_The causes of the Cornish Speech’s Decay._
1. The first and great cause of the decay of the Cornish speech was
their want of a character, which not only contributed to the decay of
the tongue, but to the vanquishing of the nation of the Britons, they
being thereby disabled upon emergent occasions to write or communicate
with one another against their invaders, and so “dum pugnabant singuli
vincuntur universi,” as Tacitus says; and he also observes, “non aliud
adversus validissimas gentes pro Romanis utilius quàm quod in commune
non consulebant.”
What would have become of the Roman tongue, when the Goths and Vandals
broke in upon Rome and all Italy, mixing the Roman tongue with their
Runa-Gothica, if there had not been learned men (amounting to 160
elegant classical authors in Augustus his time) who preserved the
tongue in their works?
I know it hath been and yet is the judgment of learned men, that the
old Britons never had any character, yet I hope they will give me the
liberty of declaring the reasons of my dissenting. I. It hath always
been supposed that Ireland had a character; now Ireland was always
accounted a British Island, however; yet I cannot positively affirm
that the character which the Bishop of Tuam sets forth as British be
really so, there seeming to be little difference between that and the
old Saxon; neither can I consent to what he saith, that the Saxons,
whom he calls their neighbours, learned their very characters from
Ireland.
2. Though we may depend on Cæsar’s[30] authority, that Druidum
doctrina non fuit literis mandata, sed memoriæ fuit, ne aut in vulgus
proficiscentur, aut juventus qui eam perdiscebant negligentia aut in
curia remitterent, which reasons, in my judgment, rather demonstrate
that they had a character to communicate their doctrines by, if they
had pleased to use it. II. The great use made of the Roman tongue, the
laws of their conquest extending to letters and speech, as well as to
territory; and where there is a delight, there are things best
retained. Romanam Linguam Britanni non abnuebant, ut eloquentiam
concupisserent. Tacit.
Fertur habere meos, si vera est fama, libellos
Inter delicias pulchra Vienna suas.
Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus.
Martial.[31]
Afri, Galli, Hispani avido arripuerunt et inducto novo paulatim
oblituerunt veterum sermonem. Lips.
III. The great loss of Armorica, near unto us, by friendship, by
cognition, by interest, by correspondence. Cornwall has received
princes from thence, and they from us. We had heretofore mutual
interchanges of private families, but as to our speech we are alike
careless. We can understand words of one another, but have not the
benefit of conferences with one another in our ancient tongue. I have
met with some Friars born and bred there, who, one would think, should
be able to discourse of their own pristine tongue, and of their own
birthplaces, yet found them, though not totally ignorant that such
things had been, yet insensible and careless of their former
condition. They could tell me that my name Scawen, was in their tongue
Elders, as here it is; that there are those that bear the same name,
and one of them a bishop; but when he writ it he changed it to
Sambucus, shewing thereby a mind declared to a new, rather than an
inclination to his old name, and relation to his country speech.
IV. But, least the tender lamentations of those losses should be
thought to put us out of memory of the loss of our tongue, the matter
which we have in hand, we are here to mention a fourth cause, and that
which most concerns this Peninsula of Cornwall, which is the giving
over of the Guirremears,[32] which were used at the great conventions
of the people, at which they had famous interludes celebrated with
great preparations, and not without shews of devotion[33] in them,
solemnized in open and spacious downs of great capacity, encompassed
about with earthen banks, and in some part stone work of largeness to
contain thousands, the shapes of which remain in many places at this
day, though the use of them long since gone. These were frequently
used in most parts of the county, at the conveniency of the people,
for their meeting together, in which they represented, by grave
actings, scriptural histories, personating patriarchs, princes, and
other persons; and with great oratory pronounced their harangue,
framed by art, and composed with heroic stile, such as have been known
to be of old in other nations, as Gualterius,[34] an ancient father,
hath been mentioned to be. This was a great means to keep in use the
tongue with delight and admiration, and it continued also friendship
and good correspondency in the people. They had recitations in them
poetical and divine, one of which I may suppose this small relique of
antiquity to be, in which the passion of our Saviour, and his
resurrection, is described. They had also their Carols at several
times, especially at Christmas, which they solemnly sung, and
sometimes used, as I have heard, in their churches after prayers, the
burden of which songs, “Nowell, Nowell, good news, good news of the
Gospel,” by which means they kept the use of the tongue the better.
