Re: Breton, Cornish & French

"Bob Jones" <bobj@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:RFogj.434$421.325@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> From "The Story of the Cornish Language" by Peter Berresford Ellis (Tor 
> Mark Press, Redruth):

Ere! That's where I was born, ansome, in Reys Druith.

> "Of John Davey of Zennor who died in 1891, it was claimed that was the 
> last speaker of the language. ... Davey it was re****ted could hold 
> conversations on many topics in Cornish. He also sang various
traditional 
> Cornish songs.

Es. They do all say it was Dolly, but...

> It would seem, then that there were at least a small number of Cornish
who 
> had learned the language, or phrases of it, from their parents. From
this 
> evidence it can safely be said that the last native speakers did not die

> out until the end of the nineteenth century."

Es again. A slightly earlier re****t by one Edward Lhuyd, an Oxford
scholar, 
who undertook an extensive survey of the Celtic languages, visited
Cornwall 
in 1700. He found Cornish still spoken in some 25 parishes from Land's End

to the Lizard. he also recorded an an intriguing rhyme given to him by the

parish clerk of St Just-in-Penwith:

    An lavar koth yw lavar gwir
        The old saying is a true saying
    Na boz nevra doz vaz an tavez re hir;
        A tongue too long never did good;
    Bez den heb davaz a gollaz i dir.
        But the man with no tongue lost his hand.

Dolly died in 1777. William Bodinar is said to have survived her and spoke

Cornish, he died 1789 - and your John Davey of Boswednack near Zennor,
died 
1891 - though how much Cornish he knew is a bit disputed.

> In a sense Cornish never died out because the Cornish revivalist couple 
> Henry Jenner and Kitty Lee were already active reviving the language
from 
> 1873. Henry's mother-in-law learned to say the Lord's Prayer and Creed
in 
> Cornish at her school in Penzance - she died in 1879 aged 57.

Not to mention Jenner's //Handbook of the Cornish Langauge// publ 1904. 
Jenner had scottish and English parentage but lived in Cornwall.

> My own grandmother remembers Cornish country folk coming to the family 
> shop in Truro speaking the language.

Trura? Used to live and work out Pencalenick way, and trapse down the
river 
to Tressilian .

> Two of our local Bards of the Cornish Gorsedd tell me that the 2
variants 
> you talk of are:
>
> 1. Kernewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish) used by 80% of speakers and taught
in 
> the school system - it has become by far the dominant form of the 
> language.
>
> 2. Unified used by the Bards of the Gorsedd in ceremonies - it is has 
> become the "Liturgical" form of the language.

Do you happen to know where D. M. Thomas is from, my 'ansome? And how
bouts 
Jack Clemo? Proper poet 'e was - and what about that there maid Brenda 
Wooton - and I forgot her paramour singer friends name.

Phil Innes