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Cornish people
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The Cornish people are regarded as an ethnic group of the United Kingdom originating in Cornwall. They are often described as a Celtic people.
ith other ethnic groups in the British Isles, the question of identity is not straightforward. Ethnic identity has been based as much if not more on cultural identity than on descent. Many descendants of people who came and settled in Cornwall have adopted this identity.
The subject of Cornish identity has been extensively studied in the Cornish studies series of books published by Exeter University Press.
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Encyclopedia
The Cornish people are regarded as an ethnic group of the United Kingdom originating in Cornwall. They are often described as a Celtic people.
Cornish ethnic identity
As with other ethnic groups in the British Isles, the question of identity is not straightforward. Ethnic identity has been based as much if not more on cultural identity than on descent. Many descendants of people who came and settled in Cornwall have adopted this identity.
The subject of Cornish identity has been extensively studied in the Cornish studies series of books published by Exeter University Press. Cornishness is examined with methodological tools varying from feminist theory to deconstructionism.
In the 2001 UK Census, the population of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly was estimated to be 501,267. The number of people living in Cornwall who consider themselves to be more Cornish than British or English is uncertain. One survey found that 35.1% of respondents identified as Cornish, with 48.4% of respondents identifying as English, a further 11% thought of themselves as British. A Morgan Stanley survey in 2004 indicated that 44% of people in Cornwall identify as Cornish rather than English or British, and there have been recent calls for more accuracy in the recording of the number who identify as Cornish in the 2011 Census.
For the first time in a UK Census, those wishing to describe their ethnicity as Cornish were given their own code number (06) on the 2001 UK Census form, alongside those for people wishing to describe themselves as English, Welsh, Irish or Scottish. About 34,000 people in Cornwall and 3,500 people in the rest of the UK wrote on their census forms in 2001 that they considered their ethnic group to be Cornish. This represented nearly 7% of the population of Cornwall and is therefore a significant phenomenon. Although happy with this development, campaigners expressed reservations about the lack of publicity surrounding the issue, the lack of a clear tick-box for the Cornish option on the census and the need to deny being British in order to write "Cornish" in the field provided. The UK government has agreed recently that English and Welsh will have an ethnicity tick box on the Census 2011 but there will be no Cornish option tick box. Various Cornish organisations are campaigning for the inclusion of the Cornish tick box on the next 2011 Census.
Mythological descent of the Cornish nation
An ancient legend, the Brutus Myth, recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth, gives explicit reference to the Cornish people in describing their descent. The legend tells how Albion was colonised by refugees from Troy under Brutus, how Brutus renamed his new Kingdom, Britain, and how the island was subsequently divided up between his three sons, the eldest inheriting England and the other two Scotland and Wales. Additionally according to the legend there were two groups of Trojans who originally arrived in Britain. The smaller group was led by a warrior named Corineus, to whom Brutus granted extensive estates. And just as Brutus had ‘called the island Britain…and his companions Britons’, so Corineus called ‘the region of the kingdom which had fallen to his share Cornwall, after the manner of his own name, and the people who lived there... Cornishmen’.
The first account of Cornwall comes from the Sicilian Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c.90 BCE–c.30 BCE), supposedly quoting or paraphrasing the fourth-century BCE geographer Pytheas, who had sailed to Britain:
[The inhabitants of that part of Britain called Belerion or the Land's End] from their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised in their manner of life. They prepare the tin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced…Here then the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling overland for about thirty days, they finally bring their loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhône.
Who these merchants were is not known. There is no current evidence for the theory that they were Phoenicians.
No other region is picked out for such special treatment; the historian Dr Mark Stoyle has suggested that this shows that, as far as Geoffrey was concerned, Cornwall possessed a separate identity. Cornishmen and women continued to regard themselves as descendants of Corineus until well into the early modern period.
In two recently published books, Blood of the Isles, by Brian Sykes and Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer,
both authors claim that according to genetic evidence, most Cornish people and most Britons descend from an ancient (Paleolithic) population of the Iberian Peninsula, as a result of different migrations that took place during the Mesolithic and the Neolithic which laid the foundations for the present-day populations in the British Isles, indicating an ancient relationship among the populations of Atlantic Europe.
