[Original]
CHAPTER IX THE PEOPLE AND THE FARMS
A primitive type—Unintelligible speech—The little dark man—The prevailing type blonde—The Dawn in Britain—-Cornish speech and "naughty English"—Two modes of speaking—Voice and intonation—Chapel singing—The farmer's politics—Preachers and people—Life on a farm—Furze as fuel—Food—Healthy and happy children—Children in procession—The power of the child.
ONE afternoon I watched the gambols and mock fights of three ravens among the big boulder stones at a spot a little way back from the cliff, and seeing a man occupied in pulling up swedes in a field not very far off, I thought I would go and speak to him about the birds, as they haunted the spot regularly and he would perhaps be able to tell me if they ever bred in the neighbouring cliffs. I knew the man by sight, also that he was a native of the place and never in his fifty odd years had been further than about ten miles away from it. He called himself a "farmer," being the tenant of a small holding of about a dozen or fifteen acres and a small cottage which was the "farm-house." He was a curious-looking undersized man with a small narrow wizened face, small cunning restless eyes of no colour, and reddish yellow eyebrows, perpetually moving up and down. He reminded me of an orangutan and at the same time of a wild Irishman of a very low type.
I talked to him about the ravens, pointing to them, and he, presently recalling I dare say some exciting adventure he had met with in connection with the birds, began to tell me the strangest story I had ever listened to. It was absolutely unintelligible; the strangeness was in his manner of delivering it. He grinned and he grimaced, swinging his long thin sinewy monkey-like arms about, jerking his body, and making many odd gestures, while pouring out a torrent of gibberish, interspersed with Caffre-like clicks and other inarticulate sounds; then throwing himself back he stared up at me, wrinkling his forehead, winking and blinking, as much as to say "Now what do you think of that?"
"Yes, just so; dear me! very wonderful!" I returned; and then, after treating me to another torrent, he threw himself back on his swedes and I walked off. I discovered that this little man, who, when excitedly talking and gesticulating, was hardly like a human being, was one of a type which is not excessively rare on this coast. He differed from others of his kind whom I met only in his reddish colour. The proper colour of this kind is dark. On the St. Ives beach I one day saw another specimen. He was in the middle of an altercation with a carter who was loading his cart with dogfish which the fish-buyers had turned up their noses at and so it had to be sold for manure. He was in a state of intense excitement, dancing about on the sands and discharging a torrent of wild gibberish at the other. I remarked to a young Cornishman who was standing there looking on and listening, that I could not understand a word and could hardly believe that all the man's jabber really meant anything. "I can understand him very well," said the young man: "he is talking proper Cornish."