CHAPTER II—THE LITERATURE AND OTHER REMAINS OF CORNISH

The following is a list, in order of date, of the known remains of Cornish from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century. There may be others of very early date, which have been hitherto classified as old Welsh or Breton, such as the Lament for Geraint, King of Devon, generally attributed to Llywarch Hen, and certain glosses in Latin MSS.

1. _The Manumissions in the Bodmin Gospels_ (Add. MS. 9381, in the British Museum). The MS. is of the tenth century, and belonged to St. Petrock’s Priory of Black Canons, originally Benedictine, at Bodmin. At the beginning and end are manumissions of serfs from whose names about two hundred Cornish words may be gathered. These have been printed in the _Revue Celtique_ (vol. i. p. 332), with notes by Dr. Whitley Stokes.

2. _The Cottonian Vocabulary_ (Cott. MS. Vesp. A. xiv., in the British Museum). This forms part of a MS. of the end of the twelfth century, and consists of about seven pages, preceded by a calendar containing many Celtic names, and followed by lives of Welsh and Cornish saints. The words are classified under various headings such as heaven and earth, different parts of the human body, birds, beasts, fishes, trees, herbs, ecclesiastical and liturgical terms, and at the end occur a number of adjectives. It has been printed by Zeuss in his _Grammatica Celtica_, by Dr. Norris with the _Ordinalia_, and has been incorporated into Canon Williams’s Cornish Lexicon. Many of the words in it were incorporated by Dr. John Davies in his Welsh Dictionary, as coming from what he calls the _Liber Landavensis_, and a quotation from the Life of St. Cadoc in the same MS. is spoken of in Camden’s _Britannia_ as coming from the Book of Llandaff. The MS. evidently bore that name for a time. It is probable, from certain mistakes in it, that the vocabulary is a copy of an earlier one, in which the letters _Ƿ_ and þ of the Saxon alphabet were used.

Of about the same date as this manuscript was a composition in Cornish, of which the original is lost, except a few words. This was a _Prophecy of Merlin_, which only exists in a translation into Latin hexameters by John of Cornwall, who in his notes gives a few words of the original, which are certainly Cornish. Like many of the so-called Merlin prophecies, this relates to the struggle between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, but it contains local Cornish allusions of great interest. The only known MS. is one of the fourteenth century, in the Vatican.

3. The single sentence, _In Polsethow ywhylyr anetkow_, in the Cartulary of Glasney College. If the writer of the history of the foundation of the college is correct, this prophecy, “In Polsethow [the Pool of Arrows, the old name of Glasney] shall be seen habitations,” is older than the foundation in 1265. It is therefore the oldest known complete sentence of Cornish, and is interesting as containing the inflected passive _whylyr_. There is an abstract of the cartulary, by Mr. J. A. C. Vincent, in the 1879 volume of the _Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall_, and this sentence is given there, with an explanatory note by the late Mr. W. C. Borlase. The original belongs to Mr. Jonathan Rashleigh of Menabilly.

4. On the back of a charter in the British Museum (Add. Charter 19,491) the present writer discovered in 1877 a fragment of forty-one lines of Cornish verse. The writing was very faint, indeed the MS. had passed through other and by no means incompetent hands without this precious endorsement being noticed, and the finder might have missed it too had he not been deliberately looking for possible Cornish words on the backs of a number of charters relating to St. Stephen-in-Brannel, after he had finished the necessary revision of the cataloguing of these documents. The date of the document is 1340, but the Cornish writing on the back is somewhat later, perhaps about 1400. The language and spelling agree with those of the _Poem of the Passion_ and the _Ordinalia_, and the exact metre is not found anywhere else. The speaker (it may be a part in some play) offers a lady to some other person as a wife, praises her virtues, and then gives the lady some rather amusing advice as to her behaviour to her future husband, and how to acquire the position attributed in Cornish folklore to the influence of the Well of St. Keyne and St. Michael’s Chair. A copy of these verses was printed in the _Athenæum_ in 1877, but, as the writer admits, his readings were not at all good, for the writing was very faint. Dr. Whitley Stokes, who had the advantage of working on a photograph, which brought out many letters which were invisible in the original, published an amended version in the _Revue Celtique_.

