The Friendship of Dagda and Tinker Howth — Sam Smith

One time called Kitnor, now Culbone, three miles west of Porlock is a steep combe further concealed by close-grown sessile oaks. Isolated, and on the Devon/Somerset border it has been variously used over the centuries as a place of refuge and of banishment. Latterly it has become a destination for poetaster pilgrims - Kubla Khan having been written in the vicinity. Could ‘The Friendship of Dagdá & Tinker Howth’ however be the true origin of Culbone’s pretty little church? Or could Tinker Howth’s tale, set in the first Elizabeth’s reign and in the one-time leper colony, be the underlying reason why the word ‘Porlock’ is held in such low esteem by literati? And nothing whatsoever to do with Coleridge’s creatus interruptus ..?