The Cornish in history
| Year | Event |
|---|
| 4000 BC | Examples of Cornish Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures are Chûn Quoit, Boscawen-Un and Chysauster Ancient Village. | | 60 BC | Greek historian Diodorus Siculus named Cornwall Belerion ("The Shining Land"). | | 400s | King Mark, of Tristan and Iseult fame, probably ruled in the late 5th century. According to Cornish folklore, he held court at Tintagel. King Salomon, father of Saint Cybi, ruled after Mark. | | 500s | The Kingdom of Cornwall, which included the tribes of the Dumnonii and the Cornish Cornovii, emerged around the 6th century.. | | 577 | The Battle of Deorham Down near Bristol results in the separation of the West Welsh (i.e. the Cornish) from the Welsh, other than by sea, by the advance of the Saxons. | | 722 | With their allies, the Danish Vikings, the Cornish Britons (the Cornovii) destroy an invading Anglo-Saxon army at "Hehil", a place whose location is unknown but which some claims put in the vicinity of modern-day Padstow. | | 878 | The drowned Cornish king Donyarth is recorded in the Annales Cambriae as rex Cerniu ("King of Cornwall"). | | 838 | According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Cornish, in alliance with the Danes, were defeated by Egbert of Wessex at Hingston Down. (The eastern Cornish border in 838 lay on the line of the River Exe and River Taw.) | | 927 | William of Malmesbury, writing around 1120, says that Athelstan evicted the Cornish from Exeter and perhaps the rest of Devon: "Exeter was cleansed of its defilement by wiping out that filthy race". | | 928 | It is thought that the Cornish king Huwal, "King of the West Welsh", was one of several kings who signed a treaty with Aethelstan of Wessex at Egmont Bridge. | | 936 | Athelstan sets the border between Cornwall and England as the River Tamar. | | 944 | Athelstan's successor, Edmund I of England, styled himself "King of the English and ruler of this province of the Britons" | | 1066 | According to William of Worcester, writing in the 15th century, Cadoc was described as the last survivor of the Cornish royal line at the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066. Following his conquest, William the Conqueror installs his brother, the Celtic-speaking Breton Robert, Count of Mortain, as the Earl of Cornwall. | | 1336 | Edward, the Black Prince, named Duke of Cornwall. | | 1360 | Treaty of Brétigny: "John, by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Earl of Anjou, confirmed the aforesaid; and Richard, King of Germany and Earl of Cornwall, in like manner, confirmed the aforesaid". | | 15th century | The Croyland Chronicle states: "In order zealously to carry out the same, he sent the venerable men of God, brothers Egelmer and Nigel, his fellow-monks, with relics of the saints, into the western parts, namely, Flanders and France. To the northern parts and into Scotland he sent the brothers Fulk and Oger, and into Denmark and Norway the brothers Swetman and Wulsin the younger; while to Wales, Cornwall and Ireland he sent the brothers Augustin and Osbert". | | 1485 | Polydore Vergil, an Italian cleric commissioned by King Henry VII to write a history of England, states that "The whole country of Britain is divided into four parts, whereof the one is inhabited by Englishmen, the other of Scots, the third of Welshmen, the fourth of Cornish people ... and which all differ among themselves either in tongue, either in manners, or else in laws and ordinances." | | 1497 | First Cornish Uprising of 1497, ending in the Battle of Deptford Bridge, London. | | 1497 | Second Cornish Uprising of 1497 led by Perkin Warbeck. | | 1508 | Henry VII grants Cornwall a "Charter of Pardon", confirming and strengthening its right to its own parliament. | | 1509 | King Henry VIII's coronation procession includes "nine children of honour" representing "England and France, Gascony, Guienne, Normandy, Anjou, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland." | | 1531 | From the court of King Henry VIII, the Italian diplomat Lodovico Falier writes in a letter that "The language of the English, Welsh and Cornish men is so different that they do not understand each other". He also claims it is possible to distinguish the members of each group by alleged "national characteristics". | | 1538 | Writing to his government, the French ambassador in London, Gaspard de Coligny Chatillon, indicates ethnic differences thus: "The kingdom of England is by no means a united whole, for it also contains