Bit more chat with Maid Lowenna
A few explanations of Cornish Dialect. Ee wuz left ta gaw. – Neglected and now needs attention. Where ee to un? – Where are you? There’s knaw top nun bottom to un. – Don’t depend on him. Standun in iz awn light. – Failing to grasp the situation. Scat ta ribbuns – Smashed up. Streamun […]
Oswald Prior Cartoons
Oswald Pryor (15 February 1881 – 13 June 1971) was a South Australian cartoonist noted for his depictions of life particularly of miners from Cornwall. A few to start with there are many more, when I can find them.
Some Wedding Humour
A husband is living proof that a wife can take a joke. A best man’s speech needs to be like a mini-skirt; short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the bare essentials. A wedding ring is like a tourniquet: it cuts off your circulation. Always in the bride’s mind as the happy […]
How Folk Earned A Living On Some Of Our Yesterdays By Dulcie Wing
Between the two World Wars many young men would be seen peddling goods from door to door, especially in the country villages. Most of these men were ex-servicemen who after spending years in the 1914 to 1918 war had no job to come back to. so would set out with a little box of pins, […]
The Cathedral of the Moors – Altarnun Church by Kath Keen
Travelling west on Cornwall’s main artery, the A30 road, the sometimes bleak, sometimes wild, but always beautiful expanse of Bodmin Moor begins, a short distance from Launceston. About eight miles from that ancient gateway to Cornwall, and situated off the A30 is the parish of Altarnun. Many years ago, this little hamlet was known as […]
The Wrecker by Neville Paddy
Customs man with his musket primed, Death within his curled finger, No mercy given within his aim, On a wrecker who dared to linger, Fired lead ball struck naked flesh, Hurling the wrecker into foam, Death’s reaching hand lay upon him, A body bloody lay upon sea stone, Rum, bitter, against a salted throat, Final […]
Alfred Wallis 1855 – 1942 by Tom Salmon
What I do mosley is what used to Bee out of my own memory what we may never see again as Thing are altered altogether So wrote Alfred Wallis, arguably the strangest and one of the most original of all Cornish painters in response to a note he’d received (and that must have surprised him), […]
A Scillonian skippers’s scribllings with John Hicks c1995
John Hicks is a Scillonian and very proud of it. He’s a boatman by profession who used to ferry passengers all around the Islands in his 45 foot launch The Swordfish II. John used to live in his guest house in Longstone which is about one mile from St Mary’s. An ex-member of the local […]
The Coming of the Wireless by Tom Clemens c1996
In my village in mid-Cornwall the telephone was still something of a novelty when the first wireless sets appeared and although we didn’t understand how it worked, at least it had wires connected to it along which messages could travel. But here was a box of tricks which needed no wires from the outside, as […]
Nineteenth Century Punishment in Cornwall by Michael Tangye
Today it frequently appears that “crime pays”. Lack of discipline within the family group allied to a vast drift away from church and chapel, where a Christian way of life was learned and practised from early childhood, has resulted in a vast decline in moral standards. Government encourages selfish rampant individualism where the wealthy flourish […]
Granite from Zennor Did it come to St. Ives by sea or land c1996 by Tre Pol Pen
Being born and reared in St. Ives, the writer has been brought up, like so many others, with the story passed down from generation, that the stone for St. Ives parish church was brought from Zennor by sea. Our own Saint Ia is surrounded by myths and legends regarding her arrival here all those many […]
Choughs Over Cornwall by Dr. Richard Meyer
How things have changed since Richard wrote this article in 1996, there are now numerous sightings of the Cornish Chough in Cornwall. We will give an update as soon as an expert lets us have an article. Three endangered species stand upon the Cornish crest: the fisherman is threatened, the tin miner is virtually extinct, […]
Cornwall’s Boer War General
The Boer War was only nine days old when the first battle occurred at Talana Hill, near the Natal town of Dundee. It was October 1899 and the British troops deployed from Ladysmith to meet the Boer invasion from the north were under command of a Cornishman, Major-General Sir William Penn Symons of Hatt, near […]
John Knill remembered
Many Cornish worthies are remembered principally for their contribution to the well being of our Cornwall. Opie as the artist, Trevithick for steam power, Boscawen the Admiral and Davy for the safety lamp, to name but a few. However, these men are remembered by their talents with which they were endowed, and are therefore remembered […]