It is impossible to spend even a few weeks in Cornwall without being
impressed with the air of antiquity which pervades that county, and seems,
like a morning mist, half to conceal and half to light up every one of its
hills and valleys. It is impossible to look at any pile of stones, at any
wall, or pillar, or gate-post, without asking one’s self the question, Is
this old, or is this new? Is it the work of Saxon, or of Roman, or of
Celt? Nay, one feels sometimes tempted to ask, Is this the work of Nature
or of man?
“Among these rocks and stones, methinks I see
More than the heedless impress that belongs
To lonely Nature’s casual work: they bear
A semblance strange of power intelligent,
And of design not wholly worn away.”—_Excursion_.
The late King of Prussia’s remark about Oxford, that in it everything old
seemed new, and everything new seemed old, applies with even greater truth
to Cornwall. There is a continuity between the present and the past of
that curious peninsula, such as we seldom find in any other place. A
spring bubbling up in a natural granite basin, now a meeting-place for
Baptists or Methodists, was but a few centuries ago a holy well, attended
by busy friars, and visited by pilgrims, who came there “nearly lame,” and
left the shrine “almost able to walk.” Still further back the same spring
was a centre of attraction for the Celtic inhabitants, and the rocks piled
up around it stand there as witnesses of a civilization and architecture
certainly more primitive than the civilization and architecture of Roman,
Saxon, or Norman settlers. We need not look beyond. How long that granite
buttress of England has stood there, defying the fury of the Atlantic, the
geologist alone, who is not awed by ages, would dare to tell us. But the
historian is satisfied with antiquities of a more humble and homely
character; and in bespeaking the interest, and, it may be, the active
support of our readers, in favor of the few relics of the most ancient
civilization of Britain, we promise to keep within strictly historical
limits, if by historical we understand, with the late Sir G. C. Lewis,
that only which can be authenticated by contemporaneous monuments.
But even thus, how wide a gulf seems to separate us from the first
civilizers of the West of England, from the people who gave names to every
headland, bay, and hill of Cornwall, and who first planned those lanes
that now, like throbbing veins, run in every direction across that
heath-covered peninsula! No doubt it is well known that the original
inhabitants of Cornwall were Celts, and that Cornish is a Celtic language;
and that, if we divide the Celtic languages into two classes, Welsh with
Cornish and Breton forms one class, the _Cymric_; while the Irish with its
varieties, as developed in Scotland and the Isle of Man, forms another
class, which is called the _Gaelic_ or _Gadhelic_. It may also be more or
less generally known that Celtic, with all its dialects, is an Aryan or
Indo-European language, closely allied to Latin, Greek, German, Slavonic,
and Sanskrit, and that the Celts, therefore, were not mere barbarians, or
people to be classed together with Finns and Lapps, but heralds of true
civilization wherever they settled in their worldwide migrations, the
equals of Saxons and Romans and Greeks, whether in physical beauty or in
intellectual vigor. And yet there is a strange want of historical reality
in the current conceptions about the Celtic inhabitants of the British
Isles; and while the heroes and statesmen and poets of Greece and Rome,
though belonging to a much earlier age, stand out in bold and sharp relief
on the table of a boy’s memory, his notions of the ancient Britons may
generally be summed up “in houses made of wicker-work, Druids with long
white beards, white linen robes, and golden sickles, and warriors painted
blue.” Nay, strange to say, we can hardly blame a boy for banishing the
ancient bards and Druids from the scene of real history, and assigning to
them that dark and shadowy corner where the gods and heroes of Greece live
peacefully together with the ghosts and fairies from the dreamland of our
own Saxon forefathers. For even the little that is told in “Little
Arthur’s History of England” about the ancient Britons and the Druids is
extremely doubtful. Druids are never mentioned before Cæsar. Few writers,
if any, before him were able to distinguish between Celts and Germans, but
spoke of the barbarians of Gaul and Germany as the Greeks spoke of
Scythians, or as we ourselves speak of the negroes of Africa, without
distinguishing between races so different from each other as Hottentots
and Kaffirs. Cæsar was one of the first writers who knew of an
ethnological distinction between Celtic and Teutonic barbarians, and we
may therefore trust him when he says that the Celts had Druids, and the
Germans had none. But his further statements about these Celtic priests
and sages are hardly more trustworthy than the account which an ordinary
Indian officer at the present day might give us of the Buddhist priests
and the Buddhist religion of Ceylon. Cæsar’s statement that the Druids
worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, is of the same
base metal as the statements of more modern writers that the Buddhists
worship the Trinity, and that they take Buddha for the Son of God. Cæsar
most likely never conversed with a Druid, nor was he able to control, if
he was able to understand, the statements made to him about the ancient
priesthood, the religion and literature of Gaul. Besides, Cæsar himself
tells us very little about the priests of Gaul and Britain; and the
thrilling accounts of the white robes and the golden sickles belong to
Pliny’s “Natural History,” by no means a safe authority in such
matters.(38)
We must be satisfied, indeed, to know very little about the mode of life,
the forms of worship, the religious doctrines, or the mysterious wisdom of
the Druids and their flocks. But for this very reason it is most essential
that our minds should be impressed strongly with the historical reality
that belongs to the Celtic inhabitants, and to the work which they
performed in rendering these islands for the first time fit for the
habitation of man. That historical lesson, and a very important lesson it
is, is certainly learned more quickly, and yet more effectually, by a
visit to Cornwall or Wales, than by any amount of reading. We may doubt
many things that Celtic enthusiasts tell us; but where every village and
field, every cottage and hill, bear names that are neither English, nor
Norman, nor Latin, it is difficult not to feel that the Celtic element has
been something real and permanent in the history of the British Isles. The
Cornish language is no doubt extinct, if by extinct we mean that it is no
longer spoken by the people. But in the names of towns, castles, rivers,
mountains, fields, manors, and families, and in a few of the technical
terms of mining, husbandry, and fishing, Cornish lives on, and probably
will live on, for many ages to come. There is a well-known verse:—
“By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Caer, and Pen,
You may know most Cornish men.”(39)
But it will hardly be believed that a Cornish antiquarian, Dr. Bannister,
who is collecting materials for a glossary of Cornish proper names, has
amassed no less than 2,400 names with Tre, 500 with Fen, 400 with Ros, 300
with Lan, 200 with Pol, and 200 with Caer.
