Things Cornish

[JonathanB]

I'm quite prepared to believe the Cornish never wore kilts, even though their language is a Celtic one, and their habit of naming villages after otherwise unknown saints of indeterminate gender is eminently Celtic, but I thought it would be nice to have a Cornish thread.

I've got a Cornish design kilt pin and I'm hoping soon to be the proud owner of a kilt in Cornish Hunting tartan, ersatz though it may be.

But I like Cornwall and I've got some pics, so here goes.

Here's the bench end in Zennor church near Land's End showing the Mermaid of Zennor, who did what mermaids usually do to nice young men, viz lure them to a fate worse than death.

[Spartan Tartan]

Being that my family hails from St. Ives, Cornwall, I love seeing the pictures and hope to visit soon.

I don't have any nice pictures of Cornwall, but I have a couple of my kilt Well, actually I have ONE of me wearing my kilt and one of a Cornish gentlemen that I ran into last weekend here in Rhode Island at the local Highland Festival.

The first is a couple years old, but it's the only one I have of me wearing my Cornish Hunting kilt.



Here, I am wearing the District Tartan of the State of Michigan (That's where my Cornish ancestors moved and took their mining skills to work in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan). But on my Right is Fred. He was straight off the boat, as they say. He was shocked that I would even recognize the tartan and I was surprised to see it at all! I have only seen pictures of others wearing it in Cornwall, but never here in the States. Nevertheless, here it is.



I thought you might like to see a couple kilts made up in the Cornish Hunting to kick start your jones into high gear

[Roderick Powell]

Thank you Johnothan, we are getting some good threads of Cornish history and and Cornish mining families moving To Canada and America.

To reverse the thread,they say there is a Cornish miner in every mine in the world.
My special interest is sea trading,my Scottish sea traders worked out of Poole in dorset.

The sea traders plied tin from Cornwall to wales for smelting and returned to Cornwall with coal for local mine smelting and for the estates,often landing on open beaches to discharge cargo.

Roderick.... South Coast England.

[Roderick Powell]

Re the link of Cornish dress from Pleater there are Illustrations of a gentleman from the time of John O'Gaunt,alias Geoffery Chaucer, which show the Gentleman wearing his closely stiched cloth stockings supported by straps on a belt under his short tunic.
The straps were called points. The level of a gentleman's class was noted in society by the number of points he wore.

As a crossover, In I believe 1967, when I was an apprentice, the young ladies wore stockings and suspenders under their very short skirts.
They then closed the gap with tight long briefs, then wore what were called pantie hose, and later; tights, sometimes in a thick wool for the Winter.
First time I saw a school girl in wooly tights was in the cold winter of about 1959 ,year of death of Buddy Holly in the plane crash in the snow.

The village girl's tights may have been a gift from rich aunt in Canada or America eight years before Mary Quant Fashions introduced tights as a fashion.
If I may move historically for the benefit of Pleater,at that time, mid fifties, the elderly generation of over ladies,over forty, still wore bloomers, known as passion killers.
These were similar to the" brechae ?" worn by Roman Soldiers Under their short tunics in colder climes.
If we move back to the time when the Roman armys moved across England, what were the Scots ,the Welsh And the Cornish wearing as they retreated away over their borders away from the romans ?
To complete my theme, John O'Gaunt was believed to be a secret agent in the French Court. Later gentlemen wore completely stiched tights for horse riding.Medieval and Tudor times.

This thread may have gone astray but ends with the horse riding officers with kilted highland infantry regiments wearing both tight tartan breeches , modern riding breeches and kilts for the mess in WW1 photos.

There is a reference to the old kilted kilted majors who were schoolies,(instructors) correctly dressed in the mess in Scotland after the abolition of the kilt as acceptable battle dress, post 1940. Ref. a book called the Dorset Highlander.

My theme for this post is the early style of cornish wear,historical male wear and Cornish mining ,migration and tradining.In my next post I will be returning to The Black Cornish Kilt as a starting point.

Roderick South Dorset Uk

[JonathanB]

I thought you might like to see a couple kilts made up in the Cornish Hunting to kick start your jones into high gear

Blast you, you have.

[Jock Scot]

In my youth I spent quite a lot of time around Falmouth and Zenor. The only time that I have seen a Cornish tartan was a few weeks ago at the High School graduation at Fort William. Mainly yellow and black as I recall and was worn by one of the school staff.

[JonathanB]

There are these two Cornish tartan designs from the last twenty years or so. The Cornish National has a lot of mustardy yellow

http://scotweb-objects.com/images/sw...jpg?1364025856

The Cornish Hunting is a nice green and I'm longing, longing, longing...

[JonathanB]

Roddy (hi and welcome, Roddy) started a thread here about Cornish kilts:

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...sh-kilt-79562/

I started this thread to talk about other things Cornish.

[Jock Scot]

There are these two Cornish tartan designs from the last twenty years or so. The Cornish National has a lot of mustardy yellow

http://scotweb-objects.com/images/sw...jpg?1364025856

The Cornish Hunting is a nice green and I'm longing, longing, longing...

The tartan shown in your link above is not like the one I saw a few weeks ago. Yes yellow and black for sure, but there was a vertical and horizontal white line crossing on the black, just like the Cornish flag.

[English Bloke]

Like this Jock?


This is Lochcarron's variant.