h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have been following this forum for a couple of years now and I thought it was about time for me to make a contribution. Since it is so central to everything else that I have to say, let me begin by stating that I am a Newfoundlander and like many Newfoundlanders I am of Devonian ancestry. For those of you who may not be that familiar with Newfoundland let me provide a little historical and cultural background.

Newfoundland was first settled in the 17th century by people mostly from the West Country. In the 17th century most of these people came from Devon but in the 18th century many settlers also came from Dorset (and to a lesser extent Somerset) and from southeastern Ireland. What attracted people to Newfoundland was the cod fishery and from the late 16th century until the early 19th century thousands of fishermen from the these places came to Newfoundland every year to catch and salt cod which they sold mostly in southwestern Europe. Many returned to the West Country and Ireland but others stayed and settled.

I don’t think a lot of people in the West Country are aware of how strongly West Country culture (and especially Devon and Dorset culture) have influence Newfoundland. In many ways our language, way of life, and traditions are more Devonian then what is to be found in many parts of Devon today. Newfoundlanders are often mistaken for people from the West Country because of their dialect.

Since I was in my teens I have been struck by the fact that although my ancestry was supposed to be “English” the culture in which I grew up was so unlike anything that one would normally think of as being English. It was really only when I went to university that I realized the many similarities between my own culture and Devonian culture. Another thing that always struck me was the many similarities between the culture of “West Country” Newfoundlanders and “Irish” Newfoundlanders. In many parts of Newfoundland today the two are so intertwined that it is hard to unravel what came from where. Since my late teens I have thought of my own ancestry as being more Celtic and/or British (in the original sense of the term) then English although I have always had a great deal of respect and affection for England and the English.

Let me give you one example of something in Newfoundland that has its origins in the Celtic West Country. In many parts of “English” Newfoundland people refer to ants as “emmets”. I grew up with this word and always wondered were it came from. It was only within the last few years that I discovered that the word is Celtic in origin. It is generally referred to as being a Cornish word today but very few Newfoundlanders came from Cornwall which leads me to think that the word must have originally been used in other parts of the West Country as well.

This brings me to another question which I think may shed some light on the whole question of Celtic Devon and Celtic survivals in that part of the world ( and will hopefully stimulate some more discussion). Are there many words of Celtic origin that have survived in vernacular Devonian speech? I seem to remember reading that there were quite a few words of Celtic origin in the Devonian vernacular but I can’t remember any examples right now. I would be interested to hear if anyone knows of any such words (other than place names). Surely the survival of such words in would indicate some continuity between present day Devon and its Celtic past.

Newvonian

Firstly may I welcome you to the discussion! And it is great to have another perspective.

As far as I have read where there is a strong local accent from the time of settlement, like Newfoundland and parts of New England, Virginia etc, the English spoken is closer to that spoken in England in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries than any spoken today in England. Speaking praper loike we were taught and RP has come to dominate.

Emmets is definately a Cornish word, most Devonians use "grokles" in the way the Cornish use "emmets". Though no longer for ants... but from what you are saying there was a the very least a folk memory of the language from whence it sprang when your ancestors left Devon for Newfoundland. The BBC Devon dialect dictionary gives emmet as being a "very old word" in it's definition of grokle. This does tie in with what has been written on these pages of a Brythonic language surviving east of the Tamar to the end of the Medieval period. Most of the dialect books I have seen don't seem to carry words that are not of English origin, though one thing I remember from growing up was my Grandparents often used unothordox word order, an order that thinking about it mirrored Welsh better than the latinised Germanic language which English has become. It is difficult to express, but apparently I do the same.

Personally, I am going to have to dig out my own dialect dictionary and go through it. It is certainly a thought that it is possible that some Brythonic words may have survived in Devon to this day.

Anyway, once again, great to have a new contributor!

Newvonian - Greetings and Welcome!

There certainly are a number of Celtic words in Devon vernacular speech.

Examples [from Wikipedia] include "Blooth" (Blossum), "Goco" (Bluebell), and "Jonnick" (pleasant). Others include "growan" (a type of decomposed granite).

Unlike Tivvyboy I have heard "Emmet" used to describe a tourist in Devon as well as in Cornwall, although "Grockle" is more common. neither term represents a compliment.

I am sure there are plenty more.

Thank you Tivvyboy and Ozzie Exile for your words of welcome. As I said in my first posting I have been following this discussion for about two years. I hope I am able to make some contribution to a topic that has fascinated me for many years and perhaps stimulate some more discussion on this topic.