Wales and Cornwall, natural enemies of the rest of England, and speaking a [different] language". | | 1549 | The Prayer Book Rebellion. The roots of this conflict can be traced back to the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 and the forced introduction of the English language Book of Common Prayer resulting in a decline of the Cornish language and Cornish cultural identity. Some 4,000 "rebels" were killed and eventually up to 11% of the Cornish population were slaughtered by English forces. After 1549, the term "Anglia et Cornubia" was no longer used in official documents. | | 1603 | Following Queen Elizabeth I's death, the Venetian ambassador writes that the "late queen had ruled over five different 'peoples': 'English, Welsh, Cornish, Scottish ... and Irish'". | | 1616 | Arthur Hopton, later ambassador to Madrid, writes that "England is ... divided into three great Provinces, or Countries ... speaking a several and different language, as English, Welsh and Cornish". | | 1642 | English Civil War: First Battle of Lostwithiel. | | 1643 | Battle of Braddock Down | | 1643 | The Battle of Stratton, a Cornish Royalist victory. | | 1644 | King Charles I stays one night in Cornwall at Trecarrell near Launceston | | 1644 | Second Battle of Lostwithiel; Royalist victory. | | 1646 | Siege of Pendennis Castle. | | 1648 | The Gear Rout. | | 1652 | The English puritan preacher, Roger Williams complained that "we have Indians ... in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland". | | 1769 | The antiquarian William Borlase writes that "Of this time we are to understand what Edward I says ... that Britain, Wales, and Cornwall, were the portion of Belinus, elder son of Dunwallo, and that that part of the Island, afterwards called England, was divided in three shares, viz. Britain, which reached from the Tweed, Westward, as far as the river Ex; Wales inclosed by the rivers Severn, and Dee; and Cornwall from the river Ex to the Land's-End". | | 1801 | Richard Trevithick builds a full-size steam road carriage. | | 1856 | The Cornish Foreshore Case, a case of arbitration between the Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall. Officers of the Duchy successfully argued that the Duchy enjoyed many of the rights and prerogatives of a County palatine and that although the Duke of Cornwall was not granted Royal Jurisdiction he was considered to be quasi-sovereign within his Duchy of Cornwall. | | 1928 | First Gorseth Kernow at Boscawen-un, instituted by Henry Jenner, symbolising the resurgent interest in Cornwall's Celtic cultural and linguistic heritage. | | 1951 | The Cornish independence party, Mebyon Kernow(Cornish: "Sons of Cornwall"), is formed. | | 1971 | The Kilbrandon Report into the British constitution recommends that, when referring to Cornwall, official sources should cite the "Duchy" rather than the "County". This was suggested in recognition of its constitutional position. | | 1977 | Plaid Cymru MP Dafydd Wigley confirms in Parliament the Stannators' right to veto Westminster legislation. | | 2001 | The Cornish are allocated the ethnic code "06" for the 2001 UK Census (see UK Census 2001 Ethnic Codes). | | 2001 | A petition in favour of a Cornish Assembly, carrying the signatures of over 50,000 people, is handed into 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 12 December 2001. | | 2002 | The Cornish language is officially recognised by the British Government. | |
During the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson created a Cornish declaration of independence that he used in his essay Taxation no Tyranny "We are the acknowledged descendants of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, of men, who, before the time of history, took possession of the island desolate and waste, and, therefore, open to the first occupants. Of this descent, our language is a sufficient proof, which, not quite a century ago, was different from yours."
Additionally, many maps of the isles prior to the seventeenth century showed Cornwall ("Cornubia"/"Cornwallia") as a nation on a par with Wales.
Popular Cornish sentiment during the 19th century appears to have been still strong. For example, A. K. Hamilton Jenkin records the reaction of a school pupil who was asked to describe Cornwall's situation replied: "he's kidged to a furren country from the top hand" - i.e. "it's joined to a foreign country from the upper part". This reply was "heard by the whole school with much approval, including old Peggy (the school-dame) herself."
