Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/397

Rh Mousehole, a considerable part of whose letter I shall subjoin:—

" 'Dolly Pentreath is short of figure and bends very much with old age, being in her eighty-seventh year; so lusty, however, as to walk hither to Castle Horneck, about three miles, in bad weather in the morning and back again. She is somewhat deaf, but her intellect seemingly not impaired. . . . She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English, being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as, her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it, or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by the parish, and partly by fortune - telling and gabbling Cornish.' "

A monument has been erected to her memory by Prince Lucien Bonaparte. She died on December 26th, 1777, and was buried in January, 1778. The following epitaph was written for her:—