The Cornish Language and the Conquest of Cornwall

[Menydh]

Little is known about Cornwall during the period of history knwon as the Dark Ages. Confusion has been created by the failure of the ancient historians to distinguish clearly between the kingdom of Kernow (Cornwall) and that of Kernev (Cornouaille, Brittany). Christianity prospered and shadowy figures of saints and kings played their part in its history. Between 450 A.D. and 550 A.D. Christian missionaries from Ireland and Wales came to Cornwall leaving behind, as their memorials, saintly placenames --such as St. Columb, St. Ives, St. Mawgan, St. Tudy and St. Mabyn. The Irish missionaries, moreover, left memorial inscriptions in Ogham, the early form of Goidelic Celtic script.

Although the Romans did not occupy Cornwall as intensively as they did other parts of Britain, they, too, left traces of their activities, including several inscribed milestones. Furthermore, the native Cornish chieftains, during or immediately after the Roman occupation, were commemorated by numerous Christian memorial stones, inscribed in often indifferent Latin. Two of these stones, moreover, are inscribed in both Latin and the Ogham script. One of the oldest of the memorials of this period is called Men Scryfa --the written stone-- which stands on the granite uplands of the Land's End peninsula. The inscription reads "RIALOBRANI CUNOVALI FILI"-- Rialobran son of Cunoval. Near St. Cleer on Bodmin Moor, there are two cross bases carved in Irish style, the larger bearing the words "DONIERT RIGAVIT PRO ANIMA" --Doniert ordered (this cross) for (the good of) his soul. Doniert was the Cornish king Dungharth who was accidentally drowned in 878 A.D. A cross outside Penlee House in Penzance, bears the inscription "REGIS RICATI CRUX", dated to the tenth century. This is the cross of Ricatus, another Cornish ruler.

Perhaps the most romantic of these memorials stands a a cross roads near Fowey, not far from the earthworks of Castle Dore, the fortress of King Mark, whose bride Iseult was escorted from Ireland by Tristan, later to become her lover. The inscription reads "DRUSTANUS IC IACIT CUNMORI FILIUS". In the ancient manuscript, The Life of St. Pol de Leon, we are told that Mark, who ruled Cornwall between 570 A.D. and 585 A.D., was named Marcus Quonomorus. Tristan could be a corruption of the Celtic name Drustan. This then, could be the actual memorial to Tristan, son (not nephew) of King Mark of Cornwall.

One of the earliest manuscripts of the Tristan and Iseult romance was written by Florence of Worcester (d. 1118 A.D.) but Professor J. Loth in his famous study of the romance, claimed the original version in Cornish went to France via Brittany and there French poets adapted the story. These versions were written in the latter half of the twelfth century. Strangely enough it was from France that the romance made its way back into Cornish literature. A. S. D. Smith (Caradar) translated one edition, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseult, back into modern Cornish, Trystan hag Ysolt, published in 1951. It was this romance that inspired the composer Franz Liszt to write his celebrated Cornish Rhapsody and Wagner to write the opera Tristan und Iseult while other composers have based operas on it.

By the seventh century Dumnonia had dissolved and Saxons were pushing westward. By the eighth century, Cynewulf and his men were bold enough to forage into north-east Cornwall but the Saxons were soundly defeated by the Cornish at Camel in 721-722 A.D., but the weight of numbers was against the Cornish. In 825 A.D. the latter fought a great battle in Devon and a few years later, realising their precarious position, they enlisted the help of the Danes. The subsequent battle fought at Hingston Down, east of Callington, resulted in a Cornish defeat. However, it was not until the year 936 A.D. that Athelstan, king of Wessex (925-940 A.D.), drove the Cornish out of Exeter and defeated Hywel, the last independent king of Cornwall. Athelstan fixed the River Tamar as the boundary between his Saxon kingdom and "the west wealhas". Cornwall was, in fact, marked on the maps as "West Wales" until as late as the seventeenth century. In spite of the boundary that he had fixed, the Saxon king did not allow the Cornish and independent existence.

He started to eradicate the Celtic culture as a "reform" and in this way remodelled Celtic monastic centres of learning along Saxon lines. It can safely be supposed that, in doing so, Athelstan destroyed a great many early Cornish manuscripts, accounting for the sad lack of literature from this period. Perhaps the original Tristan and Iselut tales were destroyed in this fashion. The Saxons also made St. Germans the see of the bishopric of Cornwall. It had been the seat of a Cornish bishop since 429 A.D. This bishopric was transferred to Crediton in 1043 A.D. and then to Exeter. Not until the nineteenth century did Cornwall have its own bishop once more.

It was during this struggle against Saxon domination that the legend of Arthur was born. If he existed in fact, he was certainly a Cornish ruler who opposed conquest by the Saxons. The first version of this legend that has survived was written by the Welshman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century. He states that Arthur's birthplace was Tintagel, formerlyTrevena. Experts have identified various sites in Cornwall with places in the early versions of the legend. It was, of course, thirteenth and fourteenth century writers who embellished the legend with tales of medieval knighthood and chivalry.