The famous crime writer Wilkie Collins described Cornwall as:
- "a county where, it must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation to his provincial sympathies; where the national feeling is almost entirely merged into the local feeling [sic]; where a man speaks of himself as Cornish in much the same way that a Welshman speaks of himself as Welsh."
Chambers Journal in 1861 described Cornwall as "one of the most un-English of English counties", a sentiment echoed by the naturalist W.H. Hudson who also referred to it as "un-English" and said there were:
- "[few] Englishmen in Cornwall who do not experience that antipathy or sense of separation in mind from the people they live with, and are not looked upon as foreigners"
Contemporary references
In 1937, Bartholomew published a Map of European Ethnicity prepared by the Edinburgh Institute of Geography which featured the "Celtic Cornish".
More recently, on 12 July 2005, Jim Fitzpatrick MP, an ODPM Parliamentary Under Secretary in the current Labour government, said in the Commons in response to Andrew George MP, a Liberal Democrat representing the St Ives constituency in Cornwall, "I realise that the people of Cornwall consider that they have a separate identity, but that alone does not justify creating an assembly for Cornwall." Phil Woolas MP, Minister for Local Government, indicated the same in his answer to a letter from Mebyon Kernow: "On your point about Cornwall’s desire to control its own future, the Government is very much aware of the strength of feeling about Cornwall’s separate identity and distinctiveness ... The Government recognises that many people in Cornwall consider they have a separate identity."
NGOs such as Eurominority and the Federal Union of European Nationalities also give varying degrees of recognition to a Cornish people.
Cornish language
The Cornish language is seen by many as the cultural backbone of the Cornish identity, although only 3,500 of the estimated 250,000 Cornish people (1.4%) speak it to a basic conversational level and only around a tenth of those with fluency. Recently the Cornish language, which was revived in the 20th century after dying out as a native tongue during the 19th century, has been recognised by the UK and EU for protection as a UK minority language and now receives funding from both these bodies. The Cornish language is a Brythonic language related to Welsh and Breton. In June 2005, after much pressure from language groups and groups such as the Gorseth Kernow, the government allocated £80,000 per year for three years of direct central government funding to the Cornish language. Although pleased with this development, there have been concerns however that in the same period for example the Ulster Scots language is being allocated £1,000,000 per year of direct government funding. This comes after the British government acknowledged in its 1st European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages compliance report that: "There are no current demands from within the school system for Ulster-Scots to be taught as a language. There have been concerns that while the ECRML Level II Cornish language remains in the slow lane, the Ulster-Scots language is to be made a ECRML Level III language.
A distinct dialect of English can also be found in Cornwall, and appears in many popular Cornish folksongs such as Camborne Hill. To an extent, the accent and dialect is a badge of "Cornishness" for some people, but interest in Anglo-Cornish has been overshadowed by the Cornish language recently.
Descent
Many who perceive themselves to be of the Cornish nation also consider themselves to be descended from the Brythons, or Cornovii (Cornish), of the post-Roman period. For this reason they consider there to be a kinship connection with the Welsh and Breton peoples and more distantly with the Scots, Manx and Irish. After the Anglo-Saxon conquest of southern, eastern and central Great Britain, Brythonic speakers were gradually pushed further into the fringes, eventually cutting them off into three groups: the Southwestern Britons from whence the Cornish the West Britons (the Welsh) and the Northern Britons (see Cumbric language).
This sense of a shared past is given voice in such organisations as the Celtic League and Celtic Congress, both of whom recognise Cornwall and the Cornish as a Celtic nation.
Today, many family and given names from Cornwall are clearly rooted in the Cornish language.
Y chromosome analysis of samples from the British Isles, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Friesland, and the Basque Country have shown that Cornish men's Y chromosomes are generally more similar to those of the assumed indigenous population (Welsh/Irish/Basque) than are those of men from other parts of England or Scotland. The Y chromosomes from Cornwall, however, were more Germanic (Danish/German/Frisian) than those from Wales, Ireland or the Basque Country. It should be noted that samples from all parts of the British Isles show an indigenous component.
