Chapter II: Part 2

The transition from it to the Bronze Age took place in Europe, according to the best authorities, about 1800 years before Christ. Bronze gave place to iron about 900 years later. The use of bronze in Cornwall, judging from the comparatively small number of bronze implements which have been discovered in the county, and from the fact that for its manufacture both of its constituent metals are abundant, would seem to have been of shorter duration here than elsewhere. Bronze celts have been found in Lelant, St. Just-in-Penwith, St. Hilary, St. Mawgan-in-meneage, Gwinear and in a few other places, but the net result is somewhat disappointing.

It is, however, during this period that in Gaul we meet with two races, the Ligurian and Iberian, occupying lands east and west of the Rhone respectively. These races must not be identified too closely with the countries whose names they bear.

They appear to have followed different occupations, the Ligurians devoting themselves to agriculture and the Iberians to the keeping of sheep and cattle.[15]

It is remarkable that little evidence should have been discovered respecting the character of the religion of either race. A bronze disc from Ireland and a horse mounted on (not harnessed to) a six-wheeled curricle to one of the axles of which is affixed a disc, from Denmark, have been supposed to be emblematic of the Bronze Age sun worship of those countries. Again, the swan-shaped prow of Scandinavian boats has been recognised as a solar emblem, but the freedom with which that ancient bird has been treated for decorative purposes, leaves one somewhat in doubt as to its religious signification. No evidence of the use of either symbol has apparently been found in Britain or in Armorica.

If the distinction between Ligurian and Iberian can be sustained is it not possible that the latter if not both emblems were confined to the Ligurians and were introduced by them along with their religious associations as traders engaged in the overland amber traffic between the Baltic and the Mediterranean?

The same dearth of evidence meets us when we come to consider the cult of the bull and the sacred horns and that of the axe. Had this cult been peculiar to a pastoral people like the Iberians an irreverent mind might have been pardoned for suggesting that they hit upon a very appropriate symbolism. Unfortunately the Bronze Age of Britain and Armorica, whether Iberian or otherwise, supplies us with very few if any illustrations of it. Two bronze bulls of small size found in Morbihan have been claimed to represent it in Armorica. The bronze bull found in the Vicarage garden at St. Just, undoubtedly fashioned for a religious purpose, seems to have an equal claim; but until more evidence is forthcoming it is allowable to doubt whether the Minoan beliefs, associated with the bronze period in the Ægean, ever gained a footing in Britain. M. Déchelette has with great pains striven to show that the mythology and the metal were closely related, perhaps contemporaneous and coextensive[16]—at least this seems to be the general drift of his exposition. While yielding to no one in gratitude for his great work—a challenge to English archæologists—it seems to the present writer that, in dealing with the religious symbolism of the Bronze Age, so far as North-Western Europe is concerned, he has done little more than to show that the double axe (_bipenne_) of the Ægean has its analogue, perhaps archetype, in the single axe with handle (_hache simple et emmanchée_) which is found inscribed on some of the Armorican dolmens of an earlier age. Nor is it self-evident that either the sacred horns or the axe is a solar emblem, though both appear to have been received into the Minoan system.

When we leave the Bronze Age and come to the Iron, we enter upon what has been termed protohistoric archæology. Within about 300 years of its commencement we find ourselves in the presence of a race which has survived and has in a measure retained its individuality up to the present time.

The Celts, it is true, were only one of several races which from the east and north pressed westward and southward over Europe for a period of over a thousand years; but no invasion has ever been more complete or the effects of an invasion more profound and permanent. The Celts became identified with our island to a greater extent than either of their successors, the Saxons and Normans. The second body of them imparted to it its name. In the fifth century before Christ they had reached the Atlantic and had begun to invade Britain although the main body were near the Danube. In 387 B.C., they sacked Rome, and in the succeeding century a section of them crossed the Hellespont, overran Asia Minor and eventually settled in what became known as Galatia.

The point of greatest importance at the present stage of our enquiry is that of the Celtic religion between the close of the Bronze Age and Cæsar’s invasion of Gaul and Britain. Was it one of the many forms of nature worship which found the central object of its adoration in the glorious orb who in the words of the Psalmist “cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course”? Did the worship of the sun form its most prominent distinguishing feature?

The much-quoted passage given by Diodorus the Sicilian, who lived in the first century before the Christian era and who reproduced it from the _Description of the World_ written by Hecatæus in the fifth century, states that in the island of the Hyperboreans over against Celtica there is a magnificent circular temple which they have erected to Apollo.[17] The passage presents more than one difficulty. The Hyperboreans were known to the ancient world as the possessors of the sources of amber, a substance which is not found in Britain but in the neighbourhood of the Baltic. Those who would identify the Hyperborean island with Britain and the temple with Stonehenge, have to face the greater difficulty of accounting for the fact that a sepulchral structure erected in pre-Celtic times was, in the fifth century before Christ, being used for sun worship by Hyperboreans who may or may not have been Celts, but who in the passage are described as having erected it for that purpose. It should be remembered that Hecatæus had been dead for over a century when Pytheas the daring Greek explorer made his famous voyage of discovery, and that if that voyage was, as M. Déchelette contends,[18] to the navigator of the fourth century before the Christian era what a polar expedition is to the navigator of to-day, it is hardly likely that Hecatæus could have had very reliable information concerning either Britain or its Celtic inhabitants.

