SIXTH ORDINARY MEETING, AT 
Isaac Taylor, in his “ Words and Places,” affirms that the word 
Cornwall or Cornwales signifies the country of the Weish, or strangers: 
of the horn. Cornwall may be regarded as a compound of corn, a 
Cornish word signifying horn, and waller a stranger. The origin 
of the term corn or horn may be discovered in the peculiar form of 
Cornwall, running as it does like a horn into the sea. Cernow is the 
Cornish word for Cornwall, and Cernewec and Kernnak for Cornish, 
e.g., Metten da dha why: elo why clapier Kernnak: good morning 
to you, can you speak Cornish! Max Miiller, who has evidently 
bestowed great attention on the language and antiquities of Corn- 
wall, thus writes in his “ Chips from a German Workshop ” (Vol. 3, 
pp. 242, 247): ‘‘The Cornish language is no doubt extinct, if by 
extinct we mean that it is no longer spoken by the people. But in 
the names of towns, castles, rivers, mountains, fields, manors and 
families, Cornish lives on and probably will live on for many years to 
come. More than four hundred years of Roman occupation, more: 
than six hundred years of Saxon and Danish sway, a Norman con- 
quest, a Saxon reformation, and civil wars, have all passed over 
the land, but like a tree that may bend before a storm but is not to 
be rooted up ; the language of the Celts of Cornwall has lived on in 
an unbroken continuity for at least two thousand years.” Norris, 
the editor of the ancient Cornish Drama, is of opinion that the 
Cymric was separated from the Gaelic before the division into Cor- 
nish and Welsh was effected, and that Cornish is the representative 
of a language once current all over South Britain at least. The 
author of the article on ‘“‘ Celtic Literature” in the Encyclopedia 
Lritannica writes that “among the British dialects, the most archaic, 
v. €., the one which best represents the British branch, is Cornish, 
which is the descendant of the speech of the unromanized Britons 
of England.” 
So very numerous are the Celtic words in the Topography of Corn- 
wall, that, in his Glossary of Cornish names, Dr. Bannister asserts 
that there are 20,000 Celtic and other names. Owing to the diffi- 
culty as well as the uncertainty which must of necessity obtain 
in arriving at the true derivation of so many words, Bannister has 
with commendable modesty adopted as his motto the expressive: 
language of Horace :— 
‘* Si quid rectius istis 
Candidus imperti: si non his utere mecum.” 
