that which the peasants of Brittany and Normandy spoke at the beginning of the seventeenth century—the period of the first migrations from France to the New World. The Acadians' accent is better than that of the Quebec French, but their grammatical observance is less exact. Like Henry the Fourth and his subjects of three hundred years ago, the Clare Acadians say j'ons for j'ai (I have) and ils avont for ils avaient (they have), and they use the old form for "man," houme for homme. Proverbs and phrases used by Molière are still current in the district about Weymouth. Sometimes new words are derived from the English—montains for mountains, instead of montagnes; or words unequivocally Anglo-Saxon are introduced into a French sentence. "Il est très smart" is a phrase one often hears, and "God knows!" is a familiar interjection on the lips of habitants who speak no other English.
In the remote region beyond the Margaree, many miles from the railroad, the French heard in farm or fishing cottage is almost incapable of being understood by unaccustomed ears. Here, the language has degenerated to an unlovely patois.
There are other parts of Cape Breton where nearly all the natives "have the Gaelic," where one hears the tongue of the Highlands in guttural discussion on trains and street corners, and where the sermon is first given in the kirk in English and then repeated in Gaelic for patriarchs and grave-
