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A Celtic language similar to Welsh, Cornish was spoken west of the Tamar until the 19th century. Written evidence indicates that was widely used at the time of the Reformation, but after a Cornish uprising against the English in 1548, the language was suppressed. By the 17th century only a few people in the remotest parts still spoke it as their native tongue. The last known Cornish woman to speak nothing but Cornish was Dolly Pentreath in Mousehole and she died in 1769. Goodness knows who she spoke it to! An 1891 tombstone in Zennor churchyard commemorates John Davey as 'the last to possess any traditional considerable knowledge of the Cornish language'.