V. I cannot find that the British have boasted of many miracles done
among them; if any such antiently there were, they were deprived of
the memory of them by the Romans. I cannot affirm with so much reason
(as some of our neighbours have done with confidence) who say, that at
the last digging on the Haw for the foundation of the citadel of
Plymouth, the great jaws and teeth therein found, were those of
Gogmagog, who was there said to be thrown down by Corineus, whom some
will have to be the founder of the Cornish;[35] nor am I able to
assert, that some great instruments of war in brass, and huge limbs
and portraitures of persons long ago, as some say that have been in
some of the western parishes, were parts of giants, or other great
men, who had formerly had their being there. But we may rather think
those to be imaginary things or devices of old bards said to be there,
though we have no certain memory of them neither. Nor may we think it
strange that such things may be spoken of, since we may well credit
some good historians, that write that Alexander, after that he had
returned from his journey to India, caused a great representation to
be made on the ground on the western side of the river Indus, of a
huge campaign almost immeasurable, with tents, cabins, and platforms,
and arms also, for horses, racks, and mangers, of such height as were
not to be reached at; and that there were also scattered about the
ground bits and bridles for horses, of extraordinary length and
bigness, and that all this “ut de magnis majora loquantur,” and to
make men think upon him and his miraculous acts with the more
admiration.
VI. The sixth cause is, the loss of the ancient records, not of the
Duchy or the Earldom of Cornwall, (which some affirm were burnt, and
others lost in the ancient ruins of the castles of Rostormell, and
other such,) but of those of whole Cornwall, whilst one of the four
dynasties of this island, (or, as Pancirollus,) one of the five.
VII. The seventh cause is desuetude, or want of a continued use; and
it is no wonder, if, after so many losses, the true use of the tongue
vanished away or grew not into contempt. Speeches are compounded of
words, and both of them of one nature, and continued according to
their use, and of one of them it may be said as of the other
Multa recensentur quæ nunc cecidere, cadentque
Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus.
Words many and tongues we recount,
Which being fallen do oft remount,
And those that are now priz’d by us,
May fall to ground for want of use.
VIII. A general stupidity may be observed to be in the whole county.
As to other matters monumental, there is little mention made of our
antient stately fabrics amongst us, now ruinated; as to the founders
of them, castles, battles fought, and other things: and as to churches
(though we have abundance of fair ones for so small a county, where
there is no city nor any great town in it) excellent foundations, but
who the builders were we have no intelligence, only a great many false
tutelaries of them we hear of. Little of the monasteries hath been
said by those that have written copiously of others elsewhere.
