The service in Cornish last Sunday at Towednack Church is
a feather in the cap of " Tyr Tavas," the Young Cornish society. They managed a full trans- lation of the Anglican evensong, with lessons and sermon ; and four readers besides the Vicar took part. I wonder, however, how many worshippers could have followed what was read, if they had not studied it before in print or MS. Modern literary Cornish is an extremely artificial product ; for original Cornish literature, written down while the language lived, is very meagre and. piecemeal. The tongue used last Sunday has been reconstructed from these fragments much as a palaeontologist recon- structs an extinct monster from its bones; by reference, chiefly, to its nearest living analogue, which is Breton. But when. One thinks of the ebbing of Welsh, despite its splendid literature and its living hold at the beginning of this century over a really large population which used it for all modern purposes, can one really hope much from a Cornish revival ? Welsh declines in spite of every sort of political, religious, and educational propping- up. Why ? Because the young Welsh boy or girl finds English a better language for " getting on." That was what killed Cornish before, and it is likely to keep it dead now. It seems a mistake to tie a revival of Cornwall's " soul " to an impracticable resurrection of her language.
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