Page:The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall.djvu/22

 among whom are such writers as Carew, Lhuyd, Pryce, Borlase, Polwhele, Hals, Tonkin, &c., and scattered ac- counts may be found in various publications. The particulars, as given in the History of Cornwall compiled by Hitchins, and edited by Samuel Drew, in 1824, are very simple and clear, and Drew's account may be quoted with advantage. He says : — " The language which was once spoken in this county by our British ancestors, awakens our solicitude from motives of local attachment, and becomes particularly in- teresting from the singular circumstance of its being now no more. At present we behold its mighty shadow in the pages of our history, and even this is gradually disap- pearing. The only scattered remnants which have survived its oral existence, may be found in those provincial phrases, and local names, for which Cornwall is so peculiarly re- markable. "The Cornish tongue is generally admitted to be a dialect of that language, which, till the Saxons came in, was common to all the western parts of Britain, and more anciently to Ireland and Gaul. " When the Romans came and subdued this country, the changes which they introduced, affected the language as well as the manners of the inhabitants. It does not however appear, that the Romans had any fixed design to extirpate the British language; yet its gradual decline followed as a necessary consequence of their solicitude to diffuse and establish their own. Hence in those parts where they had more fully established their power, the language of th*e people suffered most from the general