John Davey or Davy (1812–1891) was a Cornish farmer who was one of the last people with some traditional knowledge of the

Cornish language Cornish (Standard Written Form: or ) , is a Southwestern Brittonic language, Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family. It is a List of revived languages, revived language, having become Extinct language, extinct as a livin ...

.Bruxelles, Simon de (21 May 2008)
"After centuries, Cornish agree how to speak their language"
''The Times''. According to

Henry Jenner Henry Jenner (8 August 1848 – 8 May 1934) was a British scholar of the Celtic languages, a Cornish cultural activist, and the chief originator of the Cornish language revival. Jenner was born at St Columb Major on 8 August 1848. He was the ...

, the level of his ability in the language is unclear, but was probably restricted to a few words and phrases.Jenner, p. 23. A song attributed to Davey's memory, the "

Cranken Rhyme The "Cranken Rhyme" is a Cornish language, Cornish-language song known by farmer John Davey (Cornish speaker), John Davey or Davy (1812–1891), who was one of the last people with some knowledge of the tongue. It was recorded by J. Hobson Matthew ...

", is not known from any earlier source and is notable as possibly one of the last survivals of Cornish literary tradition.

History

Davey lived in the hamlet of

Boswednack Boswednack is a hamlet in the parish of Zennor near the north coast of the Penwith peninsula in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is located along the B3306 road southwest of Zennor. Boswednack was home to a small community of Cornish spea ...

Zennor Zennor is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish includes the villages of Zennor, Boswednack and Porthmeor and the hamlet of Treen (Zennor), Treen. Zennor lies on the north coast, ...

parish. A farmer who served as a

schoolmaster The word schoolmaster, or simply master, refers to a male school teacher. This usage survives in British independent schools, both secondary and preparatory, and a few Indian boarding schools (such as The Doon School) that were modelled after B ...

in Zennor for a period,Ellis, p. 129. he reputedly learned his Cornish from his father.Matthews, p. 404. He died in 1891, aged 79, taking his knowledge with him.

John Hobson Matthews John Hobson Matthews (1858–1914) was a Roman Catholic historian, archivist and solicitor. Biography John Hobson Matthews was born in Croydon in 1858, to Emma Hobson from Great Grimsby and his father from St. Ives. He attended schools in Black ...

mentions Davey in his ''History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack, and Zennor'', published in 1892, the year after Davey's death. In a chapter discussing Cornish and the evidence of its late survival in the region, Matthews indicates that Davey had had some knowledge of the tongue, could decipher local Cornish placenames, and could "converse on a few simple topics in the ancient language". However, he records only one example of Davey's speech, and is unclear as to whether he had heard Davey speak in person, or was relying on second-hand accounts. Additionally, while Davey's reputation as a receptacle of Cornish was well known in the area, none of his neighbours or descendants learned or recorded any of it. As such it is difficult to judge the accuracy of Matthews' claims or to gauge how much knowledge of the tongue Davey might actually have had. Davey is known to have had a copy of

William Pryce William Pryce (baptised 1735–1790) was a British medical man, known as an antiquary, a promoter of the Cornish language and a writer on mining in Cornwall. Life He was the son of Dr. Samuel Pryce of Redruth in Cornwall, and Catherine Hill; Wi ...

's 1790 Cornish work ''Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica'', which he inherited from his father. As such it is possible that he acquired some part of his Cornish through studying – or memorising – Pryce. However, the piece of Cornish recorded by Matthews, the song known as the "

", does not appear in Pryce or any other known text, showing that he had some "original" Cornish that he may indeed have learned traditionally from his father. As such he is an important figure in the study of Cornish in its last stages, along with

Chesten Marchant Longevity myths are traditions about long-lived people (generally supercentenarians), either as individuals or groups of people, and practices that have been believed to confer longevity, but for which current scientific evidence does not suppo ...

(died 1676) and

Dolly Pentreath Dorothy Pentreath (16 May 1692 aptised– 26 December 1777) was a fishwife from Mousehole, Cornwall, England. She is the best-known of the last fluent speakers of the Cornish language. She is also often credited as the last known native spea ...

(died 1777), judged by various scholars to be the last

monoglot Monoglottism (Greek μόνος ''monos'', "alone, solitary", + γλῶττα , "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. ...

and

native speakers A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

of Cornish respectively. Matthews could make nothing of the "Cranken Rhyme", regarding it as seemingly a "mere jumble of place-names.". However,

Robert Morton Nance Robert Morton Nance (1873–1959) was a British writer and leading authority on the Cornish language, a nautical archaeologist, and joint founder of the Old Cornwall Society. Nance wrote many books and pamphlets on the Cornish language, inclu ...

amended Matthews' spelling into a comprehensible form, and offered a translation. By Nance's emendation, the song is a brief piece of humour, comparing the fertility of the rocky fields of Cranken unfavourably to a road. A memorial plaque at Zennor church was erected by the St Ives

Old Cornwall Society The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (FOCS) was formed in 1924, on the initiative of Robert Morton Nance, with the objective of collecting and maintaining "all those ancient things that make the spirit of Cornwall — its traditions, its old ...

. The inscription describes Davey as "the last to possess any traditional considerable knowledge of the Cornish Language", and contains a Cornish quotation from the

Book of Proverbs The Book of Proverbs ( he, מִשְלֵי, , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different ...

: "The words of wise men are as a deep pool, a flowing stream – a fountain of life". There is some evidence that at least three individuals with some knowledge of Cornish outlived John Davey: Jacob Care of St Ives (d. 1892); Elizabeth Vingoe of Higher Boswarva, Madron (d. 1903 and who taught at least some Cornish to her son); and John Mann, who was interviewed in his St Just home by Richard Hall (Elizabeth Vingoe's nephew) in 1914, when Mann was 80. He told Hall that, when a child in Boswednack, Zennor, he and several other children always conversed in Cornish while at play together. This would have been around 1840–1850. They would certainly have known Cornish speaker Anne Berryman (1766–1854), also of Boswednack.

Notes

References

*Bruxelles, Simon de (21 May 2008)
"After centuries, Cornish agree how to speak their language"
''The Times''. * Ellis, Peter Berresford (1974)
The Cornish language and its literature''
p. 129. * Jenner, Henry (1904
''A Handbook of the Cornish Language''
* Matthews, John Hobson (1892)
''A History of the Parishes of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor: in the County of Cornwall''
E. Stock. * * Nance, Robert Morton
"John Davey of Boswednack and his Cornish Rhyme".
''The Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall'', vol. XXII (1922–25), pp. 146–153. *Shield, L. (1984) "Unified Cornish–-Fiction or Fact? an examination of the death & resurrection of the Cornish language", in: ''Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development'', 5 (3 & 4), pp. 329–337

External links

Picture of Davey memorial stone at Zennor
(Cornwall in Focus website)

– website on writing systems & languages of the world (this page on the Cornish Language has Davey as the last Cornish speaker) {{DEFAULTSORT:Davey, John 1812 births 1891 deaths Farmers from Cornwall Cornish language Cornish-speaking people Last known speakers of a language People from Zennor