At the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 A.D., Cornwall was an earldom hel by one Cadoc, obviously a native Cornishman. His arms were "a black shield with golden bosses or roundals", which is the present coat-of-arms of the Duchy. It would seem, therefore, that Cornwall was still fairly independent of the Saxons at this period. The Domesday Book shows that the Normans settled in Cornwall as baronial landowners. Speaking Norman-French, they interfered little with the Cornish language. The Saxons, however, were placed in the position of a "middle class" and their treatment of the native Cornish increased in severity because of their position.

From the post-Norman Conquest period onwards we begin to have more extensive examples of written Cornish, although perhaps the earliest work which recorded it as a written language was a tenth century manuscript The Bodmin Gospels Manumission. This work records many Cornish names and words. The earliest authoritative work on the language is the twelfth century Cottonian Vocabulary, also in the British Museum. This contains seven pages of Cornish nouns, covering parts of the human body, birds, beasts, fishes, trees, herbs, ecclesiastical and lithurgical tems plus a number of adjectives. Preceding the vocabulary is a calendar containing many other Cornish words.

A twelfth century story in Latin written by John of Cornwall shows us how much pre-Conquest literature must have been lost. The manuscript --The Prophecy of Merlin-- was translated by him from a very early Cornish manuscript. In this version he attaches notes which give some passages in the original Cornish. The only known manuscript of his work that survives, a fourtheenth century copy, is in the Vatican Library at Rome.

In the Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (1327-69), there is recorded a dispute in the parish of St. Buryan, four miles from Land's End. Formal submissions were made in French by thirteen prominent "middle class" parishioners, while the rest of the evidence was given in Cornish and translated by one Henry Marseley, rector of St. Just. After this hearing, the bishop preached a sermon which was then translated into Cornish by Marseley. Writing some time later, de Grandisson remarked on the fact that an ancient British tongue was still spoken in "extremis Cornubie". De Grandisson, it appears, was very conscious of his rôle as administrator of the Christian doctrine. Certain English priests preached to monoglot Cornish and Welshmen in Latin, French or English only, so if their congregations wished to hear the teachings of the Church they were obliged to learn those languages. In 1339, however, a licence was granted to J. Polmarke to help the vicar of St. Merryn, near Padstow, "expound the Word of God in the said church in the Cornish language". In a list of penitentiaries for the archdeaconry of Cornwall, dated 1335, Brother Roger of Truro was licensed to preach in Cornish and Brother John of Bodmin to preach in Cornish and English.

Meanwhile, in England itself a fierce linguistic struggle was taking place. Following the Norman Conquest, Norman French had become the language of the country and, according to Mario Pei, Story of the English Language, "the speech of the conquered was banned from all polite society and official usage, it was despised as the jargon of peasants and practically ceased to be a written language." English, in fact, was a dying language.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century a movement seeking to gain official status for English, had arisen in the country. The growing support it received brought several reactions from the authorities. In 1332 an Act of Parliament decreed that French must be taught to all children receiving education and in 1352 at Oxford it was decreed all conversations in the city should "be in Latin or French". From the Cornish viewpoing, the irony of this English language movement was the fact that it was led by Cornishmen.

One of them was John of Trevisa from St. Mellion, a Cornish-speaking cleric who gave the English the biggest Encyclopaedia and history of the day in their own vernacular. Trevisa died in 1402. Writing about the change from French to English, he states: "... John of Cornwall, a grammar master, changed the instruction and construing in the grammar schools from French into English: and Richard Pencrych learned that kind of teaching from him, and other men from Pencrych, so that now, in the year of Our Lord, 1385, the nineth of the second King Richard after the Conquest, in all the grammar schools of England, children are now dropping French and construing and learning in English". Basil Cottle, in The Triumph of English 1300-1400, writes: "... we are asked to believe, by a Cornishman, with a Cornish name, that two others from his Duchy were largely responsible for the redemption of what wasn't even their native tongue, since all three must have been originally Celtic speaking!"

It was in 1349 that it was permissible to teach English in schools; in 1362 pleas to Law Courts were acceptable in English and not, as before, only in French or Latin, and in 1362 also, members of parliament were allowed to debate in English. The final step was in 1413, when English became the official language of the royal court. While three Cornish speaking Conishmen had saved the English language from death, they had, in fact, dealt a blow at the continuing existence of their own language.

In east Cornwall more Cornishmen began to adopt English, which had now replaced Norman French as the language of the ruling classes. The lesser gentry were quick to follow and thus only the poorer classes continued to speak solely Cornish. In court records it can be seen that translators had to be employed for these latter whenever necessary. The position of the language by the end of the fourteenth century, in the face of the conquest, was still strong. In north east Cornwall English was spoken, but in most of the south east the people were mainly bi-lingual --and when a people are bi-lingual they usually begin to drop the language which has no commercial value. Only in the west of the peninsula did the Cornish remain entirely monoglot.


The Story of the Cornish Language
by P. Berresford Ellis

[Arawn]

I don't think there are any true monoglot Cornish speakers left, though its making a slow comeback supposidly, within a bi-lingual context. Good for them.

[Menydh]

Right. I remember reading that the last true Cornish speaker died many years ago. Basically, modern Cornish would be a revival.

[Breogan]

That's right, last monoglot died in 1777. More information in this link

http://bussorah.tripod.com/cornish.html