UNKNOWN LANGUAGE

Southland Times, Issue 22010, 9 May 1933, Page 11

UNKNOWN LANGUAGE

WOMAN SPEAKS IN GAELIC. EXPERIENCE UNDER ANAESTHETIC. A woman who did not know a word of Gaelic spoke the language fluently while under an anaesthetic recently. She is Mrs Frank Sherrin, of Netherington Grove, London, and her case has baffled doctors and psychologists. "Once when I was operated on, she said, “the nurses and doctor told me I had talked in a strange language while I was unconscious. Many years later Sir William McEwan, the famous surgeon, operated on me. When I came round he said, ‘You and I must talk Gaelic. I am a great lover of the language.’ and he told me that I had been talking fluently about my personal affairs in Gaelic. I assured him I had never spoken or learned a word "My parents were Highlanders, and I was born in the Highlands, but the only time I heard Gaelic was for the first few months of my life, when I had a Scottish nurse. I often talk and sing in my sleep, and I am told I use a strange language—evidently Gaelic then.” . , Even more remarkable is the case ot a child of three, named, Jean, the daughter of English parents, who aS she learned to talk spoke with a broad Scottish accent and used Scottish, words that her parents did riot know. The child’s mother said: “My mother was a Highland woman, but Jean never saw her. Her nurse is a cockney, and Jean has never heard anyone speaking with a Scottish accent.