God, of England,
Fraunce, and Ireland, defender of the Faith." It seems, however, that
the church was not so utterly destroyed as this might lead us to
believe; much of the stonework survived, including the lofty granite
tower. Most persons remember Paul as the burial-place of Dolly
Pentreath, whose claim to be the last person speaking Cornish can
hardly be maintained, though even she did not speak it habitually. Her
married name appears to have been Jeffery, but that did not matter;
when the wife was the better half her maiden name often prevailed over
that of the husband, in later days than this. In 1768 Daines
Barrington visited her, and was heartily abused by her in Cornish
because he slyly suggested that she did not understand the tongue. He
says: "She does indeed talk Cornish as readily as others do English,
being bred up from a child to know no other language, nor could she
talk a word of English before she was past twenty years of age, as,
her father being a fisherman, she was sent with fish to Penzance at
twelve years old, and sold them in the Cornish language, which the
inhabitants in general, even the gentry, did then well understand. She
is positive, however, that there is neither in Mousehole, nor in any
other part of the county, any other person who knows anything of it,
or at least can converse in it. She is poor, and maintained partly by
the parish and partly by fortune-telling and gabbling Cornish." The
stone above her grave was erected in 1860 by "the Prince Louis Lucien
Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John Garrett, Vicar of St. Paul."
Prince Lucien, nephew of the first Napoleon, was an eager student of
philology. In 1854 George Borrow, then touring Cornwall (his father
was a Cornishman), visited Paul Church, and noticed a Cornish epitaph
on the walls--said to be the only inscription in the old vernacular
surviving in this fashion. It may be given as a specimen of the
extinct language:--

"Bounas heb dueth Eu poes Karens wei
tha Pobl Bohodzhak Paull han Egles nei";

which has been thus rendered:--

"Eternal life be his whose loving care
Gave Paul an almshouse and the church repair."

Two words here prove how Cornish was affected by the Roman
occupation--_pobl_ for people, and _egles_ for church.

[Illustration: LANYON CROMLECH.

_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]

When Paul was burned Mousehole suffered also, and its only house that
survived was the manor of the Keigwins, now the "K