It may, perhaps, be allowable to hazard an opinion which after all is only an opinion, viz. that the Ligurians who dwelt along the transcontinental amber route were sun worshippers, but that until the days of Julius Cæsar we know very little, if indeed anything for certain, of the religion of the Celts who inhabited western Gaul and Britain. Whether Stonehenge was the temple referred to is very doubtful; whether it was orientated with respect to the sun is a matter which, as Professor Oman justly observes, need not be taken seriously.[19]

But what of the Phœnicians, and where do they come in? It is a cruel thing to say to a generation which can ill afford to part with any fragment of its diminished archæological patrimony, but it must be said without reserve or qualification: the Phœnicians do not come in at all.

It would be comparatively easy, as some have already found, to provide Celtic Britain with all the elaborate machinery of sun worship if it could be shown that there were direct and close relations between Britain and Phœnicia either before or after the Celtic invasion. No one, of course, doubts or denies the glory of the Phœnician thalassocracy. The Bible is only one of many witnesses. Hiram King of Tyre supplied Solomon both with craftsmen for the brass work of the Temple at Jerusalem and with sailors for his trading expeditions to India. Gades (Cadiz) the port of Tartessus, or Tarshish, was founded by the Phœnicians before 1100 B.C. The ships of Tarshish are rooted in the memory like the bulls of Bashan and the cedars of Libanus. Ezekiel’s lamentation for Tyre[20] is not only one of the most profoundly pathetic but also one of the most illuminating passages in the Old Testament.

Speaking of Tyre, he says, “Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches, with silver, iron, tin, and lead they traded in thy fairs:” “the ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.”

Nevertheless, great, extensive and varied as was the commercial enterprise of the Phœnicians, scholars are now generally agreed that they never got beyond Gades in their Atlantic voyages.

Moreover, the Cassiterides or Tin Islands, mentioned by Diodorus, which a former generation strove to identify with the Scilly Isles, lay undoubtedly to the north of Spain.[21] At the same time it must be noted that the same author Diodorus, who probably had his information from Poseidonius (born circa 135 B.C.), does expressly state in the same passage that tin was conveyed from Britain to Gaul and overland to Marseilles. By that time, however, the doom of Carthage, the daughter city of Tyre, situated on the Bay of Tunis, had also been sealed.

This absence of historical evidence respecting Phœnician intercourse with Britain, supposing such intercourse to have existed, might have been in some measure explained—and not as the Privy Council explained the Ornaments Rubric of the Church of England, by arguing that omission implies prohibition—by assuming that the source of the tin supply was kept secret, like that of amber, by the traders in that commodity. It is the fact that no vestige of these Semitic navigators has been found either in Gaul or in Britain, which decisively excludes the supposition that they ever visited those countries. Dr. Birch in giving his judgment upon the bronze bull found in the garden of St. Just Vicarage states it as his conviction that no object has yet been found in Britain which can be satisfactorily identified with the Phœnicians,[22] and M. Déchelette is equally emphatic respecting the absence of similar objects in Gaul.[23] What M. Alexandre Bertrand says of Celtic civilisation, namely, that neither the Ligurians, nor the Phœnicians, nor the Greeks, nor the Iberians collaborated in that educational work, may with some reservations in favour of the two latter nations be accepted as true of the Celtic religion.

From Julius Cæsar some useful information is to be gained respecting the religion of the Celts of his own day. He states that they had many gods, the chief of whom, in Gaul at least, answered to the Roman Mercury, patron of arts and crafts. Mars, Apollo, Minerva and Dis Pater were represented in the Celtic system, but it is not easy to equate them satisfactorily. After the Roman conquest the Britons followed the custom of other subject races and identified their gods with those of Olympus. Some of their gods found no corresponding analogue, like Nodens, whose temple overlooked the Severn; others again were purely local and patronal.

During the three centuries while Britain remained a province of the Empire the Romanisation of the native religion had free scope, the spread of Christianity meanwhile striving with indifferent success to keep pace with it. “The larger half of the altars and shrines, discovered in Britain are simply set up to honour the ordinary gods of the Roman world.”[24] Among these latter were many strange divinities, who in origin were neither Celtic nor Roman, but were those of alien races led to Britain by the hope of profitable traffic or by compulsory military service.

Mithras, for example, whose worship was introduced at Rome under the Emperors, found in this way a place in the British pantheon.

There is no evidence to show that either nature worship or sun worship was the dominant religion of the Celts either before, during or after the Roman occupation. It is, of course, possible to say of the Romans that they practised both, but it is an abuse of language to say that they were either sun worshippers like the Egyptians or nature worshippers like the Phœnicians. The same holds good of the Celts.

Under Roman influence the days of the week received Latin names derived from the planetary system, all of which except Sunday (_Dies Solis_ which became _Dies Dominica_) continued to be used by our lawyers until English took the place of Latin in the courts of record. In Cornwall, notwithstanding the Saxon invasion, the Latin names were retained until Cornish ceased to be a spoken and written language. Thus Sunday, _Dies Solis_ became _Dê Zil_, _Zil_ being the Cornish derivative of Sol and not a variant of the Cornish word Houl.[25] Until the Roman occupation the Celts reckoned time by nights, not days. Thus the first night (of the week if they had weeks) was the sixth night after new moon, that is when the moon was on the point of becoming half-full. Their year, therefore, consisted of thirteen months. The Celtic mind appears to have revelled in the realm of mystery. The practice of magic; the prevalence of human sacrifice; the numerous local divinities, with strange names preserved to us only in the dedications of their shrines, whose attributes and powers remain unknown; the hidden virtues of the mistletoe and the selago; above all, the secrets of the Celtic priesthood—the Druids—suggest, but unfortunately only suggest, a religious differentiation which carries us back to a period more remote than that of any religious system with which we are familiar.

