St Who?

Yesterday, 5th March, was St Piran's Day, not that anyone I met here in Buckinghamshire, or anything I read or saw during the day, gave any indication of the fact. When I was growing up in West Cornwall I hardly ever heard his name mentioned, but over the last fifty or sixty years he has become a symbol of varying degrees of Cornish identity, from the minority who would like to see 'Kernow' regain its independence after centuries of English oppression and neglect to those who, like me, see the cross of St Piran (a white cross on a black background) as a cheerful statement that 'we do belong'. The flag is waved at county rugby matches, flies defiantly on Cornish vessels of all sizes, and appears on many Cornish products, including the wrappers of a well-known Cornish pasty company (which, perhaps incongruously, sponsors Plymouth Argyle) . Google marks days deemed important by modifying its logo, but ignores St Piran. Perhaps this is not surprising, for the importance of a Celtic saint of whose contribution to world history not much hard evidence remains is disputable. Fanciful tales of his Irish (others say Welsh) origins survive. One version has it that he was thrown into the sea, tied to a millstone, at the command of an Irish king because he would not renounce his Christian faith, but that the millstone floated and bore him across the sea to Cornwall, where he converted the locals. The remains of a shrine are buried in the sand, and a few place-names (Perranarworthal, Perranporth) commemorate him. He became the patron saint of miners, his cross suggesting white metal in dark rock. Nowadays there is not just a single day of remembrance in Cornwall but a county-wide sequence of events lasting over several days of 'Pirantide'.

But yesterday, when I wore my small lapel badge with its cross of St Piran, only Sue knew what it signified. My mind went back to the day in 1991 when Cornwall met Yorkshire at Twickenham in the final of the now emasculated County Championship, a game which, despite its relatively provincial title, was regarded as a match of virtually international significance by the spectators from two of Britain's proudest and most distinctively independent-minded areas. It was a game that made the tame encounters of several of this year's Six Nations games look like a different sport. There were St Piran's flags all over the stadium, the overwhelming Cornish support overturning the huge population imbalance, and when we won, having come back to draw level and go into extra time, it was the finest example of the joyful, unaggressive side of the Cornish identity that I have seen.