Cornishmen’s clannish propensities are well known and are most apparent
when they meet in foreign lands. At the gold-fields of Australia, as
elsewhere, they stand by and support each other “through thick and
thin.” Cornishmen are also preferred for many kinds of work which
require some degree of engineering skill, and they seldom undertake any
employment for which they are incompetent. Consequently, many persons
from other shires who have never been west of the Tamar try to pass
themselves off as Cornishmen, and sometimes succeed in being received
into the fellowship of “One and All.” If, however, the stranger be
suspected of “sailing under false colours,” when they are all in
familiar chat about nothing in particular, “Cousin Jackey” will take
occasion to say to the new chum “My dear; ded ’e ever see a duck klunk
a gay?” If the stranger be up to the intent of the question he will
probably reply, “Learn thy granny to lap ashes,” which is the West
Country equivalent for teaching the same venerable dame to suck eggs;
but, if ignorant of what the question means, he is given to understand
that they regard him as an interloper and will be no more deceived by
him than a duck can be made to klunk (swallow) a gay (fragment of
broken crockery.)
The proverbial saying of “nobody ever saw a duck klunk a gay”—meaning
that no one will be deceived beyond a certain point—may be puzzling to
some Cornish readers as well as to strangers; those, however, who are
country-born and bred remember that when children they often left the
table with their meals unfinished and ran out with their morsels in
their hands and their “gays” in their pockets, eager to join their
playmates in the town-place; and how the village ducks—knowing the
childrens’ custom—gathered around them to pick up the crumbs, or to
snatch the food from the childrens’ hands, and the urchins often tossed
them a “gay,” which the greedy fowl gobble up and drop, one after the
other, but never swallow. It is a comical sight to see how the ducks,
on having discovered the cheat, look askaunt at the “didjan” of broken
clome, shaking their tails and quacking in anger or scorn the while.
The Gileadites’ Shibboleth served much the same purpose in the times of
the Judges of Israel as the old proverb does to-day among Cornishmen
abroad. (Judges xii chap., 5 and 6 verses.)
The usual test above-mentioned fails sometimes, chiefly from young
Cornishmen making comrades of strangers, as they are apt to do for
short spells, in which case they have other tests for the next
opportunity, but all turn on the same idea—that of using words only
understood by themselves. One more will serve as an example.
A Cornishman will come behind the stranger who wishes to pass for a
genuine Cornubian and say, quite natural-like, “Mate! there’s a green
myryan on thy nudack.” The venomous bite or sting of a green myryan
(ant) being much dreaded, a Cornishman would either put his hand to the
nape of his neck, to brush it off, or show in some way that he
understood the meaning—looking “as dazed as a duck against (on hearing)
thunder” the while.