Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
"Hence Mr. Carew, who published his _Survey of Cornwall_ in 1602,
notices the almost total extirpation of the language in his days. He
says, 'The principal love and knowledge of this language liveth in Dr.
Kennall the civilian, and with him lyeth buried; for the English speech
doth still encroach upon it and hath driven the same into the uttermost
skirts of the shire. Most of the inhabitants can speak no word of
Cornish; but few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect
their airs, as to a stranger they will not speak it; for if meeting them
by chance you inquire the way, or any such matter, your answer shall be,
"_Meea naurdua cowzasourzneck?_" (I can speak no Saxonage).'
"Carew's _Survey_ was soon followed by that of Norden, by whom we are
informed that the Cornish language was chiefly confined to the western
hundreds of the county, particularly to Penwith and Kirrier, and yet
(which is to be marveyled) though the husband and wife, parents and
children, masters and servants, etc., naturally communicate in their
native language, yet there is none of them in a manner but is able to
converse with a stranger in the English tongue, unless it be some
obscure people who seldom confer with the better sort. But it seemeth,
however, that in a few years the Cornish will be by little and little
abandoned."
The Cornish was, however, so well spoken in the parish of Feock by the
old inhabitants till about the year 1640, "that Mr. William Jackman,
the then vicar, and chaplain also of Pendennis Castle, at the siege
thereof by the Parliament army, was forced for divers years to
administer the sacrament to the communicants in the Cornish tongue,
because the aged people did not well understand the English, as he
himself often told me," says Hals.
So late as 1650 the Cornish language was currently spoken in the
parishes of Paul and S. Just; the fisherwomen and market-women in the
former, and the tinner in the latter, for the most part conversing in
their old vernacular tongue; and Mr. Scawen says that in 1678 the Rev.
F. Robinson, rector of Landewednack, "preached a sermon to his
parishioners in the Cornish language only."
Had the Bible been translated, had even the English Prayer-book been
rendered into Cornish, the language would have lived on. It is due to
a large extent to this--the translation into Welsh--that in Wales
their ancient language has maintained itself.
The editors of the _Bibliotheca Cornubiensis_ state that Dorothy
Jeffery, daughter of Nicolas Pentreath, was baptized at Paul 17th May,
1714; and they conclude that she was the Dolly Pentreath who died in
1777, and that her age accordingly was sixty-three and not one hundred
and two.
But this is a mistake. Dolly was a Jeffery by birth and married a
Pentreath.
A story is told of Dolly in Mr. J. Henry Harris's _Cornish Saints and
Sinners_, "as current in Mousehole, but whether true or well conceived
it is not possible for me to say."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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