"JEWS IN COfeNWALL"; AND "MARAZION." 335 



and so to countenance the so-called " historical legends of Jews 

 settled in the county of Cornwall." 



In these last quoted words, the Professor condemns those who 

 would make Market Jew=^Jetv-Market. " No real Cornishman," he 

 says, " would ever have taken Marcliadiew " in this way. " The 

 name for Jew in Cornish is quite different." But real Cornishmen 

 have so taken it. The common, vulgar, general name for the 

 place is Market Jew * — (Marazion was seldom heard in the neigh- 

 bourhood till the Railway Station was opened), and the street in 

 Penzance leading towards it is called Market Jew street. This is 

 considered by most Cornishmen as a proof of the truth of the 

 tradition that Jews have been connected with the place ; and Dr, 

 Borlase, a genuine Cornishman, would make even Marazion have 

 the same meaning, making it^:^3IargJm DzJmoii, which would= 

 Marghas Edzhuon— -the latter part being one of the admissible 

 plural forms of Ezoio, a Jew. And further, in an old Fisherman's 

 Catch printed in a former Number of this Journal,f we have : 



" on a poble en Porthia ha Maraz joioan " ; 



which, strictly rendered, is : " All the people in St. Ives port and 

 the market of the Jew," — an, the individualizing particle, being 

 used as a termination instead of on, the plural termination. 



Then with regard to the name for Jew in Cornish. The forms 

 recognized by Professor Max MiiUer are : " Edhoiv, Yedhow, 

 Yudhoio, corrupted likewise into Ezow ; plural, Yedhewon, &c." 

 This " &c." includes a great variety of forms. J Of course, " Jew," 

 in whatever language found, is a foreign word, modified from the 



or others fancied they saw in the sunny, rocky, pyramidal hill some resem- 

 blance to " the holy hill of Zion." Gesenius derives p1\^ from |°J1\^, tzayah, 



T T 



to be sunny. Others make the word mean " a heap of rocks." Either of 

 these etymologies would apply to S. Michael's Mount ; and Marazion would 

 be the market (maraz) near this Zion. • 



* This mode of dividing the name is not modern. In the Public Eecord 

 Office I found a deed, 5 Edward IV, in which Laurencius Goldsmyth, de 

 Marghas loiu, was stated to be seized of 10 messuages and 100 acres of land 

 in the town of Bodman. The spelling of the last named place is also inter- 

 esting, as affording some countenance to the derivation of Bodmin from Bod- 

 manach, " The monk's house." 



f Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, No. V, p. 14. 



X See Note at p. 334. 



