A Handbook of the Cornish Language - Chiefly in Its Latest Stages with Some Account of Its History and Literature

Henry Jenner

• Publisher: Mallock Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473385511
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachen

This book contains a detailed guide to the Cornish language. It is intended for those of Cornish nationality who wish to acquire some knowledge of their ancient tongue, and to read, write, and perhaps even to speak it. Contents include: "The History Of The Cornish Language And Literature", "The Story Of The Cornish Language", "The Literature And Other Remains Of Cornish", "Conversations And Phrases", "Epitaphs", "Letters", "Proverbs, Mottoes, And Maxims", "Verses And Epigrams", "Songs And Poems", "The Grammar Of The Cornish Language", "Spelling And Pronunciation", "The Initial Mutations", et cetera. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction.

PART I

THE HISTORY OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

THE STORY OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGE

There have been seven Celtic languages—not all at once, of course—and indeed it is possible that there may have been more; but seven are known to have existed. One other may have been a Celtic speech, or it may have been something pre-Celtic, but of it we know too little to judge.

The Celtic languages belong to the type known as Aryan or Indo-European, the language of the higher or white races whose original habitat was once taken to have been near or among the Himalayas, but is now located with much less exactness than heretofore. To this class belong the Sanscrit, with its multitude of Indian derivatives; the Persian, ancient and modern; the Greek, the Latin with all its descendants, the Lithuanian, the Slavonic, the Teutonic and Scandinavian, the Albanian and the Celtic. It is not to be supposed that the possession of an Aryan language is necessarily a proof of the possession of Aryan blood. In many cases the conquering white race imposed its language on the aborigines whom it subjugated and enslaved. This must have been very much the case in Britain, and it is probable that the lower classes of a great part of England, though they now speak a language of mixed Teutonic and Latin origin, as they once spoke Celtic, are largely the descendants, through the slaves successively of Britons, Romans, and Saxons, and the “villains” or nativi of the Norman manorial system, of the aboriginal palæolithic “cave” man, and have far less in common with the Anglo-Saxon, the Celt, or any other white man than they have with the Hottentot, the Esquimaux, the Lapp, or the Australian “blackfellow.” This is particularly the case in what was once the forest-covered district of middle England. There, no doubt, when there was any fighting to be done, the aboriginal hid in the woods until it was all over, and only then came out to share in the spoil and the glory and the drinks; while the white man, whether Briton, Saxon, or Norman, went out to fight, and not infrequently to be killed. A survival, perhaps, of the unfittest was the result, which may account for some of the peculiar characteristics of the Midland lower classes. That the successive changes of masters were matters of little or no importance to the enslaved aboriginal, while a life of servitude was intolerable to the free white man, may account for the fact that the labouring classes of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Wales, and the Welsh border are of a type infinitely superior in manners, morals, and physique to the same class in the Midlands, because they now consist almost entirely of the descendants of the free Britons who were driven westward rather than submit to the overwhelming invasion of the Teutonic tribes. Thus it is that probably, except for a certain Silurian (or Iberian) element in South Wales, which descends from the higher or fighting sort of pre-Aryan, and a surviving aboriginal element in parts of Ireland, the natives of what are known as the “Celtic” parts of these islands are more purely Aryan than any except the upper and upper middle classes of the so-called “Anglo-Saxon” districts of Britain. And of the Celtic parts of Britain, the Highlanders of Scotland and the Cornish are probably of the most unmixed Aryan or white race.

The Celtic languages are subdivided into two branches, representing two separate immigrations, about which little is known for certain, except that they happened a very long time ago. These are:—

