CORNWALL

A THOUSAND YEARS AGO

A Lecture

DELIVERED TO THE

LONDON CORNISH ASSOCIATION

BY

the rev. W. S. LACH SZYRMA, M.A.,

ON

FEBRUARY 13th, 1899.

H. W. WILLIAMS, esq., chairman of the association,

Presiding.

I SUPPOSE most of us have a, good idea of what Cornwall is in 1899, so what we have now to con­sider is what was it like—the country, the people, the edifices, the mines, etc.—in 899, or, indeed, in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries. The subject may seem a difficult one, looking back on the past; but I question if it is as difficult to answer it about Cornwall as of many counties of England, or even countries of Europe, for we have remains to guide us, and extraneous evidence.

Now, at the beginning of our enquiry, I must show you how, in many things, the Cornwall of 1,000 years ago must have been very like the Cornwall we all know.

1. The sea around—sometimes calm, sometimes foaming with billows—must then, as now, have ever beaten against those rock-bound shores. The cliffs must have reared over them then as in prehistoric ages, or even in the tertiary period. The mighty carns must have then as now been heaped up, only they belonged in popular notion then, as they did till a century ago or less, in the minds of the vulgar, to the work of Cornish giants, and not to the icebergs of the Glacial Epoch.

2. Then, as now, the country heaved up and down, or spread in wild moorlands, only then I think there was more woodland and forest in Cornwall. I hardly believed this till I saw lately the mountain lands of Western Bohemia, so like Cornwall in many ways, with hills crowned with carns (the result of old Glacial action) but also covered with forest. I expect most of Cornwall and Devon was forest 1,000 years ago, only excepting those barren spots where trees would not grow. In this matter (as in some other things) I think we may catch a light from Bohemia on our Cornish problems.

3. Were the hedges there? I expect not. I believe they represent a later stage of progress, when land was more valuable, and population more numerous. The history of our English hedges, and the Celtic wall hedges of Cornwall, is a branch of English history. Mr. Gomme has done much to it.

4. As for the Cromlechs, Quoits, Hill Forts, Menhirs, Rock Circles, which to so many tourists form a leading attraction in Cornwall, there is no doubt they were much as we see them now. They belong, it seems, to the ancient Dolmen builders of Corn­wall and Brittany in the old prehistoric age.

These Dolmen builders were not Celts, nor even Aryans like the modern Europeans mostly are, but among the aboriginal tribes of Europe something like the Lapps or Eskimaux—their relatives—who were driven north by stronger Celtic and Germanic nations.

Have these Dolmen builders any descendants? Mysterious topic! Possibly not extinct, but mixed in population, some Cornish men still trace a portion of their ancestry to them.

The cave dwellers were here also, e.g., Pendeen Vau, the Fogou of Trewoofe, are evidence of them.

But what should we find missing?

1. The mediæval or modern parish churches. There were churches then (perhaps almost as many as now) but few of them exist now—Perranzabulo, and Gwithian are the most celebrated; still there may be vestiges of some built into by our later churches. I remember Mr. Brock (See. B.A.A.) showing me in Gulval Church some very ancient rude stonework which might have existed 1,000 years. The discovery of the famous Gulval Menhir close by (certainly much over 1,000 years old) verifies his view. So also at St. Hilary Church. The Constantine and Noti stones are well over 1,000 years old. Most of the church is Victorian (after the fire). Yet here in the churchyard you can trace in situ the history of England in monuments from the age of Constantine the Great to Victoria, which one can say of very few (if any) parish churches in England.

Taken as a whole our Cornish parish churches, as we see them, are not very old. A large portion were built during the Wars of the Roses or soon after. It is possible that then many of the gentry and knights and nobles from other parts went down to Cornwall to be out of the way (which is convenient for some people in civil war), and certainly Cornwall seems to have prospered at this time. We had quite a rage for church-building before the Tudor period. Architects mark the perpendicular and later pointed work in scores of the Cornish churches.

