(c) Cornish.—The ancient language of Cornwall (Kernûak, Carnoack) stood in a much closer relation to Breton than to Welsh,[1] though in some respects it sides with the latter against the former.

It agrees with Breton on the following points:—It has given up the nasal mutation of initials but provects the mediae. Prim. Celt. ā is not diphthongized, but becomes ē, e.g. Corn, ler, “floor,” Br. leur, W. llawr, Ir. lār. Ng is lost as in Breton, e.g. toy, “to swear,” Br. toui, W. tyngu, Ir. tongu; nd becomes nt before the stress and not nn as in Welsh, e.g. Corn. Br. hanter, “half,” W. hanner. Cornish like Breton does not prefix a vowel to words beginning with s + consonant, e.g. Corn. spirit, later spyrys, Br. spered, W. yspryd. On the other hand, O. Cornish does not confuse ĭ and ĕ to the same extent as Bret., e.g. W. helyg, “willow,” O. Cornish heligen, Br. halek. Further, Cornish does not change th, đ to s, z as in Breton, e.g. beth, “grave,” Br. bez, W. bedd, and initial g disappears in the vocalic mutation as in Welsh. Peculiar to Cornish is the change of non-initial t, d to s, z. This occurs in the oldest Cornish after n, l, e.g. O. Corn, nans, “valley,” W. nant; Corn. tâs, “father,” W. tad. A feature of later Cornish is the introduction of a d before post-vocalic m, n, e.g. pedn, “head,” W. pen. In later Cornish the accent seems to have fallen on the penultimate as in Modern Welsh and Breton.

In 936 the “Welsh” were driven out of Exeter by Æthelstan, and from that time the Tamar appears to have formed a general boundary between English and Cornish, though there seems to be evidence that even as late as the reign of Elizabeth Cornish was spoken in a few places to the east of that river. The decay of Cornish has been largely attributed to the Reformation. Neither the Prayer-book nor the Scriptures were translated into the vernacular, and we find the same apathy on the part of the Church of England in Cornwall as in Wales and Ireland. Unfortunately the Methodist movement came at a time when it was too late to save the language. By 1600 Cornish had been driven into the western parts of the duchy and in 1662 we are informed by John Ray that few of the children could speak it. Lhuyd gives a list of the parishes in which Cornish was spoken, but goes on to state that every one speaks English. In 1735 there were only a few people along the coast between Penzance and Land’s End who understood Cornish, and Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole, who died in 1777, is commonly stated to have been the last person who spoke it, though Jenner seems to show that there were others who lived until well into the 19th century who were able to converse in the dialect. However, the modern English speech of West Cornwall is full of Celtic words, and nine-tenths of the places and people from the Tamar to Land’s End bear Cornish names. Celtic words still in use are to be found in Jago’s Dialect of Cornwall (Truro, 1882); thus the name for the dog-fish is morgy, “sea-dog.”

Authorities for Cornish.—A mass of details about Cornish is collected in H. Jenner’s Handbook of the Cornish Language (London, 1904). (Cf. J. Loth’s review in the Revue celtique, xxvii. 93.) Lhuyd’s Archaeologica Britannica (1707) contains a grammar of the language as spoken in his day, and a Sketch of Cornish Grammar is to be found as an appendix to Norris’s Ancient Cornish Drama. A dictionary was published by R. Williams entitled Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum (Landovery, 1865), to which W. Stokes published a supplement of about 2000 words in the Transactions of the London Philological Society for 1868-1869. We may also mention the English-Cornish Dictionary, by F.W.P. Jago (Plymouth, 1887), and a Glossary of Cornish Names, by J. Bannister (Truro, 1871). W. Stokes published a Glossary to Beunans Meriasek in the Archiv für celtische Lexikographie, i. 101, and important articles by J. Loth have appeared in the Revue celtique, vols. xviii. to xxiv. W.S. Lach-Szyrma, “Les Derniers Échos de la langue cornique,” Revue celtique, iii. 239 ff. H. Jenner, “Some Rough Notes on the Present Pronunciation of Cornish Names,” Rev. celt. xxiv. 300-305.

