Known by one general name upon this point that dwell.
The name of Dumnonii, Damnonii, or Danmonii, in Solinus and Ptolemy, comprehended the people of Devonshire and Cornwal; whence the Lizard promontory is called Damnium in[74] Marcian Heracleotes; and William of Malmesbury, Florence of Worcester, Roger of Hoveden and others, stile Devonshire by name of Domnonia, perhaps all from Duff neint, i. e. low valleys in British; wherein are most habitations of the countrey, as judicious Camden teaches me.
Or that this foreland lies furth’st out into his sight,
Which spreads his vigorous flames——
Fuller report of the excellence in wrestling and nimbleness of body, wherewith this western people have been and are famous, you may find in Carew’s description of his country. But to give reason of the climate’s nature for this prerogative in them, I think as difficult as to shew why about the Magellanic streights they are so white, about the Cape de Buon Speranza so black,[75] yet both under the same tropic; why the Abyssins are but tawny moors, when as in the East-Indian isles, Zeilan and Malabar, they are very black, both in the same parallel; or why we that live in this Northern latitude, compared with the Southern, should not be like affected from like cause. I refer it no more to the Sun, than the special horsemanship in our Northern men, the nimble ability of the Irish, the fiery motions of the French, Italian jealousy, German liberty, Spanish puft-up vanity, or those different and perpetual carriages of state-government, Haste and Delay, which, as[76] inbred qualities, were remarkable in the two most martial people of Greece. The cause of Æthiopian blackness and curled hair was long since judiciously[77] fetcht from the disposition of soil, air, water, and singular operations of the heavens; with confutation of those which attribute it to the Sun’s distance. And I am resolved that every land hath its so singular self-nature, and individual habitude with celestial influence, that human knowledge, consisting most of all in universality, is not yet furnish’d with what is requisite to so particular discovery. But for the learning of this point in a special treatise Hippocrates, Ptolemy, Bodin, and others have copious disputes.
Of Corin Cornwal call’d, to his immortal fame.
So, if you believe the tale of Corin and Gogmagog: but rather imagine the name of Cornwall from this promontory of the Land’s End, extending itself like a[78] horn, which in most tongues is Corn, or very near. Thus was a[79] promontory in Cyprus called Cerastes, and in the now Candy or Crete, and Gazaria (the old Taurica Chersonesus) another titled[80] Κρίου μέτωπον: and Brundusium in Italy had name from Brendon or[81] Brention, i. e. a Hart’s-head, in the Messapian tongue, for similitude of horns. But[82] Malmesbury thus: “They are called Cornwalshmen, because being seated in the western part of Britain, they lie overagainst a horn (a promontory) of Gaul.” The whole name is as if you should say Corn-wales; for hither in the Saxon conquest the British called Welsh (signifying the people rather than strangers, as the vulgar opinion wills) made transmigration: whereof an old[83] rhimer:
The vewe that wer of hom bileved, as in Cornwaile and Wailes,
Brutons ner namore ycluped, ac Waleys ywis.
Such was the language of your fathers between three and four hundred years since.