Professor Sir John Rhys has attempted to show that Druidism was a pre-Celtic survival, the religious system, in short, of some race which preceded the Celts in Britain, and his judgment would doubtless have been accepted had there not been good evidence to show that the system was not peculiar to Britain but to the Celts themselves. It prevailed among the continental Celts just as it prevailed among those of Britain and Ireland. On the other hand, its affinities with classical mythology are not sufficiently pronounced at the time when it is first encountered to indicate an Ægean origin. When the original home of the Celt has been determined it may be possible to discover the home of his religion.

The Druids[26] were the interpreters of divine things to the Celtic conscience. They shared with the knights the administration of public affairs, expounded the ceremonial law and determined the times and modes of its application. Cæsar states, but not on good authority, that Druidism originated in Britain, and Tacitus, who lived towards the end of the first century of the Christian era, that Anglesey was its religious centre. An impressive picture is given of the scene (A.D. 60) which was presented to the army of Suetonius Paulinus preparing to attack that venerable sanctuary. “Along the shore was seen a dense line of armed warriors, while women were rushing about between the ranks garbed like the Furies, in black gowns, their hair flowing loose, and torches in their hands. The Druids were visible in the rear offering sacrifices to their gods, raising their hands to heaven, and calling down dire imprecations upon the head of the invader.”[27]

Of Druidical worship in Cornwall there is no direct evidence.[28] The kinship and intercourse and close relations, however, which subsisted between Cornwall, Wales and Ireland leave no room for doubt that Druidism was its religious system. It should be needless to observe that its megalithic remains, dolmens, circles, and the like, which were erected many centuries before the Celts appeared in Britain, had originally no connection with Druidism and that there is no evidence to show that they ever became identified with it.

Without stopping to compare Irish and Gaulish Druidism with that of Britain there is one point which claims attention and which, whether Druidical or essentially primitive and sporadic, bears witness to the existence of a cult which, occurring in Ireland, could not have been introduced by the Romans.

From the life of St. Patrick we learn that in Ireland idols of stone, sometimes adorned with gold, silver, or copper, and in particular one stone, that of Ceen Cruaich or Cronn Cruach, were worshipped by all the people of the land.[29] Practices similar though not necessarily identical—in other words idol worship—characterised the Cornish paganism of the sixth century. Henoc the biographer of St. Sampson relates an incident of such absorbing interest that a translation of the Latin,[30] however imperfect, will be welcomed. It was during the saint’s sojourn at Docco (St. Kew) that we read, “Now it came to pass, on a certain day as he journeyed through a certain district which they call Tricurius (the hundred of Trigg) he heard on his left hand (_in sinistra parte de eo_) to be exact, men worshipping (at) a certain shrine after the custom of the Bacchantes by means of a play in honour of an image. Thereupon he beckoned to his brothers that they should stand still and be silent while he himself, quietly descending from his chariot to the ground and standing upon his feet and observing those who worshipped the idol, saw in front of them, resting on the summit of a certain hill an abominable image. On this hill I myself have been and have adored and with my hand have traced the sign of the cross which Saint Sampson, with his own hand, carved by means of an iron instrument on a standing stone. When Saint Sampson saw it (the image), selecting two only of the brothers to be with him, he hastened quickly towards them, their chief Guedianus standing at their head, and gently admonished them that they ought not to forsake the one God who created all things and worship an idol. And when they pleaded as excuse that it was not wrong to keep the festival of their progenitors in a play, some being furious, some mocking but some of saner mind strongly urging him to go away, straightway the power of God was made clearly manifest. For a certain boy driving horses at full speed fell from a swift horse to the ground and twisting his head under him as he fell headlong, remained, just as he was flung, little else than a lifeless corpse.

“Then St. Sampson, speaking to the tribesmen as they wept around the body, said, ‘You see that your image is not able to give aid to the dead man. But if you will promise that you will utterly destroy this idol and no longer adore it I, with God’s assistance, will bring the dead man to life.’ And they consenting, he commanded them to withdraw a little further off and after praying earnestly over the lifeless man for two hours he delivered him, who had been dead, alive and sound before them all.

“Seeing this they all with one accord, along with the aforementioned chief, prostrated themselves at St. Sampson’s feet and utterly destroyed the idol.”

It will have been noticed that the writer does not state whether the idol was of stone or of wood; nor is it quite clear whether it was itself the object of worship or the representation or symbol of a god. Probably it was the latter.

Whatever its nature and character the saint decided upon its destruction and marked the sign of the cross not upon it but upon a stone standing in its vicinity. It does not seem likely that the word abominable (_simulacrum abominabile_) would have been employed to describe a wheel-headed stone. The idol was probably a fetich pure and simple or possibly a symbol of nature worship.

Whatever may have been the purposes for which menhirs were erected during the neolithic period and whatever adoration may have been paid them by succeeding races—we have no evidence that such adoration _was_ paid—it appears certain that they had nothing to do with sun worship. The Minoan symbolism, as such, which included the cross or rather the wheel with four spokes (in this connection a better and more accurate description because it explains the most beautiful form which it assumed as the swastika), is entirely absent from the prehistoric monuments of Western Europe.[31] The stone crosses of Cornwall are not of an earlier date than the sixth or seventh century of our era, and by that time not only was the county actively Christian but the Minoan symbolism was dead, buried and forgotten.

Stones may be, and in many ages and in many lands have been, venerated for their supposed powers and virtues. Such stones, especially in Brittany, have received Christianisation, that is, have been marked with or surmounted by a cross within comparatively modern times. There is no reason why some such course may not have suggested itself to the Cornish Christians of the seventh and succeeding centuries. But the golden age of Celtic Christianity was during the latter half of the seventh and first half of the eighth century, and at that time Cornwall was in constant communication with Ireland, the centre of Christian learning.[32]

About 270 stone crosses are to be found in Cornwall. They are mostly of granite and have been fashioned by means of iron implements, in some instances with considerable taste and skill.

