Page:A handbook of the Cornish language; Chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature.djvu/28

Rh apparently further than Welsh in that direction, while Breton still retains the u. Like Welsh, it retained the th and dh sounds which Breton, in nearly all its dialects, has changed into z, though these in Cornish, like the guttural gh, and v or f, showed a tendency to drop off and become silent, especially as finals. In vocabulary Cornish follows Breton more closely than Welsh, though there are cases where in its choice of words it agrees with the latter, and cases in which it is curiously impartial. An instance of the last is the common adjective good. The ordinary Welsh word is da, though mad (Gaelic math) does exist. In Breton mad is the regular word, though da is used as a noun in the sense of satisfaction or contentment (da eo gant-han, good is with him = he is pleased). In Cornish da and mas are used about equally. As an instance of the first, bras, which in Welsh means. fat, gross, is the more common Cornish and Breton word for large or great, though mêr (mur, meur) in Cornish, and meur in Breton, the equivalents of the Welsh mawr, are also used. In grammatical forms Cornish almost invariably in cases where Welsh and Breton differ follows the latter, but, as in vocabulary, it sometimes has also ways of its own.

Except for the existence of Cornish names in the Bodmin Gospels, and in Domesday Book and one or two early charters, and of the Cornish vocabulary in the Cottonian Library, the earliest mention of the Cornish as differentiated from any other British language that has been as yet discovered occurs in Cott. MS. Vesp. A. xiv., in the British Museum (the volume in which the said vocabulary is included), in a Latin life of St. Cadoc. This speaks of St. Michael's Mount being called, " in the idiom of that province," Dinsol (or the Mount of the Sun).

Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the latter part of the