page_title: Cornish people
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Cornish people / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: en:St Piran's Day
context_page_description: The Cornish people or Cornish are a Celtic ethnic group and nation native to, or associated with Cornwall and a recognised national minority in the United Kingdom, which can trace its roots to the ancient Britons who inhabited southern and central Great Britain before the Roman conquest. Many in Cornwall today continue to assert a distinct identity separate from or in addition to English or British identities. Cornish identity has been adopted by migrants into Cornwall, as well as by emigrant and descendant communities from Cornwall, the latter sometimes referred to as the Cornish diaspora. Although not included as an explicit option in the UK census, the numbers of those claiming Cornish ethnic and national identity are officially recognised and recorded.
  Throughout classical antiquity, the ancient Britons formed a series of tribes, cultures and identities in Great Britain; the Dumnonii and Cornovii were the Celtic tribes who inhabited what was to become Cornwall during the Iron Age, Roman and post-Roman periods. The name Cornwall and its demonym Cornish are derived from the Celtic Cornovii tribe.
context_section_description: The survival of a distinct Cornish culture has been attributed to Cornwall's geographic isolation. Contemporaneously, the underlying notion of Cornish culture is that it is distinct from the culture of England, despite its anglicisation, and that it is instead part of a Celtic tradition. According to American academic Paul Robert Magocsi, modern-day Cornish activists have claimed several Victorian era inventions including the Cornish engine, Christmas carols, rugby football and brass bands as part of this Cornish tradition. Cornish cultural tradition is most strongly associated with the people's most historical occupation, mining, an aspect of Cornish history and culture that has influenced its cuisine, symbols and identity. The Cornish writer C. C. Vyvyan wrote in her 1948 book Our Cornwall: "A man might live and die among us and never gain throughout his allotted span of life one glimpse of the essential Cornwall or the essential Cornishman."
  Cornwall has its own tradition of Christian saints, derived from Celtic extraction, that have given rise to localised dedications. Saint Piran is the 5th century Christian abbot, supposedly of Irish origin, who is patron saint of both tin miners and Cornwall. According to popular mythology, Piran, an Irish scholar who studied Christianity in Ancient Rome was to be drowned in the Irish Sea by the High Kings of Ireland, but instead floated across to Perranporth in Cornwall by the will of God to preach the ministry of Jesus. Saint Piran's Flag, a centred white cross on a black field, was described as the "Standard of Cornwall" in 1838 and was re-introduced by Celtic Revivalists thereafter as a county flag of Cornwall. It has been seized upon by the Cornish people as a symbol of their identity, displayed on cars and flying from buildings including those of Cornwall Council. St Piran's Day is an annual patronal fête, and the pre-eminent Cornish festival celebrating Cornish culture and history on 5 March.
caption: St. Piran's Day is an annual patronal Cornish festival celebrating Cornish culture and history every 5 March.
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