Cornish History

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Been meaning to post something on here about Cornwall and its people, and while nosing through my hard drive I found probably the best text document that best sums the place and people up. Here it is, no idea where I copied it from, the files 4 years old and I think copied from a book.



The news that, on April 24, 2014, the Cornish people were finally recognised as a national minority by the UK Government and included on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, throws up the question: Just who are the Cornish and why are they different? The answers may be surprising.

Communities minister Stephen Williams stated: “The Cornish, with the Welsh, are the oldest people in Britain.” This fact was drawn from the ongoing nine-year genetic survey of the peoples of Britain being undertaken by the University of Oxford, which concludes that the Cornish and Welsh people are descended from the original post-Ice Age colonists of Britain, 12,000 years ago. It even finds that the Cornish are genetically distinct from people in Devon right next door.

Those people, from the Atlantic fringes of what are now France, Spain and Portugal, entered a completely depopulated island, and have been here ever since. No-one was displaced, for there was no-one to displace.



No-one knows what language they spoke, although one intriguing theory is that it might have been an early form of Euskara (Basque), a pre-Indo-European language of very great antiquity.

In the Neolithic period, from 4,500 BC, more people, from the very same areas of Atlantic Europe, arrived bringing agricultural skills to Britain for the first time. From then until the Roman invasion in AD 43, there was relative continuity, although minor movements to and from the European mainland must have occurred, each bringing new technology, expertise and implements.

So, why did these people come to be defined as Celtic? The term is not one of race, but of language and culture. Over the last two decades, wholly new findings have emerged about the origin of the Celts and the 18th-century idea of a Central European origin and a Celtic invasion of Britain at the start of the Iron Age after

800 BC has, at long last, fallen by the wayside.It now appears that the Celtic language was developed from Indo-European in the western part of the Iberian peninsula, possibly around the Tagus estuary, which was a centre for prehistoric innovation and within the same area from which many of those early British colonists had come.

Today, we think that “Atlantic Arc trading” is a new concept but, in fact, it’s incredibly ancient. By the beginning of the Neolithic period, around 4500 BC, an Atlantic sea-trading route from western Iberia to Britain and Ireland was already established and, in time, Celtic became the common language of the trading nations along that route. The language became established in Ireland and Western Britain by 3000 BC, and across the rest of Britain by 2000 BC. Current work by leading archaeologist Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe and archaeo-linguist Dr John Koch is attempting to pin down those dates even more closely.

This was the language from which all the present-day Celtic languages, including Cornish, descended and perhaps the best definition of a Celt is “a person who speaks, or whose forebears spoke, as their native tongue, a Celtic language”. This would certainly include the Cornish people.

West Cornwall was the very first place in Britain ever to have been written about, following a visit by a Greek explorer and geographer called Pytheas of Massalia, around 325 BC. From his account, the native Cornish were described as “courteous” and “civilised” and their expertise in tin production and smelting was also described.

Roman occupation of Britain had little effect upon the Cornish people and their way of life. Cornwall did not become absorbed into the expanding Saxon Kingdom of Wessex, their king Athelstan placing the east bank of the Tamar as a revised border between his own Wessex kingdom and the independent Kingdom of Cornwall

(it had previously been the Taw-Exe line for several centuries), grabbing our then territory of Western Devon for himself in 926 AD.



Saxon settlement was small, late (no evidence suggests any earlier than the 10th century) and confined to a few small areas close to the Tamar. Cornwall retained its own status as an independent kingdom whose royal line continued until the 11th century. This – under Norman rule – became an Earldom and then, in 1337, the Duchy it remains today, giving Cornwall a peculiar constitutional and legal status which remains unique in the UK. Not so much a “county” as a Crown Dependency.

The early Celtic Christian church in Cornwall (predating St Augustine) had its own doctrines and practices, and Cornwall was the last of the Celtic nations to hold out against demands for change and conformity by Rome.

The Cornish language continued, with major literary production in the 14th century and again in the 16th. The relationship with England became fraught under Tudor rule, with two major uprisings in 1497 and 1549, the second resulting in a five-week siege of Exeter, five horrific battles – some of the bloodiest engagements ever fought on British soil – and savage reprisals resulting in the deaths of an estimated 11 per cent of the Cornish population. Refusal to allow a prayer book or Bible in Cornish struck a potential death-knell for the language, already retreating westward under the overwhelming influence of English.

Somehow, the language continued until confined to the Penwith and Lizard peninsulas by the 18th century. Isolated pockets of community use in remote parishes carried on throughout the 19th century, by which time a revival had begun among enthusiasts that continues today, securing official recognition and protection for the Cornish language in 2002, under the European Charter for the Protection of Regional and Minority Languages.