Scarcely anything of the ancient bishops here, or of the bishop’s see;
only we know it to be said antiently, that it was removed from Bodmyn
to St. German’s,[36] and that it was about anno 1000, Danorum turbine,
from a country more open, to a place more woodland. The cathedral
indeed might have been better memorized by Godwin in his Catalogue of
Bishops, and enumeration of all the bishopricks; yet little is said of
it or the four several chapels in several distinct places of the
parish thereto belonging; and as for the monastery nothing at all. It
is strange too that Mr. Camden should say, “Germani viculum nihil
aliud est hodie, quam piscatorum casulæ:” whereas, there are no such
things belonging to such a trade there seen, but instead thereof a
cathedral, maintained at the great cost of the inhabitants, (though a
great part, by an accident, about one hundred years since fell down,)
a good monastical house yet undemolished, and hospitably inhabited, to
the relief of poor people. The bishop’s seat and house are yet
eminently extant in a Cornish name. The borough of St. German’s enjoys
still the privilege of sending burgesses to Parliament by
prescription. Pity it is that St. German, who came hither to suppress
the Pelagian heresy, should have so bad a going off; for an old fable
remains yet in report, that St. German being ill used fled away,
leaving a sad curse behind him, to the cliffs at Rame near the head;
where bewailing his misfortunes, the compassionating rocks in the
cliffs shed tears with him, at a place ever since called St. German’s
Well. True it is, such a spring there is, but the occasion of it
cannot be more truly affirmed than the other part of the story that
follows, viz. That he should be carried thence into remote countries
by angels in a fiery chariot, the tract of whose wheels were said to
be seen in those cliffs, but they are invisible. Thus much for the
site of the place. As to the person of St. German, who perhaps never
saw the place, I need not turn over old fabulous legends, nor a better
sort who have written his life heretofore, but I may have liberty to
relate what I have from the better hands of learned persons.[37] That
besides his disputation and confutation of Pelagius at Verulam, and
thereby freeing the church and nation from those heresies by a public
edict from the Emperor Valentinian, whereby they were no more troubled
with them afterwards, he the said St. German did other great works for
this land, viz. 1st. the institution of schools of learning among the
Britons; Dubritius and Iltutus being both of them his disciples.
Dubritius was made Archbishop of Carlehon; Iltutus sent to Lan Iltut,
a church bearing his name to this day; and one Daniell, made Bishop of
Bangor; from these famous men the monastery of Bangor, and other
monasteries in this land, were so well furnished with learned men, at
the coming in of St. Austin from the Pope, they stood upon discreet
and honourable terms.
2. The introduction of the Gallican Liturgy into use in the churches
of Britany, which was ever different from the Romans, and thereby a
happy means to have kept this nation from so much acquaintance with
the Pope, as they had with him afterwards, to their great trouble. It
is also said that St. Patrick, who carried over into Ireland the
education monastic, and good principles therewith, and is held to be
the Apostle of Ireland, spent many years under the discipline of St.
German, when he came hither; who, after he had been employed in the
embassy to the Emperor at Ravenna, died there one year before the
Saxons’ arrival.
All this time we are left in the dark concerning the fabric of the
Monastery of St. German’s, which could not be built till two or three
hundred years perhaps after the Saxons got a perfect dominion here
over the land, but we may believe that that and the cathedral might be
dedicated to his memory afterwards, in respect of the many good works
he had done elsewhere.
IX. As we have had an ill registry of monumental matters, so for five
or six centuries past (before the two last), I doubt we had but few
learned men here, which induces me to put that to the ninth cause of
the decay of the Cornish tongue. After the suppression of the Druids,
and that Christianity was received, yet learning decayed some while
amongst the people, the best of them being carried abroad by the
Romans and never returned; and then the supposed Saints coming in
after them, made no reparation thereof, but by their supposed
miracles, with which they entertained the people. So they had very few
learned men amongst them, places of breeding and obtaining learning
being remote, scarcely approachable, and the nation in continual
troubles and dangers; and for latter times such learned men as came to
us, seeing our own neglect of our tongue, have thought it not fit to
take the pains to inquire into it, as a thing obscure and not fit to
be studied by them, and so suffered to decay insensibly by them and
the inhabitants.
X. The Cornish tongue hath mostly resided for some ages past in the
names of the people, the gentry chiefly, and in the names of places,
observed to be significant mostly as to the site, &c. or for some
things eminent about them. Concerning both these, I must take liberty
to shew how the speech has been invaded, and eaten up by intrusion,
much of which hath been about churches and their sites, as well as by
neglectful inobservation; for those Saxon saints have hungrily eaten
up the antient names, which, when they could not well digest for
hardness of the words, many catched up others from those whom they
fieigned to be the tutelaries of those places, churches, and
fountains, and supposed miracles wrought thereabouts, as St. Kaine,
St. Gurrion, St. Tudy, St. Ive, St. Endellion, St. Kue, Landulph, St.
