To return. The speech of the Cornish people is another subject about which erroneous ideas may be got from reading. Norden wrote that the native language was declining in his day, and adds: "But of late the Cornishe men have much conformed themselves to the use of the Englishe toung and their Englishe is equall to the beste." There is no doubt that he was speaking of the gentry, but hasty makers of books who came after him took it to mean that the people generally spoke good English, and this statement has been repeated in books down to the present day. Andrew Borde, in his Bohe of the Introduction of Knoledge, 1542, wrote: "In Cornwall is two speeches, the one is naughty Englische, and the other Cornysshe speeche." The last has been long dead, and dead will remain in spite of the efforts of one enthusiast who hopes to revive it and has actually written a sonnet in Cornish just to prove that it can be done; but "naughty Englische" is still generally spoken, though very much less naughty than the "proper Cornish" which I have described as quite unintelligible to a stranger.
It was explained to me by a gentleman, resident for many years in West Cornwall, a student of the people, that they have two distinct ways of speaking, especially in the villages along the coast and in places much frequented by visitors. In speaking to strangers they enunciate their words with deliberation so as to be understood, and those among them who have a good deal of practice succeed very well; but among themselves they speak in a hurried manner, slurring over or omitting half the syllables in half the words, so that it is most difficult to follow them. I am convinced from my own observation that he is right. I have sat conversing with a knot of fishermen, and after a while become silent, pretending to fall into a brown study while listening all the time, and they, seeing me absorbed in my own thoughts, as they imagined, have dropped quite naturally into their own familiar lingo.
Here is another instance. There was one cottage I always liked to visit to sit for an hour with the family and sometimes have a meal with them just for the pleasure of listening to the wife, a thin, active, voluble woman, who was a remarkably good speaker, and what was even more to me, a lover of all wild creatures—a rare thing in a Cornish peasant. Or perhaps I should say all creatures save one—the adder. Once, she told me, when she was a little girl she was running home over the furze-grown hill from school when she came upon an adder in the act of devouring a nestful of fledglings. She stood still and gazed, horror-stricken, as it slowly bolted bird after bird, and then fled home crying with grief and pain at what she had witnessed, and never from that day had she seen or thought of an adder without shuddering. Now it almost invariably happened that in relating her experiences she would become excited at the most interesting part, and in her heat speak more and more rapidly and change from plain understandable English to "naughty English" or "proper Cornish," and so cause me to lose the very point of the story. Tonkin, the Cornish historian, when the old language was well-nigh dead, described the people's speech as a jargon "the peculiarity of which was a striking uncertainty of the speaker as to where one word left off and another began."
The voice is not musical, but in young people who have not lost the quiet low manner of speaking acquired at school and gone back to the original noisy gabble, it often sounds pleasant. There is an intonation, or sing-song, which varies slightly in different localities: some fine ears can tell you to which village or "church-town," as they say, a man belongs by his intonation. As a rule it is a slight raising of the voice at the last, and dwelling on it, and on any word in the sentence on which the emphasis naturally falls, and is like singing. When you get young people with fresh, clear voices talking together with animation, the speech falls into a kind of recitative and has a rather pleasing effect. But the voice appears to harden and grow harsh with years, and acquires a disagreeable metallic quality. A good singer is, I imagine, a great rarity. The loud and hearty singing in the chapels is rather distressing. In a Bible Christian place of worship, when Baring Gould's hymn "Onward, Christian soldiers," was being sung, I was almost deafened by the way in which the congregation bellowed out the lines—
Hell's foundations tremble
At our shout of praise.
And small wonder, I thought, if any sense of harmony survives down there!