2. The mines, such as we understand the term, were not there yet, but there were mines, i.e., "old men's works" (as the country folk call them), surface works and diggings of the tinners. Some of these, which every Cornishman I suppose knows about (though perchance I may be as credulous on this point as Lord Macaulay was about his wonderfully learned "schoolboy"), were very old indeed. I expect some stream works existed from the times of the Phoenicians, when the Father of History, Herodotus, says he believes that the Tin Isles of the West really existed, but that he had never been there himself, nor had he met anybody who had ever seen them. This belief was justified, as we know, and we can see the valleys and the mounds whence the tin was dug. Possibly some of the tin used for the brass in Solomon's Temple, and the tin mentioned by Isaiah, may have been Cornish tin. The remark that these islands were sometimes joined and sometimes separated is true, as all Cornishmen know in Mounts Bay, of St. Michael's Mount, and also of some of the Scilly Isles. To sailors accustomed to the almost tideless Mediterranean it must have seemed very wonderful. Even English tourists accus­tomed to tides often express wonder that we should be able to walk over to islands which sometimes are only accessible by boats.

So, though Cornwall was not dotted then by tall chimneys and mine count-houses and engine-houses, still there were, I doubt not, plenty of real mines—many "knocked," but some perhaps to some extent "going concerns," though, I own, the state of the Continent or even of England a thousand years ago was not very suitable to people making fortunes by mining. It was worse than now. Not that there was not plenty of metal, but few to buy.

We have come to the vexed question: Were there Jews in Cornwall? I know all the clever arguments of Professor Max Müller, and also I know the traditions of the people. Having thought over the matter, I have come to the conclusion that the Cornish tradition is probably right, and the Professor (in spite of his learning) wrong.

The reasons for my view are:—

1. The clear tradition of the miners themselves.

2. The antecedent probability that Jews would take up the metal trade.

3. The remarkable Semetic cast of some Cornish Faces. I know a Jewish clergyman who had travelled much in many lands, who told me that the only land in which he could not tell a Jew was in Cornwall, for he had met numbers of Cornish-men (he was a curate near Truro) whom he thought at first sight to be Jews.

One striking case we had at Newlyn of a boat-owner who had a wondrous Hebrew face. I recommended him as a model to an artist, and he sat for a St. Peter, and the combination of Jew and fisherman in the picture was very striking. His daughters looked Jewesses also. I believe myself that there may be Jewish and Phoenician blood in some of our Cornish families, and that the tin trade has been a cause. One thousand years ago there would be more of this than now.

4. As for our roads, I expect one thousand years ago they were like the drains in Punch's Welsh village—they did not exist. I suppose there may have been some remains of Roman roads to Tregony or Voluba, and some other places. But I suspect there was not much done in the road way. Road surveying under King Howell must have been a sinecure.

Ages long after, all through the Middle Ages, and in the days of Good Queen Bess, the Cornish goods were carried on pack saddles, and the passengers travelled on horseback or Shanks' pony. No carriages, any more than railway trains or bicycles, then. So there was not so much going to and fro as in our time. Cornishmen did not run up to London very often, for:—

1. The journey was long and dangerous.

2. The Saxons were not over friendly.

3. The Cornish gentlemen even could not speak English or Anglo-Saxon.

4. Last of all (I must tell it low), London was not worth going to then. Roman London was a decent trading town somewhat bigger than our Cornish city of Truro. But Alfred's London, I expect, was rather a small affair, not worth the trouble and risk of a Cornishman going to. Besides that, Alfred's London was not a safe residence. The Danes had taken it, and though King Alfred regained it, still it could not have been a very desirable place for strangers to settle in. Winchester, and not London, was then the capital of England.

Now as to the population of old Cornwall one thousand years ago. It was certainly not numerous, probably not 40,000, if that. Even in Edward I.'s time the population was not over that.