They are too well known to require description. To suppose them to have been erected by sun worshippers in the sixth and succeeding centuries is to suppose the prevalence of a religion in Cornwall which at that time prevailed nowhere else in Europe and concerning which history is silent. On the other hand, to suppose them to have been originally connected with nature worship of a peculiarly revolting character and to have been Christianised by signing them with the sign of the cross is highly improbable if, as the maintainers of this hypothesis assert, that sign was regarded as pagan.

A much simpler and more convincing explanation is that the stone crosses were erected in order to disaffect and sanctify places which from time immemorial had been devoted to old pagan superstitions.[33] This at any rate has the merit of being in accordance with the facts disclosed by the Sampson episode. Moreover, it avoids the anachronism which connects them with sun worship, while at the same time it disallows the charge of incredible folly which must otherwise be imputed to the founders of Cornish Christianity if we suppose those earnest men to have retained a degrading symbol of nature worship with little or no modification of its structural features.

-----

Footnote 11:

A still earlier age, the eolithic, which in Sussex has supplied my
school contemporary, Dr. A. Smith Woodward of the British Museum, with
what he believes to be a link between man and his pre-human ancestor
is not represented in Cornwall.

Footnote 12:

_Geology of the Land’s End District_, pp. 79-80.

Footnote 13:

“_Le prétendu caractère phallique de quelques-uns de ces monuments
n’est qu’une conjecture chimérique qui a permis à certains esprits
imaginatifs de se donner carrière._” Déchelette, _Manuel
d’Archéologie_, I, 431, n. 2.

Footnote 14:

W. C. Borlase, _Nænia Cornubiæ_, p. 99:

“Wishing to put beyond dispute the origin and purpose of some few at
least of these monoliths, and to ascertain if any were indeed
sepulchral, the author ... examined the ground round some half-dozen
of them.”

At the foot of a menhir at Pridden, St. Buryan, he found “a deposit of
splinters of human bone.” At the foot of a menhir at Trelew, St.
Buryan, he found “a deposit of splintered bones similar in quantity
and appearance to that found at Pridden.” A precisely similar
discovery was made at Trenuggo, Sancreed. Another at Tregonebris.

Footnote 15:

This is shown by the presence of bronze sickles in Ligurian graves and
their absence in Iberian.

Footnote 16:

_Archéologie: Age du Bronze_, chap. xiii.

Footnote 17:

Quoted by Déchelette, _Archéologie_, II, pp. 413, 567; by Lord
Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_, p. 132; by D. Gougaud, _Chrétientés_, p.
13.

Footnote 18:

_Archéologie_, II, p. 30.

Footnote 19:

_England before the Norman Conquest_, p. 9.

Footnote 20:

Ezekiel, xxvii and xxviii.

Footnote 21:

Sir Hercules Read, _Early Iron Age_, p. 85.

Footnote 22:

_Arch. Journal_, viii, 8.

Footnote 23:

_Age du Bronze_, p. 29.

Footnote 24:

Oman, _England before the Norman Conquest_, p. 107.

Footnote 25:

Mr. Henry Jenner, F.S.A., to whom I am indebted for this statement,
has reminded me that St. Michael’s Mount is given in the _Life of St.
Cadoc_ as Dinsul (Mons solis) and that Tregaseal in St. Just may be a
compound of which _seal_=_Zil_=_sol_. Both are possible. Roman
intercourse with the extreme west of Cornwall is proved by the Roman
milestone at St. Hilary, which is within easy distance of both places.

Footnote 26:

Gougaud, _Chrétientés_, p. 22. The derivation of the word Druid is
uncertain. There appears to be no doubt that the Druids practised a
form of divination founded not on the flight but on the song of birds,
that of the wren in particular. Dren is Irish for wren. From this some
have inferred that Druid is derived from dren drui-én. There is
another Irish word _drúi_ (genitive _druad_) which meant a magician.
Anwyl, _Celtic Religion_, p. 55.

Footnote 27:

Prof. Oman’s translation, _England before the Norman Conquest_, p. 74.

Footnote 28:

See, however, chap. iv.

Footnote 29:

D. Gougaud, _Chrétientés_, pp. 16, 17.

Footnote 30:

Edited by M. Fawtier (Paris, Champion, 5 Quai Malequais, 1912). The
Latin text is given in the appendix to this book p. 169.

Footnote 31:

Déchelette, _Archéologie Préhistorique_, p. 441.

Footnote 32:

Oman, _England before the Norman Conquest_, p. 30.

Footnote 33:

Anatole le Braz, _La nuit des feux_.

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III

CORNWALL AND BRITTANY

Although much good work has been done and useful results have been obtained in many fields of research both by individual Cornishmen and by societies like the Royal Institution of Cornwall, there is one department at least which has been somewhat neglected by those for whom it might have been expected to possess a special attractiveness.

The interest which of late years has been awakened in the Cornish language and in Celtic Christianity has not been the result of any revival in Cornwall itself. Mr. Whitley Stokes is an Irishman by birth and extraction, Professor Loth a Breton, Mr. Henry Jenner a Cornishman. In fact no Cornishman except the last-named has so far thrown himself wholeheartedly into the movement which has for its object the critical study of the language and religion of the Celtic-speaking nations. This is much to be regretted, because both of these subjects were assigned a place in the comprehensive scheme of Dr. Borlase, which, as conceived and elaborated by him, entitled him to rank among the leading European antiquaries of his own day. Although Dr. Borlase achieved little of permanent value in the way of exposition, he gathered much valuable material which, but for him, would have been lost, and by his sagacity and diligence succeeded in riveting the attention of his compatriots.