Ust, St. Just, St. Marthren, &c. Of St. Mardren’s Well,[38] (which is
a parish west to the Mount) a fresh true story of two persons, both of
them lame and decrepit, thus recovered from their infirmity. These two
persons, after they had applied themselves to divers physicians and
chirurgeons for cure, and finding no success by them, they resorted to
St. Mardren’s Well, and according to the ancient custom, which they
had heard of, the same which was once in a year, to wit, on Corpus
Christi evening, to lay some small offering on the altar there, and to
lie on the ground all night, drink of the water there, and in the
morning after, to take a good draught more, and to take and carry away
some of the water, each of them in a bottle, at their departure. This
course these two men followed, and within three weeks they found the
effect of it, and by degrees their strength increasing, were able to
move themselves on crutches. The year following they take the same
course again, after which they were able to go with the help of a
stick; and at length one of them, John Thomas, being a fisherman, was,
and is able at this day, to follow his fishing craft. The other, whose
name was William Cork, was a soldier under the command of my kinsman,
Colonel William Godolphin, (as he has often told me) was able to
perform his duty, and died in the service of his majesty King Charles
I. But herewith take also this: one Mr. Hutchens, a person well known
in those parts, and now lately dead, being parson of Ludgvan, a near
neighbouring parish to St. Mardren’s Well, he observing that many of
his parishioners often frequented this well superstitiously, for which
he reproved them privately, and sometimes publicly in his sermons; but
afterwards, he the said Mr. Hutchens, meeting with a woman coming from
the well with a bottle in her hand, desired her earnestly that he
might drink thereof, being then troubled with cholical pains, which
accordingly he did, and was eased of his infirmity. The latter story
is a full confutation of the former, for if the taking the water
accidentally thus prevailed upon the party to his cure, as it is
likely it did, then the miracle which was intended to be by the
ceremony of lying on the ground and offering, is wholly fled, and it
leaves the virtue of the water to be the true cause of the cure. And
we have here, as in many places of the land, great variety of salutary
springs, which have diversity of operations, which by natural reason
have been found to be productive of good effects, and not by miracle,
as the vain fancies of monks and friars have been exercised in
heretofore.
Howbeit, there are some old names yet remaining of places of prayers
or oratories, and the ruins shewing them to be such, as V. Gr.
Paderda, which is prayers good, (of which many places are so named);
Eglarose, the church in the vale, supposed antienter than the names of
their churches. Their sites are eminent and ancient, standing towards
the east, though no mention made how they came to be in decay, but
supposed to be after the Saxon churches came to be erected, and
miracles supposed to be wrought by those whose names they bear.
Churches’ sites took new names, whereas the old Cornish names remain
in all other places of the parishes generally; yet the names of the
four old castles remain, and of manors also for the most part, and
some other things in the Cornish, and do so continue the better, by
reason of men’s particular interest in them: and so are the eminent
hills likewise, especially towards the sea, and the hundred or hamlet
names of the country remain so chiefly in the western parts; those on
the eastern, standing towards the borders, have their names wrested
away by neighbourhood, as are other things by like accidents in the
eastern parts of the county; other names have been encroached upon by
fantastical or vainglorious builders calling their houses after their
own names, and others upon vain toys; but these are not many.
Moreover, concerning the loss of our speech, and the names of
families, I must here (but tenderly though) blame the incuriosity of
some of our gentry; who, forsaking the etymologies of their own
speech, have studied out new derivations of their names, endeavouring
to make themselves as it were descended from French or Norman
originals, in adopting or adapting their names thereunto; whereas,
their own names in the Cornish are more honourable, genuine, and true;
from the Conquest, forsooth, those would have their descent, (no
illustrious thing in itself) whereas the ancestry of many of them have
been here long before. How finely many have cozened themselves
thereby, might be shewn, if it would not be offensively taken, by
taking up of coat armour as from French originals. The art of heraldry
hath been drawn out to us in French terms and trickings, mostly begun
when our kings had most to do in those parts, and so from thence it
hath continued ever since; and our Cornish gentry, finding the English
so much addicted thereunto, have followed in that tract the same mode,
and would fain have themselves understood such, when they were much
better before than those French or Latin terms could make them, in
which many of the English may be blamed as well as we; for the
herald’s art hath many mysteries in it under their French and Latin
terms, and many mistakes may be thereby to us and others who are not
well acquainted with them, but in those that concern our own tongue,
it is evident many have wronged themselves, and more may do so if not
well heeded.
