After that it goes on with long passages created to help you mirror Cornish dialect, relevant the meeting of the miner ‘Relative Jack/Jacky’ together with his maid, Mary, in addition to their after that cam and deeds. Remarkably, an identical pamphlet offers facts having ‘Cousin Jan’ and maybe Jenny-both Jan and you may Jenny occur for other emails about text of poem, recommending they too had been thought to be old-fashioned labels to have Cornish letters, and ‘Cousin phlets which might be advertised on the rear from An excellent Cornish Ghost Facts, namely New Bal, otherwise, ‘Tes a great Bra’ Keenly Lode, Cousin Jan’s Tale (first typed at Helston for the 1850) and its own follow up Relative Jan’s Courtship and you can Wedding (earliest wrote from the Truro into the 1859), both by William Bentinck Forfar. The initial of these, composed 36 months till the first site regarding OED site in order to Cousin The month of january (that is, indeed, extracted from a paper ad because of it pamphlet away from 1853, while the OED doesn’t explore it), includes the next passage:
When the it is possible to hear myself for a moment, your shallHear everything about seeking to and dealing an excellent Bal;The Lode is actually located from the a little best free hookup site Bristol hazel twig,Transmitted along side soil from the specific understanding dated prig. ,’Tes the fresh new keenliest gozan thee actually ded’st see. (13)
Cousin ple of the ore to help you a master Polglaze, ‘a Purser, infamous, Who easily, from the exploration, a rich boy got grown’. He declares that they have to go to London to boost loans (‘The went around Bristol of the an effective steamer off Hayle, And you will went on out-of Bristol so you can London area by rail’), as well as their adventure will then be recounted inside the Cornish dialect from the Relative The month of january. Next, the form ‘Cousin Jan’ is located in a small number of Cornish papers stuff regarding the 1860s to your 1890s because the identity off an effective Cornish ‘everyman’ otherwise because the a general label getting Cornishmen/Cornish miner, we.e. it appears getting functioned while the a variant particular ‘Cousin Jack’/’Cousin Jacky’. This will be backed by the truth that ‘Cozen Jan’ first seems into the Forfar’s poem included in an expression you to definitely appears fundamentally just like Christopher Child’s traditional Cornish miner’s words “Com’se collectively Cousin Jacky”.
Naturally, so it passageway seems to incorporate facts getting a Cornish use away from ‘Cousin Jack/Jacky’ to have an excellent miner still living when you look at the Cornwall sometime in the 1850s or early 1860s
The second publication that further illustrates an early usage of ‘Cousin Jack’ and similar in Britain, without obvious reference to Cornish emigrants, is a report in The Cornish Telegraph for 27 September 1854. This briefly recounted the exhumation of a miner who fell down the shaft of Pednandrea Mine, Redruth in the 1820s. The rediscovery of his remains apparently prompted ‘great excitement’ and his funeral procession on Sunday, 17 September 1854, was attended by four thousand people, equal to around half of the population of Redruth at that time. What is particularly striking is that, although his real name is given as John Stephens, the newspaper notes that in life he was ‘better known as “Cousin Jack Cobbler,”‘(14) something that obviously suggests the use of the nickname ‘Cousin Jack’ in Cornwall as far back as the 1820s. The status of Stephens’ alternative name as a nickname is confirmed by the report on the inquest published the previous week in the Royal Cornwall Gazette:
Cozen The month of january, d’ee already been ‘long wi’ me
On Saturday the 16th instant, an inquest was held. on the body of John Stephens, aged 25 years. According to the evidence of William Thomas, miner, it appeared that as long ago as the 9th of August, 1828, the deceased and his brother were employed in stripping the shaft, and drawing up the materials in the Pednandrea Mine, near Redruth. The deceased and witness both fell into the shaft together. Dead was notorious throughout the neighborhood by nickname out-of “Cousin Jack Cobbler.”(15)