5. _The Poem of Mount Calvary_, or _The Passion_.—There are five MSS. of this in existence. One is in the British Museum (Harl. 1782), and is probably the original, said to have been found in the church of Sancreed. It is a small quarto, on rough vellum, written very badly in a mid-fifteenth-century hand, and embellished with very rude pictures. Of the other copies, two are in the Bodleian, an incomplete and much “amended” one in the Gwavas collection of Cornish writings in the British Museum, with an illiterate translation by William Hals, the Cornish historian, and one is in private hands. It has been twice printed, once with a translation by John Keigwin of Mousehole, edited by Davies Gilbert in 1826, and by Dr. Whitley Stokes for the Philological Society in 1862. There is very little in this poem beyond a versified narrative of the events of the Passion, from Palm Sunday to Easter morning, taken directly from the four Gospels, with some legendary additions from the Gospel of Nicodemus and elsewhere, preceded by an account of our Lord’s fasting and temptation. The metre consists of eight-lined stanzas (written as four lines) of seven-syllabled lines. There are two hundred and fifty-nine of these stanzas.

6. _The Ordinalia_.—These consist of three dramas collectively known under this title. The first play, called _Origo Mundi_, begins with the Creation of the World, the Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, etc.; this being followed by the building of the Ark and the Flood, the story of the temptation of Abraham closing the first act. The second act gives us the history of Moses, and the third represents the story of David and of the building of Solomon’s Temple, curiously ending with a description of the martyrdom of St. Maximilla as a Christian (!) by the bishop placed in charge of the temple by Solomon. The second play, _Passio Domini_, represents the Temptation of Christ, and the events from the entry into Jerusalem to the Crucifixion; and this goes on without interruption into the third play, _Resurrectio Domini_, which gives an account of the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, with the Legend of St. Veronica and Tiberius, and the death of Pilate. As in the _Poem of the Passion_, the pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus and other legendary sources are drawn upon.

But running through the whole and interwoven with the Scriptural narrative comes the beautiful and curious Legend of the Cross. The legend, most of which is in the dramas, is this. When Adam found himself dying, he sent his son Seth to the Gates of Paradise to beg of the angel that guarded them the oil of mercy, that his father might live. The angel let him look into Paradise, where he saw many strange and beautiful foreshadowings of things that should be upon the earth; and the angel gave him three seeds from the Tree of Life, and he departed. When he came to where his father was, he found that he was already dead, and he laid the three seeds in his mouth, and buried him therewith on Mount Moriah; and in process of time the three seeds grew into three small trees, and Abraham took of the wood thereof for the sacrifice of Isaac his son; and afterwards Moses’ rod, wherewith he smote the rock, was made from one of their branches. And soon the three trees grew together into one tree, whereby was symbolised the mystery of the Trinity; and under its branches sat King David when Nathan the Prophet came to him, and there he bewailed his sin, and made the Miserere Psalm. And Solomon, when he would build the Temple on Mount Sion, cut down the tree, which was then as one of the chiefest of the cedars of Lebanon, and bid men make a beam thereof; but it would in no wise fit into its place, howsoever much they cut it to its shape. Therefore Solomon was wroth, and bid them cast it over the brook Cedron as a bridge, so that all might tread upon it that went that way. But after a while he buried it, and over where it lay there came the Pool Bethesda with its healing powers; and when our Lord came on earth the beam floated up to the surface of the pool, and the Jews found it, and made thereof the Cross whereon Christ died on Calvary.

The metres of these plays are various arrangements of seven and four-syllabled lines, of which more anon in the chapter on prosody. There are three MSS. of this Trilogy in existence, 1. The Oxford MS. of the fifteenth century, from which the others were copied, and from which Dr. Edwin Norris edited the plays in 1859. 2. Another Oxford MS., presented to the Bodleian by Edwin Ley of Bosahan about 1859, with a translation by John Keigwin. The copy of the text is older by a century than the translation. 3. A copy in the library of Sir John Williams, Bart., of Llanstephan, Carmarthenshire, with an autograph translation by Keigwin. This was Lhuyd’s copy.

