An Introduction to Cornish Folklore on Gandolf dot Com

Cornwall

Why My Interest in Cornish Folklore?

I became interested in Cornwall because my father's side of the family is Cornish. My name Rowe is common in Cornwall. After finding some long out-of-print books on Cornwall, and especially on Cornish culture, I found that Cornish folklore is interesting, charming, and delightful on its own merits.

The Cornish are Celtic cousins of the Welsh and the Bretons; the Irish and Scots are second cousins. The Cornish and Welsh people can rightly be called Britons; the English originally were Saxon, Angle, and Jute peoples from what is now the Denmark area of Europe that invaded Britain about the sixth century, occupied the flat, fertile farmlands of east and south Britain, and drove the Welsh to the mountains of Wales and the Cornish to the highlands of Cornwall. Wales in Saxon means stranger and Cornwall in Saxon means something like strange from the headlands or stranger from the highlands

Arthur, if there was an historical figure behind the myth, was a Britain who mounted the last successful fight against the Saxons at Badon Hill leading to a twenty-five year peace until the Saxons finally secured their hold on the British plains. Arthur, King of England, is a later fabrication of a man who was probably a British warlord who fought the 'English' doggedly.

The Celts are storytellers--oral storytellers--such as the Welsh and Breton bards and the Cornish droll. The Celts rarely wrote anything-- they relied on memory and recital to tell the stories. In fact, Celtic religion forbade writing. What few Celtic books and manuscripts there were in Ireland were mostly destroyed by Saint Patrick. Celtic merchants did keep some accounts in Greek. It is difficult for us, raised in a culture that reveres written material and distrusts oral, to fully appreciate the Celtic viewpoint and total reliance on oral storytelling.

Welsh bards prepared for their craft for over twenty years and memorized perhaps a thousand poems, epics, and stories. Drolls were common storytellers; some had hundreds of stories memorized; many were itinerant storytellers. These stories were often told by firelight after supper at the hearthside--many are called hearthside tales for that reason.

Not only did the bard or droll memorize his stories, but his audience knew them by heart as well and asked for the storyteller for a specific tale. Woe to the storyteller who mistold a story. Our culture thrives on new stories and many don't want to hear the same story twice because they 'know it'. Celtic cultures are more child-like in this respect and enjoyed hearing the same story again and again. To us, the story is the plot. To the Celts, the story is the telling.

Welsh is still spoken to this day, but the Cornish had lost its language by 1795--and with that loss, the Cornish lost most of its culture. When English replaced Cornish as the language of Cornwall, the drolls' stories began to die out as the Cornish drolls died. Cornish drolls all spoke Cornish and their stories were recited in Cornish. As a result, a fraction of Cornish culture has survived to today.

What I have found are several books written by Cornishmen, and others, written in the first half or so of the 19th Century--1830 to 1865-- that preserved some of the stories that survived. Even then in the mid-nineteen century, the stories were disappearing at a noticeable rate. These stories, folklore, legend, myth, superstitions, uncanny stories, fairy tales, tall tales, and hearthside stories of common folk are Cornish culture. I saw reflections of this same culture in my father even after his family had been in this country for a generation.

My great-grandfather, James Rowe, came to this country in 1866-- just after the civil war--to flee the economic devastation of that time. Cornwall had a potato famine in the 1840's just as the Irish had, and it was equally as devastating to the working poor who lived hand-to-mouth always on the edge of ruin. My grandfather, also named James Rowe, was only a few years old when my great-grandmother Christiana Gundry Maeger Rowe and the family followed a year later when my great-grandfather could send for them.

The war between the states had heated up the American economy and this prosperity attracted many who were willing to risk giving everything up to come here. Unfortunately, the US economy deflated and crashed in 1867 leaving James Rowe and his family in similar straights to those they had left. I have traced my family from Mine Hill, New Jersey to Bethel, Pennsylvania in Mercer Counter, not Berks County) to Scranton, Kansas and finally to Auburn, Illinois where my father was born, and finally to Ottawa, Illinois, where I was born.

I have always wondered about the Cornish side of the family because my father and his brothers were definitely different from everyone else when they were together in a way difficult to pin down. I now realize that the key to understanding them is understanding Cornish culture, especially folklore and legend. What Cornish stories that do survive have a unique quality that is always light and canny that came across when my father and his brothers--my uncles-- met and kidded each other. My grandmother's side is also from Cornwall and probably Devon (the county next to Cornwall), so I was steeped by both sides in a mysterious atmosphere of Cornish dead-panned pulling-of-one's-leg.

Over time, I have collected Cornish folklore. I believe that if you read some of these stories, that you will agree with me that the Cornish have a peculiar slant to life that is charming and refreshing, with a dash of devilishness to add spice, so as to avoid a bland one-dimensionality to their culture. The Cornish had their Celtic saints, but the devil had a role to play out in Cornwall as well.

Do you have a Cornish tale or story? Please mail it to me at .
I will credit you and your source if I use it here.

Remember: If you like what you see here, you may take home Celtic jewelry or a gift of the Celtic spirit by visiting our sister website:

Celtic Jewelry and Gifts at Shop Bag End dot Com

We sell many items imported from Cornwall.

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