He was, like all the leading archæologists of his time, a resolute believer in the Druidical origin of the prehistoric remains of the county, a theory which he advocated with consummate skill and particularity. Since his death the theory has been found to be untenable without any serious injury, however, being done to his high reputation.

The brilliant essay of his great-great-grandson, the late Mr. William Copeland Borlase, on the _Age of the Saints_, first printed in 1878, has been one of the very few original works accomplished in the county having for its object the exposition of Celtic Christianity. In this work its writer attempted too much. Subsequent research has shown that many of his identifications of the Cornish saints are untrustworthy, and that his arbitrary delineation of the spheres of influence of the respective groups of Irish, Welsh and Breton saints is often fanciful and misleading.

Given leisure and the spirit of enquiry, the two subjects which ought to appeal most strongly to a Cornishman are the ancient religion and the ancient language of the county to which he belongs.

Both subjects are now well within his reach owing to the immense amount of material which has, within recent years, been made available by the publication of ancient records. The _Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents_ of Haddan and Stubbs, the _Episcopal Registers_, edited by Hingeston-Randolph, the _Parish Registers_, edited by Phillimore and others, the publications of the Record Commissioners and of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, the _Revue Celtique_, the _Ancient Cornish Drama_, edited by Mr. Edwin Norris, the critical works of Mr. Whitley Stokes, of Professor Loth and Dom Gougaud, the _Cornish Grammar_ of Mr. Jenner; these are a few of the many sources whence valuable information may be derived for the comparative study of these subjects. In this connection it may be observed that little satisfaction will be gained from facts and statements which are obtained at second hand. Facts must be sought out in the original documents and examined in their original settings.

The context is often more illuminating than the fact which it enshrines. Not documents only; the towns, villages, hamlets and homesteads, with their ancient names, address silent appeals to the hearts and understandings of those who live among them.

An interesting illustration is supplied by the three Cornish words, Eglos (_Ecclesia_), Escop (_Episcopus_) and Pleu (_Plebs_)—interesting because the final judgment must be held in suspense until a survey has been made of their ramifications. All three words are found in the place-names of this county. Eglos is found in Lanteglos, Egloskerry and in some other places; Escop is found in Trescobeas in Budock, formerly appendant to the bishop’s manor of Penryn, also in Mainen Escop (Bishop’s Rock), in the Isles of Scilly; Pleu is found in Plunent, the ancient name of Pelynt, in Pluvathack (Budock) and possibly in Bleu Bridge in Gulval. Names beginning or ending in Eglos are numerous in Cornwall; those having Pleu for the first syllable are very few in number. In Brittany very few place-names are composed of Eglos and Escop, whereas Pleu enters into many. Why does Pleu rather than Eglos lend itself so readily in Brittany to the exigencies of ecclesiastical nomenclature? Were it not that Lan (monastery) is equally distributed in the two countries, we should be tempted to say that in Cornwall a Celtic word (lan) was preferred to a Latin word (plebs) to describe the ecclesiastical unit. Some difference of condition or of association there must have been to account for it. That which most readily occurs is that Armorica was thoroughly Latinised before the insular Celts arrived there, whereas Cornwall was probably never brought into close contact with Roman civilisation as such except on and near the coast; in other words, that Plebs was in use in the former country before it became Christian and acquired afterwards a specific ecclesiastical signification, whereas in Cornwall it was introduced along with Christianity or after Christianity had taken root. Very few traces of Roman civilisation are to be found in this county. The Roman milestone at St. Hilary is almost unique. Roman coins, of which many have been found in the county, do not prove Roman settlement. It is certain, however, that Britain had become Christian, at least in name, before the Roman legions were withdrawn, and it is therefore probable that the words Eglos, Escop and Pleu had been received into the Cornish language before that time. And the true explanation of the persistence of Pleu in the place-names of Brittany seems to be that the insular Britons, who had acquired the word Plebs during the Roman occupation, converted it, for ecclesiastical purposes, into Pleu and took it with them when they emigrated to Armorica, where very soon it had to give place to the word Pares (from the French Paroisse), though not before it had taken root in the place-names. In Cornwall and Wales, on the other hand, Pleu remained in current use and is therefore seldom found in the place-names of those countries. Making allowance for changed conditions, the same explanation accounts for the persistence of the word Lan in the place-names of all three countries—it persisted in the place-names because it had fallen out of current use.

For reasons which will appear later, it is important to keep well in mind the relations which subsisted between Cornwall and Brittany from the time of the Dumnonian exodus, which began in the first half of the fifth century, until those relations were interrupted in the sixteenth century.

Leaving for future discussion the question of religion, there are points of contact between the two countries which deserve attention, not only because they are interesting in themselves, but because they can hardly fail to suggest others.

The colonisation of Armorica by the people of Dumnonia is accepted by every scholar of repute. The gradual re-settlement of Bretons in Cornwall is not so well known. Nevertheless, the historical evidence is not open to question. Domesday Book shows that, with three exceptions, all the landholders in Cornwall were, in the days of Edward the Confessor, Saxons. When William the Norman set about the conquest of England, he was joined by several Breton nobles, who, by way of reward, received considerable grants of land in Cornwall. Richard Fitz Turold, the ancestor of the baronial house of Cardinan, received thirty-one manors, Brient six, Blohiu five, Jovin thirteen, Wihumar three and Judhel one.