Tivvyboy, you are right to say that North American speech in general is in many ways more linguistically conservative then is Received Pronunciation or many of the other accents one hears in Britain today. On the whole North American speech has retained many usages and pronunciations that have, if not disappeared in Britain, at least been relegated to regional dialects

However, the situation in Newfoundland is quite a bit different from much of the rest of North America. In the original American colonies ( that is those that are now part of the United States) a variety of groups who spoke different types of English and other languages came together in the 17th and 18th centuries to produce a distinctive American type of English. These groups included people from different parts of England (speaking different dialects) as well as Scots Irish, German and Dutch people. In Newfoundland the vast majority of people came from a much more restricted area both geographically and linguistically.

Most Newfoundland settlers in the 17th century came from Devon and later from Dorset (especially the area around Poole) and Somerset. In the 18th century many Irish settlers arrived in Newfoundland. Most of these people came from southeastern Ireland. Because of the close trade links between this part of Ireland and the West Country most of the Irish settlers arriving in Newfoundland who spoke English spoke an English that was already strongly influenced by West Country speech. Those who arrived in Newfoundland speaking only the Irish language (and there were many) leaned their English in Newfoundland from people who spoke Devon and Dorset dialects.

The linguistic links to the West Country were further reinforced by the yearly arrival of thousands of migratory fishermen in Newfoundland from the West Country who, prior to the late 18th century, outnumbered the resident population and by the many servants who came here from the West Country to work for the local planters (i.e settlers). Most of these servants were indentured for two years and, while many returned home at the end of this period, quite a few stayed on and married. Even today Newfoundlanders who travel abroad are sometimes assumed to be from the West Country because of the way they speak.

Of course, this forum is about Celtic Devon and not about Newfoundland but my point in all of this is that Newfoundland speech may still contain elements of Southwest Brythonic that have been lost in Devon or may at least offer an opportunity to compare and contrast such survivals on either side of the Atlantic. The fact that, as you say, the BBC Devon dialect dictionary gives emmet as being a "very old word" in Devon indicates that it was once used there. As I said before it is certainly common here in Newfoundland and it seems unlikely that it was carried here by Cornish speakers because so few Cornish settled in Newfoundland.

Ozzie Exile, one of the words that you listed in your posting, “Jonnick”, was also once common in Newfoundland. The “Dictionary of Newfoundland English” defines it as “fair, equitable, honest”. It could also be used as an asseveration similar to “I swear” as in “tis true, jonnick”. I am sure there must be others.

The dictionary is available online at no charge. Here’s the link http://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/default.html

Surely the survival of such words along with the apparent similarities in structure and syntax between Devonian speech and the Celtic languages is some of the best evidence that exists for continuity between Devon and its Celtic past. After all, there are many people today living in parts of the world that are identify as being Celtic who don’t speak a word of the old language. I believe that this is an area that would be worth some serious study and I think comparisons between Devonian speech and Newfoundland speech may have a role to play in shedding some more light on this topic.

Newvonian,

In case you don't already have it here is a link to a good directory of Devon Dialect words.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/voices2005/features/devon_dialect.shtml

It does suggest (under grockle) that emmett is heard on both sides of the Tamar.

Many words are of unknown origin but I have seen claims that 'maized' meaning disorientated (sometimes inferred as a permanent state) as in "'ees maized in the head" (shown on the link as mizmaized) is also Celtic.

There are plenty of other words that seem to be Celtic be sight and sound, but you have to be careful.

Emmet is not a good example, whichever side of the Tamar it is heard on, since it comes from an Old English, not a Cornish/Brythonic word (æmmet, meaning ant).

Thank you for that Nxylas. This only goes to reinforce Ozzie Exile's warning that we need to exercise caution when trying to distinguish Old English words for those that may be of Celtic origin.

I knew that Emmet was used in Cornwall and assumed that it was of Celtic origin. I had been told that it was a "Cornish" word and I asuumed that it was Celtic Cornish.

Another example is the word "Yaffel". This word is still fairly common in Newfoundland although, like many of these words, its use is fading and is now mostly restricted to older speakers. Here it means an armful (as in "an armful of wood" or "an armful of groceries"). I checked and found that it was used in both Cornwall and Devon and thought that perhaps it might be Celtic in origin but when I checked the "English Dialect Dictionary" I found that it was also used in Oxfordshire and comes from Old English.

