Blogs

The Penzance Cornish Language Festival kicks off its first year this Saturday, February 25th.  This festival is destined for great things and quite likely will become a nexus for growing resurgence of Celtic Cornwall’s reawakening.

As the worldwide achievements of Manx men and women continue to bring international recognition for the Isle of Man, Bob Stimpson and Roy Moore have successfully joined forces, as trustees, to raise funds for a memorial to be dedicated to one of the Island's most prolific inventors.

The campaign's success has now secured shipment of the stone for cutting before transfer to Manx Memorials for specific work on the grave-marker's inscription by Matthew Gregson.

News From Kernow Matters To Us:

We are grateful to our Breton brothers and sisters for drawing this news to our attention:

The Valley of the Saints: The hundredth statue sets sail to Carnoët, Brittany.

The statue will represent Saint Piran - Cornish Abbot and Saint, will be sculpted at Mabe, near Falmouth and will sail in May 2018.

Saint Piran will be represented with a millstone wheel around his neck. The Cornish legend tells how, Piran, already aged, was captured by the local pagan Irish.

News From Kernow Matters To Us:

Daily Express article recorded as racial incident by Met Police

The Massacre of Glencoe (Scottish Gaelic Mort Ghlinne Comhann) took place early in the morning of 13 February 1692. One of the most beautiful places in Scotland Glen Coe (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Comhann) takes its name from the River Coe that winds and tumbles its way through the glen. It is hard for those who visit this area of great beauty today to think that it was the site of such a treacherous act of murder and brutality against the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe.

Broad Haven (Welsh: Aber Llydan) is a village in the south east corner of St Bride's Bay (Welsh: Bae Sain Ffraid) in the south-west of Wales. It is an area of great beauty with the coast surrounding it forming a part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park (Welsh: Parc Cenedlaethol Arfordir Penfro). It draws visitors from far and wide and maybe from even further that we think.

Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, Chief of Clan Fraser lived from about 1667 to 9 April 1747. Beheaded in London as a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, his headless body is said to lie in a lead casket at Wardlaw Mausoleum at Kirkhill, near Inverness. A body, minus the head is in the casket but is it that of Simon Fraser? After he was beheaded, some say his body remained in England, others that it was taken to Scotland and ended up in Wardlaw Mausoleum.

There are few people in politics as disagreeable as Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster. Scowling her way through the very negative launch of her party's election campaign for the Northern Ireland Assembly election she said she would not be supporting the introduction of an Irish Language Act. No surprise there as hostility to Ireland’s indigenous ethnicity including the Gaelic language is deeply entrenched in her brand of political unionism. 

If there's one way of shaking off those winter blues, it's undoubtedly a visit to the hugely successful Scottish festival Celtic Connections, where musicians linked to the Manx music scene showed ticket holders just how vibrant the trad scene is on the Isle of Man.

Based in Glasgow, this annual folk, roots and world music festival attracts more than two thousand musicians from across the globe, for eighteen days of festival fusion and the pick of a staggering three hundred events.

The government of Catalonia has vowed to continue with its plans to secure its independence from Spain.  This come as ex-President of Catalonia Artur Mas is put on trial by Spain accused of criminal disobedience for holding a symbolic independence referendum in Catalonia in 2014. Artur Mas, who governed Catalonia from 2010 to 2016, will appear at the high court in Barcelona on Monday (06/02/17) along with former vice-president Joana Ortega and former education minister Irene Rigau.