A language does not die all at once, nor is it always possible to fix the
exact date when it breathed its last. Thus, in the case of Cornish, it is
by no means easy to reconcile the conflicting statements of various
writers as to the exact time when it ceased to be the language of the
people, unless we bear in mind that what was true with regard to the
higher classes was not so with regard to the lower, and likewise that in
some parts of Cornwall the vitality of the language might continue, while
in others its heart had ceased to beat. As late as the time of Henry
VIII., the famous physician Andrew Borde tells us that English was not
understood by many men and women in Cornwall. “In Cornwal is two
speeches,” he writes; “the one is naughty Englyshe, and the other the
Cornyshe speche. And there be many men and women the which cannot speake
one worde of Englyshe, but all Cornyshe.” During the same King’s reign,
when an attempt was made to introduce a new church service composed in
English, a protest was signed by the Devonshire and Cornish men utterly
refusing this new English:—
“We will not receive the new Service, because it is but like a
Christmas game; but we will have our old Service of Matins, Mass,
Evensong, and Procession, in Latin as it was before. And so we the
Cornish men (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly
refuse this new English.”(40)
Yet in the reign of Elizabeth, when the liturgy was appointed by authority
to take the place of the mass, the Cornish, it is said,(41) desired that
it should be in the English language. About the same time we are told that
Dr. John Moreman(42) taught his parishioners the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed,
and the Ten Commandments, in the English tongue. From the time of the
Reformation onward, Cornish seems constantly to have lost ground against
English, particularly in places near Devonshire. Thus Norden, whose
description of Cornwall was probably written about 1584, though not
published till 1728, gives a very full and interesting account of the
struggle between the two languages:—
“Of late,” he says (p. 26), “the Cornishe men have muche conformed
themselves to the use of the Englishe tounge, and their Englishe
is equall to the beste, espetially in the easterne partes; even
from Truro eastwarde it is in manner wholly Englishe. In the weste
parte of the countrye, as in the hundreds of Penwith and Kerrier,
the Cornishe tounge is moste in use amongste the inhabitantes, and
yet (whiche is to be marveyled), though the husband and wife,
parentes and children, master and servantes, doe mutually
communicate in their native language, yet ther is none of them in
manner but is able to convers with a straunger in the Englishe
tounge, unless it be some obscure people, that seldome conferr
with the better sorte: But it seemeth that in few yeares the
Cornishe language will be by litle and litle abandoned.”
Carew, who wrote about the same time, goes so far as to say that most of
the inhabitants “can no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the
English, though they sometimes affect to be.” This may have been true with
regard to the upper classes, particularly in the west of Cornwall, but it
is nevertheless a fact that, as late as 1640, Mr. William Jackman, the
vicar of Feock,(43) was forced to administer the sacrament in Cornish,
because the aged people did not understand English; nay, the rector of
Landewednak preached his sermons in Cornish as late as 1678. Mr. Scawen,
too, who wrote about that time, speaks of some old folks who spoke Cornish
only, and would not understand a word of English; but he tells us at the
same time that Sir Francis North, the Lord Chief Justice, afterwards Lord
Keeper, when holding the assizes at Lanceston in 1678, expressed his
concern at the loss and decay of the Cornish language. The poor people, in
fact, could speak, or at least understand, Cornish, but he says, “They
were laughed at by the rich, who understood it not, which is their own
fault in not endeavoring after it.” About the beginning of the last
century, Mr. Ed. Lhuyd (died 1709), the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum,
was still able to collect from the mouths of the people a grammar of the
Cornish language, which was published in 1707. He says that at this time
Cornish was only retained in five or six villages towards the Land’s End;
and in his “Archæologia Britannica” he adds, that although it was spoken
in most of the western districts from the Land’s End to the Lizard, “a
great many of the inhabitants, especially the gentry, do not understand
it, there being no necessity thereof in regard there’s no Cornish man but
speaks good English.” It is generally supposed that the last person who
spoke Cornish was Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1778, and to whose memory
Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte has lately erected a monument in the
churchyard at Paul. The inscription is:—
“Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died in 1778, said to
have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish,
the peculiar language of this country from the earliest records
till it expired in this parish of St. Paul. This stone is erected
by the Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John
Garret, vicar of St. Paul, June, 1860.”
It seems hardly right to deprive the old lady of her fair name; but there
are many people in Cornwall who maintain that when travellers and grandees
came to see her, she would talk anything that came into her head, while
those who listened to her were pleased to think that they had heard the
dying echoes of a primeval tongue.(44) There is a letter extant, written
in Cornish by a poor fisherman of the name of William Bodener. It is dated
July 3, 1776, that is, two years before the death of Dolly Pentreath; and
the writer says of himself in Cornish:—
“My age is threescore and five. I am a poor fisherman. I learnt
Cornish when I was a boy. I have been to sea with my father and
five other men in the boat, and have not heard one word of English
spoke in the boat for a week together. I never saw a Cornish book.
I learned Cornish going to sea with old men. There is not more
than four or five in our town can talk Cornish now,—old people
fourscore years old. Cornish is all forgot with young people.”(45)
It would seem, therefore, that Cornish died with the last century, and no
one now living can boast to have heard its sound when actually spoken for
the sake of conversation. It seems to have been a melodious and yet by no
means an effeminate language, and Scawen places it in this respect above
most of the other Celtic dialects:—
“Cornish,” he says, “is not to be gutturally pronounced, as the
Welsh for the most part is, nor mutteringly, as the Armorick, nor
whiningly as the Irish (which two latter qualities seem to have
been contracted from their servitude), but must be lively and
manly spoken, like other primitive tongues.”
Although Cornish must now be classed with the extinct languages, it has
certainly shown a marvelous vitality. More than four hundred years of
Roman occupation, more than six hundred years of Saxon and Danish sway, a
Norman conquest, a Saxon Reformation, and civil wars, have all passed over
the land; but, like a tree that may bend before a storm but is not to be
rooted up, the language of the Celts of Cornwall has lived on in an
unbroken continuity for at least two thousand years. What does this mean?
It means that through the whole of English history to the accession of the
House of Hanover, the inhabitants of Cornwall and the western portion of
Devonshire, in spite of intermarriages with Romans, Saxons, and Normans,
were Celts, and remained Celts. People speak indeed of blood, and
intermingling of blood, as determining the nationality of a people; but
what is meant by blood? It is one of those scientific idols, that crumble
to dust as soon as we try to define or grasp them; it is a vague, hollow,
treacherous term, which, for the present at least, ought to be banished
from the dictionary of every true man of science. We can give a scientific
definition of a Celtic language; but no one has yet given a definition of
Celtic blood, or a Celtic skull. It is quite possible that hereafter
chemical differences may be discovered in the blood of those who speak a
Celtic, and of those who speak a Teutonic language. It is possible, also,
that patient measurements, like those lately published by Professor
Huxley, in the “Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,” may lead in time to a
really scientific classification of skulls, and that physiologists may
succeed in the end in carrying out a classification of the human race,
according to tangible and unvarying physiological criteria. But their
definitions and their classifications will hardly ever square with the
definitions or classifications of the student of language, and the use of
common terms can only be a source of constant misunderstandings. We know
what we mean by a Celtic language, and in the grammar of each language we
are able to produce a most perfect scientific definition of its real
character. If, therefore, we transfer the term Celtic to people, we can,
if we use our words accurately, mean nothing but people who speak a Celtic
language, the true exponent, aye, the very life of Celtic nationality.