There were no cities. Bodmin, the house of the monks, and St. Germains (founded, it is said, by St. Germanus about 430) were perhaps Celtic monasteries with villages around them. The population was probably scattered in clans over the wild forest lands, and by the tin streams. I believe in those Cornish clans, though they are a very mysterious subject. Some of them had a sort of Totem like the American Indians, e.g., theMullion clan to this day has the Mullions "gulls" as its nickname, the Zennor folk are Zennor goats, the St. Ives men are St. Ives hakes. This may be regarded as folk-lore, but it quaintly suits the traditions of primitive clans and tribes of many distant lands. I firmly believe, and so did the late Mr. Cornish of Penzance (to whom we are indebted for many bright thoughts on local topics), in the Cornish clans, and even Cornish totems. We see the clan system in full force still in the Scottish Highlands—the Frasers, the Campbells, the Camerons, the Gordons. It once existed in Cornwall I am sure; one thousand years ago probably it was in full swing. This explains the number of old Celtic bishops. At one period there possibly was a bishop to a clan. So Conan in 930 may have been the first bishop of all Cornwall, and he is out of our period.

What was their religion? The Cornu-Britons were Brito-Celts of the old Brito-Celtic Christian church, aboul which we know little, but the little we know I think you may find in my Church History of Cornwall. It was a national church independent of Rome or Canterbury. Probably there were at first clan bishops, or a bishop to a clan, and then one for the county. This will account for the number of Cornish saints who were bishops, e.g., St Padarn, St. Pol de Leon, St. Germochus, St. Sennen, etc. Cornwall for some time had many bishops, then one, then no bishop at all. Probably the services were emotional, and full of singing suited to the Celtic people. Perhaps the Lorica of St. Patrick (our chief hymn of the Brito-Celtic church) gives the spirit of it.

KINGDOM.

As for government a thousand years ago Cornwall was a kingdom of itself, independent of England. King Howell prob­ably was king then—a sort of overlord over the chiefs of the Celtic clans. It is hard to imagine Cornwall a kingdom to itself, but once it was a fairly powerful one when Gerontius, "the glorious king of Danmonium," as St. Aldhelm calls him, reigned over Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and I think a part of Glamorganshire. We have the names of the Cornish kings, and know a little about them. I only wish someone would put a window or other monument to their memory in Truro Cathedral.

At this time the ride of the Saxon kings only reached to Exeter, and the valley of the Exe (if complete quite so far west), but the great Alfred must have warned the Cornish kings that the days of their independence were numbered. Still the kingdom of West Wales must have stretched from the Tamar, and perhaps even from the Exe. The Cornu-Britons were a nation in Europe, a Celtic nation with a definite language of their own, and their own customs, church, and government. We can understand the sort of people they were by studying the Welsh people, history, language, and antiquities. Wales and the Isle of Man throw many lights on Cornish problems, for there Saxon influence has been weaker. The carved menhirs of Llantwit and Isle of Man show what Cornish work would have developed to. By these aids we can build up the Cornish remains again.

LANGUAGE.

As to the language, no doubt it was the old Cornu-British, a branch of the Celtic, but not (as some suppose) a mere dialect of Welsh, which was in vigour in the country districts long-after, indeed all through the Middle Ages. We have some remains of a Cornish literature—though written of course long after the period I refer to, i.e.:—

The Origo Mundi.

The Passion Play of Cornwall.

The Resurrection.

The Mors Pilati.

The Ascension.

The Beunans Meriasek.

The Life of St. Sylvester or rather of Constantine the Great.

Jordan's Creation.

The epic of Mount Calvary (probably read or recited on Good Friday).

