b. Preposition.Tywardreath, the house on the sands;Tywarnhaile(=Ty war an hayle), the house on the tidal river. Note that the syllablewarin these words is unaccented. InTrewartha, the upper house, the accent is onwar, so that even if we were not accustomed to the epithetwarthawe should know thatwaris here not a preposition.
4. Appositional genitive without article.
Chytan, the house of fire;Chypons, the bridge house;Pentreath, the head of the sands;Portreath(=Porth-treath), the creek of the sands.
Nancemelling(=Nans-mellan), the valley of the mill.
5. Proper names as appositional genitives:—
Trejago, the house of Jago (or James).
Chykembra, the Welshman’s house.
Gûn-an-Guidal(orAnguidal Downs), the down of the Irishman.
In West Cornwall, especially in Penwith, where the spoken language lingered latest, there is a greater tendency to the use of the articleanthan in the more eastern part of the Duchy. Sometimes the article is prefixed to the noun itself. Thus,Andrewartha(=an dre wartha), the upper town, in Gwithian, now calledUpton, but inhabited by a family of the older name;Angarrack, the rock, between Hayle and Gwinear Road;Angove, the smith, andAngwin, the white, family names;Angrouse, the cross, in Mullion;Angear, the castle;AnnearorEnnor, the earth;AngilleyorAnguilly, the grove.[196]
Generally when the article comes between the generic noun and some other word the latter is a noun also, an appositional genitive, but occasionally it is an adjective, as inPonsanooth(in Perran Arworthal and Gluvias), which is probablyPons-an-nowedh, the new bridge. The generic prefixPleuorPlou, parish, so common in Brittany, is altogether unknown in Cornish place-names of to-day, unless, as some hold,Bleu Bridgein Madron means “the parish bridge,” and is a partial translation ofPons-an-bleu, but the word is common enough in Cornish, and the names of parishes called after saints frequently began in Cornish writings withPleu(plu,plui)—Pleu East, St. Just;Pleu Paul, St. Paul;Pleu Vudhick, St. Budock. Though the word occurs in the expressiontîz pleu, people of [his] parish, in the tale ofJohn of Chy-an-Hur, the three parishes mentioned there, St. Levan, St. Hillary, and Buryan, are called bytheir ordinary English names. The prefixlan, originally an enclosure (cf. the Englishlawn), but later used to signify a church with its churchyard, is still frequently found, with occasional variants ofla,lam, andland, but it is nothing like so frequent as the Welsh equivalentllan. In earlier days it was more common in Cornwall than it is now, and a number of parishes which now have the prefix “Saint” appear in the Domesday Survey withLan.
* * * * *
The family names of Cornwall, omitting those of the few great Norman houses, Granvilles, Bevilles, Fortescues, Bassets, St. Aubyns, Glanvilles, etc., which do not concern us at present, fall into at least four classes.
1. Names derived from places.
“By Tre, Pol, and Pen,Ye shall know Cornishmen.”
“By Tre, Pol, and Pen,Ye shall know Cornishmen.”
or as Camden more correctly expands it at the expense of metre:—
“By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Car, and Pen,Ye shall know the most Cornishmen.”
“By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Car, and Pen,Ye shall know the most Cornishmen.”
And he might have added many more prefixes. It is probable that many of these names originated in the possession of the estates of the same names.
Of this class are such names asTrelawny,Rosevear,Polwhele,Lanyon,Carlyon, andPenrose. To the ordinary Saxon they sound highly aristocratic, and are introduced into modern “up country” novels in a way that is often amusing to a Cornishman, and no doubt many of them do represent the names of families of past or present gentility, for in Cornwall, as in the Scottish Highlands, armigerous gentry were and are very thick on the ground, and a very large number of Cornishmen of every class and occupationmight write themselves down “gentlemen” in the strict heraldic sense if they only knew it. But some names of this class are derived from very small landed possessions, and some probably, as similar names in England, from mere residence, not possession.
