Beach Ices at Praa Sands
Ice meeting the sand at the base of the low cliff behind Praa Sands Beach, West Cornwall. 6th January 2009....
Icicles at Trewellard Bottoms
Water seeping through a wall is turned to icicles, ate Trewellard Bottoms, where Geevor Mine meets the sea....
Winter Sunset at Levant
A late afternoon scene, at Levant Mine, West Cornwall. 7th January 2009....
Winter at Levant
The old electricity generator building, at Levant Mine, West Cornwall, during the recent cold snap. 7th Jnauary 2009....
Fine, but why keep the blue dresses, fail to support (and arguably undermine) cornish interests that aren't language or high art (elitist) focussed, provide a focus to cornishness that ostrcises normal cornish people away from the political and social cornish groups where their involvement would be welcomed.
Its funny how those outside the cliche think that the Gorsedh is past its sell by date and more often than not counterproductive, and those pissing out of the tent think it is the zenith and be all and end of cornishness (which is clearly is not)
The cornish movement needs to be a united poltical social movement rather than the disperate group of organisations that currently exist. I blame the Gorsedh for creating this disperateness through their inherently elitist attitude.
To quote ' I won't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member'
I hope that you enjoy watching the normal cornish become more and more english as you waste time and resources looking in at your clique whilst cornwall is destroyed at the socioeconomic level.
Mk is not better in this regard, so poor as a political party are they that they poll less in a general election than individual independents do in county council election. Wrong poeople wrong policies, but thats a different thread. A hollow but charasmatic politician is much more likely to be successful than 'strong' policy politician (see NuLab Blair versus Brown), find the future cornish Blairs (I wager that they would be found in rugby and gig clubs and not in language classes).
Lets remember just because individuals are committed, intellectual, finacially or personally, it doesn't mean they are more right than those that aren't.
edited by: IrishJack, Jul 23, 2008 - 03:41 PM
But I'm starting to think that it won't for us cornish, no unity, no leadership, but lots of factions, backbiting and esoteric language drivel
The Bureaucracy needs to expand to meet the needs of the Bureaucracy
There are some fine people who are members of the Gorsedh, but the Gorsedh as an organisation seems to have lost the plot a few decades ago. It's now just a cultural Jurassic park where the dinosaurs roam. It also (possibly because they've never really thought about it much) gives off the image of Cornishness and the Cornish language being associated with elitism, incomprehensible ritual, and some imaginary past full of druids and celtic myst. Unfortunatly the sort of people who buy into that image would have no time for the Gorsedh.
IMO they've done much to undermine the language tool.
Seventy Percent of "competent & frequent" Cornish users prefer to write KK! (MAGA/CLP Survey)
Perhaps those bards with balls should send back their badges and relinquish their "Status" as a protest ?
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Where there's a Negative - there's always a Positive. You just have to find it.
In my experience groups and organisations usually continue for years, even generations, long after they've ceased to have any relevence to the world at large. That's fine if that's what turns them on. However if they intend to continue to hold public ceremonies which are supposed to symbolise Cornish language, culture and identity then they need to put on a show we can all be proud of, rather than something that makes us cringe. An event fit for the C21, not something out of the 1930's smelling of mothballs and poor amature dramatics. Basically if you're going to do something that viewed dispassionately is a bit silly and goes against normal expectations, (like say suggesting that Cornwall isn't an English county and that it has its own language -- I mean what planet are some people living on?) then the only way to carry it off is with total confidence and real style. The Welsh Gorsedd manages this and is a credit to that nation, although to achieve that end they've needed to continually re-invent themselves. The Cornish Gorsedh however appears to lack the necessary creativity.
Admitting bards with no Cornish. Exceptions might be made for very distinguished people who have contributed substantially to Cornish life and culture, but these should be clearly distinguished as "honorary" awards (like honorary degrees) and should not give the recipient any say in the running of the organisation. If they have regalia that too should be distinctive. In Wales the only exception afaik to the language rule is for royalty.
Traditionally bards were the class who retained and safeguarded the nation's history, law, literature and culture. Originally this was unwritten and coded in verse to make it easier to remember (or at least to make it easy to spot mistakes!) We should probably not take this too literally now, (although nearly all that's been preserved of the Cornish Language has been preserved in verse, and how many so-called bards could recite even five minutes' worth, I wonder?) Nevertheless, being a bard implies some sort of skill in the language, written or spoken. Admitting bards with no Cornish at all makes a complete mockery of the entire concept and reduces the whole event to a kid's game of dressing-up.
