LANGUAGE AND DIALECT tions about "crowing hens and whistling women," dogs, owls, ravens, holy days and common days, Cornwall has its plentiful share. Such lore is of a nature varying little from county to county in England. But the Cornish character Js still romantic and superstitious in a manner not common to the more purely Saxon districts of our land. With its long and beautiful coast-line, its wild moorlands, its wind-swept sand-dunes, a double measure of poetic glamour and imagination clings about the duchy — in part the result of these physical aspects, in part a matter of racial circumstance and blending. Until the coming of railways Cornwall was isolated, and it is largely this -isolation that has endowed it with tradition and myth beyond the measure of counties that have for centuries been highways of commerce and social intercourse. The advent of the schoolmaster and of the tourist has already done much to rob Cornwall of this special endow- ment; but something still remains, and we may trust will long remain. IX. Language and Dialect At the present day Cornwall has two dialects, though both are' slowly disappearing. There is the eastern dialect, which closely resembles that of Devon and Somerset, being a develop- ment of the old speech of Wessex ; and there is the western dialect, which contains traces of 45
