A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

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.

Let us take them in order from Newquay.

First we have Carantock, the fellow-worker with S. Patrick, who assisted him on the commission to draw up the laws of Ireland. Then we have Perranzabuloe, the settlement of Kieran of Saighir. Across the ridge, four miles off, is Ladock, where he planted his nurse as head of a community of women. Some of Kieran’s young pupils found it not too far to trip across and flirt with the girls at Ladock, and there was a pretty to-do when this was discovered. He was wont, when he had ploughed his own lands, to send over his oxen to plough the fields of his nurse. At Redruth was S. Euny, whom the Irish called Eoghain, and who later was Bishop of Ardstraw. He was brother of S. Erc of Erth, as it was said in later times, but earlier writers frankly call Erc his father.

Illogan was son of Cormac, King of Leinster. Piety ran in the family. Cormac abdicated and assumed the monk’s cowl in 535. The sisters of Illogan were Derwe and Ethnea, who accompanied him to Cornwall, and are numbered with its saints. He was father of S. Credan of Sancreed. Phillack is S. Piala, the sister of Gwynear (Fingar). S. Elwyn is but another form of the name Illogan. Erth, as already said, was father of S. Euny; he was a disciple of S. Brendan, the voyager, and was nursed by S. Itha, who was a woman almost as famous in Ireland as S. Bridget, and who has churches in Cornwall and Devon. S. Ives is really S. Hia, an Irishwoman. Zennor is, perhaps, dedicated to a disciple of S. Sennen of Land’s End, the very woman about whom Tom Moore wrote his song of “The Saint and the Lady.” S. Just was the deacon of S. Patrick, and he was S. Kieran’s tutor. Sennen is Senan of Inscathy, in the Shannon. S. Levan was metal-worker for S. Patrick, but in holy orders also. S. Burian was the female disciple of S. Kieran. Germoe was a bard, and an intimate friend of Kieran, and so we see him planted near his friend, who was at Perran-uthnoe. Breage was a disciple of S. Bridget and a friend of S. Kieran. Crewenna was another Irishwoman. Sithney is Setna, a disciple of S. Senan. S. Ruan, in the Lizard district, and S. Kea, on the Fal—​Irishmen as well—​I have spoken of them elsewhere.

But along the south coast are some settlements of a different kind. Paul is Paul of Leon, a Briton, who came there to visit his sister, Wulvella, at Gulval before he crossed into Brittany; and Towednack is not an Irish foundation.

Senan and Kieran, or Piran, were such allies that the former was wont to call the latter “his inseparable friend and comrade.” It is therefore no wonder that we find settlements of the two in West Cornwall together.

Senan and Kieran probably came to Cornwall some years later than Hia and Breaca, Fingar and Piala. Senan was very much attached to S. David, and both are said to have died on the same day in the same year.