7. _The Life of St. Meriasek_.—This play, the MS. of which was written by “Dominus Hadton” in the year 1504, as appears by the colophon, was discovered by Dr. Whitley Stokes some thirty-two years ago among the MSS. of the Peniarth Library, near Towyn in Merioneth. It represents the life and death of Meriasek, called in Breton Meriadec, the son of a Duke of Brittany, and interwoven with it is the legend of St. Sylvester the Pope and the Emperor Constantine, quite regardless of the circumstance that St. Sylvester lived in the fourth century, and St. Meriasek in the seventh. The play contains several references to Camborne, of which St. Meriasek was patron, and to the Well of St. Meriasek there. It is probable that it was written for performance at that town. The language of the play is later than that of the _Ordinalia_, the admixture of English being greater, while a few of the literal changes, such as the more frequent substitution of _g_ (soft) for _s_, and in one instance (_bednath_ for _bennath_) the change of _nn to dn_, begin to appear. The grammar has not changed much, but the use of the compound and impersonal forms is more frequent, and the verb _menny_ has begun to be more commonly used as a simple future auxiliary. The metres are much the same as those of the _Ordinalia_. The spelling is rather more grotesque and varied. But, since this play (or combination of plays) is to a large extent on local Cornish and Breton, rather than on conventional Scriptural lines, it has an interest, full of mad anachronisms as it is, which is not to be found in the Biblical plays. Some passages are of considerable literary merit, and a good deal of early Cornish and Breton history is jumbled up in it, and yet remains to be worked out, for Dr. Whitley Stokes’s excellent edition of 1872 does not go very much into historical side questions. It is unlucky that this play was not discovered until after the publication of Canon Williams’s Lexicon, but his own interleaved copy of the Lexicon, with words and quotations from _St. Meriasek_, is in the possession of Mr. Quaritch of Piccadilly, and Dr. Stokes has published forty pages of new words and forms from the same play in _Archiv für Celtische Lexicographie_.

8. The Cornish conversations in Andrew Borde’s _Booke of the Introduction of Knowledge_, printed in 1542.—These consist of the numerals and twenty-four sentences useful to travellers. They were evidently taken down by ear, and appear in a corrupted form. Restored texts, agreeing in almost every detail, were published by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the _Revue Celtique_, vol. iv., and by Prof. Loth in the _Archiv fur Celtische Lexicographie_ in 1898.

9. In Carew’s _Survey of Cornwall_, 1602, are the numerals up to twenty, with a hundred, a thousand, and what is meant for ten thousand, but is really something else. There are also ten words compared with Greek, a dozen phrases, some more words, and the Cornish equivalents of twelve common Christian names.

10. _The Creation of the World_, _with Noah’s Flood_, by William Jordan of Helston, A.D. 1611. The construction of this play is very like that of the first act of the _Origo Mundi_ (the metres are substantially the same), and the author has borrowed whole passages from it; but as a whole Jordan’s play possesses greater literary merit, and there are many additions to the story in it, and much amplification of the ideas and dialogue. Occasionally sentences of several lines in English are introduced, and it is curious to note that whenever this is the case, they are given to Lucifer or one of his angels, and in such a manner as to seem as if the author meant to imply that English was the natural language of such beings, and that they only spoke Cornish when on their good behaviour, relapsing into their own tongue whenever they became more than ordinarily excited or vicious. Five complete copies of this play are known, two of which are in the Bodleian, one in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 1867), and two are in private hands (one bound up with the MS. of _The Passion_ already mentioned). Besides these there is a fragment in a similar hand to that of the complete Museum copy (certainly not that of John Keigwin, who translated the play in 1693 at the request of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, then Bishop of Exeter, though it has his translation on the opposite pages to the text) in the Gwavas collection in the British Museum. In a list of books published in _Welsh_ (as it is expressed), given in one of Bagford’s collections for a History of Printing (Lansdowne MS. 808, in the British Museum), mention is made of this play. No date is given, but the names of the books are arranged chronologically, and this comes between one of 1642 and one of 1662. The play has been printed (with Keigwin’s translation) by Davies Gilbert in 1827, and with a translation by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Philological Society’s volume for 1864. Of William Jordan, the writer, nothing is known whatever. He may have been merely the transcriber, and it is possible that the transcription may be connected with that revival of Cornish patriotism which seems to have happened in the early seventeenth century.