III. The Language of the Ancient Picts.—The evidence from which we can draw any conclusions as to the affinities of the language of the Picts is so extremely scanty that the question has been the subject of great controversy. The Picts are first mentioned by Eumenius (a.d. 297), who regarded them as having inhabited Britain in the time of Caesar. In the year 368 they are described by Ammianus Marcellinus as invading the Roman province of Britain in conjunction with the Irish Scots. In Columba’s time we find the whole of Scotland east of Drumalban and north of the Forth divided into two kingdoms—north and south Pictland—and it is reasonable to identify the Picts, at any rate in part, with the Caledonians of the classical authors. Galloway and Co. Down were also inhabited by Picts. Bede in enumerating the languages of Britain mentions those of the Britons, Picts, Scots and the English. The names by which the Picts are known in history have aroused considerable discussion. It seems natural to connect Lat. Picti with the Pictones and Pictavi of Gaul, but in Irish they are known as Cruithne, which appears in Welsh as Prydyn, “Pict”; cp. Prydein, “Britain,” forms corresponding to the earliest Greek name for these islands, νῆσοι πρετανικαί.

Three conflicting theories have been held as to the character of the Pictish language. Rhys, relying on the strange character of the Scottish Ogam inscriptions, pronounces it to be non-Celtic and non-Indo-European. In this he has been followed by Zimmer, who bases his argument on the Pictish rule of succession. Skene maintained that the Picts spoke a language nearly allied to Goidelic, whilst Stokes, Loth, Macbain, D’Arbois and Meyer are of opinion that Pictish was more closely related to Brythonic. Of personal names mentioned by classical writers we have Calgacus and Argentocoxus, both of which are certainly Celtic. The names occurring in Ptolemy’s description of Scotland have a decidedly Celtic character, and they seem, moreover, to bear a greater resemblance to Brythonic than to Goidelic, witness such tribal designations as Epidii, Cornavii, Damnonii, Decantae, Novantae. In the case of all these names, however, it should be borne in mind that they probably reached the writers of antiquity through Brythonic channels. Bede mentions that the east end of the Antonine Wall terminated at a place called in Pictish Pean-fahel, and in Saxon Penneltun. Pean resembles Old Welsh penn, “head,” Old Irish cenn, and the second element may possibly be connected with Gaelic fàl, Welsh gwawl, “rampart.” The names of the kings in the Pictish chronicles are not an absolutely trustworthy guide, as owing to the Pictish rule of succession the bearers of the names may in many cases have been Brythons. The names of some of them occur in one source in a Goidelic, in another in a Brythonic form. It is of course possible that the southern part of Pictish territory was divided between Goidels and Brythons, the population being very much mixed. On the other hand there are a number of elements in place-names on Pictish ground which do not occur in Wales or Ireland. Such are pet, pit, “farm” (?), for, fother, fetter, foder, “lower” (?). Aber, “confluence,” on the contrary, is pure Brythonic (Gaelic inver). Though the majority of scholars are of opinion that Pictish was nearly akin to the Brythonic dialects, we are entirely in the dark as to the manner in which that language was ousted by the Goidelic speech of the Dalriadic Scots. In view of the comparatively unimportant part played for a considerable period in Scottish affairs by the colony from Ireland, it is well-nigh incredible that Pictish should have been supplanted by Gaelic.

Authorities.—J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (London², 1905), The Welsh People (London3, 1902), “The Language and Inscriptions of the Northern Picts,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1892); H. Zimmer, “Das Mutterrecht der Pikten,” in Savignys Zeitschrift (1895); also trans. by G. Henderson in Leabhar nan Gleann (Inverness, 1898); W.F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1876); A. Macbain in appendix to reprint of Skene’s Highlanders of Scotland (Stirling, 1902); A. Macbain, “Ptolemy’s Geography of Scotland,” in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, xviii. 267-288; W. Stokes, Bezzenbergers Beiträge, xviii. 267 ff.; H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Les Druides et les dieux celtiques à forme d’animaux (Paris, 1906). The various theories have been recently reviewed and criticized by T. Rice Holmes in an appendix to his Caesar’s Invasion of Britain (London, 1907).

