TREGAGLE, TREGEAGLE, TREGALE: From Tregagle in the parish of St. Probus; from tre-gagle, -geagle, the dirty town or dwelling; The Tregagle family of Trevorder in St. Breock is extinct. To this family belonged John Tregagle, an arbitrary magistrate and local tyrant of the days of the Stuarts, whose ghost still haunts the wilds of Cornwall. "One of this family having become unpopular," says D. Gilbert, "the traditions respecting a mythological personage have been applied to him. The object of these tales of unknown antiquity was, like Orestes, continually pursued by an avenging being, from whom he could find refuge only from time to time by flying to the cell or chapel on Roach Rock, till at last his fate was changed into the performance of a task to exhaust the water from Dozmere, with an implement less adapted, if possible, for its appropriate work than were the colanders given to the daughter of Danaus:

Hoc' ut opinor, id est ævo florente puellas,Stolen from Fore bears

Quod memorant, laticem pertuaum congerero in vas,

Quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potest

Tregagle is provided simply with a limpet-shell having a hole bored through it, and with this he is said to labour without intermission; in dry seasons flattering himself that he has made some progress towards the end of his work; but when rain commences, and the ' omnis efiusus labor' becomes apparent, he is believed to roar so loudly, in utter despair, as to be heard from Dartmoor Forest to the Land's End"