MALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}.
Afterwards the same word was used in a more sober and technical sense,
though it is not always easy to say when it means copper, or bronze
(_i.e._ copper and tin), or brass (_i.e._ copper and zinc). The Latin
poets not only adopted the Greek word in the fabulous sense in which they
found it used in Homer, but forgetting that the first portion of the name
was derived from the Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, hill, they pronounced and even spelt it
as if derived from the Latin _aurum_, gold, and thus found a new
confirmation of its equality with gold, which would have greatly surprised
the original framers of that curious compound.(62)

In a county like Cornwall, where the ancient Celtic dialect continued to
be spoken, though disturbed and overlaid from time to time by Latin,
Saxon, and Norman, where Celts had to adopt certain Saxon and Norman, and
Saxons and Normans certain Celtic words, we have a right to expect an
ample field for observing this metamorphic process, and for tracing its
influence in the transformation of names, and in the formation of legends,
traditions, nay even, as we shall see, in the production of generally
accepted historical facts. To call this process _metamorphic_, using that
name in the sense given to it by geologists, may at first sight seem
pedantic and far-fetched. But if we see how a new language forms what may
be called a new stratum covering the old language; how the life or heat of
the old language, though apparently extinct, breaks forth again through
the superincumbent crust, destroys its regular features and assimilates
its stratified layers with its own igneous or volcanic nature, our
comparison, though somewhat elaborate, will be justified to a great
extent, and we shall only have to ask our geological readers to make
allowance for this, that, in languages, the foreign element has always to
be considered as the superincumbent stratum, Cornish forming the crust to
English or English to Cornish, according as the speaker uses the one or
the other as his native or as his acquired speech.

Our first witness in support of this metamorphic process is Mr. Scawen,
who lived about two hundred years ago, a true Cornishman, though he wrote
in English, or in what he is pleased so to call. In blaming the Cornish
gentry and nobili