St. Piran’s Day Special: The Tommyknocker
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Our second Celtic Month piece celebrates St. Piran’s Day, on March 5th, the national day of Cornwall. Have some pasties! Mine some tin! Talk like a stereotypical movie pirate; but not if anybody Cornish can hear you.
Before you read what the piece means to me, share what it means to _you_. I’m just the artist; you’re the beholder.
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This was actually the first Spring Vignettes piece I created; and I think it remains the best, for its elegant minimalism and flawless composition.
I said in the last description that the Welsh are the survivors of the Celtic Britons; but they aren’t the only ones; because the Cornish still remain. The Cornish language went extinct in the 18th or 19th Century, but it’s currently being revived. Long may the Cornish language and people endure.
Cornwall is known for its tin-mining. During the Bronze Age, tin was one of the two ingredients of that era’s eponymous metal; and while copper could be found around the Mediterranean, traders needed to import tin from far afield to supply the great empires of the Near East. Cornwall has likely been one of those sources since very ancient times.
According to legend, St. Piran, patron saint of Cornwall and tin-miners, rediscovered tin-smelting when his black hearthstone put forth a pool of liquid metal that formed the shape of a cross. To this day, the flag of Cornwall is a silver cross on a black field.
Tin occurs in the form of a pitch-black ore, cassiterite, which forms distinctive rhombic crystals.
Cornish miners tell of a subterranean fairy-being, called a knocker or tommyknocker, that inhabits the deep and guards its precious ore. Provided they’re on friendly terms, tommyknockers can protect miners, lead them to veins of ore, and warn of collapses by knocking on the walls. On the other hand, if disrespected, they can steal tools, extinguish lights, or even collapse mines. It’s customary to toss the last bite of your pasty to the tommyknockers, to keep their good favor.
Cornish pasties, a savory hand-pie, are a cherished part of Cornish cuisine; usually filled with beef, potato, rutabaga, and lots of pepper. The parameters of an authentic Cornish pasty are heavily regulated by the Cornish Pasty Association. If you ever find carrots in a Cornish pasty, it is generally agreed that you should throw it back in the face of whoever gave you it; because carrots have no place in a Cornish pasty. They’re a savory food, and carrots are too sweet. If you find a pasty containing anything sweeter than carrots, you should probably stomp on it.
Fun fact: The style of speech now popularly associated with pirates is by origin a highly stylized version of a Cornish accent. Those in Cornwall who don’t delve in the mines likely sail on the sea; and the accent was well at home among salty sailors with many yarns to tell during the Age of Sail. Many rounds of iterated exaggeration eventually produced the absurd caricature recognizable throughout the English-speaking world today. Cornish English is rhotic, which is to say, R is pronounced even when it is not before a vowel; and while this feature is common in North American English, it stands out among the other dialects spoken in Southern England. I wouldn’t wonder if this was the reason for the greatly exaggerated Rs in the stylized imitations.
The interjection “arr” is actually known to be used in Cornwall, where it is synonymous with “aye”, “yea”, and “yes”.