In Cornwall there is a church on the cliffs above the sea in Penwith.  There is a story about the church and it goes like this.  One Sunday morning at the beginning of the service a woman entered and she was noted as being unearthly beautiful.  She had pale skin and bright green eyes with long golden hair in a tumble of wild and nearly tangled manner.  She wore a dress that was almost like a bridal gown and it seemed to be made of a material that no one had seen.  The people said it shimmered as though it was a sun kissed sea.  The woman sat in a pew separate from everyone else.

There was one singer in the choir a handsome young man with a fine tenor voice and as he sang the woman stared at him with those deep emerald green eyes with a faint smile.  When the service ended she quickly left before anyone had a chance to say anything and seemed to just have disappeared.

For  six services the mysterious woman came to the church but only when it was a fine sunny day and she always sat apart and talked to no one else.  At one service the young man slipped out the side door before the service was over and waited by the main door of the church.  He walked with her and the last anyone saw of her or the young man they were walking down a path toward the sea.

Many years passed, according to lore, two generations worth when one day a ship anchored in Pendower Cove.  Suddenly a beautiful woman’s voice called out: “Ship, Ship!”  The lookout spotted a golden-haired green eyes mermaid and she asked the ship to weigh anchor saying the anchor was blocking the door to her home and she could not get to her husband and her children.  The name of the husband she gave was the same name as the young man that had disappeared with her from the church many years prior.

The captain and the crew did as the mermaid asked for they believed that mermaids could cause shipwrecks and bad weather.  The captain went to the church as he knew the family and told the family.  In honour, there was a bench put in the church and carved to show the mermaid with long flowing hair.