The Land's End; A Naturalist's Impressions in West Cornwall

by William Henry Hudson

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. ... CHAPTER XII CORNISH HUMOUR Native humour--Deceptive signs--Adventures in search of humour--Irish and Cornish expression--A traveller in a stony country--The stone-digger--Taking you literally--The danger of using figures of speech--Anecdotes--The Cornish funny man--English and Cornish humour--Unconscious humour of two kinds--A woman preacher--A story of Brett the artist--Examples of unconscious humour--A local preacher--An old man and a parrot--Children's humour--Guize-dancing. IT is permissible to a writer once in a lifetime to illustrate his work by an allusion to that celebrated "Chapter on Snakes," in an island in which these reptiles are not found. But I am not saying that there is no humour in Cornwall. There may be such a thing; but if you meet with it you will find that it is of the ordinary sort, only of an inferior quality, and that there is very little. What I can say is there is no Cornish humour, no humour of the soil and race, as there is an Irish and a Scotch humour, and even as there is an English humour, which may be of a poor description in comparison with the Hibernian, but is humour nevertheless, native and local, and not confined to Dorset and Warwickshire but to be met with in every county from the Tamar to the Tweed. This came as a great surprise to me since I had often read in books and articles about the county that the Cornish are a humorous folk, and those who have been there and profess to know the people say that it is so. Their humour, like their imagination (for they are also credited with that faculty), is sometimes vaguely described as of the Celtic sort. My surprise was all the greater when I came and saw the people and received confirmation, as I imagined, through the sense of sight of all I had been...

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

William Henry Hudson was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. His works include Green Mansions (1904).

Argentines consider him to belong to their national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version of his name. He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing natural and human dramas on then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English mingled with Spanish idioms. He settled in England during 1874. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895), and later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909) and A Shepherd's Life (1910). People best know his nonfiction in Far Away and Long Ago (1918). His other works include: The Purple Land (That England Lost) (1885), A Crystal Age (1887), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), A Little Boy Lost (1905), Birds in Town and Village (1919), Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn (1920), and A Traveller in Little Things (1921).

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice curio, full of Hudson's usual keen observations.