2. Patronymics. These are the equivalents of the English names ending insonors, of the Welsh names beginning withap(=mab, son), and the Irish and Scottish beginning withmacorO’. They fall into five classes.
a. The Christian name used as a surname without alteration, asHarry,Peter,John,Rawle,RaweorRowe(forRalphorRaoul),GilbartandGilbert,ThomasorThom,Davy,Bennet,Harvey,Tangye, etc.
b. The diminutive of the Christian name, asJenkin,Hodgkin,Rawlin,Tonkin,Eddyvean(=Little Eddy),Hockin(—Hawkin, i.e.Harrykin), etc.
c. The Christian name or its diminutive in its English possessive form, asPeters,Johns,Rogers,Jenkins,Rawlings,Roberts, etc.
d. Patronymics formed as in English, German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages by addingson, asJohnson,Jackson,Wilson, etc. When these occur in Cornwall they are probably often of English origin.
e. Patronymics formed with the prefixap(formab, son), apocopated (as in the Welsh namesProbert,Pritchard,Price,Bevan,Bowen) to aporb. It is possible that to this class may belongProwse,Prawle(Ap Rowse,Ap Rawle),Bown(Ap Owen?),Budge(Ap Hodge?),Pezzack(Ap Isaac).
The Christian names from which patronymics are formed are not as a rule very peculiar. There are the usual names of the well-known saints,Peter,Paul,Mitchell(Michael),John,James(or in its Cornish form,Jago),Thomas,Matthew,Francis,Dunstan,Bennet,Andrew,Martin, and the rest, the common general Christian names,Harry,William,Robert,Roger, etc., and some less common ones, such asJulyan,Vivian,Nicholas(Nicol,Nicholl, etc.),Colin,Jeffry,Jasper,Gilbert, etc., and names of Cornish saints,Keverne,Key,Gluyas,Ustick(probably adjectival form fromJust). Besides these there are a few from old British, or of Breton or Norman introduction,Harvey(Hervé),Dennis,Rawle,and Rawlin(Raoul,Raoulin,Rivallen),Tangye(Tanguy, a quite common name in Brittany, from St. Tanguy, one of the entourage of St. Pol of Leon),Arthur,DavidorDavy(as representing the Welsh saint, not the King of Israel),Sampson(representing the Bishop of Dol, not the Israelite hero),Jewell(BretonJudicaelorJuhel). Some names take a variety of forms. ThusClementis found asClemens,Clemments,Clements,ClemoorClemmow,Climo,Climance, etc.,Ralph(Radulphus,Rudolph,Randolph,Rollo) is found asRalph,Rapson,Rawe,Rawle,Rawlin,Rawling,Rawlings,Rabling,Randall,Rowe,Rowling,Rowse, etc. There are also certain names which have a resemblance to Spanish names,Pascoe,Varcoe,Jago,Crago,Manuel, etc., but no theory of Spanish influence is necessarily to be built upon them, as they are otherwise explainable. As the Cornish had got beyond the matriarchal stage of culture before historic times, we do not find family names derived from names of women, but no chapter on Cornish nomenclature can omit that very remarkable and peculiarly Cornish nameJennifer, which is beyond any doubt a local form of the name of Guenivere, the wife of Arthur. A more Frenchified form is still found in Brittany, and the Cornish form goes back to time immemorial. At one time the name of an equally celebrated Queen of Cornwall was used as a Cornish Christian name, forYsoltde Cardinham possessed the advowson of the church of Colan inthe thirteenth century, but except as a modern revival, of which the present writer knows only one case connected with Cornwall, this name is no longer found. Another not infrequent Christian name isHannibal, from which possibly may come the surnamesHambly,Hamley, andHamblyn. The name is too old in Cornwall to have originated in any theory about the Phœnicians and the tin trade of the Cassiterides, for it is found in times when no one troubled himself about either, but its origin is decidedly a puzzle.
