CORNISH HUMOUR 169 



for I've got twenty pounds a year and a house to live 





 in. 



Books of this kind do not help us much ; they 

 are, on the contrary, apt to be misleading when the 

 author has an intimate knowledge of the people and 

 dialect and, besides, a little invention. 



There are, I take it, two common sorts of un- 

 conscious humour ; one into which persons who may 

 be of humorous minds are apt to tumble through 

 thinking too quickly and being too intent on their 

 point, and who in their haste snatch at any expression 

 that offers to illustrate their meaning without consider- 

 ing its suitability. The result may be a bull or a mixed 

 metaphor. An Irishman, asked to define a bull, 

 after a moment's thought replied, " Well, if you were 

 to see two cows lying down in a field, and one was 

 standing up, that would be a bull." A Cornishman 

 would be incapable of such a reply ; or of the Irish- 

 man's retort when his companion, accused of being 

 drunk, protested that he was sober : " If ye was sober 

 ye'd have the sinse to know ye was dhrunk." He 

 makes no bulls and does not know what they are. 

 His unconscious humour is of the second kind, which 

 consists in saying things in a way which would be 

 impossible to any person possessing a sense of humour. 

 Here is an example : 



At St. Ives, one Sunday, I went to a Methodist 

 chapel to hear a woman preach a missioner or gos- 

 peller, I think she was called. I did not find her 

 a Dinah, for she was rather large and stout, of a high 

 colour, with black eyes and hair. But it was a singu- 