The grounds of two mistakes are very obvious. 1st. Upon the Tre or
Ter. 2dly. Upon the Ross or Rose. Tre or Ter in Cornish commonly
signifies a town, or rather place, and it has always an adjunct with
it. Tri is the number. 3. Those men willingly mistake one for another;
and so in French heraldry terms, they use to fancy and contrive those
with any such three things as may be like or cohere with, or may be
adapted to any thing or things in their surnames; whether very
handsome or not, is not much stood upon. Another usual mistake is upon
Ross, which, as they seem to fancy, should be a rose; but Ross in
Cornish is a vale or valley. Now for this their French-Latin tutors,
when they go into the field of Mars, put them in their coat armour
prettily to smell out a rose or flower (a fading honour instead of a
durable one); so any three such things, agreeable perhaps a little to
their names, are taken up and retained from abroad, when their own at
home have a much bttter scent and more lasting.
Some, however, amongst us, have kept themselves better to the
antiquities of their Cornish names in their coat armour, as that
honourable family Godolphin,[39] in keeping still displayed abroad his
white eagle, from the Cornish Gothulgon. Richard, king of the Romans,
Emperor elect, supplied his Cornish border with silver (perhaps tin)
plates, deducing them from the antient earls of Cornwall, as borne by
them before the Norman Conquest, and, in honour to them and himself,
still bearing the same afterwards. Chiverton, whose name in Cornish is
a house on a green place or hill, he beareth a coat thereunto
accordant, a castle with a green field under it; which may be well
thought on as to the name in[40] Cornish, though, in the heraldry it
had been more complete. V. a castle A. as I apprehend; Scaberius,
which is sweepers or sweeping, A. 3 broom besoms V.; Gavergan, a goat;
Keverel, a he-goat, or he-goats; that creature taking most delight, as
it is observed, in the cliffs thereabout. These are better
significations taken from home, than the other that are foreign; and
yet the assumption of a coat from any particular act of a man’s own,
is better than such as have reference barely to names, without some
special signification therewith.
I had thoughts formerly, and made preparation to give many more
instances, where many amongst us have been mistaken in those two
particulars; but since it is a hard thing to convince men of old
errors, and a harder to make a question against any concerning their
gentelicions and the old forms thereof, though intended more for their
honour, I shall forbear the further prosecution thereof; but in this,
however, I shall do them right, that they, i. e. their ancestors, in
this way thus trodden, have walked generally as antiently as any
other gentry of this nation, and to my seeming, it had been better if
they had stood still _super vias antiquas avorum suorum_, since most
of those ancient families who have strayed abroad as aforesaid, have
yet some of them, and many more had, lands and places of their own
names in their possession long enjoyed; and a nearer passage it had
been to their journey’s end, viz. their honour, if they had not
adventured abroad: a testimony whereof we have in that great
contention which happened in the time of King Edward III. between
Carminow of this county (a family to which most of the ancient gentry
here have relation) and a great person[41] of the nation, for bearing
of one and the same coat armour, Azure, a bend Or. After many heats
about it, a reference was made of it by the king to the most eminent
Knights of that time, of which John of Gaunt, King of Castille, was
one, before whom Carminow proved his right by the continual bearing
thereof, and that before the Conquest, which was not disapproved nor
disallowed, but applauded: yet, because the other contendant was a
baron of the realm, Carminow was adjudged to bear the same coat still,
but a file in chief for distinction sake. The decision was no way
dishonourable, and the remembrance of the contention continued to the
glory of his posterity, to which his motto in Cornish seems to have an
allusion――in English, “A Straw for Whifflers or Dissemblers;” or as
some have said to be, “A Fig Cala Rag Whetlow;” but we may take the
same better, I think, from the very name of Carminow being in Cornish
a rock immoveable, as a sign of his resolution, from thence, or
formerly taken up.
