Cornish Culture Card

Last I night I got a new postcross address and read about the recipient. And thought hmmm, thanks for saying what you want, you can have that card of Porthcurno I have lying around upstairs awaiting a home...

Then this morning I had another look and realised that actually, they had said very clearly what they wanted. They wanted some words in your native tongue and a translation into English (which I immediately discounted because I only speak English) and some culture (culture on a card? where do I get that?). But as I thought about it I realised I could do this...

I looked up Cornish poems and eventually found this one here.

I decided to take the repeating bits of the poem and put them on a card. I also really liked the picture at the top and decided to use it, bargain! Culture and language! The card above was the result...

St Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall and legend has it som nasty non-Christian Irish folk threw him off a c liff on a millstone. He made his way to the lovely Perran Bay in Cornwall. Here in the bay, a top the sand dunes he built himself an oratory and began converting the local animals to Christianity. He eventually got a little more ambitious and started converting people.

The original Oratory was made of wattle and daub and was eventually replaced with a stone one. The dunes of Perran Bay continued to grow and in time the Oratory was abandoned to the sands, where it still lies. They built St Piran Old Church further away but eventually this to was left to the sand....

The Cornish language nearly died out but was saved in the nick of time. It is one of the old Celtic languages related to Gaelic and Welsh. I don't speak it but some Cornish words are part of the everyday vocab down here.

The words of the poem by Tim Saunders mean:

'Sand dunes hold a treasure captive between land and beach:
Black the deep nook where the shadows meet,
white the foam on sand.'

So in the end I managed culture and Cornish...