Memorialising the diasporic Cornish

And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? asked Professor Charles Thomas in his seminal book of the same name, arguing that in the early medieval period, with its paucity of documentary records (the so-called 'Dark Ages'), the inscribed standing stones of Cornwall were the best surviving evidence for the existence of named early Cornish people.¹ In Comparing this period, with its scant documentary evidence, with the modern era and its almost embarrassment of riches drawn from a multiplicity of data and source, the inference was that it was hardly necessary to resort to such devices to seek information about the lives (and deaths) of individuals and communities in recent centuries. Given the vastness of modern archives and repositories, one need not search for silent fragmentary remains cast in stone to illuminate life stories.