Whatever people, whether Romans, or Saxons, or Normans, or, as some think,
even Phœnicians and Jews, settled in Cornwall, if they ceased to speak
their own language and exchanged it for Cornish, they are, before the
tribunal of the science of language, Celts, and nothing but Celts; while,
whenever Cornishmen, like Sir Humphrey Davy or Bishop Colenso, have ceased
to speak Cornish, and speak nothing but English, they are no longer Celts,
but true Teutons or Saxons, in the only scientifically legitimate sense of
that word. Strange stories, indeed, would be revealed, if blood could cry
out and tell of its repeated mixtures since the beginning of the world. If
we think of the early migrations of mankind; of the battles fought before
there were hieroglyphics to record them; of conquests, leadings into
captivity, piracy, slavery, and colonization, all without a sacred poet to
hand them down to posterity,—we shall hesitate, indeed, to speak of pure
races, or unmixed blood, even at the very dawn of real history. Little as
we know of the early history of Greece, we know enough to warn us against
looking upon the Greeks of Asia or Europe as an unmixed race. Ægyptus,
with his Arabian, Ethiopian, and Tyrian wives; Cadmus, the son of Libya;
Phœnix, the father of Europa,—all point to an intercourse of Greece with
foreign countries, whatever else their mythological meaning may be. As
soon as we know anything of the history of the world, we know of wars and
alliances between Greeks and Lydians and Persians, of Phœnician
settlements all over the world, of Carthaginians trading in Spain and
encamped in Italy, of Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain,
Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern
Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions
of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient
seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons;
while at the same time, and for many centuries to come, the few
strongholds of civilization in the East were again and again overwhelmed
by the irresistible waves of Hunnish, Mongolic, and Tartaric invaders.
And, with all this, people at the latter end of the nineteenth century
venture to speak, for instance, of pure Norman blood as something definite
or definable, forgetting how the ancient Norsemen carried their wives away
from the coasts of Germany or Russia, from Sicily or from the very Piræus;
while others married whatever wives they could find in the North of
France, whether of Gallic, Roman, or German extraction, and then settled
in England, where they again contracted marriages with Teutonic, Celtic,
or Roman damsels. In our own days, if we see the daughter of an English
officer and an Indian Ranee married to the son of a Russian nobleman, how
are we to class the offspring of that marriage? The Indian Ranee may have
had Mongol blood, so may the Russian nobleman; but there are other
possible ingredients of pure Hindu and pure Slavonic, of Norman, German,
and Roman blood,—and who is the chemist bold enough to disengage them all?
There is, perhaps, no nation which has been exposed to more frequent
admixture of foreign blood, during the Middle Ages, than the Greeks.
Professor Fallmerayer maintained that the Hellenic population was entirely
exterminated, and that the people who at the present day call themselves
Greeks are really Slavonians. It would be difficult to refute him by
arguments drawn either from the physical or the moral characteristics of
the modern Greeks as compared with the many varieties of the Slavonic
stock. But the following extract from “Felton’s Lectures on Greece,
Ancient and Modern,” contains the only answer that can be given to such
charges, without point or purpose: “In one of the courses of lectures,” he
says, “which I attended in the University of Athens, the Professor of
History, a very eloquent man as well as a somewhat fiery Greek, took this
subject up. His audience consisted of about two hundred young men from
every part of Greece. His indignant comments on the learned German, that
notorious Μισέλλην or Greek-hater, as he stigmatized him, were received by
his hearers with a profound sensation. They sat with expanded nostrils and
flashing eyes—a splendid illustration of the old Hellenic spirit, roused
to fury by the charge of barbarian descent. ‘It is true,’ said the
eloquent professor, ‘that the tide of barbaric invaders poured down like a
deluge upon Hellas, filling with its surging floods our beautiful plains,
our fertile valleys. The Greeks fled to their walled towns and mountain
fastnesses. By and by the water subsided and the soil of Hellas
reappeared. The former inhabitants descended from the mountains as the
tide receded, resumed their ancient lands and rebuilt their ruined
habitations, and, the reign of the barbarians over, Hellas was herself
again.’ Three or four rounds of applause followed the close of the
lectures of Professor Manouses, in which I heartily joined. I could not
help thinking afterwards what a singular comment on the German
anti-Hellenic theory was presented by this scene,—a Greek professor in a
Greek university, lecturing to two hundred Greeks in the Greek language,
to prove that the Greeks were Greeks, and not Slavonians.”(46)
And yet we hear the same arguments used over and over again, not only with
regard to the Greeks, but with regard to many other modern nations; and
even men whose minds have been trained in the school of exact science, use
the term “bloods,” in this vague and thoughtless manner. The adjective
Greek may connote many things, but what it denotes is language. People who
speak Greek as their mother tongue are Greeks, and if a Turkish-speaking
inhabitant of Constantinople could trace his pedigree straight to
Pericles, he would still be a Turk, whatever his name, his faith, his
hair, features, and stature—whatever his blood might be. We can classify
languages, and as languages presuppose people that speak them, we can so
far classify mankind, according to their grammars and dictionaries; while
all who possess scientific honesty must confess and will confess that, as
yet, it has been impossible to devise any truly scientific classification
of skulls, to say nothing of blood, or bones, or hair. The label on one of
the skulls in the Munich Collection, “Etruscan-Tyrol, or Inca-Peruvian,”
characterizes not too unfairly the present state of ethnological
craniology. Let those who imagine that the great outlines, at least, of a
classification of skulls have been firmly established, consult Mr. Brace’s
useful manual of “The Races of the World,” where he has collected the
opinions of some of the best judges on the subject. We quote a few
passages:(47)—
“Dr. Bachmann concludes, from the measurements of Dr. Tiedemann
and Dr. Morton, that the negro skull, though less than the
European, is within one inch as large as the Persian and the
Armenian, and three square inches larger than the Hindu and
Egyptian. The scale is thus given by Dr. Morton: European skull,
87 cubic inches; Malay, 85; Negro 83; Mongol, 82; Ancient
Egyptian, 80; American, 79. The ancient Peruvians and Mexicans,
who constructed so elaborate a civilization, show a capacity only
of from 75 to 79 inches.... Other observations by Huschke make the
average capacity of the skull of Europeans 40.88 oz.; of
Americans, 39.13; of Mongols, 38.39; of Negroes, 37.57; of Malays,
36.41.”
“Of the shape of the skull, as distinctive of different origin,
Professor M. J. Weber has said there is no proper mark of a
definite race from the cranium so firmly attached that it may not
be found in some other race. Tiedemann has met with Germans whose
skulls bore all the characters of the negro race; and an
inhabitant of Nukahiwa, according to Silesius and Blumenbach,
agreed exactly in his proportions with the Apollo Belvedere.”
Professor Huxley, in his “Observations on the Human Skulls of Engis and
Neanderthal,” printed in Sir Charles Lyell’s “Antiquity of Man,” p. 81,
remarks that “the most capacious European skull yet measured had a
capacity of 114 cubic inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of
brain) about 55 cubic inches; while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen,
some Hindu skulls have as small a capacity as 46 cubic inches (27 oz. of
water);” and he sums up by stating that “cranial measurements alone afford
no safe indication of race.”
And even if a scientific classification of skulls were to be carried out,
if, instead of merely being able to guess that this may be an Australian
and this a Malay skull, we were able positively to place each individual
skull under its own definite category, what should we gain in the
classification of mankind? Where is the bridge from skull to man in the
full sense of that word? Where is the connecting link between the cranial
proportions and only one other of man’s characteristic properties, such as
language? And what applies to skulls applies to color and all the rest.