Today, the Cornish retain traditions and customs little known elsewhere, some of which derive from prehistory.When the Cornish became known as Cornish (or the pre-English language equivalents) is also probably

of pre-Roman date. The Cornish were one of three people known as “Cornovii” to the Romans, a name derived from native Celtic and meaning “horn or promontory people”. Around 400 AD, a Roman itinerary listing a route through north-east Cornwall included a place-name Durocornouio(n), “fortress of the Cornovii”, tentatively identified as Tintagel. In modern Cornish, that name would be rendered as “Din Kernowyon”, so the language hasn’t altered too greatly.

Cornwall’s King Donyarth, who drowned in 875 AD, was described in ancient records and in a strange mix of Latin and Celtic as “rex Cerniu, id est Cornubiae” (King of Cornwall, that is, of the Cornish people). In “Cerniu” and the “-cornou-” of Durocornouio(n), we can recognise the native name, Kernow, first spelt that way in 1400. The name “Cornwall” retains the Celtic word meaning “horns” or “promontories”, plus the West Saxon word “wealas” which they applied to Celtic-speaking Britons (hence “Wales”). To the West Saxons, the Cornish were the “Westwealas”; the Welsh, the “Northwealas”.

The Cornish were always an innovative people, blazing the trail for technologies from blood transfusion to the nationwide postal service; from road and rail transport to powered flight (yes, the son of Cornish emigrants to New Zealand achieved that feat eight months before the Wright brothers did so) and the screw propeller which drives most of the world’s shipping. And, of course, Cornish hard rock mining techniques and expertise, developed over 4,000 years, have been taken all over the world.

 

[Altair]

A good read. Surprised 'Pastie's and Ice cream' weren't mentioned tho..

Me and my EX stayed at a pub / hotel down that way...off the A470 near ffestiniog.. the The landlord and Landlady wouldn't release us.!! He wanted to hear all about Yorkshire..

He told us all about the TIN mines and Slate mines...Great stuff..

 

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Saints, well every place in Cornwall that starts with St. was usually founded by a saint. The one I'm interested in, St. Meriadoc, arrived around the 4th century, the rest seem to be later centuries. He has a Cornish miracle play written about him which was wrote in around 1500 at Glasney College. He was a Breton priest whose father was the king of Britanny and ended up getting driven out of Cornwall by king Teudar, going back to Britanny. He worshipped and set up an oratory near the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Camborne, both now lost somewhere. Saint Piran, the 5th century present saint of Cornwall, got kicked out of Ireland for being Christian. He got tied to a millstone which floated over to Cornwall and he set up an oratory where he landed which still stands. He's got the Life of Saint Piran written about him, wrote in the 1400's. St Gothians oratory still stands in the sands of Gwithian. La is the Saint of St. Ives but has a well and chapel named after her in Camborne called Fenton-La. The virgin Saint Derwa/ Derva seems to be non-existant but has chapel remains in Menerdarva and might be involved with the Battle of Reskajeage. St. Petroc was a former saint of Cornwall and could've been the son of a Welsh king. St Agnes killed the giant Bolster who fell in love her, Bolster being a mate of the giant Cormoran who was killed by Jack the Giant Killer.

And thats all I can remember at the moment, did find this though The Saints of Cornwall - Free Chat Rooms

 

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THE BOYS OF CORNWALL. "It's a 'talk and a scat,' as Cornish people themselves say, that is a word and a blow, and oftener the blow first, in the discipline of Cornish children and particularly Cornish boys.
Whether or not the boys require rough treatment, they get it. They seem to expect it. And they thrive under it. They are all boys of parents who labour severely and whose fathers before them for more than a thousand years have drudged and and striven in the same sturdy way. Sentiment in child-training is here unknown. A drill-hammer, a hob-nailed boot, or a huge fist goes along smartly with the reprimand. Disobedience is almost unknown. But in time the working days begin The boys are at once installed as fathers' "labbots," or helpers, in the mines. They bring swab-sticks and water for swabbing the drill-holes; take the dulled drills above ground to the blacksmith shops for sharpening and return them; bring the "croust" or lunch to their fathers when the "touch-pipe" or rest and bit of food are taken; help shovel and wheel ore to the "skip;" learn to “twist the drill" and then to "strike the drill," and finally have become full fledged miners that "knaw tin." During their "labbot" days in the mines these Cornish boys are reckoned the most recklessly daring cubs in all England. They scorn to descend the shafts by the man-engine, having a -wild and startling way of their own. At the corner of each shaft is a "man-hole" with a stationary ladder from top to bottom, with smooth, half- round sides and wrought-iron "rungs." Springing upon these like monkeys, the boys slide from one "sollar" or landing to another, their hands just touching the slippery sides and the toes of their hob-nailed shoes beating the iron rungs with a horrible "whi-r-r---r-r!"—the numbers engaged in the lightning-like descent causing deafening and shrill thunder as though the iron ratchets at an hundred ferries were clinking and screaming simultaneously.
The girls of Cornwall give nobody trouble in early life. They are little automatons in youth, silent as pagan stone Circles in girlhood, voiceless and blushing thereafter until wedded, when they at once develop such strength of character, temper and tongue that half the men of Cornwall are known individually as "Jinny's Jack," and in raillery are greeted with the inquiry:
"How's the woman as owns 'ee?"

