A Book of Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

The Land's End is properly Penwith, either Pen-gwaed, the Bloody Headland, or Pen-gwaedd, the Headland of Shouting. Probably it is the former, for it was the last place of refuge of the Ibernian population, and in the first years of the sixth century, even perhaps earlier, it was occupied by Irish settlers, and that there was fighting is clearly shown us in the legend of SS. Fingar and Piala. It must have been to the original people of the peninsula what Mona was to the Welsh.

LAND'S END

All we know about this invasion is what is told us in the legend just mentioned, and that states that Fingar, son of an Irish king, came to Hayle, landed there with his party, and was fallen upon by Tewdrig, the Cornish duke or king, who massacred some of the party. But the names of the parishes tell us more than that. They show us that the Irish were not defeated, that they made good their landing, and that they spread and occupied the whole of Penwith and Carnmarth, that is to say, the entire district of West Cornwall up to Camborne and the Lizard district.

The colonists cannot have been few, and they must have purposed settling, for they brought women along with them; and that they were successful is assured by the fact that those killed by Tewdrig are recognised as martyrs. Had the Irish been driven away they would have been regarded as pirates who had met their deserts.

Now this inroad of saints was but one out of a succession of incursions, and the resistance of Tewdrig marks the revolt against Irish domination which took place after the death of Dathi in 428, the last Irish monarch who was able to exact tribute from Britain; though Oiliol Molt may have attempted it, he was too much hampered by internal wars to make Irish authority felt in Britain. Oiliol fell in 483.

The Irish saints came across in detachments. Senan, Erc (Erth), Setna (Sithney), Brig (Breage), Just were some of the earliest. There was trouble when Brig arrived, and she and her party fled from Tewdrig and fortified themselves on Tregonning Hill, where their camp still remains. But Kieran and his pupils, Medran (Madron) and Bruinech (Buriena), were unmolested; so also was S. Ruan.

One thing they could not do, and that was impress on the people the Scottish or Irish pronunciation. They were few among many, and they not only could not make the natives pronounce a hard c, but they were themselves obliged to suffer their own names to be softened, and the c in them to be turned into p, and the f into gw. Thus Kieran became Piran, and Fingar became Gwinear. The Irish c is always sounded like k, and the Cornish disliked this sound. When S. Kiera settled in Cornwall she had to accustom herself to be called Piala; and Eoghain was melted down into Euny, and Erc softened into Erth.

Just one advantage to Cornwall did this invasion afford; by it we know the histories of the founders of churches in West Cornwall; because the Irish had the wit to preserve their records and biographies, whereas of the home-grown saints, princes of blood royal, the Cornish have not kept a single history. Consequently, if we desire to know about the early kings and saints of the peninsula, we have to ask the Irish, the Welsh, and even go hat in hand to the Bretons. It is a sorry truth, but truth it is.

How thoroughly occupied by the Irish this district was may be judged when we come to look at who the saints were.