IV. History of Celtic Philology.—For many centuries the affinities of the Celtic languages were the subject of great dispute. The languages were in turn regarded as descended from Hebrew, Teutonic and Scythian. The first attempt to treat the dialects comparatively was made by Edward Lhuyd in his Archaeologia Britannica (Oxford, 1707), but the work of this scholar seems to have remained unnoticed. A century later Adelung in Germany divided the dialects into true Celtic (= Goidelic) and Celtic influenced by Teutonic (= Brythonic). But it took scholars a long time to recognize that these languages belonged to the Indo-European family. Thus they were excluded by Bopp in his comparative grammar, though he did not fail to notice certain resemblances between Celtic and Sanskrit. James Pritchard was the first to demonstrate the true relationship of the group in his Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations (London, 1831), but his conclusions were not accepted. As late as 1836 Pott denied the Indo-European connexion. A year later Pictet resumed Pritchard’s arguments, and Bopp himself in 1838 admitted the languages into the charmed circle, showing in an able paper entitled Über die keltischen Sprachen that the initial mutations were due to the influence of terminations now lost. But it was reserved to a Bavarian historian, J.C. Zeuss (1806-1856), to demonstrate conclusively the Indo-European origin of the Celtic dialects. Zeuss, who may worthily rank with Grimm and Diez among the greatest German philologists, rediscovered the Old Irish glosses on the continent, and on them he reared the magnificent structure which goes by his name. The Grammatica Celtica was first published in 1853. The material contained in this monumental work was greatly extended by a series of important publications by Whitley Stokes and Hermann Ebel, so much so that the latter was commissioned to prepare a second edition, which appeared in 1871. Stokes has rendered the greatest service to the cause of Celtic studies by the publication of countless texts in Irish, Cornish and Breton. In 1870 the Revue celtique (vol. xxviii. in 1908) was founded by Henri Gaidoz, whose mantle later fell upon H. d’Arbois de Jubainville. In 1879 E. Windisch facilitated the study of Irish by publishing a grammar of Old Irish, and a year later a volume of important Middle Irish texts with an exhaustive glossary, the first of its kind. Since then Windisch and Stokes have collaborated to bring out some of the greatest monuments of Irish literature in the series of Irische Texte. The text of the Würzburg glosses was published by Zimmer (1881) and by Stokes (1887), and that of the Milan glosses by Ascoli. An important step forward was the discovery of the laws of the Irish accent made simultaneously by Zimmer and Thurneysen. This discovery led to a thorough investigation of the difficult verb system of Old Irish—a task which has largely occupied the attention of Strachan in England, Thurneysen and Zimmer in Germany, and Pedersen and Sarauw in Denmark. In a sense the publication of the Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (Cambridge, 1901-1903) may be regarded as marking the close of this epoch. The older stages of Irish have hitherto so monopolized the energies of scholars that other departments of Celtic philology save Breton have been left in large measure unworked. J. Strachan had begun to tap the mine of the Old Welsh poems when his career was cut short by death. J. Loth and E. Ernault have concentrated their attention on Breton, and can claim that the development of the speech of Brittany has been more thoroughly investigated than that of any other Celtic language. The number of periodicals devoted entirely to Celtic studies has increased considerably of recent years. In 1896 K. Meyer and L. C. Stern founded the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie (now in its 7th volume), and in 1897 the Archiv für celtische Lexikographie began to appear under the direction of K. Meyer and W. Stokes. As a supplement to the latter Meyer has been publishing his invaluable contributions to Middle Irish lexicography. In Ireland a new periodical styled Ériu was started by the Irish School of Learning in 1904. The Scottish Celtic Review, dealing more particularly with Scottish and Irish Gaelic, began to appear in 1903, and the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness are in the 26th volume. For Wales we have Y Cymmrodor since 1877, and the Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion since 1892, and for Brittany the Annales de Bretagne, published by the Faculty of Letters at Rennes (founded 1886).

See V. Tourneur, Esquisse d’une histoire des études celtiques (Liége, 1905).

(E. C. Q.)