Even a black skin and curly hair are mere outward accidents as compared
with language. We do not classify parrots and magpies by the color of
their plumage, still less by the cages in which they live; and what is the
black skin or the white skin but the mere outward covering, not to say the
mere cage, in which that being which we call man lives, moves, and has his
being? A man like Bishop Crowther, though a negro in blood, is, in thought
and speech, an Aryan. He speaks English, he thinks English, he acts
English; and, unless we take English in a purely historical, and not in
its truly scientific, _i.e._ linguistic sense, he is English. No doubt
there are many influences at work—old proverbs, old songs and traditions,
religious convictions, social institutions, political prejudices, besides
the soil, the food, and the air of a country—that may keep up, even among
people who have lost their national language, that kind of vague
similarity which is spoken of as national character.(48) This is a subject
on which many volumes have been written, and yet the result has only been
to supply newspapers with materials for international insults or
international courtesies, as the case may be. Nothing sound or definite
has been gained by such speculations, and in an age that prides itself on
the careful observance of the rules of inductive reasoning, nothing is
more surprising than the sweeping assertions with regard to national
character, and the reckless way in which casual observations that may be
true of one, two, three, or it may be ten or even a hundred individuals,
are extended to millions. However, if there is one safe exponent of
national character, it is language. Take away the language of a people,
and you destroy at once that powerful chain of tradition in thought and
sentiment which holds all the generations of the same race together, if we
may use an unpleasant simile, like the chain of a gang of galley-slaves.
These slaves, we are told, very soon fall into the same pace, without
being aware that their movements depend altogether on the movements of
those who walk before them. It is nearly the same with us. We imagine we
are altogether free in our thoughts, original and independent, and we are
not aware that our thoughts are manacled and fettered by language, and
that, without knowing and without perceiving it, we have to keep pace with
those who walked before us thousands and thousands of years ago. Language
alone binds people together, and keeps them distinct from others who speak
different tongues. In ancient times particularly, “languages and nations”
meant the same thing; and even with us our real ancestors are those whose
language we speak, the fathers of our thoughts, the mothers of our hopes
and fears. Blood, bones, hair, and color, are mere accidents, utterly
unfit to serve as principles of scientific classification for that great
family of living beings, the essential characteristics of which are
thought and speech, not fibrine, serum, coloring matter, or whatever else
enters into the composition of blood.
If this be true, the inhabitants of Cornwall, whatever the number of
Roman, Saxon, Danish, or Norman settlers within the boundaries of that
county may have been, continued to be Celts as long as they spoke Cornish.
They ceased to be Celts when they ceased to speak the language of their
forefathers. Those who can appreciate the charms of genuine antiquity will
not, therefore, find fault with the enthusiasm of Daines Barrington or Sir
Joseph Banks in listening to the strange utterances of Dolly Pentreath;
for her language, if genuine, carried them back and brought them, as it
were, into immediate contact with people who, long before the Christian
era, acted an important part on the stage of history, supplying the world
with two of the most precious metals, more precious then than gold or
silver, with copper and tin, the very materials, it may be, of the finest
works of art in Greece, aye, of the armor wrought for the heroes of the
Trojan War, as described so minutely by the poets of the “Iliad.” There is
a continuity in language which nothing equals, and there is an historical
genuineness in ancient words, if but rightly interpreted, which cannot be
rivaled by manuscripts, or coins, or monumental inscriptions.
But though it is right to be enthusiastic about what is really ancient in
Cornwall,—and there is nothing so ancient as language,—it is equally right
to be discriminating. The fresh breezes of antiquity have intoxicated many
an antiquarian. Words, purely Latin or English, though somewhat changed
after being admitted into the Cornish dictionary, have been quoted as the
originals from which the Roman or English were in turn derived. The Latin
_liber_, book, was supposed to be derived from the Welsh _llyvyr; litera_,
letter, from Welsh _llythyr; persona_, person, from Welsh _person_, and
many more of the same kind. Walls built within the memory of men have been
admitted as relics of British architecture; nay, Latin inscriptions of the
simplest character have but lately been interpreted by means of Cornish,
as containing strains of a mysterious wisdom. Here, too, a study of the
language gives some useful hints as to the proper method of disentangling
the truly ancient from the more modern elements. Whatever in the Cornish
dictionary cannot be traced back to any other source, whether Latin,
Saxon, Norman, or German, may safely be considered as Cornish, and
therefore as ancient Celtic. Whatever in the antiquities of Cornwall
cannot be claimed by Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, may fairly be
considered as genuine remains of the earliest civilization of this island,
as the work of the Celtic discoverers of Britain.
The Cornish language is by no means a pure or unmixed language,—at least
we do not know it in its pure state. It is, in fact, a mere accident that
any literary remains have been preserved, and three or four small volumes
would contain all that is left to us of Cornish literature. “There is a
poem,” to quote Mr. Norris, “which we may by courtesy call epic, entitled
‘Mount Calvary.’ ” It contains 259 stanzas of eight lines each, in
heptasyllabic metre, with alternate rhyme. It is ascribed to the fifteenth
century, and was published for the first time by Mr. Davies Gilbert in
1826.(49) There is, besides, a series of dramas, or mystery-plays, first
published by Mr. Norris for the University Press of Oxford, in 1858. The
first is called “The Beginning of the World,” the second “The Passion of
our Lord,” the third “The Resurrection.” The last is interrupted by
another play, “The Death of Pilate.” The oldest MS. in the Bodleian
Library belongs to the fifteenth century, and Mr. Norris is not inclined
to refer the composition of these plays to a much earlier date. Another
MS., likewise in the Bodleian Library, contains both the text and a
translation by Keigwyn (1695). Lastly, there is another sacred drama,
called “The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood.” It is in many
places copied from the dramas, and, according to the MS., it was written
by William Jordan in 1611. The oldest MS. belongs again to the Bodleian
Library, which likewise possesses a MS. of the translation by Keigwyn in
1691.(50)
These mystery-plays, as we may learn from a passage in Carew’s “Survey of
Cornwall” (p. 71), were still performed in Cornish in his time, _i.e._ at
the beginning of the seventeenth century. He says:—
“Pastimes to delight the minde, the Cornish men have Guary
miracles and three mens songs; and, for the exercise of the body,
hunting, hawking, shooting, wrastling, hurling, and such other
games.
“The Guary miracle—in English, a miracle-play—is a kind of
enterlude, compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history, with
that grossenes which accompanied the Romanes _vetus Comedia_. For
representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open
field, having the diameter of his enclosed playne some forty or
fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles
off, to heare and see it, for they have therein devils and
devices, to delight as well the eye as the eare; the players conne
not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the
Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the booke in his hand,
and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. Which
manner once gave occasion to a pleasant conceyted gentleman, of
practising a mery pranke; for he undertaking (perhaps of set
purpose) an actor’s roome, was accordingly lessoned (beforehand)
by the Ordinary, that he must say after him. His turn came. Quoth
the Ordinary, Goe forth man and shew thy selfe. The gentleman
steps out upon the stage, and like a bad Clarke in Scripture
matters, cleaving more to the letter than the sense, pronounced
those words aloud. Oh! (sayes the fellowe softly in his eare) you
marre all the play. And with this his passion the actor makes the
audience in like sort acquainted. Hereon the prompter falls to
flat rayling and cursing in the bitterest termes he could devise:
which the gentleman, with a set gesture and countenance, still
soberly related, untill the Ordinary, driven at last into a madde
rage, was faine to give all over. Which trousse, though it brake
off the enterlude, yet defrauded not the beholders, but dismissed
them with a great deale more sport and laughter than such Guaries
could have afforded.”(51)
Scawen, at the end of the seventeenth century, speaks of these
miracle-plays, and considers the suppression of the _Guirrimears_,(52) or
Great Plays or Speeches,(53) as one of the chief causes of the decay of
the Cornish language.
