Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/396

322 Cornish fluently. While we were travelling together I enquired how he knew that this woman spoke Cornish, when he informed me that he frequently went to Mouse- hole to buy fish which were sold by her, and that when he did not offer her a price that was satisfactory she grumbled to some other old woman in an unknown tongue, which he concluded to be Cornish.

"When we reached Mousehole I desired to be introduced as a person who had laid a wager that there was not one who could converse in Cornish, upon which Dolly Pentreath spoke in an angry tone for two or three minutes in a language which sounded very much like Welsh. The hut in which she lived was in a very narrow lane, opposite to two rather better houses, at the doors of which two other women stood, who were advanced in years, and who, I observed, were laughing at what Dolly said to me.

"Upon this I asked them whether she had not been abusing me, to which they answered, 'Very heartily,' and because I had supposed she could not speak Cornish.

"I then said that they must be able to talk the language, to which they answered that they could not speak it readily, but that they understood it, being only ten or twelve years younger than Dolly Pentreath.

"I had scarcely said or thought anything more about this matter till last summer (1772), having mentioned it to some Cornish people, I found that they could not credit that any person had existed within these few years who could speak their native language; and therefore, though I imagined there was but a small chance of Dolly Pentreath continuing to live, yet I wrote to the President (of the Society of Antiquaries), then in Devonshire, to desire that he would make some inquiry with regard to her, and he was so obliging as to procure me information from a gentleman whose house was within three miles of