3. Names derived from trades or occupations. Some of these are only English,Smith,Wright,Carpenter,Brewer,Paynter, etc., but others are real Cornish, asMarrack, knight;Angove, the smith;Drew, druid, magician (and perhapsAn-drew, the druid, when it is not merely a patronymic);Tyacke, farmer;SayerandSara, possiblySaer, carpenter;Hellyar, hunter;Cauntor(Lat.Cantor), singer.
4. Nicknames or names derived from personal peculiarities, such asBlack,White,Brown,Grey,Green, which are mostly found in English, though one findsAngwin, the white, andWinn, white;GlassandGlaze, blue;Couch, red;Floyd(cf. WelshLloyd), grey;Glubb, moist, wet;Coath,Coad, and its EnglishOldeorOuld;Baragwaneth, wheat-bread, etc. Also names derived from names of animals,Bullock,Cock,Fox, or its CornishLewarne(unless that isLe-warne, the place of alders),Mutton(though this may be a place-name also), etc. One does not see why a man should have been calledCurnow, the Cornishman, in a country in which such an epithet could not have been very distinguishing, but that name is not at all uncommon, nor isAndainorEndean, the man, which is still less distinguishing.
This is only a slight sketch of a considerable range of investigation, but the subject would require a book to itself, so that it is impossible here to do more than indicate the direction in which students of Cornish nomenclature should work. But in the investigation of place-names in any language one must always allow for corruption and alteration in the course of centuries, and in a Celtic country for the Celticising of names of non-Celtic derivation. Thus the well-known Welsh nameBettwsis probably the old English bede-house (prayer-house),Gattws, less common, is gatehouse. The terminationsaig,sgor,bhal,dail,ort, so common in the Hebrides and West Highlands, are Gaelic forms of the Norsevik,skjœr,val,dal,fjord, and many names in those parts are altogether Norse, spelt Gaelic fashion, and have no meaning whatever in Gaelic. Probably the Cornish place-nameBereppa,Barrepper,Brepper,Borripper, of which instances occur in Gunwalloe, Penponds, Mawnan, and elsewhere, is only the FrenchBeau-Repaire, and there are probably many other names of French derivation. Dr. Bannister’s Glossary of Cornish Names is of so eminently uncritical a character as to be of little use. Though he had a wide knowledge of separate Cornish words, he was no philologist, and did not seem to understand how to put his words together. Had he only given the situation of the places—the name of the parish would have been something towards it—he would have left a basis for future work. As it is, the whole work needs to be done over again. Of course one need hardly say that out of such a large collection of names a considerable number of the derivations are quite correctly stated, but those are mostly the easy and obvious ones, and even easy ones are often wrong, and it was quite useless to encumber the glossary with the hopeless derivations of eighteenth-centurywriters. But the interpretation of place-names is not so simple as it looks, and it is easier to criticise other people’s derivations than to find better ones, so that one may admire Dr. Bannister’s industry while one deprecates the recklessness of many of his conclusions.
Sunday
Dê Zîl.
Monday
Dê Lín.
Tuesday
Dê Mergh.
Wednesday
Dê Marhar.
Thursday
Dê Yew.
Friday
Dê Gwener.
Saturday
Dê Sadarn.
It will be seen that, like the Welsh and Bretons as well as the Latin nations, the Cornish derived the names of the days directly from Latin, and did not, like the Teutonic nations, translate them in accordance with primitive ideas of comparative mythology.
January
Mîs Genver.
February
Mîs Whevral.
March
Mîs Mergh.
April
Mîs Ebral.
May
Mîs Mê.
June
Mîs Efan.
July
Mîs Gorefan.
August
Mîs Êst.
September
Mîs Gwengala.
October
Mîs Hedra.
November
Mîs Deu.
December
Mîs Kevardheu.
Spring
Gwainten.
Summer
Hav.
Autumn
Kidniav.
Winter
Gwav.
Christmas
Nadelik.
New Year’s Day
Bledhan Nowedh.
Epiphany / Twelfth Day
Degl an Stêl/An Dawdhegvas Dêdh.
Easter
Pask.
Low Sunday
Pask Bîan.
Ascension Day
An Askenyans.
