THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
57 
the first of May. There seems no necessary connection between a 
ship and the floral rites of early spring ; but it helps us somewhat 
to account for the incongruity when we learn from our local records 
that the carrying about of a ship was part of the Plymouth 
celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi. The Reformation put 
an end to the Corpus Christi festival, but it was not a very great 
change to transfer the ship pageant to May-day, which continued 
to be kept up with befitting ceremonial. It was the custom, so 
far back as the fifteenth century, for " companies " of performers 
from adjoining parishes and places to visit Plymouth on these days 
of popular rejoicing, to entertain and be entertained ; and there are 
entries of payments to such parties, among others, from Stonehouse 
and St. Budeaux. There is no difficulty in understanding why a 
custom given up in Plymouth would linger on in the ancient 
borough of Millbrook ; nor does the pedigree of the ship of Corpus 
Christi seem hard to make out. Tacitus credits the Suevi with 
carrying about a ship in honour of Isis ; and a boat is almost a 
natural emblem of the crescent moon. In Germany the custom of 
ship-carrying was followed from the earliest ages, though there is 
some dispute as to the goddess honoured. (Mr. Baring-Gould 
thinks Hilda or Holle). The early Christian Church dealt with 
Pagan rites in two ways. Sometimes the attempt was made to 
abolish them ; sometimes — and especially if the effort at repression 
failed — they were adopted into Christian custom. In Germany the 
ceremonial was opposed. In England it retained sufficient vitality 
to be adopted. The silver boat of the crescent moon became with 
us the ship of Corpus Christi, and that the Millbrook "garland." 
And there are traces of yet other faiths, not living now in direct 
representation, but once widely held. The mysterious cup mark- 
ings found so frequently on the rocks of the North of England, 
and occasionally in Cornwall, 1 the pre-Christian cross, and probably 
some of the later traditional forms of cross, have their origin in 
that wide-spread cultus of the energies of Nature, traceable in 
purer or in grosser forms in every corner of the ancient world. 
So the most reasonable explanation of the stories of dragons 
and loathly worms throughout England is again the conflict of 
1 Found first by Mr. Blight, f.s.a. ; and since by Mr. Lukis, f.s.a., and 
Mr. W. C. Borlase. Vide also E. Parfitt's "Idol found at Kingsteignton." 
Trans. Devon. Assoc. vol. ix. pp. 170-176. 
