Page:The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall.djvu/181

 161 The moment "out" was said, the one on whom this word fell had to quit the row; and so seriatim, repeating the above words each time. In West Cornwall according to M.A.C. the following are the words used : — "Ena, mena, mona, mi, Pasca, lara, bona, (or bora,) bi, Elke, belke, boh. Eggs, butter, cheese, bread, Stick, stack, stone dead." In the game of Blindmaiis Buff, <* Among the many evidences that furnish the philologist with the proof that a once powerful people existed in our midst are those "wandering words" that flit through the atmosphere of our every-day lives. At first their indistinctness adds nothing to their beauty ; but, after a careful scrutiny, their roughness wears away, and amidst an accumulation of what is seemingly unreal and unsatisfactory, we begin to discover something that eventually will repay us for the labour we have bestowed upon them. There is — so to speak — nothing too common, nothing too mean, nothing so out of the everyday working of our lives, that will not lead us to a suc- cessful issue. A bit of bronze, a battered flint, a broken bussa, a single word or expression, — each carries us back to a period when manners, dress, domestic appliances, and the prevalence of a now forgotten tongue were scattered up and down our land ; and which differ from the England and the English in every essential of the present day. For instance, who would surmise that the talismanic words uttered by our children in their innocent games have come down to us very nearly as perfect as when spoken by the Ancient Briton; but with an opposite and widely different meaning ? The only degree of likeness that lies between them now is that where the child of the present day escapes a certain kind of juvenile punishment the retention of the word originally meant death in a most cruel and barbarous way. L