“These _Guirrimears_,” he says, “which were used at the great
conventions of the people, at which they had famous interludes
celebrated with great preparations, and not without shows of
devotion in them, solemnized in great and spacious downs of great
capacity, encompassed about with earthen banks, and some in 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.... This was a great means to keep in use the tongue
with delight and admiration. 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.”
If to these mystery-plays and poems we add some versions of the Lord’s
Prayer, the Commandments, and the Creed, a protestation of the bishops in
Britain to Augustine the monk, the Pope’s legate, in the year 600 after
Christ (MS. Gough, 4), the first chapter of Genesis, and some songs,
proverbs, riddles, a tale and a glossary, we have an almost complete
catalogue of what a Cornish library would be at the present day.
Now if we examine the language as preserved to us in these fragments, we
find that it is full of Norman, Saxon, and Latin words. No one can doubt,
for instance, that the following Cornish words are all taken from Latin,
that is, from the Latin of the Church:—
_Abat_, an abbot; Lat. _abbas_.
_Alter_, altar; Lat. _altare_.
_Apostol_, apostle; Lat. _apostolus_.
_Clauster_, cloister; Lat. _claustrum_.
_Colom_, dove; Lat. _columba_.
_Gwespar_, vespers; Lat. _vesper_.
_Cantuil_, candle; Lat. _candela_.
_Cantuilbren_, candlestick; Lat. _candelabrum_.
_Ail_, angel; Lat. _angelus_.
_Archail_, archangel; Lat. _archangelus_.
Other words, though not immediately connected with the service and the
doctrine of the Church, may nevertheless have passed from Latin into
Cornish, either directly from the daily conversation of monks, priests,
and schoolmasters, or indirectly from English or Norman, in both of which
the same Latin words had naturally been adopted, though slightly modified
according to the phonetic peculiarities of each. Thus:—
_Ancar_, anchor; the Latin, _ancora_. This might have come
indirectly through English or Norman-French.
_Aradar_, plough; the Latin, _aratrum_. This must have come direct
from Latin, as it does not exist in Norman or English.
_Arghans_, silver; _argentum_.
_Keghin_, kitchen; _coquina_. This is taken from the same Latin
word from which the Romance languages formed _cuisine, cucina_;
not from the classical Latin, _culina_.
_Liver_, book; _liber_, originally the bark of trees on which
books were written.
_Dinair_, coin; _denarius. Seth_, arrow; _sagitta. Caus_, cheese;
_caseus_. _Caul_, cabbage; _caulis_.
These words are certainly foreign words in Cornish and the other Celtic
languages in which they occur, and to attempt to supply for some of them a
purely Celtic etymology shows a complete want of appreciation both of the
history of words and of the phonetic laws that govern each family of the
Indo-European languages. Sometimes, no doubt, the Latin words have been
considerably changed and modified, according to the phonetic peculiarities
of the dialects into which they were received. Thus, _gwespar_ for
_vesper_, _seth_ for _sagitta_, _caus_ for _caseus_, hardly look like
Latin words. Yet no real Celtic scholar would claim them as Celtic; and
the Rev. Robert Williams, the author of the “Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum,”
in speaking of a list of words borrowed from Latin by the Welsh during the
stay of the Romans in Britain, is no doubt right in stating “that it will
be found much more extensive than is generally imagined.”
Latin words which have reached the Cornish after they had assumed a French
or Norman disguise, are, for instance,—
_Emperur_, instead of Latin _imperator_ (Welsh, _ymherawdwr_).
_Laian_, the French _loyal_, but not the Latin _legalis_.
Likewise, _dislaian_, disloyal.
_Fruit_, fruit; Lat. _fructus_; French, _fruit_.
_Funten_, fountain, commonly pronounced _fenton_; Lat. _fontana_;
French, _fontaine_.
_Gromersy_, _i.e._ grand mercy, thanks.
_Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!_ hear, hear! The Norman-French, _Oyez_.
The town-crier of Aberconwy may still be heard prefacing his notices with
the shout of “Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!” which in other places has been corrupted
to “O yes.”
The following words, adopted into Cornish and other Celtic dialects,
clearly show their Saxon origin:—
_Cafor_, a chafer; Germ, _käfer_. _Craft_, art, craft. _Redior_, a
reader. _Storc_, a stork. _Let_, hindrance, let; preserved in the
German, _verletzen_.(54)
Considering that Cornish and other Celtic dialects are members of the same
family to which Latin and German belong, it is sometimes difficult to tell
at once whether a Celtic word was really borrowed, or whether it belongs
to that ancient stock of words which all the Aryan languages share in
common. This is a point which can be determined by scholars only, and by
means of phonetic tests. Thus the Cornish _huir_, or _hoer_, is clearly
the same word as the Latin _soror_, sister. But the change of _s_ into _h_
would not have taken place if the word had been simply borrowed from
Latin, while many words beginning with _s_ in Sanskrit, Latin, and German,
change the _s_ into _h_ in Cornish as well as in Greek and Persian. The
Cornish _hoer_, sister, is indeed curiously like the Persian _kháher_, the
regular representative of the Sanskrit _svasar_, the Latin _soror_. The
same applies to _braud_, brother, _dedh_, day, _dri_, three, and many more
words which form the primitive stock of Cornish, and were common to all
the Aryan languages before their earliest dispersion.
What applies to the language of Cornwall, applies with equal force to the
other relics of antiquity of that curious county. It has been truly said
that Cornwall is poor in antiquities, but it is equally true that it is
rich in antiquity. The difficulty is to discriminate, and to distinguish
what is really Cornish or Celtic from what may be later additions, of
Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman origin. Now here, as we said before, the
safest rule is clearly the same as that which we followed in our analysis
of language. Let everything be claimed for English, Norman, Danish, and
Roman sources that can clearly be proved to come from thence; but let what
remains unclaimed be considered as Cornish or Celtic. Thus, if we do not
find in countries exclusively inhabited by Romans or Saxons anything like
a cromlech, surely we have a right to look upon these strange structures
as remnants of Celtic times. It makes no difference if it can be shown
that below these cromlechs coins have occasionally been found of the Roman
Emperors. This only proves that even during the days of Roman supremacy
the Cornish style of public monuments, whether sepulchral or otherwise,
remained. Nay, why should not even a Roman settled in Cornwall have
adopted the monumental style of his adopted country? Roman and Saxon hands
may have helped to erect some of the cromlechs which are still to be seen
in Cornwall, but the original idea of such monuments, and hence their
name, is purely Celtic.