1. The Goidelic (or Gaelic), consisting of the three languages, or properly the three dialects, known as the Gaelic of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands, and of the Isle of Man. It has been said, with some truth, that these three are as far apart as three dialects of the same language can well be, but are not sufficiently far apart to be counted as three distinct languages. Until the first half of the eighteenth century the written Gaelic of the Scottish Highlands differed from that of Ireland scarcely more than the written English of London differs from that of New York. Even now, though the use of the sixth and seventh century Latin minuscules, which people choose to call “Irish” letters, has been dropped in Scotland, any one who can read the one dialect will have little difficulty in reading the other. Manx adopted in the seventeenth century an attempted, but not very successful, phonetic spelling, based partly on Welsh and partly on English, and therefore looks on paper very different from its sister languages; but it takes a Gaelic-speaking Highlander of intelligence a very short time to get to understand spoken Manx, though spoken Irish (except the Ulster dialect) is more difficult to him. Possibly Pictish, if it was Celtic at all, which is uncertain, was of the Gaelic branch, for we find but little of any language difficulty when St. Columba and his fellow-missionaries, whose own speech certainly was Gaelic, were evangelising among the Picts. But the absence of such mention proves very little, for Christian missionaries, from Pentecost onwards, have not infrequently made light of the linguistic barrier, and we really know next to nothing about Pictish.

2. The Brythonic (or British), consisting of Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. These may be said to be as near together as three separate languages can well be, but to have drifted too far apart to be accounted three dialects of the same language. The place of Cornish, linguistically as well as geographically, is between Welsh and Breton, but though in some points in which Welsh differs from Breton, Cornish resembles the former, on the whole it approaches more nearly to the latter. Probably Cornish and Breton are both derived from the language of the more southern, while Welsh represents that of the more northern Britons. [4] Of course Cornish, like Welsh, has been influenced to some extent by English, while the foreign influence on Breton has been French. It is probable that the ancient Gaulish, certainly a Celtic language, belongs to this branch.

The seven Celtic languages, then, are Irish, Albanic (or Scottish), and Manx Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Gaulish, and it is possible that Pictish must be added to these.

Though a philologist has much to say on the points of resemblance between the Goidelic and Brythonic branches, and though no one who studies both can fail to be struck by their affinity in vocabulary, in grammar, and even in idiom, the speakers of different branches—a Welshman and a Highlander, for instance—are no more mutually intelligible than an Englishman and a German would be, if as much so. The three sets of Gaels, however, can understand one another with considerable difficulty, and Irish priests have been known to preach sermons (with but moderate success) in the Catholic parts of the Highlands. But though there has been for some time a Welsh mission of some sort of Nonconformists in Brittany (with doubtless a very limited following), it is said that the missionaries, though they learnt Breton easily, were greatly disappointed with the extent to which at first they could understand the Bretons or make themselves understood. Simple things of everyday life might be asked for in Welsh, and a Breton might “average” what was said, but no sort of conversation could be held, though any one who knew both Welsh and Breton might make himself understood at some length by a mixed audience, if he very carefully picked his phrases; it would not, however, be good Welsh or good Breton. But the same would only apply in a far less degree to Cornish, for Cornish is very much nearer to Breton than Welsh is. [5] The divergence is increased by the tendency of all the Celtic languages, or, indeed, of all languages, to subdivide into local dialects. Thus the Irish of Munster, of Connaught, and of Ulster must be mutually intelligible only with great difficulty; the dialect of Munster, by reason of the difference of the stress accent, being especially divergent. There is growing up now, with the Irish revival, what may be called a Leinster dialect, founded on the literary language, with peculiarities of its own. The Scottish Gaelic has at least four marked dialects: Northern, spoken in Sutherland, part of Caithness, and Ross; Western, spoken in Inverness-shire and Argyle and in the Islands; and the rather broken-down dialects of Arran and of Perthshire, but the speakers of these are not very unintelligible to one another. Even Manx has a tendency to a “north side” and a “south side” dialect. Welsh has two fairly well marked dialects, of North Wales and South Wales, and the Welsh of Glamorgan, once the classical form of the language, before the Cardiganshire Welsh of the translation of the Bible superseded it, is now tending to be a broken-down form of South Welsh. But all these spoken dialects of Welsh are kept together and their tendency to divergence is greatly checked by the existence of a very clearly defined spelling, grammar, and standard of style in the book language of what is far and away the most cultivated and literary of all the Celtic tongues. Breton has four well-defined dialects, those of Leon, Treguier, Cornouailles, and Vannes, besides the broken-down Breton of the Croisic district, the Vannes dialect differing from the others as much as Cornish does, and curio...