Still, I think that a thorough analysis of Devonian vernacular could reveal some interesting, and as yet undiscovered, links between the vernacular and West Country Brythonic. Know any linguistics students
looking for a thesis topic?

Just found this on Google Book Search. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow me to cut and paste the relevant text, but go to http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN3110115506&id=ptAb7J1DUZAC&pg=PA393&lpg=PA393&dq=Devon+Newfoundland&sig=mhhCwF0yvq4DYXAbmjEe1cXlPb0

You may find note 19 interesting.

Thanks, Nxylas. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to read the paper - I could only access the endnotes, but it’s by Harold Paddock one of Newfoundland’s foremost linguists and someone who grew up speaking the Notre Dame Bay dialect - a dialect heavily influenced by Dorset speech. I assume that the Rogers referenced in endnote 19 is to Beverly Rogers, also a linguist. The Handcock is Gordon Handcock, a Newfoundland historical geographer. Judging from the date, it’s one of his early works. Indeed, given that the most recent source sited in the paper is from 1980, I would assume that the paper was written not long after that.

Handcock focuses mostly on the late 18th and early 19the centuries in Newfoundland. In my opinion probably the best work on 17th century Newfoundland is Peter Pope’s “Fish in to Wine: the Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century” (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). In it Pope states the following: “In the seventeenth century, most British fishing voyages to Newfoundland fitted out at Barnstaple, Bideford, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Topsham or Pool. Most fishing masters ... recruited servants for Newfoundland in the hinterland of these towns: the pasture lands of north Devon, Dartmoor, Exmoor, south Somerset and Dorset” (p. 234). Most 17th century settlers came from these same areas, so the population base established in the 17th was mostly Devonian with some Dorset and Somerset settlers as well.

Dorset came to play a larger role in the 18th century. In his 1989 book on Newfoundland settlement, “Soe longe as there comes noe women” (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 1989), Gordon Handcock presents a list of non-Irish emigrants to Newfoundland between the years 1755 and 1884 by region (p. 147). Here it is:

Devon: 35.2%
Dorset: 29.0%
Hampshire: 8.2%
Somerset: 7.9%
London: 2.8%
Bristol: 2.5%
Liverpool:1.7%
Cornwall:1.3%
Other: 10%

Many of the Dorset settlers came from around Poole and farther west. Those settlers from Hampshire came almost exclusively from west Hampshire, near the Dorset border. The other ten percent consisted almost exclusively of people from other parts of England (quite a few from southwest Wiltshire also on the Dorset border) and a handful of people from Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands. The settlers from south Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire were usually drawn into the Newfoundland fishery (and later settlement) by way of Poole.

So, the statement that the non-Devonian settlers were from farther east should not be taken to mean very much farther east. Most people writing in Newfoundland 25 years ago would have had a fairly vague idea of the exact boundaries of Wessex and tended to think of it loosely as the region described by Hardy in his novels. I’m not sure how you would define East Wessex but I would guess that it would probably begin east of the Somerset and Dorset borders. From what Paddock says in this endnote, it seems that he was grouping everything east of Devon (including Somerset and Dorset) as part of East Wessex. It should also be noted that there are more people of Devonian ancestry in areas off the Avalon than the note would indicate and that the Avalon (where people of non-Irish descent are predominantly of Devonian ancestry) is the most densely populated part of Newfoundland with roughly 50% of the total population.

By the way, since I couldn’t read the paper I’m not sure exactly what it is that they are talking about in this note. By “the feminine ‘er” as subject” do they mean using “er” for “her” as in “I will tell er about it”, or are they talking about the tendency to add an “r” to the end of words ending in a vowel sound such as “winder” for “window” or “Linder” for “Linda”? Both of these usages are quite common in Newfoundland, by the way.

Sorry if I’m going off on a tangent here but I thought this needed to be clarified. Let’s get back to discussing Celtic Devon.

In going through Clement Martin’s booklets on the Devon dialect I’ve come across a few words that Martin classifies as Cornish although they may more accurately be described as Brythonic.

