SIXTH OKDINARY MEETING. 47 



Isaac Taylor, in his " Words and Places," affirms that the word' 

 Cornwall or Gornwales signifies the country of the Welsh, 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 Cernewee and Kernnak for Cornish, 

 e. g., Metten da dha why : elo why clapier Kernnak : good morning: 

 to you, can you speak Cornish 1 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 im 

 the names of towns, castles, rivers, mountains, fields, manoi'S 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 efiiected, 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 Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica writes that " among the British dialects, the most archaic, 

 i. e., 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 miist 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 uon his utere mecum." 



