Cornish Saints & Sinners

by J. Henry Harris

One should come into the duchy to hear how the English language may acquire a languorous ease, which makes one want to sit still at the first milestone, and never to go any further. At first, Guy wanted everything "sharp"—boots "sharp," breakfast "sharp," everything to the minute, and every one on the alert. The Cornish constitution wasn't made to work that way in Cornish air. A woman was selling fruit at a street corner, and Guy bought some. A small boy was sent to change a coin, and Guy grew tired and impatient of waiting. Then he murmured, and talked of calling again at Christmas, if the boy was likely to be back by then. The woman was sweetly placid, and asked Guy if he was in a hurry? Guy said he wasn't suffering from that complaint, only he liked to see boys smart, and things done quickly, and so help the world to spin.

"I hate to be kept waiting," said he.

"It doan't sim long to we," said the woman, counting the coppers slowly, one by one, into Guy's impatient palm, when the boy did return.

It doesn't seem long to the native to "quat," and listen to another telling a yarn of endless length which might all be packed into a sixpenny "wire." The stranger has to get rid of irritable impatience before the restful influences of the words, and the manner of speaking them, lay hold of him; and when they do he is in a peaceful oasis. A bustling commercial man never dreams of opening his samples until he's inquired about all the family, down to the third generation; and in villages he has to remember that his customer's cow was bad last journey, that his black minorca hen hatched out fifteen eggs, and that the rats carried away ten in a single night. Then he has to see the missus, and talk babies, and corns, and indigestion; and then, when no one is looking, he undoes his samples, and business is introduced as though by accident.

Who can be in a hurry when he finds that to get to a place three or four miles away he must take the road to Trevalsamin, then cross the town place at Ponsandain, which brings you to the stile at Hallywiden, leave Ventongimps to the right, and the church-town of Trevespanvean will come in view, then down by Trebarva well, and you will reach your destination? Imagine this direction given in a zigzag fashion, with comments and sketches of scenery thrown in, and the story of a man who tackled a bull down by Trannack-Treneer bottom, and was carried home on a gate, and then lived——. You can't get away from the man until a sense of peace has fallen upon you; and you don't care if you take the journey now, or put it off until to-morrow.

The old people who invented these names were in no humour for hurry, and names are as thick as blackberries, for every field, and brake, and bottom has its own particular name, which is always repeated in full in conversation, no odds how often it occurs. A farmer knows his fields by their names, just as he knows his children by theirs. The English language shows its restful side in Cornwall.

Since our first parents were turned out of Eden, there has been no paradise for children more perfect than Cornwall. We didn't know it until we were told so by an old man hobbling along by the side of a donkey with panniers on its back, and in the panniers fresh fish to sell in the villages through which we were to pass. The old man was in trouble on account of the school children jumping on his donkey's back, and riding off at their own sweet wills. Then a boat came in with a little "cate" of fish, which the old man bought to sell to country, but nowhere could the donkey be found. Then he went about seeking, until, at last, he ran the animal to earth in a quarry in a brake, where the children had hidden it in order to ride back again in triumph after school. This was the old man's grievance, and he called heaven and earth to witness that there was no place under the sun where the rising generation better deserved hanging than in this parish; or where parents more deserved hanging for bringing up such varmints.

Guy tried his hand at a little friendly examination, and we learnt that things were different when the old man was young; when his very own father would have thought no more of cutting him down with a shovel, or stretching him stiff with a hammer, if he went leastways contrary, than he would have of eating a pasty. Well, if he did not like it he had to put up with it, like the rest, and it taught him how children ought to be trained. But now——

The old man was too full of words to speak for a time, but a passage cleared itself, and then we found it was all the fault of the school, and the rates, that children were varmints, and ought to be nailed up to barn doors, like weasels and wants, and sich-like. "Lay a finger upon a cheeld now, and the wimmen'll screech murder, marbleu! just as ef the French was coming. An' th' men's no better, tes oal, 'Coom here, Johnny, my son, an' plaise doan'ee break th' cloam, an' plaise doan'ee make a malkin ov yersel'; an' plaise doan'ee stale Tom Cobbledick's jackass, and hide'n away, when he do waant to go to country weth vish.' I'd 'plaise' em, th' varmints; I'd scat th' brains ov'm out!"

The old man told us frankly that the maidens were a tarnation sight worse than the boys under the new order of things. They didn't steal away his donkey, but they were the cause of quarrels among the women, and the women egged on the men, until there was neither rest nor peace in the parish. "There's that maid of Nancy Golley's," said he, "an' you'd s'poase she was the quietest maid in the country to see her on a Sunday, with a feather in her hat a yard long, and oal the fashions on her back. An' so she es quiet till she do see another maid come down along weth something on her back which she thinks would suit her beauty better. Then what do she do but go over to the other maid, oal artful-like, an' begin to purr round, and find out what it cost, and what tallyman her mother got it from; and then she rounds and says, ted'n paid for, and she ought to be ashamed to wear it, when her old granny is eating parish bread. Then the two wimmen begin upon their own account, and rip up each other, an' set th' men on; and they'd have killed one t'other, only the parish com'd in and tooked sides, and fout till they cud'n blaw nor strike. And this trubble oal becase the maidens were dressed up, and sent to school to learn bukes, instead of goin' to work. I'd giv' it to th' varmints, ess, sure I wud," said he, with a sing-song drawl, but all his ill-temper gone.