11. _Nebbaz Gerriau dro tho Carnoack_ (A few words about Cornish), by John Boson of Newlyn. The only known MS. of this little tract in Cornish and English was formerly among the MSS. of Dr. William Borlase in the possession of his descendant, Mr. W. C. Borlase. The present writer had it in his possession for a short time in 1877 or 1878, and copied about half of it, but returned it to Mr. Borlase, who wanted it back, and it was then printed in the 1879 volume of the _Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall_. At the time of the sale of Mr. Borlase’s library, this tract, which when the present writer last saw it used to live between the pages of Dr. Borlase’s MS. Collections on Cornish, did not appear, and its present ownership is unknown. It is in the handwriting of the Rev. Henry Usticke, Vicar of Breage (died 1769), and in the Gwavas MS. in the British Museum there are several pieces in the same hand. As a copy of Boson’s original it is rather inaccurate, but Boson wrote by no means a clear hand. It is of great interest as the composition of one who, though he was brought up to speak English, as he himself says, had acquired a thorough knowledge of Cornish as it was spoken in his day, without having even looked at any of the literary remains of the language. He was also a man of general education, and in this tract and in his letters is rather fond of airing his Latin. Very little is known of him except that he was the son of Nicholas Boson and was born at Newlyn in 1655 and died some time between 1720, the date of his last letter to Gwavas, and 1741, the date of the death of the latter, who is recorded to have received a copy of verses in Cornish found among Boson’s papers after his death. The date of the _Nebbaz Gerriau_ is unknown, but it mentions a little book called _The Duchess of Cornwall’s Progress_, which the author says that he wrote “some years past” for his children, refers (though not by name) to John Keigwin, who died in 1710, as being still alive, and does not mention Lhuyd’s Grammar, published in 1707, so that we may infer that the date is somewhere about 1700. _The Duchess of Cornwall’s Progress_, which had at least thirty pages (for he refers to the thirtieth page), was probably in English, with a few passages in Cornish, which Dr. Borlase, who had seen two copies of it, transcribed into his Cornish Collections. Judging from his letters and from this tract, John Boson was a man of considerable intelligence, and one about whom one would like to know more, and his Cornish writings are of more value than those of the somewhat pedantic Keigwin.

12. _The Story of John of Chy-an-Hur_.—This is a popular tale of some length, of a labouring man who lived at Chy-an-Hur, or the Ram’s House, in St. Levan, and went east seeking work, and of what befell him. It is the _Tale of the Three Advices_, found in many forms. It appears first in Lhuyd’s Grammar, printed in 1707, where it has a Welsh translation. Lhuyd says that it “was written about forty years since,” which dates it _circ._ 1667. Part of it, undated, but in the hand of John Boson, occurs with an English translation in the Gwavas MS. (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 28,554). This, as appears by a note on the back of the first leaf, was written out for Gwavas’s instruction in Cornish. The spelling is altogether different from Lhuyd’s. Another copy in Cornish of Lhuyd’s spelling, with an English translation, is in the Borlase MS., copied from the lost MS. of Thomas Tonkin, with some corrections by Dr. Borlase. It was printed with Lhuyd’s Welsh and an English version, in Pryce’s _Archæologia Cornu-Britannica_ in 1790, and by Davies Gilbert at the end of his edition of Jordan’s _Creation_, 1827, in Cornish and English. The English versions of Borlase, Pryce, and Davies Gilbert are substantially the same, and are probably Tonkin’s. An English version, translated from Lhuyd’s Welsh, but pretended to be from Cornish, was printed in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ in 1818, and again in an abridged and expurgated form in Mr. J. Jacob’s collection of Celtic Fairy Tales in 1891. There is a much amplified version of the story in English in William Botterell’s _Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall_, published at Penzance in 1870, and a short and rather foolish one in Hunt’s _Popular Romances of the West of England_, 1865, 1871, 1881. The language is a good specimen of the latest Cornish. The same story is given as an Irish folk-tale in an early volume of _Chambers’s Journal_.

13. The Preface to the Cornish Grammar in Lhuyd’s _Archæologia Britannica_. This consists of two and a quarter folio pages of close print, and is written in the Cornish of his own day. It is the work of a foreigner, but is nevertheless very well done. A not very good translation, probably the work of Tonkin and Gwavas, is given by Pryce, and reprinted by Polwhele in the fifth volume of his History.

14. The rest of the remains of Cornish consist of a few songs, verses, proverbs, epigrams, epitaphs, maxims, letters, conversations, mottoes, and translations of chapters and passages of Scripture, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, King Charles’s Letter, etc. They are found in the Gwavas MS. (Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 28,554), a collection made by William Gwavas, barrister-at-law, and ranging in date from 1709 to 1736; in the Borlase MS. of the date of about 1750, in the handwriting of Dr. William Borlase, Rector of Ludgvan, formerly in the possession of his descendant, the late W. C. Borlase, F.S.A., M.P., but now belonging to Mr. J. D. Enys, of Enys; in Pryce’s _Archæologia Cornu-Britannica_, 1790, and in Davies Gilbert’s editions of the _Poem of the Passion_ and Jordan’s play of _The Creation_, published respectively in 1826 and 1827. Those in the Borlase MS. (except a few from a work of John Boson), and those printed by Pryce and Davies Gilbert, were probably taken from the Gwavas MS. and from Tonkin’s MSS. There is also one epitaph dated 1709 in Paul Church, an epitaph on Dolly Pentreath, which does not appear ever to have been inscribed on her tomb, and the letter of William Bodenor in 1776.