_Cromlêh_ in Cornish, or _cromlech_ in Welsh, means a bent slab, from the
Cornish _crom_, bent, curved, rounded, and _lêh_, a slab. Though many of
these cromlechs have been destroyed, Cornwall still possesses some fine
specimens of these ancient stone tripods. Most of them are large granite
slabs, supported by three stones fixed in the ground. These supporters are
likewise huge flat stones, but the capstone is always the largest, and its
weight inclining towards one point, imparts strength to the whole
structure. At Lanyon, however, where the top-stone of a cromlech was
thrown down in 1816 by a violent storm, the supporters remained standing,
and the capstone was replaced in 1824, though not, it would seem, at its
original height. Dr. Borlase relates that in his time the monument was
high enough for a man to sit on horseback under it. At present such a feat
would be impossible, the cover-stone being only about five feet from the
ground. These cromlechs, though very surprising when seen for the first
time, represent in reality one of the simplest achievements of primitive
architecture. It is far easier to balance a heavy weight on three uneven
props than to rest it level on two or four even supporters. There are,
however, cromlechs resting on four or more stones, these stones forming a
kind of chamber, or a _kist-vaen_, which is supposed to have served
originally as a sepulchre. These structures presuppose a larger amount of
architectural skill; still more so the gigantic portals of Stonehenge,
which are formed by two pillars of equal height, joined by a
superincumbent stone. Here weight alone was no longer considered
sufficient for imparting strength and safety, but holes were worked in the
upper stones, and the pointed tops of the pillars were fitted into them.
In the slabs that form the cromlechs we find no such traces of careful
workmanship; and this, as well as other considerations, would support the
opinion, that in Stonehenge we have one of the latest specimens of Celtic
architecture. Marvelous as are the remains of that primitive style of
architectural art, the only real problem they offer is, how such large
stones could have been brought together from a distance, and how such
enormous weights could have been lifted up. The first question is answered
by ropes and rollers; and the mural sculptures of Nineveh show us what can
be done by such simple machinery. We there see the whole picture of how
these colossal blocks of stone were moved from the quarry on to the place
where they were wanted. Given plenty of time, and plenty of men and oxen,
and there is no block that could not be brought to its right place by
means of ropes and rollers. And that our forefathers did not stint
themselves either in time, or in men, or other cattle, when engaged in
erecting such monuments, we know even from comparatively modern times.
Under Harold Harfagr, two kings spent three whole years in erecting one
single tumulus; and Harold Blatand is said to have employed the whole of
his army and a vast number of oxen in transporting a large stone which he
wished to place on his mother’s tomb. As to the second question, we can
readily understand how, after the supporters had once been fixed in the
ground, an artificial mound might be raised, which, when the heavy slab
had been rolled up on an inclined plane, might be removed again, and thus
leave the heavy stone poised in its startling elevation.
As skeletons have been found under some of the cromlechs, there can be
little doubt that the chambers inclosed by them, the so-called
_kist-vaens_, were intended to receive the remains of the dead, and to
perpetuate their memory. And as these sepulchral monuments are most
frequent in those parts of the British Isles which from the earliest to
the latest times were inhabited by Celtic people, they may be considered
as representative of the Celtic style of public sepulture. _Kist-vaen_, or
_cist-vaen_, means a stone-chamber, from _cista_, a chest, and _vaen_, the
modified form of _maen_ or _mên_, stone. Their size is, with few
exceptions, not less than the size of a human body. But although these
monuments were originally sepulchral, we may well understand that the
burying-places of great men, of kings, or priests, or generals, were
likewise used for the celebration of other religious rites. Thus we read
in the Book of Lecan, “that Amhalgaith built a cairn, for the purpose of
holding a meeting of the Hy-Amhalgaith every year, and to view his ships
and fleet going and coming, and as a place of interment for himself.”(55)
Nor does it follow, as some antiquarians maintain, that every structure in
the style of a cromlech, even in England, is exclusively Celtic. We
imitate pyramids and obelisks: why should not the Saxons have built the
Kitts Cotty House, which is found in a thoroughly Saxon neighborhood,
after Celtic models and with the aid of Celtic captives? This cromlech
stands in Kent, on the brow of a hill about a mile and a half from
Aylesford, to the right of the great road from Rochester to Maidstone.
Near it, across the Medway, are the stone circles of Addington. The stone
on the south side is 8 ft. high by 7-½ broad, and 2 ft. thick; weight,
about 8 tons. That on the north is 8 ft. by 8, and 2 thick; weight, 8 tons
10 cwt. The end stone, 5 ft. 6 in. high by 5 ft. broad; thickness, 14 in.;
weight, 2 tons 8-¼ cwt. The impost is 11 ft. long by 8 ft. broad, and 2
ft. thick; weight, 10 tons 7 cwt. It is higher, therefore, than the
Cornish cromlechs, but in other respects it is a true specimen of that
class of Celtic monuments. The cover-stone of the cromlech at Molfra is 9
ft. 8 in. by 14 ft. 3 in.; its supporters are 5 ft. high. The cover-stone
of the Chûn cromlech measures 12-½ ft. in length and 11 ft. in width. The
largest slab is that at Lanyon, which measures 18-½ ft. in length and 9
ft. at the broadest part.
The cromlechs are no doubt the most characteristic and most striking among
the monuments of Cornwall. Though historians have differed as to their
exact purpose, not even the most careless traveller could pass them by
without seeing that they do not stand there without a purpose. They speak
for themselves, and they certainly speak in a language that is neither
Roman, Saxon, Danish, nor Norman. Hence in England they may, by a kind of
exhaustive process of reasoning, be claimed as relics of Celtic
civilization. The same argument applies to the cromlechs and stone avenues
of Carnac, in Brittany. Here, too, language and history attest the former
presence of Celtic people; nor could any other race, that influenced the
historical destinies of the North of Gaul, claim such structures as their
own. Even in still more distant places, in the South of France, in
Scandinavia, or Germany, where similar monuments have been discovered,
they may, though more hesitatingly, be classed as Celtic, particularly if
they are found near the natural high roads on which we know that the Celts
in their westward migrations preceded the Teutonic and Slavonic Aryans.
But the case is totally different when we hear of cromlechs, cairns, and
kist-vaens in the North of Africa, in Upper Egypt, on the Lebanon, near
the Jordan, in Circassia, or in the South of India. Here, and more
particularly in the South of India, we have no indications whatever of
Celtic Aryans; on the contrary, if that name is taken in its strict
scientific meaning, it would be impossible to account for the presence of
Celtic Aryans in those southern latitudes at any time after the original
dispersion of the Aryan family. It is very natural that English officers
living in India should be surprised at monuments which cannot but remind
them of what they had seen at home, whether in Cornwall, Ireland, or
Scotland. A description of some of these monuments, the so-called Pandoo
Coolies in Malabar, was given by Mr. J. Babington, in 1820, and published
in the third volume of the “Transactions of the Literary Society of
Bombay,” in 1823. Captain Congreve called attention to what he considered
Scythic Druidical remains in the Nilghiri hills, in a paper published in
1847, in the “Madras Journal of Literature and Science,” and the same
subject was treated in the same journal by the Rev. W. Taylor. A most
careful and interesting description of similar monuments has lately been
published in the “Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,” by Captain
Meadows Taylor, under the title of “Description of Cairns, Cromlechs,
Kist-vaens, and other Celtic, Druidical, or Scythian Monuments in the
Dekhan.” Captain Taylor found these monuments near the village of
Rajunkolloor, in the principality of Shorapoor, an independent native
state, situated between the Bheema and Krishna rivers, immediately above
their junction. Others were discovered near Huggeritgi, others on the hill
of Yemmee Gooda, others again near Shapoor, Hyderabad, and other places.
