Page:Glossary of words in use in Cornwall.djvu/91

70 EAST CORNWALL GLOSSARY. by UB to a larger extent than in our common tongue : dmen tree, doamen dish, &o. F is sounded as v before vowels and liquids. G, This letter is elided in the present participle, as doin for doing. / has often the sound of e, as ehSld, child ; kerdyy kindly, &c. 0/ loses its / before a consonant ; *^ the nap o* the hill." R is often transposed, as girts, groats; a/eard, afraid; apem, apron. m m 8y at the beginning of words and when followed by a vowel or Uqaid, is replaced by its softer kin-letter, z, Th is pronounced d : dreah for thresh, d<xtch fox thatch. V and u are interchangeable in a most erratic way. We have hdve for bellow, waive for wallow, Jiauen for haven, euoZ for eval (see glossary, sub voce). The ancient and knightly family of Seville bore a passant bull in their canting arms» Y is occasionally substituted for h, but not so frequently as in the other south-western dialects. We have yaffd for armful, yeffer for heifer ; and the semi-consonantal e in ewe is with us yawe. In most instances the past tense of verbs is weak, as " I knowed It for I knew it ; and in a few cases where it is weak in national English it is strong with us, as ** I gove," for " I gave." The infinitive mood has y often added in termination, as to mowy, to reapy, to milky. Words ending in a mute consonant undergo metathesis, as hap^ for hasp, crips for crisp. There is a marked difference between the speech of East and West Cornwall, not only in structure and vocabulary, but in tthe intonation of sentences^ We have none of that indescribable cadence, a sort of sing-song, which marks the pcUois of the West, and which I judge to be as truly Keltic as the Comu-British words which remain to it. At the beginning of the present century mining adventure, especially in the search for copper, became a furor in East Cornwall, and a passionate enthusiasm brought hither the skilled miners of the West, who flocked to the banks of Tyward* leath Bay, and further east to the central granite ridge about the tors