Whitsunday / Pentecost
Zîlgwidn/Pencast.
Palm Sunday
Dê Zîl Blejyow.
Ash Wednesday
Dê Marhar an Losow.
Maundy Thursday
Dê Yew Hamblys.
Good Friday
Dê Gwener an Grows.
Holy Week
Seithan Sans/Seithan Mêr.
Purification / Candlemas
Degl Marîa an Golow.
Annunciation / Lady Day
Degl agan Arledhes/Degl Marîa en Mîs Mergh.
Visitation
Degl Marîa en Gorefan.
Assumption
Degl Marîa en Hanter-Êst/Ewhelyans Marîa.
Nativity of B.V.M
Genesegeth Marîa.
Midsummer Day / Nativity of St. John
Golowan(i.e. The Lights or Midsummer Fires) /Genesegeth Jûan Bejedhyor.
Lammas Day / Harvest Home
Degoledh ŷs(pron.dêgŭldŷzmeaning, “Corn Feast”).
All Saints Day
Halan Gwav(i.e. the Kalends of Winter).
All Souls Day
Dêdh an Enevow.
Ember Days
An Pajer Termen.
Whit Monday
Dê Lîn Pencast.
Trinity Sunday
Dê Zîl an Drinjes.
Corpus Christi Day
Degl Corf Crîst.
Michaelmas Day
Degl Sans Myhal hag ŏl an Eleth.
1. The Ancient Cornish Drama. Edited and translated by Mr. Edwin Norris. Oxford, University Press, 1859. 2 vols. 8vo. [This contains the Trilogy known as theOrdinalia(see p. 27), followed by notes and a most valuable “Sketch of Cornish Grammar,” and the Cottonian Vocabulary, arranged alphabetically].
2.Pascon agan Arluth: the Poem of the Passion (see p. 26). [With a translation and notes by Dr. Whitley Stokes.]Philological Society’s Transactions, 1860-1. 8vo.
3.Gwreans an Bys: the Creation of the World, a Cornish Mystery. Edited, with a translation and notes, by Whitley Stokes.Philological Society’s Transactions, 1864. 8vo.
4.Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum: a Dictionary of the ancient Celtic language of Cornwall, in which the words are elucidated by copious examples from the Cornish works now remaining; with translations in English. The synonyms are also given in the cognate dialects of Welsh, Armoric, Irish, Gaelic, and Manx, showing at one view the connection between them. By the Rev. Robert Williams. Roderic, Llandovery, 1865. 4to.
5. A Collection of hitherto unpublished Proverbs and Rhymes in the ancient Cornish Language: from the MSS. of Dr. Borlase. By William Copeland Borlase.Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 1866. 8vo.
6. A Cornish Glossary. By Whitley Stokes. [Additions of about 2000 words to Williams’sLexicon, with somecorrections].Transactions of the Philological Society, 1868-9.
7.Beunans Meriasek: the Life of St. Meriasek, Bishop and Confessor. A Cornish Drama. Edited, with a translation and notes, by Whitley Stokes. Trübner & Co., London, 1872. 8vo.
8. The Cornish Language. A Paper read before the Philological Society, March 21st, 1873. By Henry Jenner.Philological Society’s Transactions, 1893.
9. Traditional Relics of the Cornish Language in Mount’s Bay in 1875. By Henry Jenner.Philological Society’s Transactions, 1876. 8vo.
10. The History and Literature of the Ancient Cornish Language. By Henry Jenner. A Paper read before the British Archæological Association at Penzance, August 19th, 1876.British Archæological Journal, 1877. 8vo.
11. Copy of a MS. in Cornish and English from the MSS. of Dr. Borlase.Nebbaz Gerriau dro tho Carnoack. By John Boson. Edited by W. C. Borlase.Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Nov. 1879. 8vo.
12. An English-Cornish Dictionary. Compiled from the best sources. By Fred. W. P. Jago. Luke, Plymouth; Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., London, 1887. 4to.