Of speaking and singing I heard more than enough during my first winter (1905-6), as it was a time of political agitation. The excitement was, however, mostly in the towns. Fishermen and miners were almost to a man on the Liberal side, led by their ministers, who were eagerly looking to have their revenge on the Church; while those on the land were, despite their Methodism, on the other side, but with small hopes of winning. They appeared to be in a reticent and somewhat sullen humour: it was hard to get a word out of them, but I one day succeeded with a farmer I was slightly acquainted with. I found him in a field mending a gate, and after telling him the news and guessing what his politics were, I teased him with little mocking remarks about the way things electoral were going, until he was thoroughly aroused, and burst out in a manner that fairly astonished me. Yes, he was a Conservative, he angrily exclaimed. Being on the land, what else could he be? Only a blind fool or a traitor to his fellows could be anything different if he got his living from the land. He didn't knaw the man as thought different to he. But they—the farmers—were going to be beat, he knew well enough. 'Twas bound to be, seeing the other side had the numbers. They had the town people—small tradesmen, fishers, workmen and all them that passed their time leaning against a wall with their hands in their pockets—the unemployed as they was called now-days. We didn't use to call them that! The Liberals with their promises had got them on their side. What did they think they'd get? To live without work? That pay would be better, clothes and food cheaper—miners to get two pounds a week, or three, 'stead of thirty shillings; a fisherman to get twice as much for his fish, so that after a good catch he'd be able to sit down and rest for six months? No more work for we! Yes, many expected that. Anyhow they'd all git something because 'twas promised 'em—better pay, better times. But you can't have something for nothing, can you? Who's to pay for it then? They don't bother about that; 'twill have to come somehow—maybe from the land. Yes, the land's to pay for everything! Did any of them town idlers, them that worked a day or two once a week or month—did they knaw what the land gave? Did they knaw what 'tis to git up before dawn every day, Sundays as well, and work all day till after dark, all just for a bare living? But you work the land, they'll say, you don't own it—'tis the landlords we've got to get it out of. 'Twill come out of the profits. Will it? That's just what I'd like to knaw. We pay a pound or two an acre with all the rough and stones, and we pay tithes. And what do the landlords git? There's rich and poor and big and little among 'em, the same as in everything. If he owns a hundred thousand acres he's well off, however little the land pays. But what if he owns only a few small farms, like most of them in these parts—can he live and bring up his sons to be anything better than labourers, or just what we farmers are, out of it? If I owned this land myself and had to pay all my landlord pays, I don't think I'd be much better off than I am now. I'd have to work the same. What do they mean, then, by saying the land will pay? I knaw—I'll tell you. It means that the land's here and can't be hidden and can't be taken out of the country, and them who own it and them that make their living out of it can be robbed better than anybody else. That's how them that are not on the land will get their something for nothing.
What most interested me was the manner in which this discourse was delivered. In conversation he had the hard metallic Cornish voice without any perceptible intonation; now in his excitement he fell into something like a chant, keeping time with hands and legs, swinging his arms, striking his foot on the ground, and jerking his whole body up and down. Even so might some Cornish warrior of the ancient days have harangued his followers and tried to inspire in them a fury equal to his own. Even the cows two or three fields away raised their heads and gazed in our direction, wondering what the shouting was about.
As for the matter of his discourse, he expressed the feeling common among the farming people—the fear of change was on them. The odd thing is that the people generally, including miners, fishermen and others of their class, are haters of innovation, even as the farmers are, which does not promise them some material benefit, and there is no doubt that in this case they did confidently expect some good thing, and it pleased them to think their ministers were on their side. They knew that their ministers were aiming at something which they cared very little about: it was an alliance and nothing more. They are not dominated by their ministers, and, excepting some of the local preachers, do not share their malignant hatred of the Church. On the contrary I found it a usual thing for the chapel people to go occasionally to church as well, and many made it a practice to go every Sunday to the evening service. It is also common for the chapel-goers to send for the vicar when in want of spiritual aid. The minister often enough tells the applicant to go to the vicar who is "paid to do it." I talked to scores of people about the education question and could hardly find one in ten to manifest the slightest interest in it. The people had no quarrel with the Church on that question, although their ministers were preaching to them every Sunday about it. These preachers were Scotchmen, Midlanders, Londoners—anything but Cornishmen—and in most cases knew as much about the Cornish as they did of the inhabitants of Mars. They knew what the Methodist Society wanted and that was enough for them.