Page:The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall.djvu/29

 not offer her a price that was satisfactory, she gruinblecl to some other old women in an unknown tongue, which he concluded therefore to be Cornish. When we reached Mousehole, I desired to be intro- duced 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, and in a language which sounded very 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 continued nine or ten days in Cornwall after this, but found that my friends whom I had left to the eastward continued as incredulous almost as they were before, about these last remains of the Cornish language; because, among other reasons, Dr. Borlase had supposed in his Natural History of the County, that it had entirely ceased to be spoken. It was also urged, that as he lived within four or five miles of the old woman at Mousehole, he consequently must have heard of so singular a thing as her continuing to use the vernacular tongue.