CORNISH LANGUAGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18297, 13 January 1923, Page 8 (Supplement)

CORNISH LANGUAGE.

In the little churchyard of Paul, Cornwall, is a remarkable stone marking the grave of Dorothy Pentreath. who was the last person who had a knowledge of the Cornish language and could converse in it. She died at the end of the eighteenth century, at the age of 102, and was buried in Paul churchyard. With her died the Cornish language. On the first tombstone erected over her grave the inscription was written in Cornish; but all that remains of that language now is the Fifth Commandment, inscribed on the present stone, which was erected in 1860 by Prince Lucien Bonaparte, acting in asssciation with the vicar, the Rev. J. Carrett. .;; The Prince visited the spot out of curiosity, and was so struck with the absence of any record on the grave that he had this stone erected. The inscription reads:~ "Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died in 1778, said to have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish language of this country from the earliest records till it expired in the eighteenth century in this parish of Paul." The remaining portion gives the names of the erectors'and 'the Fifth Commandment in English and Cornish*