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Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall First Series
In the 19th century William Bottrell compiled three volumes of Cornish folklore, legends and historical tales. This is the first book in that series. Bottrell tells stories of giants, mermaids, and a gallery of Cornish fairies including the spriggan, bucca, and the knackers, the earth elementals who live in the tin-mines. He also describes Cornish folk magic, and folklore about witches. The style is idiomatic, and the episodic stories are told with touches of dialect and localized in specific places in Cornwall.
- GenresNonfictionFolklore
287 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1870
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November 24, 2021
This book is a great bit of history and folklore, effectively like Grimm's Fairy Tales of Cornwall.
Collected and compiled by the author of old 'drolls' - stories told in bardic manner by drollers, professional story tellers, a practice which was dying out when the author was writing in the mid-late 1800's. At the time there were still a few people speaking and writing in Cornish and although most of the book is in Cornish-English dialect by it's very nature it is littered with language words and phrases, even more so then than today. The author also displays a comprehension of Cornish language phrases and placenames and many of the stories have been lifted into English from Cornish at some point not too long before the author takes them down.
Some of the stories hark back to the days of different races of giants, men and elves which links Cornish traditions with the Celtic migration/invasion stories of Wales and Ireland whereby men arrive and displace the tus vean, the little people and the kowri, the giants. These legends are among the earliest Celtic tales and are folk memories of the celtic/indo-european invasion of the islands of Britain and Ireland when a new people/culture displaced the pre-existing non-indo-european people and exiled them to the more barren places, the moor tops and mountains, here they eventually died out/amalgamated with the new arrivals but their memory became immortalised in these stories.
Other stories are evidently of more modern origin, medieval and early modern period, some involving crusaders, others pirates, smugglers and barbary corsairs, all tell us something of our past.
Unfortunately being a work of it's time, there is a very small amount of prejudicial language against other races and cultures - as a warning to anyone who might be offended, this is a facsimile reproduction but the publishers could perhaps blank the words out.
Collected and compiled by the author of old 'drolls' - stories told in bardic manner by drollers, professional story tellers, a practice which was dying out when the author was writing in the mid-late 1800's. At the time there were still a few people speaking and writing in Cornish and although most of the book is in Cornish-English dialect by it's very nature it is littered with language words and phrases, even more so then than today. The author also displays a comprehension of Cornish language phrases and placenames and many of the stories have been lifted into English from Cornish at some point not too long before the author takes them down.
Some of the stories hark back to the days of different races of giants, men and elves which links Cornish traditions with the Celtic migration/invasion stories of Wales and Ireland whereby men arrive and displace the tus vean, the little people and the kowri, the giants. These legends are among the earliest Celtic tales and are folk memories of the celtic/indo-european invasion of the islands of Britain and Ireland when a new people/culture displaced the pre-existing non-indo-european people and exiled them to the more barren places, the moor tops and mountains, here they eventually died out/amalgamated with the new arrivals but their memory became immortalised in these stories.
Other stories are evidently of more modern origin, medieval and early modern period, some involving crusaders, others pirates, smugglers and barbary corsairs, all tell us something of our past.
Unfortunately being a work of it's time, there is a very small amount of prejudicial language against other races and cultures - as a warning to anyone who might be offended, this is a facsimile reproduction but the publishers could perhaps blank the words out.
Displaying 1 of 1 review