Chapter XXII: Appendix: The Days, Months, and Seasons in Cornish

§ 1. The Days of the Week, _Dedhyow an Seithan_.

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.

§ 2. The Months of the Year, _Mîsyow an Vledhan_.

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_.

§ 3. The Four Seasons of the Year, _Pajer Termen an Vledhan_.

Spring _Gwainten_.

Summer _Hav_.

Autumn _Kidniav_.

Winter _Gwav_.

§ 4. Festivals and Holy Days, _Dêdh Goilyow ha Dedhyow Sans_.

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. _Golowan_ (i.e. The Lights or John Midsummer Fires) / _Genesegeth Jûan Bejedhyor_.

Lammas Day / Harvest Home _Degoledh ŷs_ (pron. _dêgŭldŷz_
meaning, “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_.

LIST OF SOME MODERN BOOKS AND ARTICLES RELATING TO CORNISH

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 the _Ordinalia_ (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’s _Lexicon_, with some corrections]. _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 the _Revue 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’s _Merlin_]; Cornish Life of St. Columba [mention of 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 posterior_ sont elles Corniques?” p. 301. “Les mots _Druic_, _Nader_, dans le Vocabulaire Cornique.” By Prof. J. Loth.

Vol. xviii. p. 401. “Études Corniques I.” [On the pronunciation of _d_, _t_, _s_, _z_, _j_, etc.]. By Prof. Loth.

Vol. xxiii. p. 173. “Études Corniques II. Textes inédits en Cornique moderne.” [_Genesis_ iii., _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 au _Lexicon Cornu-Britannica_ de 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 of _Genesis_ iii., _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 in _Archiv fur Celtische Lexicographie_.

Bd. i. p. 101. “Glossary to _Beunans 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.

Footnotes:

{0a} Cf. “Ista sunt nomina corrodiorum et pensionum _in Anglia et Cornubia_ quæ 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 the _Union Régionaliste Bretonne_ at 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 mount Looks 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’s _Survey_ (Lord de Dunstanville’s edition) passages which occur in Pryce are referred to pages of “my _Archæologia Cornu-Britannica_.”

{39} The motto of Harris of Hayne, “_Car Dew dres pub tra_,” is mentioned in Boson’s _Nebbaz Gerriau_, and is part of stanza 23 of the _Poem 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 that _ŷ_ sound given to the English _a_ in London twang (_e.g._ lȳdy for lady).

{59a} The combination _ao_ in Irish is pronounced _t_. Thus _caol_, narrow, is _cul_ in the Highlands and _kîl_ in Ireland.

{59b} The word _bewnans_, life, formed from the root _bew_, was often written _bownans_ in late Cornish and probably pronounced _boonans_. Similarly _bowjy_ (=_bewgh-chŷ_), cow-house, must have been _bewjy_. This last, which is one of the surviving Cornish words, has its _ow_ at present sounded as in _now_. This change has happened not infrequently in place-names.

{63} The word _en_, in, in quite late Cornish, was apparently sounded _et_, which is a solitary case of the disappearance of _n_ in a monosyllable.

{64} _Cf._ the _s_ or _z_ of _azure_, _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 the _th_ of the MSS. should not be written _dh_ at the _end_ of a word, and that Williams, in doing so, was wrongly following Welsh analogy. But there is an evident tendency in _late_ Cornish to end words in _z_ for _s_, _v_ for _f_, _g_ for _k_, and a considerable number of words which Williams ends in _dh_ end 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} _C_ before a broad vowel, _k_ before a thin vowel, and _q_ before a _w_.

{70b} The _ch_ and _j_ are used for an earlier _t_ and _d_ in 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 form _mescatter_, from _mescat_.

{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 in _a_ affects 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 in _gh_, the _g_ is omitted.

{94} _Idn_, to qualify a noun; _omen_, used by itself. Thus, _idn dên_, one man; _Ŏnen hag Ol_, One and All. _Wǒnnen_ is 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 of _da_, two, _fichead_, twenty, _ceud_, a hundred, and _mile_, 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 of _re_, and the auxiliary form with _wrîg_. The difference of sound in cases of verbs beginning with _g_ or _c_ would 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 apply _mutatis mutandis_ to the other tenses. See also Chapter XIV. § I.

{140} See Chapter XIV.

{144} _Kegy_, _kehegy_ (in _St. Meriasek_), are _ke_, _kehe_, with _jy_ or _gy_ (=_dî_), the personal pronoun added.

{149} Older _yn_. When this is followed by a possessive pronoun of the first or second person the _n_ is 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 and _en_=_en an_.

{153} _na_=_ni_ + a (_nag_ before 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’s _Creation_, 1. 599, “_Myhall sera thewgh gramercy_,” though Keigwin and Dr. Stokes both read _my 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!) without _by_ before 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 (in _Res. 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 of _The 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 the _Poem of the Passion_ may be accounted for in this way, and one should read _levarow_ as _larow_; cf. in the Breton of Treguier, _laret_ for _lavarout_, and the late Cornish _lawle_ for _lavarel_. 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 the _rimes riches_ and the _consonne d’appui_ of modern French. In French _chercher_—_rocher_ is a better rhyme than _aimer_—_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 long _z_ is used for _dh_ and _th_.

{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 mute _e_ is omitted. In this _ee_—_î_, _ea_=_ê_, _oo_=_ô_.

{189a} “I have only to add that the metre of _Christabel_ is 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 of _Christabel_.)

{189b} Spelling adapted to that of this grammar.

{196} Cf. the Arabic article _al_ prefixed to place-names in Southern Spain, and to nouns of Arabic derivation in Spanish.