These fragments may be classified as follows:—

Songs and Poems.

1. Lhuyd’s Elegy on William of Orange, 1702. Sixty-three lines of verse in rhyming triplets, in modern Cornish, with occasional archaic turns. A copy occurs in the Gwavas MS.; it was printed by Pryce, with a Latin version, as part of a correspondence between Lhuyd and Tonkin, and by Polwhele in his fifth volume, with the same correspondence. There is a copy with an English version by John Keigwin in the library of Sir John Williams, Bart., of Llanstephan.

2. A song beginning “_Ma leeas gwreage_, _lacka vel zeage_,” a series of moral platitudes on married life and the bringing up of children, by James Jenkins of Alverton, near Penzance (died 1710). This consists of five stanzas of five or six lines each. There is a complete copy in the Gwavas MS., and a copy wanting one line in the Borlase MS., and this in complete version, with a translation, has been printed by Pryce and Davies Gilbert. A note in Pryce says that Tonkin had it from Lhuyd and again from Gwavas, whose is the translation. It is in idiomatic late Cornish, in rather wild spelling.

3. Song on James II. and William of Orange, by John Tonkin of St. Just, a tailor, who appears to have been a solitary Whig in a nation of Jacobites, as with very few exceptions the Cornish certainly were. It begins, “_Menja tiz Kernuak buz galowas_,” and consists of fourteen four-lined stanzas of modern Cornish, probably composed in 1695, to judge by the historical allusions. It is in the Gwavas MS. only, and has never been printed.

4. A song of moral advice by the same writer, beginning “_Ni venja pea a munna seer_,” and consisting of seven four-lined stanzas, only one of which, beginning “_An Prounter ni ez en Plew East_,” has been printed (from the Borlase MS.) in the _Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall_ for 1866. The complete song is in the Gwavas MS., and has never been published.

5. A song beginning “_Pelea era why moaz_, _moz_, _fettow_, _teag_” (Where are you going, fair maid? he said). This consists of six four-lined stanzas, the second and fourth lines of each stanza being the burthen:—

“_Gen agaz bedgeth gwin_ (or according to Borlase, Tonkin, and Gwavas, _pedn du_) _ha agaz blew mellyn_”

(With your white face, or black head, and your yellow hair)

and

“_Rag delkiow sevi gwra muzi teag_”

(For strawberry leaves make maidens fair).

The song was sung by one Edward Chirgwin or Chygwin, “brother-in-law to Mr. John Groze of Penzance, at Carclew, in 1698,” as a note by T. Tonkin says. Whether it was translated from English or whether the Cornish is the original does not appear. The story is not quite the same (or quite so scrupulously “proper”) as the English nursery version. There is a copy in the handwriting of Chirgwin in the Gwavas MS., and one copied from Tonkin’s MS. in the Borlase MS. It was printed by Pryce in an amended form, and by Polwhele.

6. A song on the curing of pilchards (not a very poetical subject) by John Boson. Twenty-six lines of rhyming couplets beginning “_Me canna ve war hern gen cock ha ruz_” (I will sing, or my song is, of pilchards with boat and net), and describing the process of bringing the fish ashore and putting them into bulks and making “fairmaids” of them. There is a copy with a translation in the Borlase MS., which was printed in the _Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall_ for 1866, and Davies Gilbert printed it at the end of his edition of Jordan’s _Creation_ in 1827, but without any translation.

Verses and Epigrams.

1. Nine short sayings in verse, printed in Pryce and Davies Gilbert, and copied by Borlase from Tonkin. The first, “_An lavar goth ewe lavar gwir_,” etc., occurs also in Lhuyd.

2. Epigram on the verdict in the suit of Gwavas _v._ Kelynack, respecting tithes of fish. Eight lines by W. Gwavas. It occurs in the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and in Pryce and Polwhele.

3. “To Neighbour Nicholas Pentreath,” by Gwavas. Six lines. In the Borlase MS., and in Pryce and Polwhele.

4. “Advice from a friend in the country to his neighbour who went up to receive £16,000 in London,” by John Boson. In the Borlase MS., and in Pryce and Polwhele. Eight lines.

