In the far-west of Cornwall, on the coast of Penwith, a tale of lovers takes a dark and ghostly turn. Nancy Trenoweth was a simple uneducated girl whose world consisted of little but Lands-End, who certainly never travelled east of Penzance. She was put into domestic service with the Lenine family of Boscean, where she met the young and handsome Frank Lenine. The two fell in love and soon became devoted to one another.
Besotted, Frank asked his parent’s permission to marry his sweetheart. Unfortunately for the lovers the Lenine’s were shocked, horrified at the thought of their precious son marrying a Trenoweth. For the elder Nancy Trenoweth was known in the area as someone with considerable power in the ways of nature spirits, known for her belief in animism, the belief that every living thing contains a form of spirit. She was not feared so much as respected, but this was not a family Frank’s father would tolerate any association with so he refused his son. Also Nancy’s employer, he sent her away to serve as a maid at another house.
In defiance of his parent’s wishes, Frank and Nancy continued to have midnight trysts and made vows to each other next to Logan Rock. When Nancy’s parents discovered the inevitable had occurred, she was pregnant with Frank’s child, they demanded he marry their daughter. The Lenine’s resolved to never allow this to happen and sent their son away to sea on a ship bound for India. Neither Frank nor Nancy could write, so they had no sight or word of each other for three long years. Nancy’s mother took care of the baby and sent Nancy off into service again at a house in the village of Paul near Mousehole. The Lenine’s demanded the Trenoweth’s give the child over to them to raise, but Nancy’s mother refused.
Three years after Frank’s departure, driven by her desperate desire to see her lover again, Nancy was to make a dreadful mistake. On All Hallow’s Eve she was persuaded by two other maids to cast a spell by ‘sowing hemp-seed’ and chanting an incantation three times,
“Hemp-seed I sow thee, Hemp-seed grow thee; And he who will my true love be, Come after me and shaw thee.”
Looking back over her left shoulder she saw Frank Lenine once again, but to her fright but he was snarling with rage. Frightened, she screamed which broke the spell and he disappeard.
November followed with great storms crashing in off the Atlantic Ocean. One night, a large vessel was lost upon the rocks and smashed to pieces in the pounding waves. The bodies of the sailors washed ashore, and amongst them was the dying Frank Lenine.
The only words he spoke were spoke to call for Nancy to be sent to him so they could wed before he perished. Nancy was not informed of Frank’s death and burial in Buryan church yard. So when on the night of the funeral, a horsemen rode up to Nancy’s house and hailed her by her name she came willingly. It was the voice of her lover, back home at last, he told how that at the first chance he had he rode to find her to make her his wife as soon as possible. Giddy with the excitement of seeing her lover Nancy took his hand and leapt up onto the horse behind him. As she did so she realised his hand was deathly cold and she soon felt an icy grip creep up her arm. She succumbed to the spell of the pale and sorrowful horseman and seized with fear she found herself speechless with no power to save herself.
The rider took off with Nancy, across the moor drenched in moonlight, they rode furiously. As the rider took them through the river Nancy caught their reflection in the water. This her first proper look of the horseman; with horror she saw the rider was dresssed in grave clothes and wrapped in a burial shroud. As they rode through Buryan Churchtown Nancy regained her voice and cried out for help. The blacksmith sprang from his doorway and seized hold of Nancy and using his hot iron he freed her dress from the spirit’s cold grip. The rider sprang away and disappeared as he reached Frank Lenine’s grave.
The blacksmith rushed the half-dead Nancy back to her parent’s house. Upon her deathbed she instructed her mother to give the child to the Lenine’s, and for herself to be buried on top of her lover.
There were two sailors who also survived the wreck of Frank’s ship and recounted how on All Hallow’s eve he was distressed, eventually collapsing as if dead upon the ships deck and lay unconscious for hours. Upon his waking he recounted how he had been taken to Nancy. Furious he declared that if he ever married the young woman who had cast the spell to summon him, he would make her suffer the longest day she had to live for drawing his soul out of his body.
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