CORNISH HUMOUR 155 



badly to shorten the way with talk that was all. 

 I did not mind, because I wished to listen to him, 

 thinking that I had at length got hold of the right 

 person, one who would give me a taste of the genuine 

 native humour. Not a bit of it ! He talked freely 

 of many things his native place, his family, his 

 neighbours, the good and the bad in them, his past 

 life and labours, future prospects and much more 

 a long talk which an Irishman would have enlivened 

 with many flashes of quaint humour, but there was 

 not the faintest trace of such a quality in it. 



Later in the same day I walked by a footpath which 

 led me through what is called the " town-place " of a 

 small farm-house. Here I found two men engaged 

 in an animated discussion, and one, in ragged clothes 

 with a pitchfork in his hand, was the very type of a 

 wild Irishman ; in all Connemara you would not find 

 a more perfect specimen rags, old battered hat, 

 twinkling grey-blue Irish eyes, a shock of the most 

 fiery carroty red hair, and, finally, a short black clay 

 pipe, or dhudeen, in his mouth. Yet even this man, 

 delightful to look at, proved when I conversed with 

 him just as prosaic and disappointing as the other. 



I certainly did not expect to find anything in these 

 two and in scores more I had intercourse with which 

 could be set down in a note-book as specimens of 

 Cornish humour. One may spend days among Irish 

 peasants and never hear anything worth repeating, 

 especially in writing. Indeed, most of what we re- 

 cognise as Irish humour is not translatable into written 

 language. It is like the quality of charm in women, 