It was, doubtless, owing to the presence of these Breton knights that Cornwall came to play so important a part in the Arthurian romances, which, soon after the Conquest, became known throughout western Europe. There has been much controversy respecting their origin. They have been attributed to England, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. That of _Tristan and Iseult_ was, until quite recently, commonly referred to an English archetype which assumed literary form at the hands of British and Welsh minstrels or jugglers.

It has remained for Professor Loth to demonstrate, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it originated in Cornwall at a time when Celtic, Saxon and Norman were all spoken languages. Those who are familiar with the romance will have been puzzled by the presence of two Iseults in one and the same story. On this point M. Loth says, “in my opinion it is from the juxtaposition in Cornwall of two legends, the Cornish and the Armorican, and from a compromise between the two that the creation of the two Iseults has originated.”[34]

No better proof could be found of the friendly spirit which existed between the two nations than their mutual consent to share the tales and traditions of both.

It was a Breton who, in 1177, carried away the body of St. Petrock to the monastery of St. Mewan in Brittany. As a canon of Bodmin he had learnt to venerate the saint, and doubtless considered that he could confer no greater boon upon his own countrymen than to present them with the saint’s relics. At the instance of Henry II, Roland de Dinan restored them to the Priory.

The trade between the two countries was considerable. The Patent Rolls supply ample evidence of this. In 1343 we find an inquisition respecting certain mariners of the county of Cornwall who had been received into the service of the Duchess of Brittany, but who had turned pirates and plundered the vessels of both countries.

More convincing still is the evidence supplied by the first subsidy roll of King Henry VIII. The roll is undated, but the date cannot be later than 1523. In it are given the names of all those who were required to contribute to the subsidy and the several amounts of their assessment, in land and goods, for the purpose. The roll for the hundred of Penwith is almost complete, only the parishes of Crowan, Illogan, Redruth and a part of Camborne being missing.[35] In all the Penwith parishes, save five of the smaller ones, are found Bretons who are described as _nati in partibus Britanniæ sub obediencia Regis Francorum_. These Bretons constitute more than one-sixth of the total tax-paying population of the hundred of Penwith. They are described as tinners, fishermen, smiths, servants, labourers and cooks: the occupations of twenty-nine of them are not given. Although the several amounts to be contributed by them are in every case in respect of goods and comparatively small, there is fortunately reliable evidence to prove they were not mere sojourners but persons who had come to stay.

The order to keep parish registers issued by Thomas Cromwell in 1537, and the further order, in 1597, requiring a transcript of them to be made on parchment, would have provided future generations with an invaluable source of information, had those orders been generally obeyed and the records carefully preserved.

Unfortunately, few parishes can claim to possess an uninterrupted record of baptisms, marriages and burials from the year 1538 up to the present time. In Penwith only Camborne enjoys this distinction. All the rest of the registers begin after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. The earliest of the Madron registers, which begins in 1577, has been printed and is accessible: the Camborne marriages have also been printed. From these two registers it will suffice to give extracts which bear upon Breton settlement in the county. Camborne supplies the following marriages:

1538. John Carthowe, brito, and Nora his wife.
1540. Stephen Bryton and Jane his wife.
1540. G’ua Bryton and Margaret his wife.
1540. Uden John, brytton, and his wife.
1540. Gregorie Brytton and Margaret his wife.
1546. John Gerecrist and Margaret Willm, bryttons.
1568. Peres Brytton and Alson his wife.

If the above list is compared with the subsidy roll, to which reference has been made, it will be clear that Bryton is not a surname but a descriptive epithet. The list, in fact, supplies only four surnames, Carthowe, John, Willm and Gerecrist. Of these the first and last are interesting: the first survives in Cornwall as Carthewe and in Brittany as Carzou; the last is a Breton place-name—Kergrist, near Pontivy.[36]

As showing that the Breton immigrants did not return to their own country the following entries from the Madron register[37] will be helpful, if not conclusive. Among the burials we have:

1582. Jane, wife of John Brittayne.
1585. Elizabeth, wife of Oliver, the Brittonn.
1587. Joane, wife of John Britton.
1599. Peres Brittayne.

Unfortunately the Madron baptisms are missing until 1592 and the marriages until 1577. It is impossible, however, with the Camborne marriages and the Madron burials before us, to resist the conclusion that in the first half of the sixteenth century Bretons arrived, married and were buried in the county. They doubtless left descendants. It is remarkable, however, that whereas, at the present time, in Cornwall the surname Britton or Bridden is rare, in the Midlands, where Breton influence was never considerable, it is comparatively common. The explanation appears to be that the Christian names of the Breton immigrants became surnames, and in this way the number of Christian surnames, which in West Cornwall now amounts to little short of 30 per cent of the whole number, was vastly increased.

For how long the tide of Breton immigration had been flowing, when we meet with it in the sixteenth century, it is impossible to say. Its persistence in the first half of that century is not more noteworthy than its arrest in the second half.[38]

Brittany had become a French province in 1495 by the marriage of Anne, Duchess of Brittany, to Charles VIII. The tortuous foreign policy of Queen Elizabeth of England, no less than the political and religious complications of her protracted reign, could hardly have been favourable to Breton immigration. The reformed religion and the decline of the Cornish language have prevented a renewal of close relations between the two countries.

The mystery and miracle plays constituted another link between Cornwall and Brittany. Whether written in Cornish or Breton they could be understood by the inhabitants of both countries.

