RELICS OF THE CORNISH LANGUAGE. 281 



been presented to the Philological Society, in London, and are 

 now being examined with a view to the careful elimination of 

 the Anglo-Saxon elements, and also of words common to other 

 counties in the "West of England. 



The number of Cornu-British words stiU extant and used 

 I should calculate as hardly short of '.iOO, but most of these are 

 of infrequent occurrence, and perhaps no person is accustomed 

 to use all of them in conversation, as so many of them are 

 trade terms, or names of things rarely employed. 



In conclusion, I hope the few remarks I have made on the 

 relics of the ancient Cornu-British tongue may tend to give 

 some present an interest in the ancient and now, we may say, 

 extinct language of their ancestors. It was probably wise and 

 prudent of the Cornishmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries to give up their ancient tongue for the more useful 

 and more polished English, but at the same time with the light 

 of modern philology, it is no less well to remember that there 

 once existed such a tongue as the Cornu-British, spoken not 

 merely in Cornwall, but in much of south and west Devon, 

 and that that tongue has a definite position in the great Aryan 

 family of languages, and thereby has a certain interest and 

 importance to every linguistic scholar. The relics of the ancient 

 tongue are among the most interesting of Cornwall's rich 

 treasures of antiquity. 



W 



