
Saint Piran made his way to Cornwall already in middle age, after an incident in which he was captured by druids on the Emerald Isle. The druids, who were envious of his ability to heal the sick through his prayers, sentenced Saint Piran to death by drowning. They hung a millstone round his neck and cast him from a bluff into the sea. The day they had appointed for his execution was marked by a fearful storm, with pouring rain and howling wind, and fearsome thunder and lightning. But no sooner had Saint Piran been cast into the waves but the storm calmed and dispersed. The pagan Irish then beheld to their dismay that Piran, far from having been dragged to the sea floor and drowned, was floating and bobbing atop the waves with his millstone as though it was made of cork, making for the Cornish strand.
After numerous days at sea, surviving by the power of his prayers and the sustenance which God provided for His servant, Piran made land at a beach which now bears his name: Perranporth. Just as Saint Pedrog would do with his Indian wolf, Piran apparently had a gentle hand and a gift for befriending wild animals. He was found on the beach by a fox, a badger and a boar, all of whom served him gladly and out of goodwill, and brought him food to sustain his first days in desert isolation. He built an oratory on the beach (one of the oldest Christian archæological sites in Britain), which would later be replaced by a full church, from which he served the spiritual and material needs of the Cornish folk living around him.
The Cornish loved and awed this holy man, and the word of his preaching and wondrous cures spread rapidly around the whole peninsula. Many came to believe in Christ through Saint Piran’s teaching, and he baptised many from the oratory he’d built on Perranporth. But, as so many Celtic saints had done before him, Piran soon tired of all the attention and began to long for a more secluded life. (It also seems to have been the case that the Perranporth oratory’s location so close to the sea was architecturally troublous.) He took himself off with a handful of devoted disciples, and established a monastery some miles inland at Perranzabuloe (or Lanpiran).
But the most significant wonder that he wrought, at least from the perspective of the Cornish miners, was his rediscovery of a method for smelting tin. Cornish tin had been smelted and traded long before, though it seems the method had been lost. Saint Piran had built a fire-pit using stones rich in a local black mineral – that is to say, cassiterite. Piran had stoked the fire hot to keep his oratory warm; and when he checked on it later in the day, the astounded saint found trickles of white metal running off into the ashes from the surface of the black stones in his hearth.
Piran shared this knowledge freely with the Cornish folk living around him, and they thanked him for the favour; very soon Cornish tin mined and wrought from the cassiterite in the hills was bringing a new prosperity to the people. To thank Saint Piran for this rediscovery of tin smelting, they held a lavish feast in his honour, where ‘the wine flowed like water’. In marked contrast to others among his Celtic contemporaries, such as Dewi Sant, Saint Piran was far from abstemious with regard to drink. He loved a good cup of wine – or three or four. Indeed, among the Cornish to this day, Saint Piran’s tippling habits are immortalised in proverb: ‘as drunk as a Perraner’. But the equally-lasting and more-suitable honour remains the Cornish flag dedicated to Saint Piran, as the historian Davies Gilbert describes it. A certain Breton family surnamed Saint-Péran has this cross as their heraldic emblem. One legend, asserted by the Encyclopædia Britannica, has it that this white cross on a black field was flown bravely by a division of Cornish longbowmen fighting for Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 – these longbow archers were key to the English victory against the more mobile Frankish armoured cavalry.
Saint Piran lived to an incredible old age – though the traditional assertion that he reached two hundred and six seems somewhat unlikely – and reposed in the Lord at his hermitage in Perranzabuloe on the fifth of March, around the year 480. His cultus was instantly and enduringly popular given his status as a wonderworker among the Cornish people. In 1331 we have a written record of the Dean at Exeter complaining about the relics of Saint Piran going in procession ‘inordinately, to divers and remote places’. Churches in Cornwall which may have been founded by Saint Piran, and which retain dedications to his memory, are located at Perranuthnoe, Perranarworthal and Trethevy. In the last two of these towns, two holy wells are attributed to Saint Piran. His cultus was active also in Brittany, where dedications to Saint Piran also exist. A statue of Saint Piran was recently erected in the Valley of the Saints there. Today Saint Piran is remembered on both sides of the Channel as a common spiritual predecessor to the peoples of Cornwall and Brittany. Venerable Piran, holy hermit and wonderworker, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
St Piran’s Cross, Perranzabuloe, Cornwall
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