Page:Cornwall (Salmon).djvu/64

 CORNWALL a distinct Celtic tongue. The Cornish tongue is a dead language ; if there are degrees of dead- ness, then Cornish is very dead, for it does not enjoy a literary existence as Latin does, and as Welsh will should it ever die. And yet the language has left living and permanent traces in Cornwall to such an extent that some know- ledge of it is necessary if one would rightly understand Cornish place-names and surnames. It belonged to the Brythonic branch of Celtic once prevalent in North Europe, and Celtic itself was a branch of the stock variously known as Japhetic, Indo-European and Aryan. We can speak with greater certainty in matters of tongue than we can of race. Celtic was not the original speech of Britain ; preceding it was that which is known as Ivernian, and which seems to have lingered longest in Ireland. Of the two main divisions of Celts, the Goidels or Gaels came first, the Brythons or Britons came later. To the Gaelic branch belong, lingually, the Irish, the Gaelic of Scotland, and the Manx ; to the British belong the Welsh, the Breton and the Cornish. The Britons, fugitive from Saxon invasion, retreated to Wales, Cornwall and Brittany ; and they brought their Brythonic tongue to parts that had previously been Goidelic. This tongue was the speech that was commonly spoken in Cornwall till the sixteenth century. In old Cornish, as in Welsh, we find many words that are akin to the Latin; but this does not prove that either of these districts were 46