5. “On a lazy, idle weaver.” In the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and in Pryce and Polwhele. Six lines.

6. “Verses on the Marazion Bowling-Green.” In the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and in Pryce and Polwhele. Six lines by Gwavas.

7. “Advice to Drunkards.” Four lines, by Gwavas. In the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and in Pryce and Polwhele.

8. A Cornish riddle. Five lines. In the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and in Pryce, Gilbert, and Polwhele.

9. “Advice to all men.” Written by Gwavas to form part of his own epitaph. Four lines.

10. “Another” [of the same sort], three lines, also by Gwavas.

11. “A concluding one,” four lines, also by Gwavas. These last three, copied from the same page of the Gwavas MS., all occur also in the Borlase MS., and in Pryce, Gilbert, and Polwhele.

12. “A Fisherman’s Catch,” given by Capt. Noel Cator of St. Agnes to T. Tonkin, 1698. In the Borlase MS., and printed in the _R_. _I_. _C_. _Journal_, 1866, and in Mr. Hobson Matthews’s History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zennor.

13. Six lines of moral advice, found among the papers of J. Boson after his death, and given to Gwavas. In the Borlase MS., and _R_. _I_. _C_. _Journal_, 1866.

14. Certificate of Banns from W. Drake, Rector of St. Just, to Thos. Trethyll, Vicar of Sennen. Two versions, one in the Gwavas MS. and one in Pryce, the latter being also in the Borlase MS. Drake died in 1636.

15. Verses on a silver hurling ball given to W. Gwavas. Seven lines by Thos. Boson, 1705. In the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

16. Three couplets of verse, and a short piece of prose from J. Boson’s _Duchess of Cornwall’s Progress_. In the Borlase MS. Unpublished.

17. Prophecy, attributed to Merlin, of the burning of Paul, Penzance, and Newlyn. Two lines. In the Borlase MS., and often printed in Cornish histories and guide-books.

18. Elegy on the death of James Jenkin of Alverton. Four verses of three lines each, by John Boson, 17 Feb. 17 [11/12]. In the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

Proverbs, Mottoes, and Maxims.

1. From Scawen. Fourteen proverbs. In the Borlase MS.; printed in the edition of Tonkin’s abridgment of Scawen’s _Antiquities Cornu-Britannick_, 1777, and in Davies Gilbert’s History, and in his edition of the _Poem of the Passion_. Also in _R_. _I_. _C_. _Journal_, 1866, with sixteen others from the Borlase MS.

2. Mottoes of the families of Gwavas, Harris of Hayne, {39} Glynne, Tonkin, Godolphin, Boscawen, Polwhele, Noye, and Willyams of Carnanton. All except those of Glynne, Noye, and Willyams are printed in Pryce. All but Glynne and Willyams occur in Davies Gilbert’s edition of Jordan’s _Creation_, and the Willyams motto, though it occurs as a Cornish phrase in Pryce’s preface and in the Gwavas and Tonkin MSS., is only found as a motto in pedigree books and on the sign-board of the inn in Mawgan Churchtown. The Glynne motto, “_Dre weres agan Dew_” (Through the help of our God), is given, with an incorrect translation, in Mr. Hobson Matthews’s History.

3. Mottoes for bowls, occurring in the Gwavas MS., and some in Davies Gilbert’s edition of _The Creation_.

4. Maxims, proverbs, etc., about thirty in number, in the Borlase MS., in Pryce, and in Davies Gilbert’s edition of _The Creation_, under the title of “Sentences in vulgar Cornish.” Some of them are also in the Gwavas MS.

Conversations and Phrases.

1. About seventy sentences, in the Borlase MS., in Pryce, and in Davies Gilbert’s edition of _The Creation_, under the title of “Things occurring in common discourse.” There are some additional ones in the Borlase MS.

2. About a hundred and fifty phrases, sentences, and idioms, copied by Dr. Borlase from Lhuyd’s MSS. Some, but by no means all, are in Lhuyd’s Grammar.

3. A considerable number of similar phrases scattered throughout Borlase’s Cornish Vocabulary at the end of his History of Cornwall. These are to be found, evidently copied from the Vocabulary, in a manuscript which belonged in 1777 to Henry Brush of Carnaquidn Stamps (on the road from Penzance to Zennor), which place belonged to William Veale of Trevaylor, who married the daughter of Gwavas. The MS. is now in the possession of a descendant of Henry Brush.

