May 31, 2024
The Legend of Cheesewring in Cornwall
(Link to an expanded version)
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The Legend of Cheesewring in Cornwall
(Link to an expanded version)
5th March
St Piran’s Day
Actor Colin Retallick playing St Piran at the annual St Piran’s Day procession. Source: GettyImages/ BBC News
Today is St Piran’s Day. Not much is known about Piran. He is thought to have been an Irish missionary who travelled throughout Wales, Cornwall and Brittany in the post-Roman British Dark Ages. He was apparently an excellent speaker, and taught a fairly relaxed brand of Celtic Christianity that emphasised the joys of eating, drinking and making merry with none of the austere monasticism of the later Roman Catholic missionaries. This probably explains why he became such a popular saint, particularly in Cornwall, where Piran was rumoured to have taught the Cornish miners how to smelt their tin. Piran was said to have arrived in Cornwall in the 480s at Perranzabuloe, and a seventh century oratory still marks the spot. By the Middle Ages, Piran’s shrine had become a major saintly attraction for pilgrims and the many Cornish settlements with the prefix Perran are all likely named after the saint.
There is a darker side to the Piran cult. Nineteenth century excavations of the oratory revealed three ancient headless skeletons and three decapitated skulls. This may be no more than evidence of early medieval foul play, but equally, in this Celtic part of Britain, perhaps the shrine remained a pagan hold out with associated sacrifice and head worship at play. There is probably a gothic horror novel in there somewhere.
The Life of St Piran - now online in English
The Life of St Piran – now online in English
A couple of days ago I mentioned that Google Translate was doing an unusually good job on the Latin of the Life of St Piran. I’m afraid that I am easily distracted. I had not planned to do so, but I seem to have produced a translation of the whole text. So here it is: St Piran-Vita-2022-v1 (PDF) St Piran-Vita-2022-v1 (Word .docx) The files can also be found on Archive.org here. I’ve…
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A modern confusion between St Piran, and the "Saint" Pir who died while drunk
A modern confusion between St Piran, and the “Saint” Pir who died while drunk
March 5th is St Piran’s Day. St Piran was a celtic saint who probably lived around 500 AD. In recent years there has been increased media interest in St Piran, as the symbol of Cornwall. The Cornish flag is called “St Piran’s flag.” I suspect most of this stuff is from incomers, and that it leaves the native Cornish feeling rather bemused. But celebrations were reported by the BBC here, but…
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G.H.Doble's "Cornish Saints" series - the original booklets
G.H.Doble’s “Cornish Saints” series – the original booklets
After the Roman collapse in Britain, our sources for history become very scanty. In Cornwall in particular we are almost entirely dependent on interpreting scraps in medieval saints’ lives – often written centuries later than the events – or making deductions from place names. The pioneer in this area was Canon Gilbert H. Doble (1880-1945), who wrote and published a series of very attractive…
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Gilbert Doble and his pamphlet "St Petroc, Abbot and Confessor"
Gilbert Doble and his pamphlet “St Petroc, Abbot and Confessor”
Gilbert Doble did not have a clear mind. He was fully capable of deep erudition, combined with a child-like inability to imagine what others might think about it. He held office in Cornwall as an Anglican parish clergyman in the first half of the twentieth century, and was vicar of Wendron for almost twenty years until his death in 1945. His knowledge of Cornish history, folksong and…
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From my diary
Happy new year, everybody, in a few hours. I’ve acquired some volumes of “The Saints of Cornwall”, by G. Doble. I think there may be six in all. Canon Doble was a Cornish antiquarian of the first half of the 20th century. He issued individual pamphlets on Cornish saints – I think there might have been 48 of these or more. These were then collected into volumes after his death. I read through…
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