154 THE LAND'S END 



humour, and even as there is an English humour, 

 which may be of a poor description in comparison 

 with the Hibernian, but is humour nevertheless, 

 native and local, and not confined to Dorset and 

 Warwickshire but to be met with in every county 

 from the Tamar to the Tweed. 



This came as a great surprise to me since I had 

 often read in books and articles about the county that 

 the Cornish are a humorous folk, and those who 

 have been there and profess to know the people say 

 that it is so. Their humour, like their imagination 

 (for they are also credited with that faculty), is some- 

 times vaguely described as of the Celtic sort. My 

 surprise was all the greater when I came and saw the 

 people and received confirmation, as I imagined, 

 through the sense of sight of all I had been told. 

 They looked it, yet were without it ; the signs, 

 "gracious as rainbows," deceived me (as they had 

 doubtless deceived others), but only for a season ; 

 they were the outward marks of quite other pleasing 

 qualities with which we are not now concerned. 

 I looked for humour and met with some amusing 

 adventures in my search for that rare, elusive quality. 



Walking to a village one day I fell in with a man 

 who had, like many a West Cornishman, a strikingly 

 Irish countenance, also an Irish voice and flow of 

 spirits. Hearing where I was going he at once un- 

 dertook to show me the nearest way. It would, he 

 asserted, save me a good mile : his way proved in the 

 end two miles further than the one I had chosen, but 

 it led him near to his own cottage and he wanted 