All these monuments in the South of India are no doubt extremely
interesting; but to call them Celtic, Druidical, or Scythic, is
unscientific, or, at all events, exceedingly premature. There is in all
architectural monuments a natural or rational, and a conventional, or, it
may be, irrational element. A striking agreement in purely conventional
features may justify the assumption that monuments so far distant from
each others as the cromlechs of Anglesea and the “Mori-Munni” of Shorapoor
owe their origin to the same architects, or to the same races. But an
agreement in purely natural contrivances goes for nothing, or, at least,
for very little. Now there is very little that can be called conventional
in a mere stone pillar, or in a cairn, that is, an artificial heap of
stones. Even the erection of a cromlech can hardly be claimed as a
separate style of architecture. Children, all over the world, if building
houses with cards, will build cromlechs; and people, all over the world,
if the neighborhood supplies large slabs of stone, will put three stones
together to keep out the sun or the wind, and put a fourth stone on the
top to keep out the rain. Before monuments like those described by Captain
Meadows Taylor can be classed as Celtic or Druidical, a possibility, at
all events, must be shown that Celts, in the true sense of the word, could
ever have inhabited the Dekhan. Till that is done, it is better to leave
them anonymous, or to call them by their native names, than to give to
them a name which is apt to mislead the public at large, and to encourage
theories which exceed the limits of legitimate speculation.
Returning to Cornwall, we find there, besides the cromlechs, pillars,
holed stones, and stone circles, all of which may be classed as public
monuments. They all bear witness to a kind of public spirit, and to a
certain advance in social and political life, at the time of their
erection. They were meant for people living at the time, who understood
their meaning, if not as messages to posterity, and, if so, as truly
historical monuments; for history begins when the living begin to care
about a good opinion of those who come after them. Some of the single
Cornish pillars tell us little indeed; nothing, in reality, beyond the
fact that they were erected by human skill, and with some human purpose.
Some of these monoliths seem to have been of a considerable size. In a
village called Mên Perhen, in Constantine parish, there stood, “about five
years ago,”—so Dr. Borlase relates in the year 1769,—a large pyramidal
stone, twenty feet above the ground, and four feet in the ground; it made
above twenty stone posts for gates when it was clove up by the farmer who
gave the account to the Doctor.(56) Other stones, like the Mên Scrifa,
have inscriptions, but these inscriptions are Roman, and of comparatively
late date. There are some pillars, like the Pipers at Bolleit, which are
clearly connected with the stone circles close by, remnants, it may be, of
old stone avenues, or beacons, from which signals might be sent to other
distant settlements. The holed stones, too, are generally found in close
proximity to other large stone monuments. They are called _mên-an-tol_,
hole-stones, in Cornwall; and the name of _tol-men_, or _dol-men_, which
is somewhat promiscuously used by Celtic antiquarians, should be
restricted to monuments of this class, _toll_ being the Cornish word for
_hole_, _mên_ for _stone_, and _an_ the article. French antiquarians,
taking _dol_ or _tôl_ as a corruption of _tabula_, use _dolman_ in the
sense of table-stones, and as synonymous with _cromlech_, while they
frequently use _cromlech_ in the sense of stone circles. This can hardly
be justified, and leads at all events to much confusion.
The stone circles, whether used for religious or judicial purposes,—and
there was in ancient times very little difference between the two,—were
clearly intended for solemn meetings. There is a very perfect circle at
Boscawen-ûn, which consisted originally of nineteen stones. Dr. Borlase,
whose work on the Antiquities of the County of Cornwall contains the most
trustworthy information as to the state of Cornish antiquities about a
hundred years ago, mentions three other circles which had the same number
of stones, while others vary from twelve to seventy-two.
“The figure of these monuments,” he says, “is either simple, or
compounded. Of the first kind are exact circles; elliptical or
semicircular. The construction of these is not always the same,
some having their circumference marked with large separate stones
only; others having ridges of small stones intermixed, and
sometimes walls and seats, serving to render the inclosure more
complete. Other circular monuments have their figure more complex
and varied, consisting, not only of a circle, but of some other
distinguishing properties. In or near the centre of some stands a
stone taller than the rest, as at Boscawen-ûn; in the middle of
others, a kist-vaen. A cromlêh distinguishes the centre of some
circles, and one remarkable rock that of others; some have only
one line of stones in their circumference, and some have two; some
circles are adjacent, some contiguous, and some include, and some
intersect each other. Sometimes urns are found in or near them.
Some are curiously erected on geometrical plans, the chief
entrance facing the cardinal points of the heavens; some have
avenues leading to them, placed exactly north and south, with
detached stones, sometimes in straight lines to the east and west,
sometimes triangular. These monuments are found in many foreign
countries, in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, as well as in
all the isles dependent upon Britain (the Orkneys, Western Isles,
Jersey, Ireland, and the Isle of Man), and in most parts of
Britain itself.”
Modern traditions have everywhere clustered round these curious stone
circles. Being placed in a circular order, so as to make an area for
dancing, they were naturally called _Dawns-mên_, _i.e._ dancing stones.
This name was soon corrupted into dancemen, and a legend sprang up at once
to account for the name, namely, that these men had danced on a Sunday and
been changed into stones. Another corruption of the same name into
_Danis-mên_ led to the tradition that these circles were built by the
Danes. A still more curious name for these circles is that of “_Nine
Maidens_,” which occurs at Boscawen-ûn, and in several other places in
Cornwall. Now the Boscawen-ûn circle consists of nineteen stones, and
there are very few “Nine Maidens” that consist of nine stones only. Yet
the name prevails, and is likewise supported by local legends of nine
maidens having been changed into stones for dancing on a Sunday, or some
other misdeed. One part of the legend may perhaps be explained by the fact
that _mêdn_ would be a common corruption in modern Cornish for _mên_,
stone, as _pen_ becomes _pedn_, and _gwyn_, _gwydn_, etc., and that the
Saxons mistook Cornish _mêdn_ for their own _maiden_. But even without
this, legends of a similar character would spring up wherever the popular
mind is startled by strange monuments, the history and purpose of which
has been forgotten. Thus Captain Meadows Taylor tells us that at
Vibat-Hullie the people told him “that the stones were men who, as they
stood marking out the places for the elephants of the king of the dwarfs,
were turned into stone by him, because they would not keep quiet.” And M.
de Cambry, as quoted by him, says in regard to Carnac, “that the rocks
were believed to be an army turned into stone, or the work of the
Croins,—men or demons, two or three feet high, who carried these rocks in
their hands, and placed them there.”