Since most bards know sweet Fanny Adams about the language, the Gorsedh failed to give the Cornish Language Board (it's own creation, a group that does consist of Cornish speakers and which conducts almost all of its business in Cornish) unqualified support when the language was reformed around twenty years ago. This undermined the credibility of the Kesva as the elected governing body of the language. The Gorsedh has continued to serve as a breeding ground for the 'Dinosaurs' who oppose the development of Cornish as a workable modern language, prefering to see it only as a ceremonial plaything. The recent delays in bringing Cornish into public use have been largely due to such reactionary forces appearing to have a much higher profile than their numbers warrant. For this the Gorsedh is at least partly to blame.
Take no notice of this. If you are a Bard wear your robes with pride,and ignore the minority on this website who have nothing better to do other than whinge about anything they don't or won't make an effort to understand. Morvran is a member of the Kesva, who contrary to his own belief does not own the language. He is unable to accept that the language is the heritage of the people of Cornwall, and whether one is a beginner or fluent each person matters.
The Cornish people threw their language into the garbage bin a few hundred years ago. It belongs to those who have worked hard to retrieve the remains and put them back into some sort of usable shape. This is the hard truth that most of you can't accept. If you think we've done it wrong then the original sources are more available now (thanks to the internet) than they've ever been. If you want the language back (and without it Cornwall is just another English county) then you've got to work to get it back, or at the very least support rather than undermine those who are doing that. It's taken 100 years to go from 'extinct' to 'seriously endangered' and there's a very very long way still to go. It works in stages. But the danger is that each stage gets institutionalised and then becomes a barrier to further progress. Cornish used to be taught as a 'dead language' like Latin, to be spoken haltingly and badly on special occasions. The Gorsedh is a relic of those days. For the last 30 or so years it's been taught as a 'modern language' that people expect to use informally once in a while, like the Italian/Spanish etc people learn to use (maybe) on holiday. Now we need to break out of that mold and push a little further. What's the next logical step and who's going to make the effort to impliment it? Not the Gorsedh I shouldn't think.
morvran, whilst the language may well have been in a state of near limbo, it was never thrown "into the garbage bin", it remained ours. It was, whilst not used for everyday communication, as such, still very much part of us. It was/is still there in our place names, it was/is still there in our surnames, in our dialect to a degree, and, I am told, in the way we phrase our sentences and questions etc.
In my shed, there are many things, tools etc, that I have not used for a considerable time, and will probably never use again, like the screwdriver I reshaped to assist in replacing the windscreen on an old Moggie 1,000, but they are still mine, they belong to me. Much like our language, the fact that "we" did not use it very much, does not change the fact that it is still "ours".
For the work that all those people who worked to get the language to where it is today, "we" are grateful, but that work does not make the language theirs. To suggest so is somewhat an elitist argument. It is on a par with saying that the chap down the street who is doing up an old Moggie 1,000, and borrows my adapted screwdriver to replace his windscreen, now owns my screwdriver because he cleaned the rust off it, and tightened the handle. It is like saying that Calculus belongs to the heirs of Sir Isac Newton, perhaps we should all pay those heirs royalties for every time that calculus is used today.
Does history belong to the historians, and archaeologists, as much of that which the archaeologists dig up, was literally stuff that we threw "into the garbage bin", or does our history belong to us.
Your claim that the language belongs only to those who have "worked" on it, or those who have had the time and ability to learn it, is not only false, but is an insult to them, as I am sure that, at least most of them, did not do such work in order to claim possession of the language, a language that most of them already "owned" by simply being Cornish.
I think that it is you who is unable to accept "hard" truths. If the only reason you learnt, and did any "work" on, the language, was to be able to lay claim to it, then I am afraid you wasted your time. It belongs to the Cornish people, whether they use it or not, it's theirs, all of them, all of us. If you are Cornish, it already belonged to you, your work, learning, or use, does not make it any more yours, or any less mine.
And that's the truth.
Kernow Kensa!
Our day will come!
"Everyone has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something."
No it didn't "remain yours", your ancestors chucked away your birthright. Otherwise they'd have spoken it to their kids when they were young enough to pick it up naturally, and they to their kids, and so on, and you'd be a native speaker and we wouldn't be having this argument, ni a via ow tisputya neppyth arall y'n yeth arall heb dhowt y'n kas.
When a ship goes down there's quite a lot of flotsum. Some might get salvaged and put to good use. And it's just the same with a language. Maybe you mended your shed door with a plank from the Lusitania, but that doesn't make your shed a transatlantic liner. The plank has a new use in a different context, it's origin is only of historical interest. If you call your shed a 'crow' that word is of Cornish origin, but it doesn't mean you're speaking Cornish. It's a bit of flotsum from when the language went down that's been salvaged and given a new use in a different context. It's now an English (dialect) word, just as 'spaghetti' and 'karate' are now English words. Their origins are of historical interest only, and kids learn them without knowing or caring where they came from. If they do the job, one word is as good as another in a living language.
