III. THE NAMES OF PLACES.

The

In these we have the most striking and obvious record of the old tongue, such as might strike the "man in the street" if he came to Cornwall. Everywhere, when one passes the Tamar (the border of England, "beyond which is Cornwall," as an old geographer said), one meets strange and most un-English names. names of the parishes-i.e., St. Mellion, St. Ive, St. Botus Fleming, St. Urney-are mostly old Celtic saints, the biographies of some of whom can be traced in Welsh, Cornish, or Breton hagiographies, but some are still obscure or doubtful. Let me give a few of our Cornish

saints :

1. St. Perran, or Kieran, to whom there are four parishes dedicated the doyen of Cornish saints, a wonderful Irish missionary, about whom many legends are told, and to whom is dedicated the oldest church in South BritainPerranzabuloe and three other parish churches.

2. St. Germo, or Germoeh, the Irish king and bishop. 3. St. Breage, his sister, the Irish saintly princess. 4. The children and grandchildren of good King Brechan, most famed of whom is his daughter St. Keyne, so zealous for woman's rights in the sixth century, and who has been popularised by a well-known ballad.

5. St. Buryan, or Burnsech, an Irish princess. 6. St. Ive, an Irish princess and martyr.

7. St. Mewen and St. Issy.

8. St. Mullion, a Breton saint.

9. St. Carantoc, St. Cuby, St. Ruan, etc.

It may be said that most of these saints, though Celtic, were not actually Cornish. But (1) St. Constantine, whose name is Latin, but who was King of Cornwall; (2) St. Gerrans, or Gerontius, "the glorious king of Damnonium," to whom St. Aldhelm wrote his famous epistle; and (3) St. Mylor and St. Nunn, seem to be the chief true Cornish saints, born and bred in the county, if we exclude St. David, who, though of Welsh parentage, seems to have been brought up in Cornwall.

The secular names, however, lie about as bones of the dead language on the linguistic battle-field. There they

are as skeletons of the old Celtic speech. Cornish chief towns have Celtic names:1. Penzance-the holy headland.

2. Truro-Tre-ru-the three roads.

Nearly all the

3. Redruth-dubious, but clearly Celtic, possibly Tredruith the town of the Druids, or oaks.

4. Liskeard-the town of the trials.

5. Bodmin-the house of the monks.

I venture to note these with trepidation, for I know that the odium philologicum is as fierce as the odium theologicum, especially as to derivation. It was the fear of this terrible odium, I expect, that awed Dr. Bannister in his elaborate work on Cornish names to give two or three derivations to the same name. This spoils the value of his painstaking work; for what people want is some definite clue as to what Dr. Bannister believed to be the true derivation of each name.

I believe many of the Cornish names are plain enough, if you have even a small knowledge of the language. Take some in my old parish of Carnmenellis.

1. Boquio, a quaint name, but simple-the house by, or in, the wood.

2. Pencoys-the hill in the wood.

3. Carnmenellis-the pile of rocks on the green hill. 4. Polmarth-the horse-pool.

5. Polmear-the pool by the rocks.

6. Menherion—the place of menhirs.

It is very fascinating to me, when walking over the lonely Cornish moors, to ask the names and, as it were, talk to the "old men of the past" about their meanings. The long dead of 500 or 1,000, or even 2,000, years ago, still speak in them, in weird, quaint words of the extinct Brythonic tongue, their descriptions of the surroundings one is passing through. It is like an antique guide-book, often poetical in tone, describing the wild Cornish scenery in the wild old Celtic words of a forgotten past. In Wales the Celtic names strike one less. The country is still-in part at least-a Welsh-speaking land. English has not superseded Welsh, nor is Welsh forgotten. But for all that, many a town has both a Welsh and an English name, and the English is the only one the

stranger hears. In Cornwall we have one instance of the double name-Dunheved and Launceston, but the Saxon here prevails. Elsewhere the Celtic survives, save in Falmouth, which is a modern English port, dating its importance from the later Stuart epochs and the Falmouth packets.

In some cases, against all laws of philological propriety, both English and Cornish names are added together, e.g., Castle-an-Dinas. Dinas is Cornish for castle, but the English translation is added.

IV. THE NAMES OF FAMILIES.

The old West Country proverb, dating from the Middle Ages, says

"Tre, Pol, and Pen,

By which you know the Cornishmen."

Camden suggested an improvement in this

"By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Caer, and Pen

You may know the most Cornishmen."

