Last speaker of the Cornish language number of miners might have come was St Day and Carharrack, but they may have come from the area around Breage. If this "uncouth jargon" was Cornish it would mean that there were still a lot of people using it at the end of the 18th century. The Reverend John Bannister stated in 1871 that "The close of the 18th century witnessed the final extinction, as spoken language, of the old Celtic vernacular of Cornwall". However, there is some evidence that Cornish continued, albeit in limited usage by a handful of speakers, through the late 19th century. Matthias Wallis of
The Dawning of the Day The Dawning of the Day "The Dawning of the Day" (, literally "The bright ring of the day") is the name of two old Irish airs. O'Connellan's "Fáinne Geal an Lae" is often confused with the later pentatonic melody to which the words "The Dawning of the Day" is set. The O'Connellan air is different in a number of respects, although there are melodic resemblances. Words are still sung to variants of it which mostly use only the first half of the air as printed in Bunting and other collections. The Irish-language lyrics of "Fáinne Geal an Lae" describe an