CHAPTER XII 



CORNISH HUMOUR 



Native humour Deceptive signs Adventures in search of humour 

 Irish and Cornish expression A traveller in a stony country 

 The stone-digger Taking you literally The danger of using 

 figures of speech Anecdotes The Cornish funny man English 

 and Cornish humour Unconscious humour of two kinds A 

 woman preacher A story of Brett the artist Examples of un- 

 conscious humour A local preacher An old man and a parrot 

 Children's humour Guize-dancing. 



IT is permissible to a writer once in a lifetime to 

 illustrate his work by an allusion to that cele- 

 brated " Chapter on Snakes/' in an island in 

 which these reptiles are not found. But I am not 

 saying that there is no humour in Cornwall. There 

 may be such a thing ; but if you meet with it you 

 will find that it is of the ordinary sort, only of an 

 inferior quality, and that there is very little. What 

 I can say is there is no Cornish humour, no humour 

 of the soil and race, as there is an Irish and a Scotch 



