High Tide Jangye-ryn
Also known as Dollar cove owing to the wreck of a 17th century ship that has yielded some silver coins over the years.
The geology here is of special interest with the contorted strata of the clif...
Jangye-ryn
The curiously named Jangye-ryn, located just around the corner from Gunwalloe beach on the Lizard Peninsula.
I believe there are some interesting geological formations somewhere here....
Poldhu Cove Panorama
Poldhu Cove on the Lizard Peninsula.
This wasn't even low tide and there was too much beach to fit on one photo (this is 3 stitched together).
Poldhu is perhaps best known for being the site of G...
Summer Field
Dandelions on a field on a summer's day...
Here I am, complete with white charger, riding to the rescue (makes a change from the pub at Botallack).
The place name Keverangow has been interpreted in some really weird ways, as some have shown in the bove posts. "Goats all" was one such! As Keith has said, it merely means "Hundreds" and was the site of a boundary stone on the Penwith/Kerrier boundary and where four parishes also met (Chacewater, St Day,St Agnes and Redruth). The spot is close to the motel at Scorrier.
It was Assa Govranckowe in 1580, Kierancoe 1613, Keverancowe 1617, Gevar Ancho 1673, Kyver Ankou c1720 and Kyver Ancou 1790. The earliest one has the word Aswa, aswy, "gap, pass".
The word turns up again on the Mount's Bay coast close to Prussia Cove where the rock marked on modern maps as "The Enys" was, in 1580, called Meenkeverangow ("Hundreds stone"). This is the seaward end of the Germoe-St Hilary parish boundary, which is also the Penwith-Kerrier Hundreds boundary.
I can see where the suicide connection comes in. Traditionally, suicides were buried at crossroads in order to confuse the restless spirit which would not know which way to go should it rise from the grave. I suppose a spot where four parishes met would serve just as well.
Well marhak has responded and if the place is the meeting point of the hundreds and these hundreds were formerly 'tribal' areas then there is more here about the importance of these boundaries to 'Iron Age' and maybe later people.
Although Gevern Anko may not be boggy land I assume if a 'tribal' boundary (whether the meeting place of 2,3 or 4 boundaries) it could be a place of burial for those dying by means 'outside the norm'. How traditional is the tradition is another question.
The placename always has a K/c for ankou if it was kevrang(ow) would it not alternate... Also if it was a pass, why would you pass a hundred? surely its a smaller feature.
With your placename evidence, and the testament of Polwhelt;
I would think that Place of the dead is more fitting... also it kind of cool...
Aswy kevar ankow ~ The pass of the Dead!!!
I wonder if they've found any bodies there? Marhak want to bring your spade and will go for a dig?
Suicides were not considered worthy of burial in consecrated ground; it's actually theological nonsense but a lot of practices from that time had more to do with old traditions and superstition than theology. Suicides were also believed to be likely to rise as ghosts and were therefore often buried in obscure places or at crossroads where it was hoped they'd be too confused to nip home and haunt people.
Sounds like a case of "not in my back yard", so you put it on the boundary which is the nearest you can get to nomansland, particularly if there was some uncertainty as to exactly where the boundary ran, if it went through a marsh or wasteland.
OTOH the Celts did have a thing about boundaries, in both space and time, as being points that were neither quite this nor that, and so in some sense outside the normal framework. It's then easy to see how the idea arose that things supernatural could slip in through these cracks in reality.
Kevrang/k is supposed to be cognate with Welsh cyfranc and Irish comhrac. The words seem to have originally meant a meeting or appointment, but later usually referred to an 'encounter', i.e. a battle or dual, commonly at a ford, which would usually be on the boundary between the disputed territories, or at least in a small piece of ritual nomansland.
However the Cornish meaning of "Hundred" which I don't think is found elsewhere, suggests some sort of weopentake or local muster. Or did the sense of 'meeting (place)' originally refer to the boundaries between territories, and later get transfered to the units themselves, i.e. that which was contained withing the bounds?
Well ankow means 'death' or even 'Death' right enough, but kevar which is tentatively reconstructed from placenames, Breton and Welsh, means 'joint tillage' and so would refer to an area of arable land. It doesn't mean 'place'. Thinking further, ankow is the act, process or personification of death/dying. I don't think you'd use it to refer to 'the dead' or as the adjective 'dead' which would be marow plural possibly merow. So for example in PA we have :
Rag own kavoez | y ankow
"For fear of getting his death" i.e. being killed, but :
Ev eth dhe'n korf | o marow
"He went to the body which was dead".
If I were asked to translate "place of the dead/death" I'd come up with something like tyller an verow or marowva. It wouldn't really occur to me to use ankow, but my instincts might well be wrong. What do others think?
On a more serious note, where does Kevrangow come from, entymologically speaking?
It's extremely similar to 'kyvur ankou' and I wonder if there is any cross over of meanings?
If suicide cases were buried at crossroads/border lands then perhaps the place name would turn up more often? and perhaps Kyver ankou was confused with kevrangow or visa versa???
Also 'Meenkeverangow' would not be hard to imagine a rock at sea associated with Death? Especially on the border with association of suicides....
Kev(e)rangow cannot mean "place of death". As Morvran has said "kevar" translates as "joint tillage" and it simply would not fit (unless those who carried out the tillage worked themselves to death).
We can always compromise, though. Accept that both place-names refer to their position on the old Hundreds boundary but erect a bloody great statue at Scorrier, looking right over the A30, of the old guy with the scythe. Might even have an beneficial effect on the speed freaks (as well as scaring the hell out of the tourists)!
Oliver Padel has a workable suggestion, though. If "kev(e)rang" is analogous to Welsh <cyfranc>, "meeting, encounter, battle", Old Welsh <cibracma>, "meeting place, battlefield", Middle Breton <cuuranc>, "military assembly" and Old Irish <comrac>, battle, the Cornish <keverang, kevrang> could well have come to mean "district from which a military force could be drawn".
One of the original six hundreds was Trigg, one of our oldest recorded place-names, which was, by the time of The Life of St Sampson, "pagus tricurius", meaning "land of three war hosts". It's interesting that it was later divided into three - Trigg, Lesnewth and Stratton. Maybe Padel is right with this suggestion; it certainly makes sense.
I wonder if an argument could be made for Carn Marth, or whatever hill is nearest to the four hundreds meeting point, as the W. Cornish equivalent of Uisneach, i.e. the local omphalos (spelling?) or geopolitical 'navel'. Any evidence/tradition of gatherings there in ancient times?
There are Bronze Age barrows on Carn Marth but nothing that distinguishes it from any other hill top. How about the huge Neolithic complex on Carn Brea?
It is likely that the people who wrote the place-name as two words, spelling ankow with c or k rather than with g, believed that the name contained the word ankow. This is folk-etymology. They did not know the word keverangow. We know much more about Celtic linguistics than they did.
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