Richard Gendall's Dictionary for Modern Cornish 4

THE EMERGENCE OF CORNISH AND MODERN CORNISH

The periods of the Cornish language may be summarised as follows:

Old Cornish (c.1000-1250)
Middle Cornish (c.1250-1500)
Late Cornish (c. 1500-early 17th century)
Modern Cornish (late 17th and into 18th century)

By 1000 CE the British language in Cornwall was developing to the extent that it is now usual to refer to it as Cornish, but Cornish is no more nor less than a local form of British, and the Cornish and Welsh possess the only languages that are native to Britain. Even Gaelic was introduced from Ireland.

The emerging form of Cornish is known as Old Cornish, but there was no real division between it and British for changes were gradual, in the same way that midday marks the division of morning from afternoon, but without there being any obvious difference unless we compare the early part of the day with the late. We know Old Cornish, or Late British, only from personal names inscribed on stone monuments (such as that of Doniert), from the old forms of place-names, and from written records and ancient vocabularies, particularly what is usually called the Old Cornish Vocabulary from a manuscript of the 12th century which might have been a copy of an earlier document. This gives some thousand words of Cornish glossed in Latin, and most of these are little different from the forms they retained in later periods.

Not surprisingly, Old Cornish was very much like Welsh of the same period, and this similarity was still obvious in 1580 when John Norden wrote: …the South Wales man understandeth not perfectlye the North Wales man, and the North Wales man little of the Cornishe, the South much… One feature of Old Cornish that is identical in Welsh is to be seen in the elements of eastern place-names such as nant, valley, pant, dell, sant, holy, which were washed up on the beach of time and left high and dry when the language retreated westwards, retaining their ancient form while ultimately in the west in Modern Cornish they became nanz, panz and sanz, while Old Cornish cuit, most often found in Anglicised form as -quite as in Penquite, Welsh coed, eventually became cûz, or cooz. The old prefixed, unstressed form of this word was cut-, as in Cutlinwith [k‹t˙linwið], Wood of Timber Trees, which would be spelled in Modern Cornish as Cutlinwidh, and Cotehele, traditionally and corrrecty pronounced as [k‹t˙he:l], and which might be spelt more correctly as Cuthêl, meaning Wood by the Estuary. In the west this prefix is found as cus-

In about 1250, but with same proviso as above, Old Cornish was turning into Middle or Mediaeval Cornish in which the ancient Cornish drama was written during the 15th century. By 1500 this was becoming Late Cornish, which during the 17th century rapidly developed into Modern Cornish. Similar changes occurred in other European languages, Cornish running parallel to English, and were due to such factors as the loosening of the hold of the Church on society, the consequent advance of free thinking, literacy, science, technology, exploration, and so on. Cornish seamen were at the forefront of exploration and trade, while mining ushered in the age of steam and technology, and in the 18th century Cornwall became an industrial landscape. It is worth pointing out that Cornish was still being spoken when the first steam engines were working, and one of the leading figures in the language movement then was Thomas Tonkin who was involved in mining.

However, the main developments in the language were due to its secularisation, and to the advance of literacy. All Cornish literature prior to 1600 had been concerned with religion, most of it being found in the rhymed and scanned verse of the ancient drama, with one long work in prose under the general authorship of John Tregear, 1560, but which was in fact a translation from English. The late 17th and early 18th centuries saw a great increase in the number Cornish authors where in the Middle Ages all literature had been under the authorship of one or two of the clergy. The first works of secular prose in the history of the Cornish Language were the Daralla Jûan Chei a Horr, the Tale of John Ramshouse, and Nebbaz Gerriaw drô dho Kernûak, A few words about Cornish, both produced c. 1660 by Nicholas Boson, given here in standard modern spelling, and these show us how Cornish was used by ordinary Cornish people.

Towards the end of the 17th century a group of associates, mostly related to each other, set about trying to save the language that was clearly losing ground. Nicholas Boson had pointed the way when he stated his desire to see Cornish as pure as was possible, and not beholden to other languages. His actual words were …thera ma wheelaz en skreefma (mar mere drel a ma) tho gorah an geerna a treneuhan ra dismiggia gun Tavaz ny senges tho rerol…, I seek in this essay (as much as I can) to set aside that word which shall show our language to be beholden to others. After Nicholas Boson, the main figures in this movement were his son John, William Gwavas, and Thomas and John Tonkin, and it was decided to invite the well known linguist Dr Edward Lhuyd to visit Cornwall, find out all he could about the language, and make recommendations.

Lhuyd came down in 1700, and spent four months touring Cornwall and collecting information, especially in the parish of St Just, and from those knowledgeable in the language, in particular John Keigwin in (to quote Lhuyd) Por Enez (Mousehole), Mr Estwick in Plêu Îst (St Just), James Jenkyns of Golvan (Gulval), Nicolas Boson of Neulyn. A manuscript vocabulary was compiled at the time which was headed in Welsh GEIRLYFR Kyrnŵeig. This is kept at the Library of the University College of Aberystwyth. It has now been properly examined for the first time, and is full of new words all the legible examples of which have been incorporated into this present Dictionary.

The invitation made to Lhuyd in 1700 was quite a different matter to the advice recently solicited from multiple extraneous sources by a revivalist movement that has lost its way, for at the time Cornish was still a living language, spoken and written, and the major part of what Lhuyd used in his Cornish Grammar he collected directly from Cornish people in West Penwith. In the Preface to his Cornish Grammar he states:

An fòr a’rykemeraz vi dho deska an nebaz skîanz-ma a’n Tavazeth Kernûak, ô enrâdn dre skrefyanz dhort genaụo an bôbl en Gorleuen Kernou en enụedzhek en pleụ Yst; ha enràdn dre an hevelep Gụerraz dhort neb Pednzhivikio a ’riganz skrefa ragov lîaz gerrio Kernûak.