A Book of the West. Volume 1, Devon: Being an Introduction to Devon and Cornwall

This is a scholarly and evocative portrait of England's far western counties, written at a moment when ancient ways of life were still intact but already fading. Baring-Gould, a noted folklorist and historian, approaches Devon and Cornwall not as a Baedeker guide but as an anthropologist and cultural detective, tracing who the people of the moors and coastlines actually are. He investigates the deep ancestry of the region, from the mysterious Ivernian tribes through Roman occupation to the medieval period, examining how each wave of arrivals left their mark on blood and character. The book becomes particularly vivid when exploring Devon's distinctive dialect, the folklore that still haunts its lanes, and customs that urban England had long since abandoned. Baring-Gould writes with evident affection for saints and smugglers alike, for holy wells and weathered castle walls, for the particular courtesies and suspicions of people who lived at the kingdom's edge. This volume captures a world that still believed in spirits, spoke a language closer to Welsh than London English, and knew tin mining and smuggling as ways of life.