They were acted on both sides of the Channel in the open air. The subject matter—sacred history and religious biography—was the same for both. The trilogy called the Ordinalia, which, in three plays, covered roughly the same ground as the Old and New Testament, represents the Cornish treatment, by means of the Cornish language, of the mystery, which, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was common to western Europe. But the miracle play of _Beunans Meriasek_, the life of St. Meriasek, was Celtic in origin and treatment. The Cornish version, written by Dom Hadton, in 1504, had probably a Breton archetype. St. Meriasek or Meriadec, who shares with St. Martin the patronage of Camborne, was unquestionably a very important personage in Brittany. He gave his name to a trève of Plumergat, Pluvigner, Pluneret and Noyal-Pontivy:[39] he is the patron of Stival and of Plougasnou. He was also numbered among the early bishops of Vannes, though, according to M. Loth, mistakenly.[40]

It is significant that in the Cornish _Beunans Meriasek_ his elevation to that see forms an important episode. This fact, of itself, would suggest a Breton origin for the play. Mr. Thurstan Peter has, on other grounds, arrived at the same conclusion.[41]

The mystery and miracle plays were still in vogue when Richard Carew wrote his _Survey of Cornwall_. There is no need to quote the well-known passage in which he describes the degradation of what had once been a valuable means of instruction, but which, in his day (1590), had become a questionable form of popular entertainment.

At St. Just-in-Penwith and Perranzabuloe the plain-an-gware, place of the play, is more or less carefully preserved. The populous district of Plainangwarry in the parish of Redruth also reminds the inhabitants of the days of old and the years that are past. In more than one manorial extent, as, for example, in that of the manor of St. Buryan, the writer has found a tenement, described as Plainangware, the site of which is now unknown. It is not improbable that every considerable Cornish parish had formerly a space reserved for the mystery and miracle play.

No attempts have hitherto been made to revive these plays in Cornwall.[42] A graduate of Missouri University, visiting the Plain-an-gware at St. Just, informed the writer that in New York, with the assistance of wealthy patrons, the Cornish plays had been successfully rendered by members of the University. In Brittany there has been of late years a notable revival of the mysteries on modern lines in the Breton language. Under the direction of an enlightened clergy, encouraged by eminent Celtic scholars, the plays are attracting the attention of many besides those for whom they have been written. The marked histrionic ability of the players, most, if not all, of them simple country folk, the atmosphere of reverent adoring faith, and of robust inspiring patriotism, the utter absence of anything like vanity or pretence, the intense reality of the Gospel story which, too often, in the case of ordinary Englishmen, has, under the soothing influence of an inimitable authorised version of the Holy Scriptures, become an idyllic, poetical and idealistic presentment of Scriptural truth, when proclaimed by the living voice and the impassioned fervour of believing hearts amid circumstances not very dissimilar to those which gave it birth: all this is irresistibly pathetic and convincing.

No one who has been present at St. Anne d’Auray and who has followed, even by means of a French translation, the Boéh-er-goèd (the Call of the Blood), in which the parable of the Prodigal Son is unfolded strictly on the lines of the sacred narrative, can ever forget it. In the words of Abbé le Bayon, the writer of the libretto, it is “par delà ce pauvre père qui souffrit un jour, dans quelque coin ignoré, de l’abandon inqualifiable de son fils—que chacun des spectateurs veuille bien entrevoir; le cœur de Dieu éternellement blessé des abandons humains; mais aussi, la vieille Bretagne toute déchirée au délaissement des siens et confiante encore, toujours aimante, rappelant à sa vieille langue, à ses croyances anciennes, les fils oublieux en qui repose l’espoir de la race.” The appeal “à sa vieille langue” for Cornishmen comes too late, but that “à ses croyances anciennes” should meet with a response from those at least who are zealous for the traditions of their Cornish forefathers.

-----

Footnote 34:

_Romans de la Table Ronde_, p. 110.

Footnote 35:

The Roll was printed by the Royal Institution of Cornwall in 1887.
Extracts from some of the later rolls are given by Mr. J. H. Matthews
in his _History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor_, pp.
133-42; and by Dr. W. J. Stephens in his _Collections for a History of
Crantock_.

Footnote 36:

I am indebted to Professor Loth for the identification of these
surnames.

Footnote 37:

Some further light would doubtless be thrown on the subject if the
Camborne registers were searched for the children of the above
marriages and for the burial of their parents. It is noteworthy that
Carthew marriages were solemnised at Camborne in 1583 and 1588. They
may have been, and probably were, those of John Carthowe’s children.

Footnote 38:

As late, however, as 1599 we meet with Bretons at Redruth, who
contributed handsomely to the subsidy of that year. Six may be noted
in the St. Ives district in 1571, but none in 1593 or after that date
(Lay Subsidies, 87 (218)).

Footnote 39:

The trève is described by Dom Gougaud as a parochial subdivision still
recognised in certain cantons of Brittany (_Chrétientés_, p. 124).

Footnote 40:

Loth’s _Les Saints bretons_, pp. 92, 93.

Footnote 41:

Peter, _Old Cornish Drama_, p. 34.

Footnote 42:

After the above was written, Mr. Thurstan Peter, President of the
Royal Institution of Cornwall, announced that under the ægis of that
institution the _Beunans Meriasek_ would be performed in the year
1915. The great war has necessarily caused the postponement of the
enterprise.

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IV

THE CELTIC CHRISTIANITY OF CORNWALL

By comparing the development of Christian institutions in the various portions of the Celtic world and observing those elements which were, for three centuries at least, characteristic, common and permanent, it ought to be possible to arrive at some very definite and useful results. It ought to be possible to supplement the evidence, supplied by writers like Gildas and the venerable Bede, and, from the common store of Celtic learning, acquired in Wales, Ireland and Brittany, to remedy our defective knowledge of Cornwall and of Cornish Christianity. Obviously the closer the relations between the four Celtic families the stronger the presumption in favour of an identity of ecclesiastical organisation.

