THE ORIGINS OF OUR CORNISH ANCESTORS

by Daphne McMAHON

The Cornish are the second smallest of the six Celtic nationalities -- the Irish, Manx and Scots (Goidelic Celts), the Welsh, Bretons and Cornish (Brythonic Celts). The Cornish were the first Celtic nation to lose their language, the last people with a native knowledge of the language dying out in the nineteenth century.

The other Celtic countries that have managed to retain native speakers are: the Isle of Man with 165 Manx speakers in 1961 (down from 4,657 in 1901); Ireland, where 27% of the country is Irish speaking (an improvement of 19% in 1921); and Scotland, where speakers of Scottish Gaelic number 80,978 (1.67% of the population). It is also estimated that there are one million native Breton speakers in Brittany. Overseas there are two major Celtic settlements that have remained Celtic, one in Nova Scotia, settled by Scots, and one in Patagonia, settled by the Welsh. Nova Scotia has 7,533 Scottish Gaelic speakers and Patagonia 8,000 Welsh speakers.

These Celtic nationalities are all that is left of an ancient civilisation, which left its mark from Asia Minor to Ireland. The Celts were the first Trans-Alpine people to emerge into recorded history, originating, according to ancient chroniclers, from the region round the Lower Danube. They invaded and settled in Italy at the beginning of the third century BC and sacked Rome in 387-386 BC. The Romans remained under Celtic domination until 349 BC when they rose against their conquerors and by 355 BC the Celtic conquest had been turned back. However, the Celts remained in Italy as settlers down to imperial times. Evidence of their settlement is shown in such place names in northern Italy as Trevi, Treviso, Treviglio, the River Trebia, etc. A comparison with some Cornish place names is interesting.

In the next century the Celts turned towards Greece and in a spectacular campaign destroyed the armies of Macedonia, Haemos and Thessaly. Finally, they defeated an Athenian army at Thermopylae before flooding through the gorges of Parnassos to sack the great temples of Delphi in 279 BC. Although the Greeks finally turned back the Celtic invasion, Thrace remained a Celtic kingdom until 193 BC. Some Celts pushed into Asia Minor and established a state called Galatia. The Galatians remained a Celtic speaking country up to the fifth century AD.

The early Celts were exponents of the Druid religion who taught the doctrine of immortality; that death is only a changing of place and their souls would return to earth again. Julius Caesar observed that this religious outlook could have accounted for the reckless bravery of the Celts in battle, with their apparent complete lack of any fear of death.

The Druids were great natural scientists who had knowledge of physics and astronomy, applied in the construction of calendars. The earliest known Celtic calendar dates from the first century AD and is far more elaborate that the Julian one and is now in the Palais des Arts in Lyons, and is the oldest document in a Celtic language. This was the civilisation from which the Cornish emerged.

The Celts began to invade Britain in the first millennium BC and at the time of the Roman Conquest, 43 AD Britain was Brythonic, or British speaking. The Romans settled mainly in south-eastern Britain, stopping at Exeter and leaving Cornwall more or less untouched.

In the fifth and sixth centuries in the face of fierce invasion by the Saxons, large groups of Brythonic Celts migrated to Europe, taking with them the name of their country, which is known today as Brittany. Their language at the time of migration was exactly the same as Cornish and Welsh.

The remaining British Celts occupied Western Britain, from Cornwall and Dover, their settlements extended from Wales to Cumberland, and into Scotland, where they mixed with Goidelic Celts. Faced with the onslaught of the Saxons, the Celts formed an alliance with the Scots, but after nearly two centuries the Celts were defeated by the English at the Battle of Winwaed Field in 655AD. This was the last time the Celts seriously contended with the English for supremacy in Britain.

The Celts became split into three groups and separated from each other -- the main bodies were driven into the mountainous western peninsula that became Wales. A country called Cymru was formed in Northern Britain and became part of the Celtic kingdom of Scotland in the eleventh century. The following century the Scots were defeated by the English but they retained the ancient name of Cymru in the Anglicised form of Cambria and Cumberland. Unfortunately, the Celtic language soon ceased to be spoken, though Cumberland is still full of Celtic place names.

In the south-west of Britain the Celts of Devon and Cornwall united into the kingdom of Dumnonia, but its eastern border was weak and the Saxons began to move into Devon. Within a few years Dumnonia had fallen and the Celts were confined in the kingdom of Kernow which the English called Cornwall.

The geographical separation imposed upon the various groups of Brythonic Celts caused differentiations in their languages to emerge. Until the reign of Henry VIII there is no reliable knowledge of the state of the Cornish language; by this time it had become transformed from harsh Old Cornish into a softer sounding tongue, today called Middle Cornish. The fact that the language was reaching its highest development, may be seen from the amount of literature left to us from fifteenth and sixteenth century manuscripts.

By the start of the seventeenth century only a few Cornish speakers were left and they were mostly in the extreme west of Cornwall. Most of eastern Cornwall spoke only English, while the rest of the Duchy was bilingual. The seventeeth century saw a rapid deterioration of the language as an everyday form of speech and by the end of the century, Cornish speakers remained only from Land's End to the Mount and towards St Ives, and Redruth and again from Lizard towards Helston and Falmouth.

The eighteenth century was the last in which the Cornish language was in general use. That it had survived 800 years after Cornwall's conquest is a fact to be wondered at and it is claimed that by 1722 only St Ives fishermen and miners used the language, though at the beginning of the century a Dr Edward Lhuyd, a scholar from Wales, when visiting Cornwall to study the language, found Cornish spoken in twenty five parishes as a first language. He listed St Just, Paul, Buryan, Sennen, St Levan, Morvah, Sancreed, Madron, Zennor, Towednack, St Ives, Lelant, Ludgvan, Gulval and other parishes from Land's End to the Lizard. Dr Lliuyd pointed out that the gentry did not speak Cornish "there being no need, as every Cornishman speaks English. " I find this very interesting when he had stated that there were twenty five parishes" that spoke Cornish as a first language!

Source of information: "The Story of the Cornish Language, " printed in Cornwall by H.E. Warne Ltd. of St. Austell for the publishers, Lor Mark Press.