An Ladymer ay Kernow
- The Cornish Language and Its Literature, Peter Berresford Ellis, 1974. p105
In ACB, Lhuyd says that he has held off including a Cornish vocabulary, because of space limitations, its similarity to Breton, and because he had been told of someone near Truro who was composing a Cornish Vocabulary.
Thomas Tonkin, writing to Gwavas from Pol Gorran on 19 July 1738, bemoans the fact that he had told Lhuyd that a Mr William Hals was compiling a Cornish vocabulary called "An Lhadymer ay Kernou" (The Interpreter of Cornwall). According to Tonkin, William Hals (1655-1737?) was not very fluent in the language:
- I have not corresponded with him for these many years and shall only give this friendly admonition, that, if he still entertains thoughts of publishing his An Ladymer ay Kernow and (what he calls) his Parochial Antiquities of Cornwall, he would do well to have them carefully revised by some learned discreet persons, especially the latter.
Tonkin later wrote an introduction to an edition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall, dated at Pol Gorran on 9 July 1733, but which was not published until 1811:
- But since I am now upon Cornish I ought not leave another gentleman unmentioned, Mr. William Hals of St. Wren who has been for fifty years past, labouring on that language, and the history of this county, the first by way of a dictionary which he calls 'An Latimer ay Kernou and the other Parochial Antiquities of Cornwall. It is between 25 and 30 years since I have seen him. I am told he has greatly improved and polished them since that time...
Pryce describes Hals' work as 'a most strange hodge podge of Hebrew, Greek etc. and British words'.
After Hals' death, his Antiquities was published by his nephew in Truro in 1750 as The Compleat History of Cornwall-general and parochial, written by William Hals, Gentleman, deceas'd, a native of that county, perfect master of the Cornish and very well versed in the British and Saxon as well as the learned languages.
The Latymer was not published, but part has been recovered, the manuscript from A to BRIGH, and is in the National Library of Wales.
Lhuyd's Vocabulary, containing Lhuyd's elegy on the death of William III, dates 1702, was discovered in the National Library of Wales.