Until the Saxon raids, which began in the year 428, Cornwall and Wales were integral portions of Great Britain; the inhabitants, though differentiated into kingdoms, were bound together by a common religion and by a more or less common language.

The Roman occupation which in Armorica had changed the vernacular from Gaulish to Latin (which in the fifth century was, in that country, already giving rise to a romance language) achieved no such marked result in Britain. Latin may have been spoken in the centres of population and in places where the Roman influence was exceptionally strong; it may have been spoken, as Professor Haverfield contends, in the eastern counties; but the absence of any trace of a romance language goes to prove that it was never the vernacular.

The Saxon invasion which, during the fifth and sixth centuries, reduced the Britons to a state of servitude, or drove them to the more inaccessible and remote regions of Wales and Cornwall, was the immediate cause of a great exodus to Armorica. No event in British history proved more fruitful in results: no event is more suggestive for the purpose of elucidating Cornish Church history. How large was the share taken in that emigration by the people of Dumnonia (Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset) may be gathered from the fact that the language which the emigrants introduced into Armorica—a language which speedily superseded Latin just as Latin had superseded Gaulish—was Cornish rather than Welsh, the language, in short, which survived in some parts of Cornwall until the eighteenth century and which is, with some slight modification, still spoken in Finistère and to some extent in Morbihan and Côtes du Nord. Professor Loth, whose eminence as a Celtic scholar no one will dispute, has written, “it is certain that linguistically the Britons of Cornwall were nearer of kin to the emigrants than the Welsh: they doubtless occupied the nearer neighbourhood of ancient Dumnonia.” “The Breton language forms with Cornish a closely compacted unity as opposed to Welsh, although the three languages were assuredly very near neighbours at this period” (the fifth century).[43]

Armorica itself became known as Brittany in the sixth century. Cornwall (Cornouaille) was adopted as the name of that portion of it between the Elorn and the Ellé soon afterwards. Dumnonia was the name given to the northern portion between the Elorn and the Cuesnon in the ninth century. The settlers in Armorica introduced their own form of Christianity, and the object of the British and Irish missionary saints who flocked thither soon afterwards was not, as ancient writers have supposed, in order to convert the pagan Gauls, but rather to administer to the spiritual needs of their compatriots. To these missions our Dumnonia contributed little in comparison with Wales. Cornwall after the foundation of the kingdom of Wessex in 519 became isolated: its relations with Brittany were doubtless closer than with Saxonised Britain. But it never became, like Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, a great missionary centre. The founders of the Breton monastery-bishoprics—Pol Aurelian, Lunaire, Magloire, Mewan and Malo were all Welsh: Tutwal only, the founder of Tréguier, was of British Dumnonia. Of the British saints whose names are found in the parishes, fractions of parishes and holy places of Brittany, from 80 to 90 are Welsh; about 60 appear in Cornwall; from 30 to 40 appear only in Brittany and in Cornwall and Devon, and a few in Somerset.[44]

The British refugees remind us of Æneas whom tradition represents as bringing with him his Lares and Penates to Italy. The Dumnonian immigrants brought with them the cult of their own insular saints. At a later period Brittany was able to make a return in kind. Pol Aurelian, Sampson, Columba, Meriadec, Corentin and others of Breton fame were received into the devotional system of Cornwall.

Not only were the Breton and Cornish people one in origin, tradition, language and religious sentiment, they were one in their Celtic ideal of the priestly and religious life. Theirs no less than that of the Welsh and Irish was the monastic ideal. Every Cornish place-name bearing the prefix _lan_, together with some place-names bearing the prefix _nan_, implies a monastic foundation. Lanisley, Landithy, Lanhydrock, Lanherne and Landegy, Nancekuke and Nansladron are a few examples which show that the quasi-monastic foundations of Domesday Book were only modified survivals of what was in the sixth century the accepted ecclesiastical type, a type which continued to exist apparently long after the parochial system made its appearance. A body of celibate clergy, living in community, observing a religious rule and entrusted with the care of souls over an ill-defined area will probably represent the normal, just as an anchorite living solitary with a view to the perfecting of his soul in holiness will represent the abnormal development of the monastic ideal. We have no means of estimating the number of monks whose segregation constituted a Cornish lan. It is probable that the communities were small as compared with those of Wales and Ireland. The great monastery of Bangor Iscoed on the Dee had, according to the Venerable Bede, at the beginning of the seventh century no less than 2100 monks. Clonard, in the county of Meath, founded by St. Finnian about the year 520, is said to have been larger. It may be extravagance on the part of the biographer of St. Patrick to state that the saint enjoined a levy of a tithe of the men as well as a tithe of the land for the support of the Church,[45] but there can be no doubt that a very considerable fraction of the Celtic population embraced the religious life. At the same time we shall probably arrive at a false economic inference unless we bear in mind the tripartite division of the monk’s day which required one-third of it to be spent in manual labour.

Professor Loth, as the result of a careful study of Breton toponomastic, has arrived at the conclusion that the Armorican parishes were placed as early as the sixth and seventh century under the invocation of the saints—national, emigrant, or otherwise—whose names they still bear.[46] It is therefore possible, I think probable, that the Cornish parish is older than the English. The reforms of Archbishop Theodore (668-690) which resulted in the subdivision of dioceses and the formation of parishes, were begun though not completed a little less than a century later. Cornwall and Wales were unaffected by these reforms, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s jurisdiction not being acknowledged by Cornwall until the days of Egbert (803-839), or by Wales until the beginning of the twelfth century.