Milva Kernow: A Cornish Bestiary

Exploring the Symbolic Beasts of Cornwall and the Power of Reimagined Folklore

A Cornish Oss. Illustration by Morgana Weeks

From the rugged tors of Bodmin Moor to the windswept headlands of the far west, Cornwall’s folkloric imagination has long been peopled by creatures of bone, hide, shadow, and mystery. In Milva Kernow: A Cornish Bestiary, Dr. Merv Davey opens a door to this world not just through myth and memory, but through music, dance, costume, and revival. His work is more than a catalogue of creatures. It is an invitation to see Cornwall through its masks: theatrical, satirical, ancestral, and defiant.

At Dark Cornwall, we’ve always believed that folklore is a living force. Stories grow, shift, and return in new forms. Often darker, wiser, and more rebellious than before. Davey’s piece doesn’t simply document the beasts of Cornwall. It shows us how they’ve evolved, how they’ve been summoned again, and what they now represent for a culture that refuses to be erased.

The Resurrection of Pen Glas and the Invention of Pen Gwyn

Our friend, Pen Hood

One of the most striking moments in the bestiary is the tale of Pen Glas, the Blue Head. Early 20th-century folklorist Robert Morton Nance mentioned this spectral horse-skull figure as part of Cornwall’s winter traditions, an echo of the Welsh Mari Lwyd. But it wasn’t until the late 1970s that Pen Glas was reimagined, revived, and ultimately transformed into Pen Gwyn (White Head) by Cam Kernewek, a Cornish dance group attending the Pan Celtic Festival in Killarney.

This wasn’t just historical re-enactment. It was folklore made flesh again, reborn through artistry, theatre, and cultural intent. Pen Gwyn, with its eerie skull and veil, has become a fixture of events like Lowender Peran and Golowan, bringing something ancient, unsettling, and strangely joyful into the modern festival circuit. The horse is no longer just a spectre of the past. It is a performer, a presence, a challenge.

We at Dark Cornwall love this kind of creative reckoning with tradition. It’s not about strict accuracy. It’s about emotional truth. About keeping the bones of old stories dancing.

Guize Dancing: Carnival, Critique, and CostumeIf there’s a beating heart to this bestiary, it’s the practice of Guize Dancing. A tradition so Cornish, so anarchic, and so brilliantly layered that it defies neat categorisation. At first glance, Guize Dancing is festive street theatre. Masked dancers, mock-serious performances, costumes made from fur, tin, bark, and fabric scraps. But as Davey reveals, the deeper roots of Guize lie in satire, social inversion, and mockery.

The etymology itself is telling, possibly deriving from the Cornish “ges” (mockery) and “gis” (guise or manner). Guize Dancing, then, is not just play. It is protest. A way for the powerless to poke fun at the powerful. A chance for the land’s forgotten voices to be heard behind a mask. Davey connects this practice not only to community memory but also to a broader European tradition of carnival and the world turned upside down.

We couldn’t agree more with the Davey's celebration of this form. Guize Dancing is where folklore and resistance meet. Where the beast is both comic and dangerous, both fool and oracle. At Dark Cornwall, we’ve seen how masks can say what mouths sometimes can’t. And there’s something beautifully Cornish about putting on a costume to tell the truth.

The Beast of Bodmin: Metaphor and Myth

Every bestiary needs a monster, and the Beast of Bodmin fills that role with grim majesty. Though often associated with modern big cat sightings, Davey turns our attention to a different version of the Beast, one used in the revived Bodmin Riding festival of the 1970s. There, the Gwari Bosvena (Bodmin Play) was performed, with the Beast represented by a grotesque costume made of sheep hide over wicker. This was not just a creature. It was Cornwall personified.

In the play, the Beast stands trial for the historical wrongs committed against the Cornish people, including the loss of language, land, and autonomy. The performance ends not with the Beast’s destruction, but with a confrontation between past and future, tradition and injustice. It is brilliant, raw theatre. And it shows just how powerfully a folkloric figure can embody a nation’s grief, anger, and pride.

This is one of our favourite parts of Milva Kernow. Because folklore, at its best, tells the stories we’re not allowed to tell in any other way. The Beast of Bodmin isn’t just a cryptid. It is a reckoning. A symbol of Cornwall’s pain and its power. It reminds us that mythology isn’t escapism. It is memory with claws.

A Chorus of Beasts: Reclaiming Cornish Identity

Davey’s bestiary doesn’t stop at Pen Gwyn and Bodmin. He invites us into a whole ecosystem of symbolic creatures, each with their own origins, costumes, meanings, and energies. Some are rooted in older stories. Others are more modern inventions. But all are part of a larger pattern, one that shows Cornwall reimagining itself through ritual and play.

In this view, a beast isn’t just a creature. It’s a channel. A way for Cornish communities to process the past, celebrate difference, laugh at power, and reclaim pride. Whether it’s a skeletal horse trotting through the village at Yule or a monstrous figure held aloft in protest and performance, these beasts do what history books rarely can: they make people feel.

And that, for us, is the true magic of Davey’s piece. It doesn’t treat folklore as a dead archive, but as a living choreography. Each costume, each dance step, each roar and rattle is part of a larger survival spell. One that says: we are still here.

Our Reflections: Let the Beasts Roam Free

Reading Milva Kernow, we felt that rare, electric sense of recognition. As if someone had mapped out a language we’ve always known but never seen written down. Davey’s work isn’t just scholarly. It is generous. It opens the doors to anyone who wants to join the dance, wear the mask, honour the beast.

At Dark Cornwall, we’ve spent years tracing the line where myth becomes message. This bestiary sits firmly on that line. It shows how folklore, especially Cornish folklore, is never static. It adapts, provokes, reinvents, and rises from the moor again and again.

We recommend this article to anyone interested in Cornish identity, storytelling, or the potent symbolism of animal forms. And if you’re ever lucky enough to see Pen Gwyn dance past at a festival, or witness a Guize Beast in full flourish, don’t just watch. Join in.

Let the beasts roam free.

Read the full piece by Dr. Merv Davey on the Cornish National Music Archive. It is a masterclass in folkloric insight and cultural revival.