Having gone through this passage, which I know not how it may be taken
by my countrymen, let me make this observation, that since the gentry
here have thought fit, or endeavoured by mistake, to forsake the
antiquity of their Cornish names, and thereby their greatest interest,
might perhaps prognosticate that their language, which was their
ancient glory, should in revenge forsake them, as now it hath almost
done; and I shall proceed to assign some other causes of the decay
thereof.
XI. The vicinity, or near neighbourhood with Devon. I may say that
vicinity only with the Devonians, we having none else, which next to
the corruption of tongues by time and superstition to saints, hath
most devoured the names of places, especially on the borders of
Cornwall with Devon; and there is the worst language commonly spoken,
and spoken rudely too, which corrupts not only their own country
tongue but ours also, in the places that are nearest to them, and
those infect others nearest to them. The names of the places are
thereby also much altered in the Cornish, which antiently they had
generally, and the particulars that do yet appear, do stand as marks
only to shew that what were formerly had are now much eaten away, on
the borders especially. ’Tis observed also elsewhere in this county
furthest west, where the Cornish hath been most spoken, that the
English thereabouts is much better than the same is in Devon, or the
places bordering on them, by being most remote from thence from whence
the corruption proceeds.
XII. Our gentry, and others, antiently kept themselves in their
matches unmixt, commonly at home in their own country, both sons and
daughters desiring much to do so, whereby they preserved their names
here, and races the better; and when their names changed, it hath been
observed to be to the places of their abode, sometimes willingly,
sometimes by accident. So it hath continued the Cornish names to the
places, and consequently the tongue. But indeed of late our gentry
have frequently sought out foreign marriages in other counties,
whereby, though it may be confessed they have brought in much wealth,
and have goodly inheritances abroad, yet their offsprings have been
dissipated, and their affection less intire to the county, the
country-men, and country speech; yet it is to be observed, that not
many of them have been very prosperous or of long continuance in other
counties, where they cannot muster up very many of our names of
gentry, Prideaux, Trevilian, Tregonwell, Penruddock, and a few others
excepted, which shews that our Cornish are like those trees that
thrive best and live longest in their own peculiar soil and air, which
yet is fruitful and durable to those that come in amongst us. Not only
gentry, which are very many, that have great inheritance by their
matches here with Cornish families, but many others also, which seldom
leave this country when they have been planted here.
XIII. The coming-in of strangers of all sorts upon us, artificers,
traders, home-born and foreigners, whom our great commodities of tin
(more profitable to others than ourselves) and fishing, have invited
to us to converse with, and often to stay with us; these all, as they
could not easily learn our tongue, for which they could not find any
guide or direction, especially in these latter days, nor the same
generally spoken or affected amongst ourselves, so they were more apt
and ready to let loose their own tongues to be commixed with ours, and
such, for the novelty sake thereof, people were more ready to receive
than to communicate ours to any improvement to them. But ministers in
particular have much decreased the speech; this country being far from
academies, strangers from other parts of the kingdom have sought, as
they still do, and have had their promotions here, where benefices are
observed to be very good, and those have left their progenies, and
thereby their names, remaining behind them, whereby the Cornish names
have been diminished, as the tongue also: so that, as the reputed
saints heretofore where they seated themselves, have robbed the places
where their churches now stand for the most part of the Cornish names
they had before, so the ministers since those times coming from other
places, and other strangers, have filled up in many places the
inhabitants and places here with their new names and titles brought
amongst us, to the loss of many of the old. Here too we may add what
wrong another sort of strangers have done to us, especially in the
civil wars, and in particular by destroying of Mincamber, a famous
monument, being a rock of infinite weight, which, as a burden, was
laid upon other great stones, and yet so equally thereon poised up by
nature only, as a little child could instantly move it, but no one man
or many remove it. This natural monument all travellers that came that
way desired to behold; but in the time of Oliver’s usurpation, when
all monumental things became despicable, one Shrubsall, one of
Oliver’s heroes, then governor of Pendennes, by labour and much ado
caused to be undermined and thrown down, to the great grief of the
country, but to his own great glory as he thought, doing it as he
said, with a small cane in his hand. I myself have heard him to boast
of this act, being a prisoner then under him.
