Jowal Lethesow: Whedhel a'n West a Gernow (The Lyonesse Stone in Cornish) [Paperback]

 

 

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Back in 1991, I remember stumbling into the late and lamented Truro Bookshop and coming across a novel called The Lyonesse Stone: A Novel of West Cornwall. Having grown up on an epic diet of Stephen Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and Jack Vance (Lyonesse), this fantasy seemed the very thing for me. At the time, Weatherhill's novel was a tremendous breakthrough in Anglo-Cornish literature: a mature, intelligent and well-written novel that managed to weave together many mythological strands of history, folklore and legend.
Although perhaps marketed then by the Padstow-based publisher Tabb House as a teenage or young person's fiction, it in fact, has considerable appeal for adult reader as well. Even better, it was dedicated to that `old Celt' William Bottrell, folklorist and story collector. Weatherhill's original project concerned the story of modern-day Penny and John Trevelyan, who are caught up in a centuries old quest for power and immortality, connected to the flooding of Lyonesse - the mythical land between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly. Having an almost Alan Garner-like realism and a Susan Cooper-style darkness, the novel managed to redefine contemporary fantasy literature of Cornwall. What I always found great about the novel is the way that Weatherhill managed to weave in place-names and their meanings (the author is an acknowledged place-names expert), with Part One `The Crownstone' linking Men Scryfa, the Hooting Carn and a fogou, and Part Two: `Shall Times Intermingle', linking the past with the present - in a way, a notion that sums up the Cornish experience.
So, why the revisit? Well, the novel has now been expertly translated into Cornish by Nicholas Williams, and the result is that we now have an important contribution to Cornish-language literature. The effect of Williams' translation is often dazzling; the Cornish giving new illumination to major sequences in the novel, as well as presenting a further realism of space and place. Williams is a precision translator, weaving absolutely the correct meaning from the original, but also giving a tremendous feel of the original: in fact, the two qualities one would most want. Jowal Lethosow, is the novel's title in Cornish and it has been diligently produced by Evertype of County Mayo in Ireland. Evertype have made something of a reputation for themselves of late, not only producing an acclaimed series of publications on the Cornish language, but also translating a range of world-class literature into Cornish. One such publication is Weatherhill's novel. What is very important about this book is that it marks a new watermark for literature in Cornish. We have, so it would seem, moved on from safe `bang the drum' novels solely about nationalism or 1497, and now have a cotemporary literature that sits up there with J.K. Rowling and Michael Murpurgo. Evertype have high production values, so this is not the thrown together piece of work of some Cornish language organisations. Instead, we see a modern typeface, contemporary styling and an awareness of what a modern literature needs to look like.
2009 would appear to have been a significant year for Weatherhill. Halsgrove have just reprinted a fine new edition of his Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall and Scilly 4000BC - 1000AD, which features many of the places imagined in Jowal Lethosow. For that extra degree of realism, read the two books together, and one is able to map the characters' journeys across the landscape of West Cornwall. The sequel to Jowal Lethosow was Seat of Storms, which was a thoroughly enjoyable second instalment of the saga. A third, The Tinner's Way, is planned for the near future. It would be a fine thing indeed, if these could also be translated into Cornish, and that Weatherhill continues to both examine and recreate our mythological past.

Much as the Cornish language needs this sort of translation of modern popular literature, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who is not already familiar with the pronunciation of the language. The spelling being pushed here is idiosyncratic, misleading and unsupported. It does not have the backing of the Language Board or the local education authority. Nor is there any dictionary based on this system, which is experimental and unstable. It is indeed a great pity, and a loss to the language, to see the author, editor/translator and publisher/typesetter throwing away their talents in this way.

Publishing this kind of infantile fantasy into an anglicized form of Cornish, using a foreign orthography, is a big set back for the Cornish Language movement.

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