13. A Glossary of Cornish Names: ancient and modern, local, family, personal, etc. 2000 Celtic and other names, now or formerly in use in Cornwall. . . By the Rev. John Bannister. Williams & Norgate, London; J. B. Netherton, Truro, 1871. 8vo.
14. Articles in theRevue Celtique.
Vol. i. p. 332. “The Bodmin Manumissions.” By Dr. Whitley Stokes.
Vol. iii. p. 85. “Cornica.”Durdala,Dursona; Cornish in the Vatican [John of Cornwall’sMerlin]; Cornish Life of St. Columba [mentionof a letter from Nicholas Roscarrock to Camden, referring to such a work]. By Dr. Whitley Stokes.
Vol. iii. p. 239. “Le dernier écho de la Langue Cornique.” By the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma. [An account of the present writer’s Paper on “Traditional Relics of Cornish in Mount’s Bay,” with additions.]
Vol. iv. p. 258. “Cornica.” Fragments of a Drama. [Text and translation of the Add. Charter fragment (see p. 25)]. Cornish Phrases. [From Andrew Borde (see p. 30)]. By Dr. Whitley Stokes.
Vol. xiv. p. 70. “Les Glosses de l’Oxoniensis posteriorsont elles Corniques?” p. 301. “Les motsDruic,Nader, dans le Vocabulaire Cornique.” By Prof. J. Loth.
Vol. xviii. p. 401. “Études Corniques I.” [On the pronunciation ofd,t,s,z,j, etc.]. By Prof. Loth.
Vol. xxiii. p. 173. “Études Corniques II. Textes inédits en Cornique moderne.” [Genesisiii.,St. Matth. iv., ii. From the Gwavas MS., with a French translation and notes]. By Prof. Loth.
Vol. xxiii. p. 236. “Études Corniques IV. Remarques et corrections auLexicon Cornu-Britannicade Williams.” By Prof. Loth.
Vol. xxiv. p. 1. “Études Corniques V. Les Dix Commandements de Dieu.” [The versions of Boson and Kerew in the Gwavas MS., with a French translation and notes]. By Prof. Loth.
Vol. xxiv. p. 155. “Notes aux textes inédits en Cornique moderne.” [Notes, in English, on Prof. Loth’s edition ofGenesisiii.,St. Matth.iv., ii., in vol. xxiii.]. By Henry Jenner.
Vol. xxiv. p. 300. “Some Rough Notes on the present Pronunciation of Cornish names.” By Henry Jenner.
15. Articles inArchiv fur Celtische Lexicographie.
Bd. i. p. 101. “Glossary toBeunans Meriasek.” By Dr. Whitley Stokes.
p. 161. “Collation of Norris’s Cornish Drama.” By Dr. Whitley Stokes.
p. 224. “Cornique Moderne.” [The dialogues of Andrew Borde, and William Bodenor’s Letter; with restored texts, translations, and notes.] By Prof. Loth.
16. Grammatica Celtica e monumentis vetustis tam Hibernicae linguae quam Britannicarum dialectorum Cambricae Cornicae Aremoricae comparatis Gallicae priscae reliquiis. Construxit I. C. Zeuss. Editio altera. Curavit H. Ebel. Berolini, 1871. 4to.
[0a]Cf. “Ista sunt nomina corrodiorum et pensionumin Anglia et Cornubiaquæ sunt in dono Regis Angliæ.” Harl. MS. 433, f. 335, temp. Ric. iii.
[0b]The Bretons of to-day habitually speak of Brittany as “notre petite patrie,” and France as “notre grande patrie,” and none have fought and died for France more bravely than these. As soldiers (and still more as sailors) they are to France what the Highlanders are to Britain, and avenge the atrocities of 1793 in the same noble fashion as that in which the Gaels have avenged the horrors of Culloden and its sequel. Loyalty is in the blood of Celts, whether to clan, or to great or little Fatherland.
[0c]“If that learned wise man should see this, he would find reason to correct it in orthography, etc.”—Nebbaz Gerriau.