XIV. Another cause I shall mention as a great loss of the tongue,
though it be a great and wonderful advantage to the people otherwise:
the orders of the church and state, commanding all the people young to
learn the Lord’s Prayer, Belief, &c. in the vulgar tongue, supposing
that to be intended the English, if a mother, surely a stepmother to
us. Younglings take in that most, and retain longest, wherewith they
are seasoned and bred up in their education.
Herein we must complain also of another new neglect to our speech,
that the like care was not taken for us as for our brethren in Wales,
in the making of the late act of Parliament for the uniformity of the
Common Prayer, by which the five Bishops for Wales were commanded to
see the Service Book to be printed in the Welch tongue. If it had been
so here it had been a good counterpoise for the loss formerly
mentioned concerning the young people; this might also perhaps have
saved us some labour in this our undertaking, and it would have been
of good use for some of our[42] old folks also, for we have some among
these few that do speak Cornish, who do not understand a word of
English, as well as those in Wales, and those may be many in some of
the western parts, to whom Mr. Francis Robinson, parson of
Landawednack told me, he had preached a sermon not long since in the
Cornish tongue, only well understood by his auditory. This should have
been taken into consideration by our gentlemen burgesses in that and
other Parliaments, and by our bishops also; but better it had been if
our ancient bishops when they fled hither from their invaders, had
brought with them a character of their ancient speech, or left books
written therein; or, in defect thereof, they or any other had done for
us as Ulphius the bishop did for the Goths when they came to be seated
in Italy, who there invented new Gothic letters for his people, and
translated the Holy Scriptures into that language for them. This
indeed had deserved our greatest thanks from our bishops, as no doubt
they had them from those persons who received so great a benefit by
their former and latter kindness therein; nor let that good old bishop
Ulphius be censured (as he seems to be) for doing a superfluous work,
because he might perhaps know that the then service of the church was
celebrated in the Greek and Latin tongues, but rather let him be
commended for his zeal in religion, and his love to his country and to
his country people then with him, dwelling with strangers in another
land, that continued so mindful of them and their speech, as we have
been neglectful of ours. He by that means continued that tongue in
use; we by his example might have regained ours, if the like care had
been taken; but our people, as I have heard, in Queen Elizabeth’s
time, desired that the Common Liturgy should be in the English tongue,
to which they were then for novelty’s sake affected, not out of true
judgment desired it. But, besides negligence, fatality is to be
considered; fatality is a boundary beyond which nothing can pass; it
hath been eminent in kingdoms and states, and those have had commonly
fatal periods, as to a time determined five hundred years commonly.
But more usual it is, that upon such mutations of kingdoms there have
happened losses and mutations of tongues; it may therefore be the more
wondered at, that this of the British, being none of the learned
tongues to which the Lord had intrusted the writing of his Sacred
Scriptures, should have here lasted so long through so many mutations,
and that there is yet such a record thereof, as our old manuscript
imports, with the purity of the doctrine therein contained, and some
other small things in the Bodleian Library.
XV. The little or no help, rather discouragement, which the gentry and
other people of our own have given in these latter days, who have
lived in those parts where the tongue hath been in some use. In the
time of the late unhappy civil war, we began to make some use of it
upon the runnagates that went from us to the contrary part from our
opposite works, and more we should have done if the enemy had not been
jealous of them, and prevented us. This may be fit to be improved into
somewhat, if the like occasion happen, for it may be talked freely and
aloud to advantage, to which no other tongue hath reference. The
poorest sort at this day, when they speak it as they come abroad, are
laughed at by the rich that understand it not, which is by their own
fault in not endeavouring after it.
