I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read this in the papers recently ...
It's OK to insult the Cornish because they don't exist, rules watchdog
Being called a straw-sucking, inbred wurzel because of where you come from should give you fair cause for complaint. But not if you're Cornish it seems. For, according to quango chiefs, the Cornish don't exist as a people and so can't be discriminated against. The Equality and Human Rights Commission made the ruling following a written complaint about repeated media mockery of the county.
The Kernow branch of the Celtic League cited 'racist' articles in the Times, the Guardian and the Spectator as well as pieces on BBC radio and the website of Imperial College London. The league's Rhisiart Tal-e-bot said: 'People increasingly throw insults at the Cornish - so if they don't exist how can that happen? (At a guess his name is really "Richard Talbot", but hey, what's a few spelling mistakes between friends? - GOS)
'People are upset about it. We feel this is just the tip of the iceberg. Something needs to be done but nothing can be done because we are not seen as a national minority.' Graeme Hicks, a Cornwall County Councillor, said he had found 15,400 separate entries on the internet about inbreeding in the county. 'If you said something like this about Pakistanis or travellers you would be taken to court,' he added. (That's true enough, you would. Can't argue with that - GOS)
Wild West, a BBC sitcom starring Dawn French and Catherine Tate, also drew anger. One viewer complained: 'I felt ashamed that the BBC could blatantly depict the Cornish as inbred fools, thieves with limited exposure and brain power.' (Whereas in fact they are wise, honest people who expose themselves frequently - GOS)
The Celtic League wrote to the EHRC last month, saying: 'A number of individuals have contacted our branch to complain about various comments and articles that have been written in newspapers, magazines and aired on the radio referring to the Cornish as inbred and being generally derogatory and or insulting.
But Qaiser Razzak of the EHRC wrote back: 'Case law has not established the Cornish as a "racial group", for the purposes of the Race Relations Act'.
So on what, exactly, do these sad pebble-eyed ex-hippies base their claim to be a separate race? Well, the Daily Mail had a stab at explaining it ...
• For a start the border between Cornwall and England was established by King Athelstan at the River Tamar in 936. It still marks the boundary between Cornwall and Devon. Of course, this proves nothing at all - rivers have always been used as convenient boundaries between tribes, kingdoms, countries, even modern counties. Where I live, Norfolk and Suffolk lie on either side of the River Waveney. Does that mean the people in Norfolk are a different race to me? Apart from having webbed feet, that is.
• According to some American academics, the Cornish are racially distinct because they are descended from two Celtic tribes, the Dumnonii and the Cornovil. This is hogwash, of course. A young man born in 1975, say, is descended from two parents. Those parents were probably born about 1950 to two sets of parents, so our young man is descended from four grandparents. He has eight great-grandparents born around 1925, and 16 great-great-grandparents born in 1900. If you keep going at a rate of four generations per century, by the time you get back to the year 950 (shortly after King Athelstan decided that civilisation began at the Tamar) our young man has 4,398,046,511,104 ancestors, which is about eleven thousand times the population of the entire world at that time.
What this probably means is that we are all related and share a common ancestry, and to talk of any one group of people (the Corns) being descended exclusively from any other group of people (the Dumnonii and the Cornovil) is complete and utter rubbish. Mind you, it's a rather unsettling thought that I am therefore related to, say, Jade Goody. And don't tell me I shouldn't pick on her because she's dead. Most of my ancestors have been dead people. Many of them still are. What is this spurious sensitivity about dead people? Does being dead make you a better person?
• In the 2001 Census, more than 37,000 people claimed Cornish ethnicity. Yes, but they were just taking the piss.
• The Corns have a proud culinary tradition including pasties, clotted cream, fudge, fairings, spiced biscuits, heavy cake and sardines. And that proves what, exactly? People in Yorkshire have puddings. Does that make them a separate race?
• Cornwall is rich in saints, like St.Kew who converted pagan Celts in the sixth century. What? There are no saints in any other English county?
• And finally, the Cornish language, Kernewek. It's recognised as a minority language by the EU. It's said to be a close relative of Welsh and Breton, and to have 2,000 fluent speakers although at least one website we found says the figure is actually 300.
Well, here's a brief history of the Cornish language we found ...
After the publication in 1984 of Professor Glanville Price's book The Languages of Britain, which severely criticised Unified Cornish, Celtic scholars and linguists decided that they couldn't take the language seriously any more and the Cornish Language Board had to find an alternative. They decided to adopt a new version of Cornish devised by Dr.Ken George.
