Artist, maker, linguist, writer, historian, founder of societies 1873 -1959
Born in Cardiff to Cornish parents Nance spent his early years in Wales, moving to Nancledra near St Ives in 1906, where he lived for 50 years.
He was a maritime artist and historian, instrumental in founding the Society for Nautical Research in 1911. He published a book about his model boats, Sailing Ship Models, 1924, but he increasingly focussed on things Cornish.
He wrote plays based on folklore for local schoolchildren: a performance of his play ‘Duffy’, based on the story of Duffy and the Devil, in St Ives in 1920 led him to cofound the Old Cornwall Society with his friend Henry Jenner. Later Morton Nance became the first recorder of the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, editor and contributor to its journal Old Cornwall, and one of the first bards of the Gorsedh, later Grand Bard. His bardic name was Mordon (sea wave).
Words and language intrigued him, he collected Cornish dialect words chatting to fishermen on Penzance Quay, and fishing in books in the Morrab and Falmouth libraries. He used these words in his writing and shared them in A Glossary of Celtic Words in Cornish Dialect, 1923, a glossary at the end of Cledry Plays, and in the posthumously published book that combined his great loves language, the sea and Cornwall, A Glossary of Cornish Sea Words,1959.
A champion in the Cornish language revival he developed a system of spelling and grammar of Cornish based on the ‘middle’ Cornish found in the medieval texts of the Ordinalia, (Cornish language versions of the passion plays), which he called ‘Unified Cornish’. He published a Cornish/English Dictionary, 1938, revised 1952.
Cornish folktales in English and Cornish were a part of his work eg Folklore Recorded in the Cornish Language, 1927
Lyver an Pymp Marthus Selevan, a collection of folk tales from the St. Levan parish written to imitate the style of Cornwall's miracle-plays, 1939.
He wrote a poem about Tom Bawcock’s Eve in Mousehole, which was set to music and is still sung today.
Tom Bawcock's Eve - Cornish National Music Archive
https://artuk.org/discover/artists/nance-robert-morton-18731959
Photo of Robert Morton Nance Grand Bard from Morrab Library Photographic Archive