But it was too cumbrous, and the simple form has survived to the twentieth century, The Tres, the Pols, and the Pens are well known by their names; but it is curious that Tre, Pol, and Pen are prefixes to placenames, and the application to people comes from the names of estates.

Many Cornish names, however, are not place- but Christian names, just as in Wales the Roberts, the Williams, the Richards, and the Johns prevail. The Saxon was called after his trade, the Celt by his placeor his ancestor's Christian name. Still, some Cornish names are trade-names. The name Angwin is Smith in Cornish, but some hold that it was connected with the smithy.

A book has been published on Cornish patronymics.

V. SURVIVALS OF PHRASES.

Very few sentences of Cornish survived into the nineteenth century, but in the eighteenth the language must have been spoken in the west of Penwith. The process of dying out I have already explained before our Association, but I may briefly summarise the distinct periods of decay.

1. In the reign of Henry VIII the language was living and vigorous. At an earlier date, i.e., in the Middle Ages, it was spoken in the South Hams of Devon, as well as in Cornwall, and on both banks of the Tamar. It was probably as much diffused as Welsh is now in Wales.

2. At the Reformation the enforcement of the English Liturgy gave a great blow to the Cornish language. Had the Bible been translated into Cornish, and the Prayer Book used in Cornish, the language might have survived much longer. But to this day the Bible (even the Gospels) has never been fully translated into Cornish. The Cornish rebels of 1549 made the English Liturgy a grievance. As late as 1640, nearly a hundred years later, Mr. Jackson administered the sacrament in Cornish at Feock.

3. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, Carew noted that the Cornish language was nearly dying out in 1602. But then he was an East Cornish gentleman, and probably knew little of out-of-the-way places in West Cornwall.

4. Norden remarks that Cornish folk used the language in 1610 amongst themselves in the family, but English for strangers. This reminds me of my experience at Port Erin, in the Isle of Man, where our lodginghouse folk talked Manx among themselves, but English to us. 1611 Jordan's Creacon was written, the last Cornish drama.

In

5. The Civil Wars are said to have destroyed Cornish in most parts of the county. The soldiers, whether Cavaliers or Roundheads, all talked English.

6. In 1678 it seems that the last Cornish sermon was preached at Landewednack.

7. In 1701 Lhuyd says that in only five or six villages near Land's End was Cornish spoken.

8. Dr. Borlase thought, in 1758, that it had died out of conversation, but this view was premature.

9. In 1768 Daines Barrington sought for living survivals of the Cornish language, and had his famous interview with Dolly Pentreath. How far that aged lady knew Cornish I will not try to decide, but certainly some people at Newlyn and Mousehole could understand,

and even speak, a little of the Cornish language. William Bodener, of Mousehole, wrote in Cornish in 1776, and said that four or five old people there still spoke Cornish. The actual date of the death of the language is difficult to fix, but we kept the centenary of the death of Old Cornish at Paul in 1876, a very interesting event.

When the language died out (crushed by fashion mainly, I believe, for it was called "barbarous, uncouth, and vulgar") the literary survival, or, I may say, revival, began.

1. Lhuyd, in 1707, took a prime move in this by publishing a Cornish grammar.

2. The Gwavas manuscripts, by Gwavas, Pender, Tonkin, and others, from 1711 onwards. They have not yet all been published, but have been a basis for research preserving the last stage of the language.

3. In 1790 Pryce published his book founded on Tonkin, or actually plagiarised from him.

4. In the early part of the nineteenth century, little was done to preserve the old language, except by Davies Gilbert.

5. In 1859 Norris published his Cornish grammar.

6. In 1865 one of the greatest events in the history of the revival took place in the publication of Williams's Lexicon Cornu Britannicum. This is still the most important work on Cornish, though unfortunately published before the discovery of the Beunans Meriasek. It contains 9,000 words.

7. In 1869 was this discovery of the Beunans Meriasek and the Vita Sancti Sylvestri in Cornish, at Peniarth, in Wales.

8. In 1876 we had, at Paul, our centenary of the old Cornish language, which somewhat revived the interest in the ancient tongue. Archbishop Benson took some interest in Cornish while Bishop of Truro. A prize was offered for traditions of Cornish, which was divided between Mr. Bernard Victor and Mr. W. Pentreath.

9. Dr. Jago's English - Cornish Dictionary marks a development at the end of the nineteenth century. By it students can easily get a notion of what the Cornish language was like.