XVI. The want of writing it is the great cause of its decay; for,
though there wanted a proper character for it, yet we might have
written it in the character now in use, but I never saw a letter
written in it from one gentleman to another, or by any scholar; which
is to be wondered at, and blamed as a thing unbecoming such as ought
to be studious in every thing that is ancient: but since I began to
set about this work, I prevailed upon those that translated it to
write me several letters, which they at first found very hard to be
done; but after some practice it seemed easier.
Here I cannot but lament the want of such persons, books, records and
papers, which were late in being, and not now to be had, and my
misfortune in not having translated them, that most unhappily escaped
me; one was the manuscript of Anguin, who had translated out of
Cornish into English ―――― his relations, after his decease, (having suits
before me as Vice-Warden of the Stanneries for tin bounds) promised me
the favour of those translations, but before their return to their
houses, their people tearing all about for their controverted goods,
had torn to pieces all those papers. In another place I was promised
the sight of a Cornish Accidence; but that by another such-like
accident was totally spoiled by children before it could be brought
me. I have heard also that a Matins in Cornish was amongst the books
of Dr. Joseph Maynard, but I could never attain to it. But besides the
no helps by which I lie in this labyrinth, I have likewise had
discouragements amongst ourselves at home. I have been often told
that, besides the difficulty of the attempt, it would be thought
ridiculous for one to go about the restoring of that tongue which he
himself could not speak nor understand truly when spoken, to which I
have made answer with these two following instances: one is of a
countryman of ours, Langford by name; who being blind was yet able to
teach others the noble science of defence, only he desired to know
still the length of the weapon of his fellow combatant, with a guess
of his posture, and this he practised with good success. The other is
of one Grizling, of whom Mr. Camden says, that he being deaf could see
words; that is, that notwithstanding his deafness he could answer any
man’s question that set at table with him by the motion of his lips.
This man I have seen also, and he would complain of such men as in
those days wore great munchadoes, as they then called them, i. e.
nourishing of much hair, by which he was hindered somewhat of the
observation of their lips.
I may place these two men, one blind, the other deaf, for these
qualities among the observable things of the county, knowing them to
be true,――if the mentioning these examples in their comparison do not
excuse me from being laughed at by those men that have censured me for
my attempt.
_Hic facit Adam et dicit Deus._
Dol ony onen ha try, Tas ha Sap yn Trynyte
Ny ad eura ty then abry, haual dagan fare whare
Ny a euhyth yn the vody sperys sans hylly beene
Han been nans pan yn kylly, then dozty a del arte
Adam saf yn van yn clor, ha tryt the gyk ha the woys
Preder my theth wull a dor, haual theym an pen then troys
Myns us yntryr hag yn mor, evarnethe kemer halloys
Yn bysma rag dry astor ty a veea bys mafy toys.
Adam del of Den aras, bos guythys a uronty af thys
Kybar Paradys myathas saen gara un dra a govys
War bup, frut losoen ha has, avo hynny hy teays
Sacu yn frut ny fyth kymmyas, yea proen askyens hyulkis.
Nara tybbryth a henna, yen hyneuis pren askyens
Ynnes a lena tya, hag a fyth marroeu vernens.
_In English thus_:
So are we one and three, Father and Son in Trinity,
We make thee to us of clay like to our face anon,
We will breath in thy body spirit holy, and ointment on his head,
And life when lost to the earth thou must again.
Adam rise thou up in strength, and turn to flesh and blood;
Think I came all of earth like me from head to foot;
All that’s on land and sea upon them take thou authority,
In this world from bring forth thou shalt have thee allowed.
Adam so of God’s grace but keep what’s granted thee;
Take Paradise I appoint, only leave the thing thou ought.
On each fruit herb and seed that in it is growing,
Except the fruit thou shalt not take――that’s the tree of knowledge
forbidden.
Do not eat of that’s named the tree of knowledge,
Out from thence thou must and shalt die the death.
By this small part of a greater piece given (as I conceive) for Welsh,
by a Welsh gentleman, it appears how near the Cornish and Welsh
tongues are affined.