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This is a work in progress. The information is as complete and accurate as I have so far been able to make it, but as neither Celtic philology nor Anglo-British church history are my forte, any are gratefully accepted.
This is also a small experiment in open source academic research. Everything in the Vocabularium Cornicum project (http://www.carlaz.com/cornish/ and its subdirectories) is covered by the Open Publication License, making it freely available for modification, use, and redistribution under the terms of that license.
Instead of reading all the rest of the verbiage on this page, the impatient can jump directly to:
Then you can come back and read to verbiage to find out what it's all about! :)
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The Old English Antecedent
The Vocabularium Cornicum seems to be based on Aelfric's late tenth-century Latin-Old English vocabulary . Aelfric (or Æfric, c. 955-1010/20) is recognized as having been a leading scholar of his time and the foremost Old English prose stylist. He is thought to have beena monk at Winchester, then Cerne Abbas (where he later became abbot), and to have finished his life as the first abbott of Eynsham. Aelfric's most famous works are two series of Catholic Homilies that together make up the longest extant text in Old English. Among other works, Aelfric also produced a Latin grammar (c. 998), some Latin-Old English colloquies, and a Latin-Old English vocabulary -- all intended to assist English-speaking novices in learning Latin. These linguistic works became very widely known throughout Britain, and it is not that surprising that, almost two centuries later, Aelfric's Latin-Old English vocabulary was the starting point for the Vocabularium Cornicum.
Dating
It seems most likely that the Vocabularium Cornicum was originally composed in the middle or later twelfth century AD. This is later than the date suggested by Kenneth Jackson (c. 1100) who thought that the the Old English of Aelfric's tenth-century glosses would not have been understandable to the Vocabularium Cornicum's author much later than that date. However, more recent scholarship has made it clear that Old English texts could be understood well into the twelfth century, and the phonology of the forms found in Vocabularium Cornicum are seen as better suiting a date in the middle or later twelfth century. (I am grateful to Dr. Oliver Padel for offering this clarification on Jackson's dating.)
Previous Printed Editions
There are several printed editions of the Vocabularium Cornicum:
- Norris, Edwin, ed., Ancient Cornish Drama, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859; repr. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968; repr. Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., 1972).
- Zeuss, Johann Kaspar, Grammatica celtica: e monumentis vetustis tam hibernicae linguae quam britannicae, dialecti cambricae, cornicae, armoricae, nec non e gallicae priscae reliquiis, 2 vols (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1853; repr. London: Routledge, 2002).
- Graves, Eugene Van Tassel, ed., Vocabularium Cornicum: The Old Cornish Vocabulary (Columbia University thesis, 1962).
By far, the best edition is Graves's. His reading of the original manuscript and his discussion of its content are both considerable improvements on those of previous editors. He also provides thorough examination of the relationship between Vocabularium Cornicum and its Old English antecedent.
You can order an unbound printed paper version of Graves's thesis for around USD 40 (depending on where you are and how fast you want it) from the microfilm reel published by University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Go to UMI Dissertation Express and follow the directions: when prompted, enter "6203833" in the Order Number field (entering "Graves, Eugene" in the Author field should also work) and then continue following the site's directions to place an order. (Thanks to Micheal Everson for tipping me off on the dissertation ordering process!)
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Vocabularium Cornicum: an Electronic Version
At present, a text file containing the complete set of entries for the Zeuss edition of the Vocabularium Cornicum (not proof-read!) is available. My local university library has the superior Graves edition on microfilm, but it's very tedious to access, though my offprint from UMI is now on order. So, eventually, I hope to update my entries with info drawn from the Graves edition.
Meanwhile, working from the same Zeuss edition source material, Keith Bailey has prepared some complementary information covering, so far, the first hundred or so entries (or roughly two-thirds of folio 7a); he includes attempts at phonemic transcriptions of a normalized Old Cornish forms as well as Modern English glosses. Please note that this file, too, represents a work very much in progress and is subject to revision.
Hopefully, there will eventually be one "source" file that contains transcriptions of the Latin and Old Cornish entries of Vocabularium Cornicum as found in the original manuscript along with suggested "corrections" to problematic entries (drawing primarily on Graves). Maybe there can then be a further "extended edition" that includes such things cognates in other Celtic languages, the antecedent Old English glosses, and other notes.
In all cases, are most welcome.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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More Old Cornish Online
Although there is very little Old Cornish, very little of what exists is online. Heather Rose Jones has an online article "Cornish (and Other) Personal Names from the 10th Century Bodmin Manumissions". There are some notes about the Bodmin Manumissions (among others) at the Anglo-Saxon Charters website, though no actual text.
(And this is Middle/Late Cornish, rather than Old, but I thought I should mention that there are online facsimiles of the Beunans Ke manuscript and Beunans Meriasek manuscript.)
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References
Jackson, Kenneth, Language and History in Early Britain: a Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Century A.D. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953; repr. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000).
Schlutter, Otto B., "Das Vocabularium Cornicum und seine beziehungen zu dem ae. vocabulare des XI. Jahrhundert aus Ms.Gott Julius All, 4°, föl. 120v17–130v", Anglia, Band 33, Heft nr. 3 (1910), pp. 370-390.
Vocabularium Cornicum, ed. by Johann Kaspar Zeuss, in Zeuss, Johann Kaspar, Grammatica celtica: e monumentis vetustis tam hibernicae linguae quam britannicae, dialecti cambricae, cornicae, armoricae, nec non e gallicae priscae reliquiis, 2 vols (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1853; repr. London: Routledge, 2002): 2nd vol.
Zeuss, Johann Kaspar, Grammatica celtica: e monumentis vetustis tam hibernicae linguae quam britannicae, dialecti cambricae, cornicae, armoricae, nec non e gallicae priscae reliquiis, 2 vols (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1853; repr. London: Routledge, 2002).
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