Same for local placenames. They've been English names ever since Cornish was ditched. They're based (more or less) on older Cornish language names in many cases, although the experts will debate for weeks over exactly what they might have been. But then 'London', 'York', 'Carlisle', 'Dover', 'Lyon' and many many more names are all P-Celtic in origin, what's so special about 'Cornish names' (i.e. English language place names in Cornwall)?
It's comforting and possibly inspiring to fool yourself that the English spoken in Cornwall contains traces of the language. It may do, some of the old Penwith speech, the intonation perhaps, but how many people alive today have heard that? The academic view is that there's no proof either way. Most of the characteristics of W. Cornish English can be accounted for by the Cornish learning the 'posh' English of their 'betters' a few hundred years ago, rather than getting it from their neighbours further East. That's the truth, all the rest is wishful thinking.
I wish it were different, but it ain't. It would have been nice if the Newlyn School had collected a bit of Cornish folklore in Cornish from the 'peasants' instead of writing to one another about the price of pilchards. Bodinar, the last real fluent speaker we can name, left us a dozen of so lines in exchange for a few bottles of beer. Wouldn't you have bought that man an brewry! These days linguists will literally work for months with 'last speakers' and use all their skills to draw out ever last trace of a doomed language. Nobody bothered for Cornish. The antiquarian gentlemen were satisified with a few specimen samples. Pity, but we can't do anything about it. We have to accept that we have what we have and make the best possible use of it.
Certainly trying to deny that the language went won't bring it back again. There is some political milage in stressing continuity -- I'll grant you that. But when it comes to actually reviving the language, the first stage has to be to admit that it was lost, and that if you want to learn it you'll have to approach it as a 'foreign' language. Sorry, it's obviously not your fault. Maybe your ancestors thought it was for the best. Who knows. The thing is it happened. The language died. Now it's being reborn. That's amazing, we should be an inspiration to all the other 'lost' languages that are trying to revive themselves from written records, Cornish is better off than some.
Tools in your shed. (Why do we keep getting back to sheds?) If you inherited a set of craft tools from your grandfather they'd be no more than ornaments unless the skills involved in that craft had been passed down too. Odds and ends of language are no more than quaint collectors' items without the skills needed to communicate in that language. Saying 'spaghetti' every few days isn't speaking Italian. Saying 'crow' and 'morgy' once in a while isn't speaking Cornish.
If you want to 'own' (i.e. be able to use and make sensible decisions about) calculus, then you will have to take (or have taken in the past) some maths lessons. If you want to 'own' the Cornish language, then you'll have to study the language with people who've already done the groundwork. Or maybe spend another 100 years reinventing the wheel. You don't own it automatically, it was never yours, the cupboard was bare. Why, because somewhere back in the depth of time your ancestors broke the golden thread and the inheritance of milenia was lost in a single generation. Tragic! But that's how it goes. At least enough remained in written records for a decent reconstruction to be possible. Not every nation has such luck.
As a complete aside, that of course is all relative. When George Orwell was shot clean through the neck in the Spanish Civil War, and the bullet somehow missed all the vital arteries etc., everyone said he must be the luckiest man alive. However he thought he would have been luckier still if the bullet had missed him altogether! Same with Cornish. We're lucky to have enough remaining to revive the language credibly, but we'd have been much luckier if your ancestors had just done what most of humanity does all the time as a matter of course -- passed their native language down to the next generation. But they didn't they threw it away. And lucky for you, for all of us, somebody took the trouble to "gather up all the fragments".
I don't know who owns history. Seems to me every generation and every nation, and every historian rewrites history to suit their own needs and prejudices. But then every nation and every movement if it's to continue to live and grow has to keep reinventing itself. And Gorseth Kernow, which is where we started, has very clearly failed to do that. Indeed the Kesva may now be going the same way. The Kesva is associated with Cornish as a 'Modern Language' that people go to night classes to learn, take exams in etc. (Is it coincidental that more than half its members seem to be schoolteachers?) Fine, but we reached that plateau some time ago. What comes next?
People become fluent, with a few exceptions, when they find themselves living near to other Cornish speakers, so they get to speak Cornish outside classes and special events. So who is going to build clusters of speakers that can act as focal points for growth? Who is going to organise summer schools and kids camps to get the language out of the bloody classroom? Who's going to put up the money for Cornwal's equivalent to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, who's going to run a Cornish Wlpan so people believe they can speak the language, not just pass exams, who going to start our version of a Kohanga Reo ...
Well probably not the Gorsedh. But all these things and more will have to happen before you or your descendants can once again 'own' their own language.
HAG YNDELLA RE VO!
But don't hold your breath
edited by: morvran, Jul 26, 2008 - 10:10 PM
Seventy Percent of "competent & frequent" Cornish users prefer to write KK! (MAGA/CLP Survey)
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