4. A few expressions and phrases scattered through the Gwavas MS., in the letters of Boson, and in letters and notes of Gwavas.

Epitaphs.

1. On James Jenkins, by John Boson, 17[11/12], in the Gwavas MS. Four lines. The Borlase MS., quoting the very letter in which it occurs, says that it is on John Keigwin, which is a mistake.

2. On John Keigwin, by John Boson, 1715. In the Gwavas MS. Four lines.

3. On Capt. Stephen Hutchens, in Paul Church, 1709. The only Cornish inscription in any church. Probably by John Boson. Two lines. Frequently printed in guide-books, etc.

4. On William Gwavas, by himself. In the Gwavas MS., and in Pryce, Polwhele, and Davies Gilbert. Partly in English.

These four are also in the Borlase MS., and are printed in the _R_. _I_. _C_. _Journal_, 1866.

5. On Dolly Pentreath, by --- Tompson of Truro, engineer. Printed by Polwhele, and later in Blight’s _Week at the Land’s End_, and other guide-books. A variant occurs in John Skinner’s _Journal of a Tour in Somerset_, _Devon_, _and Cornwall_, 1797, in Add. MS. 28,793, f. 62, in the British Museum.

Letters.

1. William Gwavas to Oliver Pender, 11th August 1711. Partly in Cornish.

2. Oliver Pender to W. Gwavas, 22nd August 1711. Mostly in Cornish.

3. John Boson to W. Gwavas, 5th April 1710. Nearly all in Cornish.

4. An unsigned letter, including a version of the “Old Hundredth.” Partly in rhyme.

5. Note, addressed apparently to one going to America, by William Gwavas, 1710, on the back of a copy of the Creed in Cornish.

These five are in the Gwavas MS., and have never been printed.

6. Letter of William Bodenor to the Honble. Daines Barrington, 3rd July 1776. Printed in _Archæologia_ (vol. v., 1779), in “Uncle Jan Treenoodle’s” _Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialects_, 1846; in a paper on the Cornish Language by the present writer in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_, 1873, and in _Archiv für Celtische Lexicographic_, with notes and emendations by Prof. Loth, in 1898.

Translations.

Passages of Scripture.

_Genesis_ i. Two versions, one by John Boson and one probably by John Keigwin. Both are in the Gwavas MS. One, Boson’s, with his name to it, is in the Borlase MS. Boson’s was printed by D. Gilbert at the end of his edition of the _Poem of the Passion_, and in a much revised form by Canon Williams at the end of his Lexicon. Keigwin’s version was printed by D. Gilbert at the end of his edition of Jordan’s _Creation_. There are many verbal variations from the Gwavas copies in the printed editions.

_Genesis_ iii., translated by William Kerew, in the Gwavas MS. Published by Prof. Loth in the _Revue Celtique_, April 1902.

_St. Matthew_ ii. 1-20, translated by W. Kerew, in the Gwavas MS. Published in the _Revue Celtique_, April 1902.

_St. Matthew_ iv., also by W. Kerew, in the Gwavas MS. Published in the _Revue Celtique_, April 1902.

The last three were copied from a MS. of Matthew Rowe of Hendra in Sancreed, by H. Usticke.

_Proverbs_ xxx. 5, 6.

_Psalms_ ii. 11; vii. 11; xxxv. 1, 2.

These are in the Gwavas MS., probably translated by W. Gwavas himself. Unpublished.

_The Hundredth Psalm_, of the Sternhold and Hopkins version, literally translated line for line, followed by an unsigned letter partly in rhyme. In the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

The Lord’s Prayer.

There are ten versions extant besides the modern one of Canon Williams.

1. In John Davies’s _Llyfr y Resolusion_ (a translation of Robert Parsons’s _Book of Christian Exercise_), printed in 1632, and again in 1684. Translated from the Latin.

2. In Scawen’s _Antiquities Cornu-Brittanick_, circ. 1680. Printed in Tonkin’s abridgment in 1777. The same version is given in Bishop Gibson’s additions to Camden’s _Britannia_ in 1695, and by Polwhele.

3, 4. Two versions in John Chamberlayne’s _Oratio Dominica in diversas linguas versa_, 1715, one of which is evidently meant for the version in Scawen and Camden.

5, 6. Two versions by John Keigwin, one said to be in Ancient Cornish and the other in Modern. Both are in the Gwavas and Borlase MSS., and were printed by Pryce and D. Gilbert.