Edgar L. Wakeman.
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 82, Number 97, 12 December 1891

 

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Here's a little something about a traitor to the British state. Apparently still regarded as one.

Credited to The Cornish are a Nation and Kernow Matters To Us.


New Emily Hobhouse Museum - "That bloody woman!"

We are pleased to bring to you the information that a museum dedicated to the life of Cornish human rights campaigner Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) is to be constructed near her birthplace of St Ive near Liskeard. Cornwall Council has issued full planning permission.

Artists impressions of the museum are below and this affords long overdue recognition to the great campaigner herself.

Applicants AZ Urban Studio, on behalf of Emily Estate UK Ltd, said: “The chantry was the birthplace of Emily Hobhouse, on the 9th April 1860, and her home for 35 years during her formative childhood and adolescence years.

North of Blackthorn Grange, the entrance building, the existing calf shed and productive gardens will be converted in to a café and accessible kitchen garden.

The chantry building and gardens are being fully restored to the historic character during the years Emily lived there and will form an exhibit for visitors to engage in Emily’s surroundings during her up bring in St Ive.

The Emily Hobhouse Museum is positioned in the most discreet area of the site, south of Blackthorn Grange, with a line of trees providing screening to the north and the existing Cornish hedge retained to the east, south and west.

This building will exhibit the active years of Emily’s life mostly focused on her work in South Africa.

The rectory will be redeveloped to provide a small traditional cluster of new buildings, with one family dwelling and two smaller dwellings.”

We have often written about Emily and the article is below:

Emily Hobhouse – Welfare Campaigner and Humanitarian

The Cornishwoman who took on the British Empire over their concentration camps in South Africa where starvation and cruelty was the norm

Not many realise that the British employed the concentration camp system in their African empire. Emily Hobhouse, referred to by the British Establishment as ‘that bloody woman’ did and set out to do something about the evil. Regarded as a traitor by the British establishment, she is honoured in South Africa.

Emily Hobhouse was born in St Ive near Liskeard, Cornwall on 9th April 1860, the daughter of Reginald Hobhouse and Caroline Trelawny. She was the sister of Leonard Hobhouse 1864-1929, the social philosopher and both were active members of the Adult Suffrage Society. She was educated at home and lived with her parents until she was 35. In 1895 she travelled to Minnesota to work amongst Cornish miners and their families who had migrated to America and fallen on hard times

Like many liberals, she was opposed to the Boer War and she denounced the government’s actions in going to war.

Towards the end of 1900 she received information on how women and children were being treated by the British Army. She wrote “poor women who were being driven from pillar to post, needed protection and organised assistance. And from that moment I was determined to go to South Africa in order to render assistance to them”. In October 1900, she formed the Relief Fund for South African Women and Children. The aim of the organisation was to “To feed, clothe, harbour and save women and children – Boer, British and other – who were left destitute and ragged as a result of the destruction of property, the eviction of families or other incidents resulting from the military operations”. She struggled to raise funds for her new organisation.

Emily arrived in Cape Town on 27th December 1900. When she had left Britain, she only knew about the concentration camp at Port Elizabeth, but learnt that there were 34 concentration camps in operation. Hobhouse had a letter of introduction to Alfred Milner from her aunt, the widow of the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office. From Milner she obtained the use of two railway trucks, but their use was subject to Lord Kitchener’s approval. She received Kitchener’s permission two weeks later but was restricted to visiting Bloemfontein and she could take only one truck of supplies for the camps, about 12 tons. She left Cape Town on 22nd January 1901 and arrived at Bloemfontein within two days. The camp there housed some 1,800 people. Emily reported “that there was a scarcity of essential provision and that the accommodation was wholly inadequate.” At that time soap was listed by the authorities as a luxury but she succeeded in having it reclassified as a necessity.

Extending her visit beyond Bloemfontein, she visited camps to the south of Bloemfontein, including Norvalspont, Aliwal North, Springfontein, Kimberley and Orange River. She also visited Mafeking.

Her tour brought her back to Bloemfontein in March 1901. Within the two months since her first visit, the camp population had grown and she was shocked by what she found. She later wrote “The population had redoubled and had swallowed up the results of improvements that had been effected. Disease was on the increase and the sight of the people made the impression of utter misery. Illness and death had left their marks on the faces of the inhabitants. Many that I had left hale and hearty, of good appearance and physically fit, had undergone such a change that I could hardly recognise them.”

