Fwd: Re: A cornish riddle from 1830 (fwd)

[Elizabeth J. Pyatt]

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The following remarks are from Benjamin Bruch of Harvard's Celtic department,
alas, not a member of this list, who knows more about Cornish than anyone else
on this side of the Atlantic as far as I am aware.
>
>    I'm actually not on the Celtling list, but I do know the riddle. It can be
>  found in William Pryce's Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, which was published
>  in 1790, and which contains a lot of material that Pryce compiled from
>  several previous (published and unpublished) sources. Pryce attributes this
>  riddle to William Gwavas (1676-1741), who was presumably its first collector
>  rather than its author. In Pryce's edition, the riddle appears as follows,
>  with an explanatory note added:
>
>  "FlÙ vye gennes en Miz-merh,
>  Ni trehes e bigel en miz-east;
>  E a roz towl
>  Dho Proanter Powle,
>  Miz-du ken Nadelik.
>
>  A child was born in the month of March,
>  We cut his navel in the month of August;
>  He gave a fall
>  To the Parson of Paul,
>  The black month before the Nativity.
>
>  Id est, The Barley was tilled in March, was reaped in August, the Parson of
>  Paul drank the beer made of it in the month of November, and it gave him a
>  fall."
>
>  A few notes:
>
>  "Miz-merh" shows Late Cornish eu --> e and th --> h. The Middle Cornish form
>  would presumably have been mis-Meurth (<eu> pronounced as in French, a
>  rounded version of epsilon, th representing the voiceless interdental
>  fricative). Compare Modern Breton "miz Meurzh", where th --> z (written
>  <zh>). The vowel "eu" is the usual Cornish and Breton outcome of the sound
>  preserved in Welsh as "aw".
>
>  The last line could be translated as "[In] November before Christmas", since
>  Miz-du 'the black month' is the usual Cornish word for 'November' (as in
>  Breton). "Nadelik" is likwise parallel to Breton "Nedeleg", which likewise
>  means 'Christmas'.
>
Joe Eska

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