V. — " Jews in Cornwall " ; ayul " Marazion." — By the Eeverend 

 John Bannister, LL.D., St. Day. 



'K' 



the April number of Macmillan's Magazine, and then proceeds 

 to treat the question as "a riddle," in solving which, in a very- 

 learned philological article, he gives a negative answer to the 

 question with which he starts. His argument is, that there is no 

 historical evidence of the migration of the Jews hither, or, of their 

 connection with the tin trade or •with the working of tin mines in 

 the county, — that the all but universal oj)inion to the contrary took 

 its rise from certain local names, and other remnants of the old 

 language of Cornwall now extinct, — and that, plausible as Hebrew 

 origins for these names, &c., may be, they may all be' explained 

 away by what he terms the metamorphic jirocess, and they are ex- 

 plained away accordingly. 



Now if it could be shewn that the Jews never had anything to 

 do with the county, — " that one single Jew " never " set foot on 

 Cornish soil," we should at once accept the proposed " solution," 

 acknowledging that words, terms, and names in the old vernacular, 

 as it died out and was overlaid v/ith a new language, would be 

 more or less modified to accommodate them to, and make them 

 significant in, the new, and that thus they may have been twisted 

 " to support facts and fictions which could be supported by no 

 other evidence." But, on the other hand, if it can be shewn, 

 with any degree of probability, that the Jews have, or may have 

 been, from time immemorial, intimately connected ^vith the county, 

 then these various words, terms, and names may not be altogether 

 explained away, but must be allowed some weight in support of 

 the time-honoured tradition. 



That there are Jews in Cornwall, "nobody can deny"; and 

 that there are families here bearing Jewish names, as Moyes or 

 Moyse=:Moses, Isaacs, Solomon, Manuel, Daniel, &c., some of them 

 also having unmistakeably Jewish features,'" is equalty certain. 



* The present worthy Mayor of Truro, Mr. Thomas Solomon, P.G.S.W. 

 of Cornwall, is an instance in point. He has a fine type of .Jewish featm-es. 

 I have his permission to publish the following extracts from a letter to me : — 



