Porlock & Clovelly

On awakening he appeared to himself to have distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen and ink and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on buisness from Porlock, and detained him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but alas ! without the restoration of the latter.


(Samuel Taylor Coleridge on being disturbed whilst writing Kubla Khan. 1797)

My dear father had been killed by the Doones of Bagworthy, while riding home from Porlock market on the Saturday evening. With him were six brother-farmers all of them very sober; for father would have no company with any man who went beyond half-a-gallon of beer, or a single gallon of cider.

(R D Blackmore. Lorna Doone)