You may ask what it was like, I can only tell you of its latest form, but I have tried to secure a living tradition of its numerals. Some of our old people at Newlyn learnt to count in Cornish as children:—

1. On. 4. Padzher. 7. Seith. 10. Deig.

2. Du. 5. Pemp. 8. Eith. 11. Unjaek.

3. Tri. 6. Wheth. 9. Nan. 12. Dorthack.

It is not the same as Welsh, for Welsh has no cases, and Cornish seems to have a genitive. The names of estates, rivers, fields, etc., beside some people's names, enshrine the old Cornu-British. A thousand years ago it was the language of the people of Cornwall and Devon (though Saxon may have been used around Exeter). The inscriptions, however, we have are in Latin. This also is the case often in Wales. The Celtic was used in conversation, not on monuments, e.g., Men-scryfa.

TRIADIC PHILOSOPHY.

What was the learning of old Cornwall? This enquiry may be regarded as needless, for people think there was no learning. I am not so sure of that. Many Cornishmen were students at Llantwit or Llaniltyd Fawr University in Glamorganshire, which was founded under Theodosius II. when Attila was devastating the Continent. Some monuments at Llantwit of the ninth century exist to this day, and I have seen them and show you photos of them. The learning there was probably a mixture of later Latin lore, with theology and Druidic philosophy. The Triadic philosophy of the Druids lasted until the tenth century mingled with Christianity. It aimed at dividing all ideas into three—an admirable Memoria technica recognizing the tertium quid in everything.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion let us turn from the long-forgotten past of the age of Alfred and King Howell to the present, or rather through the 1,000 years that have elapsed, so eventful to England and Cornwall.

What has Cornwall had to do in the making of the British Empire? That Empire may he said to dawn in the days of the Great Alfred—when our Saxon institutions were established, when the English navy was founded, when Saxon civilisation began (such as it was). The next event is the annexation of Cornwall by Athelstan, and the union of Cornwall to England. The Saxon Heptarchy or Octarchy had been united, now the first of the Celtic kingdoms of Britain joined to England. But the Cornu-Briton has had an influence and a force on the fate of England. It is true a king of England (Edward IV.) said, that "Cornwall was the back door of rebellion," and so the Cornish often in the Middle Ages showed their independence of character. But this has proved a boon to the Empire. The "Gallants of Fowey" preceded the "Sea Dogs of Devon" in oceanic adventure. They were famed before even Hawkins (not to say Drake and Raleigh) was born or thought of. I am a Devonshire man by birth and I am proud of our "sea dogs," but I must own the Gallants of Fowey preceded them in founding the maritime enterprise of Britain, and Cornishmen shared also in the Elizabethan glories. Shall Devon or Cornwall claim Sir Richard Grenville?

In the terrible struggle of the Civil Wars Cornishmen were in the van on both sides. Elliot stood against the King, and his arrest set England in a blaze; Noye was an extremist of the side of King Charles. Grenville and the Cornishmen, had they been well supported, might have turned the fate of England at Lansdown Hill. I only deal with facts, I do not touch political theories.

Turn we to later times. Godolphin the Cornishman was prime minister of England, and a great minister too. The dukedom of Leeds combines the romantic stories of the Godolphins and the Osbornes.

Then in modern science Cornishmen have been to the front. As you travel by train do you ever think of the first man who made and planned a locomotive—Trevithick? What does not the world owe to him? I know Stephenson built up our rail­way system, but Trevethick. was before Stevenson. And then again, was not Redruth the first town lighted by gas, or where gas lamps were used? If you do not care about gas, "who discovered the electric, light?" The Penzance chemist, Sir Humphry Davy. It was a mere toy long after his death, but I believe he first converted electricity into light. And what a boon it has been to man! Then again, much of our modern science depends on the elements. Who discovered potassium? I think the Cornishman Davy. Who made coal-mining safer? Davy, with his safety lamp.

Then in mining, in spreading the Empire and civilisation. Cornish miners have torn the treasures from the earth, not only at home, but in California, in Australia, in South Africa and elsewhere. The Cornishman has been the pioneer of culture in many a land.

In 1897 we saw the unrivalled procession of the Diamond Jubilee. As an object lesson, it was wonderful; but did you think of what a great share Cornishmen had in building that Empire? and has any small remote province in Europe had a greater effect on the world's history than Cornwall?