[6]The Britons of the Kingdom of the North (Cumberland and Strathclyde) probably spoke the progenitor of Welsh, which they perhaps brought south with them, displacing the South British in Gwynedd and Powys, and later in South Wales, when they also drove out the Goidelic intruders.
[7]In September 1903, at the end of the Congress of theUnion Régionaliste Bretonneat Lesneven in Finistère, the present writer made a speech in Cornish, perhaps the first that had been made for two hundred years, and rather to his astonishment he was fairly well understood by the Bretons. It is true that all were educated men, but only one of them had studied Cornish.
[10a]Descript. Cambr., vi.
[10b]Cf.“Where the great vision of the guarded mountLooks toward Namancos and Bayona’s hold.”
[12]Clarendon’s account of the Cornish troops in the Great Rebellion gives the impression that there was no lack of piety among them at that time.
[17]Probably the well-known Sir John Maynard, whose MSS. are now in Lincoln’s Inn Library. He represented a Devon constituency at one time.
[19]In Tonkin’s notes to Carew’sSurvey(Lord de Dunstanville’s edition) passages which occur in Pryce are referred to pages of “myArchæologia Cornu-Britannica.”
[39]The motto of Harris of Hayne, “Car Dew dres pub tra,” is mentioned in Boson’sNebbaz Gerriau, and is part of stanza 23 of thePoem of the Passion.
[50]The remarks added here in brackets are those of the present writer.
[54]In compound words the accent is always on the qualifying part, and if that is a monosyllable and comes last, the accent is therefore on the last syllable. This is common in place-names.
[55]It seems likely that in the very peculiar intonation of Zennor, Morvah, Towednack, and the country part of St. Ives the true intonation of Cornish may be best preserved. But this is mere conjecture.
[56]The modern Cornish pronunciation of the word “trade,” in its local and rather contemptuous sense of “ropes’ ends, dead mice, and other combustibles” (as Cornishman once denned it), shows the sound of this vowel fairly well.
[57]Care must be taken in this case to avoid thatŷsound given to the Englishain London twang (e.g.lȳdy for lady).
[59a]The combinationaoin Irish is pronouncedt. Thuscaol, narrow, isculin the Highlands andkîlin Ireland.
[59b]The wordbewnans, life, formed from the rootbew, was often writtenbownansin late Cornish and probably pronouncedboonans. Similarlybowjy(=bewgh-chŷ), cow-house, must have beenbewjy. This last, which is one of the surviving Cornish words, has itsowat present sounded as innow. This change has happened not infrequently in place-names.
[63]The worden, in, in quite late Cornish, was apparently soundedet, which is a solitary case of the disappearance ofnin a monosyllable.
[64]Cf.thesorzofazure,treasure,sure,pleasure,sugar, in English.
[65]Dr. Whitley Stokes, in a paper of additions to Williams’s Cornish Lexicon (Philol. Soc. 1868), gives it as his opinion that thethof the MSS. should not be writtendhat theendof a word, and that Williams, in doing so, was wrongly following Welsh analogy. But there is an evident tendency inlateCornish to end words inzfors,vforf,gfork, and a considerable number of words which Williams ends indhend in the corresponding z in Breton, so that one is more inclined to follow Williams in this matter, though there is a good deal to be said both ways.
[70a]Cbefore a broad vowel,kbefore a thin vowel, andqbefore aw.
[70b]Thechandjare used for an earliertanddin a few words, through intensification of the thin sounds of the latter. See Chap. I. § 2.
[73]See Chap. IV. § 2.
[76]There is also a doubtful formmescatter, frommescat.
[78]The change of initial of the masculine plural is by no means universal in the MSS., but it is not infrequent, and is the rule in Breton (with a few exceptions), so it seems fair to conjecture that it was the Cornish rule also.
[80]Note how a masculine ending inaaffects the initial of the adjective as if it were a feminine.
