Cornish continued to be used throughout the 19th century and did not become extinct with the death of Dolly Pentreath in 1777, a new book shows.
The research challenges long-held beliefs and myths about the death of the Cornish language..
Dr Kensa Broadhurst, from the University of Exeter, has found compelling evidence that Cornish continued to be used throughout the 19th century, by the working class and those seeking to preserve the language.
Dr Broadhurst said: "The story of the Cornish language is one of resilience, not disappearance. During the nineteenth century it was critically endangered rather than extinct."
Dolly Pentreath is often cited as the last speaker of Cornish with her death described as marking the moment the language became extinct. The book shows how her status as the 'last' speaker of Cornish was possibly manipulated because the information recorded about her was mainly produced by men of a very different social class to her own. Dolly Pentreath could have tried claim the position of last speaker of the Cornish language for herself to manipulate members of the gentry interested in her, or for financial gain. Or these men could have manipulated her story for their own reasons.
The book is further evidence that Dolly's death did not represent the death of the language. Even within her own lifetime, it was evident that people other than Pentreath spoke and used Cornish. But she was one of the final generation to be brought up speaking Cornish from birth.
Dr Broadhurst is Cornish Language Lead at the University of Exeter and a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh. She teaches and examines Cornish for the University of Exeter and more widely within the language community.
The Cornish Language in the Nineteenth Century is the first major academic appraisal of the Cornish language during this period. Dr Broadhurst examined evidence which has not been previously considered in studies of the Cornish language. This includes writing about Cornish and Dolly Pentreath by antiquarians who wrote about Cornish speakers such as Dr. Fred W.P. Jago, Reverend Lach-Szyrma, and Henry Jenner.
The book shows how language became extinct thanks to the Reformation and the growth of worship in English, expansion of a national military and the uprooting of communities during the Civil War. The retreat of the language was not clear cut or specific to different regions
In Tudor times there were still many isolated areas which would not have had as much contact with English. At the end of the sixteenth century the language was still in widespread use amongst all generations but was threatened and endangered.
A possibility is people moved from being monolingual Cornish speakers to be bilingual.
By the mid-seventeenth century the use of Cornish was becoming unusual enough for it to attract attention from those who began to write in the language to preserve it. Monolingual Cornish speakers may have been difficult to find by this point.
By the late eighteenth century the language was critically endangered. Dr Broadhurst believes absolute speaker numbers could have been between 10 to 99, mainly elderly people and used within small groups.
Dolly Pentreath's contemporaries and nineteenth century antiquarians interested in Cornish dismissed her claims to be a fluent speaker of the language, and after her death she was portrayed as a figure of fun.
The letters concerning Dolly Pentreath - most of which are the only evidence we have about her – were written by men of very different class, education, and statuses: the Honourable Daines Barrington (1727 - 1800), the man who discovered Pentreath and brought her to public attention, and Mousehole inhabitants William Bodener (1711 - 1789) and Bernard Victor (dates unknown, active nineteenth century). Dolly Pentreath did not tell her own story.
In 1772, Barrington wrote to Dolly "was bred up from a child to know no other language; nor could she (if we may believe her) talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age; that, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language."
A further letter by Barrington, written on 20th March 1776, says Pentreath is evidently still alive and 'supposed to be ninety years of age. He says 'she is conceived by some to be the person existing who now speaks Cornish.'
The book shows how does not seem as if Barrington was claiming to be the discoverer of the 'last speaker of the language'. Yet, this 'Dolly myth' perpetuates to this day, perhaps because of Barrington's comments that Pentreath herself implied she was the only speaker of Cornish
Pentreath's fame spread far beyond both Cornwall and the antiquarian circles of London and interest continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, possibly because of a growing interest in nationalism and identity. She was a figure from collective living memory who could be presented by Cornish observers to be as important a literary figure as Burns and Newton.