George's system was originally known as Phonemic Cornish and is now called Common Cornish (Kernewek Kemmyn). He based it on Medieval cornish manuscripts and used a computer to analyse the pronunciation. His spelling system was so different to those used for other versions of the language that it meet with fierce opposition among supporters of Cornish and academics.
In the early 1980s, a version of Cornish based on Late/Modern Cornish and known as Modern Cornish (Curnoack Nowedga) was reconstructed by a group of Cornish enthusiasts led by Richard Gendall. In 1986 they set up the Cornish Language Council (Cussel an Tavas Kernuack) to promote Modern Cornish and to encourage the study of Cornish from all periods.
In 1995, the Celtic scholar Nicholas Williams devised a new version of Unified Cornish known as Unified Cornish Revised or UCR (Kernowek Unys Amendys) which addressed some of the shortcomings of Unified Cornish. UCR modifies the standard spelling in order to indicate the reconstructed phonology in light of current scholarship, while keeping to the traditional orthographic practices of the medieval scribes. It also makes full use of the Late Cornish prose materials unavailable to Nance, taking advantage of the same fluent, natural style that made Gendall's Modern Cornish appeal to many. (Well, not all that many, actually. Probably about 300).
You see? Just like the Welsh, they made the whole thing up. Some time ago we wrote a very serious and scholarly essay about the Welsh and their talent for self-invention. Here is a snippet ...
.... a sign fixed to the wall of an alley in a small Welsh town, bearing the legend "No cycling - DIM BEICIO".
"Dim beicio?" we thought, "they cannot be serious!" But they were. Just where we'd left the Grumpymobile was a sign saying "Dim parcio". Once we'd noticed that, there was no stopping us. A chapel is "capel". The Chapel of Zion is "Capel Seion", and a new chapel is "Capel Newydd".
Windows are "ffenestri", just like fenętres (French) and fenestrae (Latin). A church is "eglwys", like église in French. A castle is "castell" and a shallow valley or coombe is "cwm". A bridge is "pont" (more French, you see).
After that it just gets silly. A cupboard is "cwpwrdd", your garage is "garej", the car you keep in it is "car", and when it breaks down you have to take the "bws". To while away the journey you'll probably read a "bwcio", and no doubt you'll be wearing "trowsus" or a "sgert" although you probably won't have a "ffured" (ferret) in your pocket.
Now here's a little bit of Cornish ...
Yma pub den genys frank hag equal yn dynyta hag yn gwyryow. Ymons y enduys gans reson ha keskans hag y tal dhedhans omdhon an eyl orth y gela yn sperys a vredereth
... and here's the translation ...
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood
Anyone spot a certain similarity between frank/free, equal/equal, dynyta/dignity, enduys/endowed, reson/reason, keskans/conscience, sperys/spirit and vredereth/brotherhood? Of course these similarities are hardly surprising when you remember that equal, dignity, conscience, spirit and brotherhood all have their roots in Latin and have their equivalents in any number of European languages.
But it does cast something of a shadow over the Corns' claim that their "language" is Celtic in origin. Any idiot can borrow some words from French, Latin and English, spell them wrong and claim it's another language. Frankly, the whole thing is a load of bollocks and they've made it all up.
"Eheu! Totahl mundo in caca profondo et Y vor bayzaymwa aufpeesed. Y vor poovay bootslog in nackus im totahl crwd ov salads"
That's my new language, Grumpy. It means "Alas! The whole world is in deepest shit and I am f*cking pissed off with it. I could kick the whole bunch of bastards in the knackers".
And because I've got a language, I'm an ethnic minority. I want road-signs in Grumpy at every junction, I demand to be exempt from local planning regulations and if anyone dares to mock me I'll be straight round to the European Court of Human Rights.
The GOS says: Lots of us get very upset at the antics of one particular "ethnic minority", travellers, who often seem to ride rough-shod over the rights and feelings of their neighbours and the regulations that govern the rest of us because any attempt to criticise or control them is seen as prejudice.
Well, the other day I heard something that might provide a clue about their success. A charming young man came to my house to fit a Sky TV dish. He was worried that his next call was on a travellers' site. He said that the last time he'd had to go there, as soon as he pulled up numerous men appeared from the shadows and silently surrounded his van. He dared not get out, until the woman he was visiting came out of her caravan and waved the men away and they disappeared as mysteriously as they'd come. Of course, no word was spoken, no threat was made.
If this story is true - and I have no reason to suppose it isn't - it might explain why local authorities and other public agencies are so reluctant to tackle these people on our behalf when they infringe the law or planning/environmental regulations. If anyone who goes near them is routinely menaced and intimidated, it's going to take a very brave council official to stand his ground.
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