The old man turned down a by-lane to sell a fish at a farmhouse, first telling us how to find Church-town and Mrs. Tregarthen's inn, where there was "a drap of good beer" on tap, and we could pay for a pint for him to drink when he came along.
Guy said it was refreshing to hear higher criticism of this sort; and wondered what the Education Department would think did they but know what a man of the soil thought of their strenuous efforts to spoil the rod and teach the "varmints" to have it their own way? The Bookworm wouldn't be provoked into saying anything, and so we reached the inn, and found a very good larder there.
There was a pleasant hum of talk outside the inn, where a knot of young miners were chatting over what concerned them most. The corner of the building seemed to be the favourite spot in the whole village, and the young men took turns to scratch themselves between the shoulders against the corner-stones. It soothed them, and when they'd all scratched in turns, they did a sort of jig with heel and toe, kicking the wall with the heels of their boots. They never came inside; and this was their way of showing that they had no animosity to the institutions of their country. Our window was open, and Guy said this would be a good opportunity for studying the language of the district. "When people are together they talk it pure," said he, arousing the Bookworm's attention.
Picking up a dialect in this way is not so easy; everybody seems talking at once, and there's no full-stops, and the commas, when there are any, seem to be in the wrong places. After a time, we captured a few syllables, and the Bookworm wrote down phonetically a conversation with two voices only—
"Say-yu, whatkoorarta?"
"Laastkoor b'nite."
"Adurnedkoorthat."
We all heard it, and there was no doubt about the sounds; every shorthand writer would be sure on that point. Then we called in Mrs. Tregarthen's husband and read over the transcript, and he said it was all right, and we might take away as much of the dialect as we pleased in the same way. He spoke slowly, and it came out like this—
"Say you, what coor art thou?"