[81]It sometimes happens (as Dr. Stokes points out) that if the first noun is feminine, the noun in the genitive has its initial in the second state, in fact it is treated as an adjective qualifying the preceding noun, e.g.bennath Varya, the blessing of Mary;carek Veryasek, the rock of Meriasek;fynten woys, a well of blood, but as this also happens at times when the first noun is masculine (e.g.cledha dan, Cr. 964), it probably only means that mutations were rather loosely used. The last two are “genitives of material.”
[86]Note that when a syllable is added to a word ending ingh, thegis omitted.
[94]Idn, to qualify a noun;omen, used by itself. Thus,idn dên, one man;Ŏnen hag Ol, One and All.Wǒnnenis an alternative form of the latter.
[96]It has been held that this apparent singular, which is used after numerals in Welsh and Breton also, is really a genitive plural. In the Gaelic languages, in which the case-inflections of nouns still exist, the genitive plural is usually (though not universally) the same as the nominative singular, except in Manx, where it is only distinguishable from the nominative plural by its article, but except in the cases ofda, two,fichead, twenty,ceud, a hundred, andmile, a thousand, which precede nouns in the singular, the plural follows numerals in those languages.
[119]There is, however, some blight confusion in late Cornish MSS. between this use ofre, and the auxiliary form withwrîg. The difference of sound in cases of verbs beginning withgorcwould be very slight.
[133]Spelling assimilated to that of this grammar.
[135]It will not be necessary to add the pronouns to every tense.
[136]The remarks on the use of the different forms of this tense applymutatis mutandisto the other tenses. See also Chapter XIV. § I.
[140]See Chapter XIV.
[144]Kegy,kehegy(inSt. Meriasek), areke,kehe, withjyorgy(=dî), the personal pronoun added.
[149]Olderyn. When this is followed by a possessive pronoun of the first or second person thenis dropped, and the possessive pronoun takes the form which follows a preposition ending in a vowel,e’m,e’th. When the definite article would follow the two coalesce anden=en an.
[153]na=ni+ a (nagbefore a vowel), ought only to be used with interrogatives, but the later writers of Cornish did not always do as they ought.
[154]In Jordan’sCreation, 1. 599, “Myhall sera thewgh gramercy,” though Keigwin and Dr. Stokes both readmy hall=I may, one is inclined to find this form of swear, and to translate it “Michael! sir, grammercy to you!” Compare the English use of “Marry!” (for Mary!) or “Gad!” (for God!) withoutbybefore them. It is written all in one word and spelt the same as the name of St. Michael in the same play. It is no more of an anachronism to make Eve swear by St. Michael than (inRes. Dom., 1387) to make St. Thomas swear by St. Mary.
[156]Vengeans y’th glas! is used by the wife of the smith who makes the nails for the Cross in the Drama ofThe Passion(1. 2716).
[164]The spelling and mutations corrected.
[165]The spelling and mutations corrected.
[166]The spelling and mutations corrected.
[167]The spelling and mutations corrected.
[180a]Probably the apparent eight syllables in line 6 of thePoem of the Passionmay be accounted for in this way, and one should readlevarowaslarow; cf. in the Breton of Treguier,laretforlavarout, and the late Cornishlawleforlavarel. In English the first would be no rhyme.
[180b]It may be that the Cornish ear for rhymes was like the French, and that the explanation is to be sought in a theory like that of therimes richesand theconsonne d’appuiof modern French. In Frenchchercher—rocheris a better rhyme thanaimer—rocher(in each case with the accent on the last syllable).
[181]The numerals denote the number of syllables to each line. In the original a longzis used fordhandth.
[188]The spelling of one of the original MSS. has been preserved here, except that, in order to avoid confusion as to the number of syllables, the final muteeis omitted. In thisee—î,ea=ê,oo=ô.
[189a]“I have only to add that the metre ofChristabelis not properly speaking irregular, though it may seem so through its being founded on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.” (Preface to 1816 edition ofChristabel.)
[189b]Spelling adapted to that of this grammar.
[196]Cf. the Arabic articlealprefixed to place-names in Southern Spain, and to nouns of Arabic derivation in Spanish.