APPENDIX A. KINGS OF CORNWALL.

The ancient kings of Cornwall who lived and reigned over “West Wales” above a thousand years ago are veiled in mystery. There cau be, I think, little doubt about King Gerontius or Gerrans, to whom St. Aldhelm addressed his famous letter as the glorious King of Danmonium: nor of King Constantine, so famous in Welsh legend. He had been a very wicked man, but was converted and reformed, and was even called St. Constantine. Among the other kings mentioned by old writers are King Cador; King Bledene, who won a victory over the West Saxons; King Ivo, a Breton prince, who ruled over Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, and had a successful reign; King Bletius, who drove the West Saxons out of Cornwall; also Solomon, king of Cornwall, and King Cuby. These may or may not be myths, probably no one can now decide definitely about their history, nor ever will be able to do so.

APPENDIX B. THE CORNISH LANGUAGE.

The Cornish language was something more than a dialect (as some people suppose). It was a real Aryan or Indo-European language of the Celtic family. I remember Prince Lucien Bonaparte (who was much interested in this subject, and erected a monument to Dolly Pentreath at Paul Churchyard) was very strong on this point. Cornish was in some points like Breton and in some like Welsh. Even certain of the numerals, e.g., Seithack 17, Eithack 18, Naunjack 19, differed greatly from the Welsh. I would press this point on all Cornishmen, for there is a notion abroad that Cornish was merely a Welsh dialect. Be jealous for it, as it was a true language.

I took some trouble while at Newlyn in trying to revive interest in the Cornish language. We had a fête and tea at Paul on the Centenary of Dolly Pentreath's death, 1876, and I tried to persuade Mr. Bernard Victor of Mousehole and Mr. John Roberts of Newlyn (aged men who had some traditions of the old Celtic tongue) to teach their grandchildren what little they knew. If these young people recollect their lessons the tradition of Cornish numerals, etc., is not extinct yet, nor will be probably till far in the twentieth century.

The last sentence of old Cornish in use was the fishermen's trade-cry “Breal meta truja, peswartha pempthez whethez all is scrawed all along the line O." This, John Kelynack assured me, was common in his boyhood.

A thousand years ago, of course, Cornish—with a smattering of Latin among the clergy and the chieftains' families—was the general language. "Me a navidra cowza Sawzneck"—"I have not learnt to talk Saxon"—would have been, as it was for 500 years after, the answer to the Englishman who asked his way in Cornwall. At the same time there must have been a little Latin known, for the inscribed menhirs, both of Cornwall and Wales, of this period have Latin inscriptions. Cornishmen would not have inscribed their monuments in the Latin inscription if no one could read them. So I expect the Cornish clergy and lay chieftains used more Latin in Cornwall then than their descendants do now (when reallv nobody speaks and few write it after leaving school). Perhaps had a Cornish gentleman gone to London a thousand years ago he would have known more Latin than Saxon.

APPENDIX C. COSTUME.

The costume of the Cornish has excited some debate since my lecture was delivered. I also read a paper in March on "Ancient British Costume" before the British Archaeological Association. The Cornish costume seems to have been long black tunics reaching to the feet, girt about the breast, and the people walked with staves in their hands. The Greek sailors said they looked like "tragic furies," who were so attired in the Greek Drama. Whether the black and red plaid of South Wales ever was used in Cornwall is a difficult subject. Most Celts in Britain had tartans like the High­landers of modern times.

APPENDIX D. PHILOSOPHY OF THE DRUIDS.

A good deal has been done of late years to elucidate what the teaching of the old Druids may have been. This teaching at Llantwit University and elsewhere was combined with Christianity and the later Classics in the instruction of youth, and probably continued until the tenth century, if not later. The main principle of it was the division of all idea into a trinary division. Three was the sacred number, and everything was grouped in threes. The Welsh Triads and other books have handed down this system to our time.