Whitewash

Mother Ivey’s Bay takes its name from the legend of Mother Ivy who was a local white witch who cursed a local family. It lies just around the coast from Harlyn Bay. Cushioned from the wind by the Merope Rocks.

 

Mother Ivey was a white witch and vocal member of the community, She used her charms and spells to fight harm and wrongs. She was very seldom angry, but one man who lived in Harlyn tried Mother Ivey’s patience to its limit.

 

In those days wealth came in the form of pilchards. They were caught and salted and sent to Italy for Catholics to eat on fish Fridays and in Lent. While the fish merchant grew rich, the Cornish fishermen’s families went hungry.

 

One week, a ship carrying a large cargo of pilchards was returned from Italy unsold. Every villager came to see the ship in, hoping that their bellies would soon be filled. The Fish Merchant took the fish off the ship and up the hill to his farm. Mother Ivey pleaded with him to allow the villagers to eat the fish as it was still good enough to eat even though it could not be sold.

 

Instead, the fish were ploughed into a field as fertilizer. Mother Ivey was very angry, The people she spent her years helping were in desperate need of the food that had just been denied them. She went to the Fish Cellars and cursed the merchant's field:

 

"Break the soil, Death will follow,”

 

And it did. The next year, the merchant ploughed the field and planted corn. A few weeks later his eldest son was out riding his horse, when he fell off and was killed. No one has taken a spade or a plough to the field since, for fear of what may happen. The field lays fallow to this day.

 

 

Adapted from a re-telling by Anna Chorlton and Sue Field

 

 

Done