Emily returned to Britain to raise the issues with the Marquess of Salisbury and his government but there was little support from either. She wrote “The picture of apathy and impatience displayed here, which refused to lend an ear to undeserved misery, contrasted sadly with the scenes of misery in South Africa, still fresh in my mind. No barbarity in South Africa was as severe as the bleak cruelty of an apathetic parliament.” Her book on the Boer War was written in France. Emily did receive more popular support and this forced the government to set up a committee of women headed by Millicent Fawcett. Emily believed the committee was biased in favour of the government’s position and she herself was not invited to be a member. The members of the committee visited the camps for themselves between August and December 1901, concluded that they agreed with Hobhouse’s original report and recommended improvements.

With action being taken at home, Hobhouse returned to South Africa. The authorities were fearful of her visit and she was refused permission to visit the camps. Her ship docked in Cape Town on Sunday 27th October 1901 but she was not allowed to disembark. Her own health deteriorating, she recuperates in the mountains of Savoy and heard from there that the war had ended.

During post-war visits, Hobhouse set up schools to help young people learn practical skills.

Hobhouse was also an opponent of British involvement in the First War. On 3rd September, 1916, she wrote to a friend: “Think of our beloved fatherland, think of beautiful Italy, of France and of Germany, all of them working at full capacity to produce weapons of war and destruction. It seems as if we have reached the end of our civilization. It is all too hideous for words”.

In 1921 the people of South Africa raised £2,300 in recognition of the work she had done for their people. The money was sent to her with a request that she had to buy a small house for herself in Cornwall. On 18th May 1921, she replied saying “I find it impossible to give expression to the feelings that overpowered me when I heard of the surprise you had prepared for me. My first impulse was not to accept any gift, or otherwise to devote it to some or other public end. But after having read and reread your letter, I have decided to accept your gift in the same simple and loving spirit in which it was sent to me.” She purchased a house at St. Ives in Cornwall.

She died in London on 8th June 1926. Her ashes were placed in the Women’s Memorial at Bloemfontein and a town in Eastern Free State was named Hobhouse. She is not recognised by the British State, having been regarded as a traitor.

 

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The Roman fort at Restormel

“The inhabitants of Britain who dwell about the promontory known as Belerium (modern Cornwall) are especially hospitable to strangers and have adopted a civilized manner of life because of their intercourse with merchants of other peoples. They it is who work the tin, treating the bed which bears it in an ingenious manner. This bed, being like rock, contains earthy seams and in them the workers quarry the ore, which they then melt down and cleanse of its impurities. Then they work the tin into pieces the size of knuckle-bones and convey it to an island which lies off Britain and is called Ictis (St. Michael’s Mount): for at the time of ebb-tide the space between this island and the mainland becomes dry and they can take the tin in large quantities over to the island on their wagons”. - Diodorus Siculus 90 B.C. – A.D. 30; Library of History, Book V, 22
Restormel takes its name from the Cornish words ‘ros tor moyl’ translating as ‘bare hilltop spur’.
The earliest known occupation at Restormel, just outside Lostwithiel in Cornwall, was a Roman fort, the banks and ditches of which can still be seen on the hill to the south west of the later castle.
The Roman fort was occupied between the first and fourth centuries AD housing around 160 individuals.
The structure was rectangular in plan, measuring around 60 metres by 70 metres, with opposed entrances on its sides.
Surrounding the enclosure were two banks and ditches whereas a similar fort at Nanstallon, west of Bodmin, had only one.
A geophysical survey at Restormel has revealed only traces of internal buildings and their layout is not yet known.
Other Roman forts in Cornwall have been investigated at nearby Nanstallon overlooking the River Camel and at Calstock above the Tamar valley.
All three forts were sited at the tidal limits of their rivers and were probably intended to secure trade routes in to Cornwall and access its valuable mineral resources.
Roman remains are uncommon west of Exeter, in what is currently Devon, and it is believed that the Romans never had a substantial presence in the region.

 

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Fogou's

'Fogou’ is derived from a Cornish word meaning a cave, and Cornish fogous are prehistoric underground passages constructed by excavating a trench and lining its sides with either large stone blocks or drystone walling, and then roofing it over with large flat slabs.
Halliggye is a good example of a large well preserved Cornish fogou.
There are twelve surviving fogous in Cornwall, but many more may have been ‘lost’ over the centuries and new examples are revealed from time to time.
They were constructed from the 5th Century BC to the first two centuries AD, placing them in the late Iron Age and early Roman periods.
Their function remains a mystery; the most plausible explanations see them as places for storage, or for refuge, or as the setting for religious or ritual activities.
Similar sites are also found in Brittany, Ireland and Scotland where they are known as souterrains, but their architecture, date range, and possibly also their function, differ from the Cornish sites.
In Ireland, for example they may be constructed or continue in use into the mediæval period.