Page:The ancient language, and the dialect of Cornwall.djvu/67

47 proceeds, a large number of forcible and quaint words, and phrases, will be lost unless they be recorded. It may be thought that to preserve such dialectic words will be neither useful nor ornamental to English speech, on the contrary, that it would be better for such barbarous, vulgar, and uncouth modes of speech, to be thrust aside. But are they barbarous, vulgar, and uncouth? What if the charges were reversed '? Suppose modern English con- demned as vulgar, and an order given that the Cornish dialect should be used instead. In a short time the dialect which had become fashionable, would be found to be of high polish, elegant, and expressive. Somebody said that "grammar was made for language and not language for grammar," and as to words being vulgar, it depends on the manner in which they are used, and from whose mouths they fall. The words are not so much in fault, for we have often heard sentences full of grossness and vulgarity, expressed in very elegant lan- It would be startling and amusing, if, in an English drawing-room, an elegant lady were to turn to a friend and make a request, thus, " Woll'ee ax en plais"? instead of saying "Will you ask him if you please'"? yet all that could be said of it would be, that the former expression was spoken in a dialectic form, and the latter simply in current English. Now as to the word ^Ax' (for ask), we are told by Toone in his "Dictionary of obsolete and uncommon words," that Ax, though now considered as vulgar and