7, 8. Two versions, one by John and one by Thomas Boson, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

9, 10. Two versions by W. Gwavas, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished. One of these, nearly identical with Keigwin’s Modern, is said in a note to have been collected from J. Keigwin, Thomas Boson, Captain Thomas Tonkin, Oliver Pender, James Schollar, and T. Tonkin.

The first four are without the εκφώνησις at the end. All except the first are from the English.

The Apostles’ Creed.

1. In the _Llyfr y Resolusion_, 1632, 1684.

2. In Scawen and in Gibson’s Camden.

3. In Hals’s _History of Cornwall_.

4, 5. By John Keigwin, one in the Gwavas MS. and both m the Borlase MS., and printed by Pryce and D. Gilbert.

6. By Thomas Boson, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

7, 8. By William Gwavas, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

There is a modern revised version in Williams’s Lexicon.

The Ten Commandments.

1, 2. By John Keigwin, one in the Gwavas MS., and both in the Borlase MS., and in Pryce and D. Gilbert. One of these in a revised form is in Williams’s Lexicon.

3. In the Gwavas MS., but without name. Unpublished.

4. By John Boson, in the Gwavas MS. Printed with notes by Prof. Loth in vol. xxiv. of the _Revue Celtique_.

5. By William Kerew, in the Gwavas MS. Printed with the preceding.

6. By T. Boson, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

7. By W. Gwavas, in the Gwavas MS. Unpublished.

The Words of Administration of Holy Communion.

These are stated to be the words used by William Jackman, Vicar of St. Feock. They occur in Hals’s History.

King Charles I.’s Letter to the People of Cornwall.

This is a translation by John Keigwin of the Letter of Thanks from the Martyr King to the People of Cornwall for their loyalty in 1643, still to be seen in many churches in the Duchy. It occurs in the handwriting of Keigwin in the Gwavas MS., and in Dr. Borlase’s hand in the Borlase MS. It has been misprinted, with notes by the present writer (who had no opportunity of revising the proofs), in the Rev. A. Cummings’s _History of Cury and Gunwalloe_, 1875, and Mrs. Dent’s _Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley_ (the place from which the original Letter is dated), 1877.

* * * * *

The following grammatical and lexicographical pieces belong more or less to the living period of Cornish:—

1. Lhuyd’s _Cornish Grammar_, printed in his _Archæologia Britannica_ in 1707, and reprinted by Pryce in 1790.

2. Lhuyd’s _Cornish Vocabulary_. The unpublished MS. belongs to Sir John Williams, Bart., of Llanstephan, Carmarthenshire. Most of the words in it are to be found in Borlase’s and Pryce’s Vocabularies (see below). They were collected partly from the Dramas, partly from the Cottonian Vocabulary, and partly from living people.

3. _The Gwavas Vocabulary_. This is a short vocabulary of the latest Cornish (extending from A to O) in the Gwavas MS. The words were incorporated into Borlase’s Vocabulary.

4. _The Hals Vocabulary_. This is a fragment (A to C) in the Gwavas MS. It is fantastic and of little value.

5. _The Borlase Vocabulary_, compiled from the MSS. of Lhuyd, Gwavas, and Tonkin, from Lhuyd’s _Archæologia_, from oral tradition, and from other sources. The original MS. is in the Borlase Collection, now belonging to Mr. J. D. Enys, and it was printed at the end of Dr. Borlase’s _Antiquities Historical and Monumental of Cornwall_ in 1754, and again, revised, in 1769. It is a copious vocabulary, but is rendered rather less valuable by the inclusion of a large number of Welsh and Breton words, gathered chiefly from other parts of Lhuyd’s _Archæologia_, or from John Davies’s Welsh Dictionary.

6. _Pryce’s Vocabulary_, or rather that of Gwavas, Tonkin, and Pryce. Printed, with Pryce’s edition of Lhuyd’s Grammar, at Sherborne in 1790. Some of this vocabulary was collected from the literary remains of Cornish, but a very large part was compiled from living tradition, not much by Pryce himself, but by Gwavas and Tonkin.

Though some of these have been used by Canon Williams in his _Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum_, by Dr. Whitley Stokes in his Supplementary Cornish Glossary (_Transactions of the Philological Society_, 1868-9), and still more in Dr. Jago’s English-Cornish Dictionary, they have not been thoroughly exhausted yet, and a good many more words may be collected from them, as also from the attempted interpretations of place-names in Pryce’s book and in the Gwavas MS.