A second class of Cornish antiquities comprises private buildings, whether
castles or huts or caves. What are called castles in Cornwall are simple
intrenchments, consisting of large and small stones piled up about ten or
twelve feet high, and held together by their own weight, without any
cement. There are everywhere traces of a ditch, then of a wall; sometimes,
as at Chûn Castle, of another ditch and another wall; and there is
generally some contrivance for protecting the principal entrance by walls
overlapping the ditches. Near these castles barrows are found, and in
several cases there are clear traces of a communication between them and
some ancient Celtic villages and caves, which seem to have been placed
under the protection of these primitive strongholds. Many of the cliffs in
Cornwall are fortified towards the land by walls and ditches, thus cutting
off these extreme promontories from communication with the land, as they
are by nature inaccessible from the sea. Some antiquarians ascribed these
castles to the Danes, the very last people, one would think, to shut
themselves up in such hopeless retreats. Here, too, as in other cases, a
popular etymology may have taken the place of an historical authority, and
the Cornish word for castle being _Dinas_ as in _Castle-an-Dinas_,
_Pendennis_, etc., the later Saxon-speaking population may have been
reminded by _Dinas_ of the Danes, and on the strength of this vague
similarity have ascribed to these pirates the erection of the Cornish
castles.
It is indeed difficult, with regard to these castles, to be positive as to
the people by whom they were constructed. Tradition and history point to
Romans and Saxons, as well as to Celts; nor is it at all unlikely that
many of these half-natural, half-artificial strongholds, though originally
planned by the Celtic inhabitants, were afterwards taken possession of and
strengthened by Romans or Saxons.
But no such doubts are allowed with regard to Cornish huts, of which some
striking remains have been preserved in Cornwall and other parts of
England, particularly in those which, to the very last, remained the true
home of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain. The houses and huts of the
Romans were rectangular, nor is there any evidence to show that the Saxon
ever approved of the circular style in domestic architecture.
If, then, we find these so-called bee-hive huts in places peculiarly
Celtic, and if we remember that so early a writer as Strabo(57) was struck
with the same strange style of Celtic architecture, we can hardly be
suspected of Celtomania, if we claim them as Celtic workmanship, and dwell
with a more than ordinary interest on these ancient chambers, now long
deserted and nearly smothered with ferns and weeds, but in their general
planning, as well as in their masonry, clearly exhibiting before us
something of the arts and the life of the earliest inhabitants of these
isles. Let anybody who has a sense of antiquity, and who can feel the
spark which is sent on to us through an unbroken chain of history, when we
stand on the Acropolis or on the Capitol, or when we read a ballad of
Homer or a hymn of the Veda,—nay, if we but read in a proper spirit a
chapter of the Old Testament too,—let such a man look at the Celtic huts
at Bosprennis or Chysauster, and discover for himself, through the ferns
and brambles, the old gray walls, slightly sloping inward, and arranged
according to a design that cannot be mistaken; and miserable as these
shapeless clumps may appear to the thoughtless traveller, they will convey
to the true historian a lesson which he could hardly learn anywhere else.
The ancient Britons will no longer be a mere name to him, no mere
Pelasgians or Tyrrhenians. He has seen their homes and their handiwork; he
has stood behind the walls which protected their lives and property; he
has touched the stones which their hands piled up rudely, yet
thoughtfully. And if that small spark of sympathy for those who gave the
honored name of Britain to these islands has once been kindled among a few
who have the power of influencing public opinion in England, we feel
certain that something will be done to preserve what can still be
preserved of Celtic remains from further destruction. It does honor to the
British Parliament that large sums are granted, when it is necessary, to
bring to these safe shores whatever can still be rescued from the ruins of
Greece and Italy, of Lycia, Pergamos, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon, or
Nineveh. But while explorers and excavators are sent to those distant
countries, and the statues of Greece, the coffins of Egypt, and the winged
monsters of Nineveh, are brought home in triumph to the portals of the
British Museum, it is painful to see the splendid granite slabs of British
cromlechs thrown down and carted away, stone circles destroyed to make way
for farming improvements, and ancient huts and caves broken up to build
new houses and stables, with the stones thus ready to hand. It is high
time, indeed, that something should be done; and nothing will avail but to
place every truly historical monument under national protection.
Individual efforts may answer here and there, and a right spirit may be
awakened from time to time by local societies; but during intervals of
apathy mischief is done that can never be mended; and unless the damaging
of national monuments, even though they should stand on private ground, is
made a misdemeanor, we doubt whether, two hundred years hence, any
enterprising explorer would be as fortunate as Mr. Layard and Sir H.
Rawlinson have been in Babylon and Nineveh, and whether one single
cromlech would be left for him to carry away to the National Museum of the
Maoris. It is curious that the willful damage done to Logan Stones, once
in the time of Cromwell by Shrubsall, and more recently by Lieutenant
Goldsmith, should have raised such indignation, while acts of Vandalism,
committed against real antiquities, are allowed to pass unnoticed. Mr.
Scawen, in speaking of the mischief done by strangers in Cornwall, says:—
“Here, too, we may add, what wrong another sort of strangers has
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 Pendennis, by labor 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.”
Mr. Scawen, however, does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing
down the Mincamber, _i.e._ the Mênamber, acted very like the old
missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was
believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no
king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of
this loyal stone may have seemed a matter of wise policy.
Even the foolish exploit of Lieutenant Goldsmith, in 1824, would seem to
have had some kind of excuse. Dr. Borlase had asserted “that it was
_morally_ impossible that any lever, or indeed force, however applied in a
mechanical way, could remove the famous Logan rock at Trereen Dinas from
its present position.” Ptolemy, the son of Hephæstion, had made a similar
remark about the Gigoman rock,(58) stating that it might be stirred with
the stalk of an asphodel, but could not be removed by any force.
Lieutenant Goldsmith, living in an age of experimental philosophy,
undertook the experiment, in order to show that it was _physically_
possible to overthrow the Logan; and he did it. He was, however, very
properly punished for this unscientific experiment, and he had to replace
the stone at his own expense.
As this matter is really serious, we have drawn up a short list of acts of
Vandalism committed in Cornwall within the memory of living man. That list
could easily be increased, but even as it is, we hope it may rouse the
attention of the public:—
Between St. Ives and Zennor, on the lower road over Tregarthen Downs,
stood a Logan rock. An old man, perhaps ninety years of age, told Mr.
Hunt, who mentions this and other cases in the preface to his charming
collection of Cornish tales and legends, that he had often logged it, and
that it would make a noise which could _be heard for miles_.
At Balnoon, between Nancledrea and Knill’s Steeple, some miners came upon
“two slabs of granite cemented together,” which covered a walled grave
three feet square, an ancient kist-vaen. In it they found an earthenware
vessel, containing some black earth and a leaden spoon. The spoon was
given to Mr. Praed, of Trevethow; the kist-vaen was utterly destroyed.
In Bosprennis Cross there was a very large coit or cromlech. It is said to
have been fifteen feet square, and not more than one foot thick in any
part. This was broken in two parts some years since, and taken to Penzance
to form the beds of two ovens.
The curious caves and passages at Chysauster have been destroyed for
building purposes within living memory.