1. Vore - a way

In his “Flibberts and Skriddicks: Stories and Poems in the Devonshire Dialect”, Martin lists vore, as in “vore street” (Fore Street) as a Celtic word meaning ‘a furrow or way through’. In his Cornish dictionary, “Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum: Dictionary of the Ancient Celtic Language of Cornwall...”, the Rev. Robert Williams defines vor as “a way. [as in] An vor góth, the old way” and says that it is a late mutation of ‘for’ which has the same meaning. I guess this one could go either way. It could be a survival of the Celtic word ‘vor’ or, in the case of streets that are “before” or in front of something, it could simply be an adaptation of the English word “fore” meaning “situated in front” pronounced in Devon vernacular. However, if there are ‘Vore Streets’ or just ‘Vores’ in Devon that are obviously not in front of anything but are just ways through a town, a village or whatever, then we may well be dealing with the survival of Celtic place-names.

2. Bal - A mine

As in Hemerdon Bal in Plympton. In Welsh, according to Williams, the word bal means a spade or shovel and is a variant of ‘pal’ which has the same meaning. In Cornish the word came to refer to a place where digging for minerals takes place. I guess you could argue that this one is a borrowing from Cornish, especially if it occurs mostly in parts of west Devon near the Tamar, but it could also be a survival into Devon Dialect from West Country Brythonic.


3. Towan - a downland

In his “The Devonshire Dialect” Martin defines Towan as a Celtic word meaning a “downland, usually on the coast.” In his Cornish dictionary, The Rev.Williams defines towan as “a sandy shore bank, a strand” Variants being tuén, and tuyn. This could very well be a survival from West Country Brythonic into Devon vernacular speech.

Any comments?

Newvonian,

Interesting that you mention Hemerdon Bal (or Ball), as I briefly worked there in the 1980's - when it was operating on a small and exploratory scale as an underground mine to test the feasibility of a larger open cut tin/tungsten mine.

It had operated on a much larger scale just after WW2.

Recently (2008) mine site owner Wolf minerals announced increased reserves at Hemerdon, suggesting it might re-open. The GFC might have delayed that.

Alongside "bal" Devon also has numerous "wheal" names, which are both Celtic words and both signify mines and mine workings.

You can read more about this at a number of sites - including the following - which is based on the mines near Tavi (Tavistock in West Devon), rather than Hemerdon, which is in South Devon.

http://www.crying-fox.com/tribute.htm

A site with information on recent (and historical) developments at Hemerdon.

http://www.wolfminerals.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41&Itemid=75

Although Tungsten might only have been discovered in the 1860's, Hemerdon has numerous older tin mine workings, as well as at least one arsenic mine, and is not too far away from large China clay deposits.

Newvonian

There are numerous examples of “Fore Street” in Devon, and I am not aware that they are specifically in front of anything, but most (if not all) are roads leading through towns and villages. As there are also numerous examples of “Fore Street” in Cornwall, it would be extremely surprising if the Devon “Fore Streets” had a different derivation from the Cornish “Fore Streets”. Padel states that “for” or “vor” is a modern variant of the Cornish “forth” (Welsh “fordd”) meaning a road or way. It would therefore seem highly probable that the Devon usage is Brythonic in origin.

The term “bal” (as in “Hemerdon Ball”) could have one of two possible derivations, both of which are Brythonic. You have outlined the possible mineral extraction derivation. Padel states that the origin of this word is difficult, and says that “pal” (spade) could be the origin. However, he also notes the existence of the Welsh word “bal” (meaning peak or summit). Coates also notes the peak/summit derivation and specifically mentions its usage in Devon placenames. As we do not know when mineral (probably tin) extraction first occurred at Hemerdon Ball, either meaning is possible. Certainly there is archaeological evidence of Devon tin being traded with the Mediterranean region during the Dark Ages, so it is possible that surface tin deposits at Hemerdon resulted in extraction at that time and the name “bal” (a tin working) being applied to the hill. However, Hemerdon Ball also fits the alternative peak/summit derivation. I think we can safely say that the derivation is Brythonic, even if we cannot be certain which derivation is the correct one.

While on the subject of Hemerdon Ball, it should be noted that the name “Hemerdon” was recorded as “Hainmardun” in the Domesday Book (1086). Given that spelling was archaic in those days, the name looks as if it could have been derived from a combination of three Brythonic words – “hen” (old/ancient), “mor” (big) and “dun/din” (hill fort). As Hemerdon Ball has been dug up frequently for mineral extraction in the past, any traces of a previous hill fort would probably have been eradicated long ago, but it would definitely have been a good location for an Iron Age hill fort. Perhaps Ozzie Exile could throw some light on this as he worked there.