“‘Like Uncle Acky Stoddern, the picture of ill luck.’ This was always applied to a once well-known Gwennap-man.
“When a boy is asked what he will be, it is sometimes answered on his behalf, ‘I’ll be like Knuckey, be as I am.’
“‘Like Nanny Painter’s hens, very high upon the legs,’ is applied to a starveling or threadpaper.
“‘Like Malachi’s cheeld, choke-full of sense,’ applied derisively to any one boasting of himself or of his children. This is, I believe, purely Cornish.
“‘Like a toad under a harrow, I don’t know whichee corse to steer.’ The first division of this adage is common property, the last is confined to Cornwall.
“‘He is coming home with Penny Liggan,’ sometimes ‘Peter Lacken,’ signifies the return of a pennyless scapegrace. The term was probably ‘penny lacking’ originally.
“Are the Cornish folk given to making ‘bulls,’ like the Irish?” asks my correspondent. “I have heard of one or two curious inversions of speech.
“Once upon a time a little boy having vainly importuned his seniors for a penny to go and buy sweets, being determined not to be disappointed, went off, exclaiming, ‘I don’t care; I’ll go and trust Betty Rule,’ (the sweetmeat vendor.) This is native and genuine Gwennapian.
“The common people are fond of figures of speech. Port-wine negus was christened by the miners ‘black wine toddy.’ They go on Midsummer-day to Falmouth or Penzance, to get ‘a pen’ord o’ say’—that is, they go out in a boat on payment of a penny.
“With them, when their health is inquired after, every man is ‘brave,’ and every woman ‘charming;’ and friendship takes dear household names into its mouth for more expressiveness.