In 2005, professor Sir Walter Bodmer was appointed to lead a £2.3 million project (roughly 4.5 million USD) by the Wellcome Trust at Oxford University to examine the genetic makeup of the United Kingdom. The findings, published on Channel 4's Faces of Britain in April 2007 show that the Cornish people have a particular variant of the MC1R gene identifying them as a Celtic race more closely related to the Welsh, Irish and Breton peoples than to their English neighbours.
Politics
The Cornish national identity is given voice also in the existence of various political and pressure groups. These organisations usually call for greater home rule for Cornwall, recognition of Cornwall as a Duchy and various other human rights issues. (See Cornish nationalism and Constitutional status of Cornwall.)
In parliamentary politics, Cornwall is a Liberal Democrat stronghold and in the 2005 General Election, all five members of parliament returned to Westminster were Liberal Democrats. The largest Cornish nationalist party, Mebyon Kernow (Cornish for Sons of Cornwall), fielded candidates in four of the five constituencies and received around 3,500 votes, less than two percent of constituencies' electorate.
The Liberal Democrats have also campaigned on Cornish language issues, Cornish national minority issues and for the establishment of a devolved Cornish Assembly and Cornish development agency.
Mebyon Kernow (Cornish for "Sons of Cornwall", often abbreviated MK) is the only Cornish based political party. The main objective of MK is to establish greater autonomy in Cornwall, through the establishment of a legislative Cornish Assembly. They claim to campaign for all the people of Cornwall with a political programme that offers an alternative to the London-centred parties.
The Cornish branch of the Green Party of England and Wales also campaigns on a manifesto of devolution to Cornwall and Cornish minority issues. In the 2005 general election the Green Party struck a partnership deal with Mebyon Kernow.
Religion
Traditionally, the Cornish have been nonconformist in their religion. Celtic Christianity was predominant during the first millennium AD and many Cornish saints are commemorated in legends, churches and place names.
Approximately four thousand people from Devon and Cornwall died in the Prayer Book Rebellion in the 1540s, trying to resist the compulsory use of a new English language version of the Book of Common Prayer. Attempts to revert to the Latin version, or to translate the text into Cornish, were suppressed. This failure to produce or sustain a translation of the Bible in Cornish is generally seen as a crucial factor in the demise of the language. An approved version of the Bible in Cornish was finally published in 2004.
Methodism
During the Industrial Revolution, Methodism proved to be very popular amongst the working classes in Cornwall. Methodist chapels became important social centres, with church-affiliated groups such as male voice choirs playing a central role in social life. Methodism still plays a large part in the religious life of Cornwall today, although Cornwall has shared in the general post-World War II decline in British religious worship. Cornwall and Gwennap Pit in particular were favourite places of the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.
Fry an Spyrys
In 2003, a campaign group was formed called Fry an Spyrys dedicated to disestablishing the Church of England in Cornwall in favour of an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion; a Church of Cornwall. They appeal to the precedents set when the Anglican Church was disestablished in Wales to form the Church in Wales in 1920 and in Ireland to form the Church of Ireland in 1869. The group's chairman is Dr Garry Tregidga of the Institute of Cornish Studies.
Cornish emigration and diaspora
In the 18th and 19th centuries, many Cornish people migrated to various parts of the world in search of a better life this is called Cornish migration. A driving force for some emigrants was the opportunity for skilled miners to find work abroad, later in combination with the decline in the tin and copper mining industries in Cornwall. Migration became so common that a slang term to describe a Cornish migrant abroad appeared: "Cousin Jack".
Today, in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Brazil and other countries, some of the descendants of these original migrants celebrate their Cornish ancestry and remain proud of the Cornish family names they carry. This is evidenced by the existence of both Cornish societies and Cornish festivals in these countries, as well as a growing overseas interest in the Cornish language. Cornish ethnicity is recognised on the Canadian census, and in 2006, 1,550 Canadians listed their ethnic origin as Cornish.
See also
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