The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 542, April 14, 1832

Part 4

Chapter 4222 wordsPublic domain

_The Mother Tongue_.--In Mr. Combe's _Illustrations of Phrenology_, a case is related of a Welsh milkman, in London, who happening to fall down two pair of stairs, received a severe contusion on the head, and was carried to St. George's Hospital, where he lay senseless for several days, and unable to speak. At length he became something better, and began to talk to the nurses, but in such terms that no one could understand him, till it was discovered that he had forgotten his English, and was talking Welsh; a language he had not spoken for eighteen years. Mr. Combe conceives that the blow having hit the store-house in his head, where the Welsh language was garnered, his youthful acquisitions were poured out, whilst the English language, which he had learned much later, was overpowered and obliterated by the force of his mother tongue. W.G.C.

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_Warning to Betrayers_.--St. Bennet's Abbey, in Norfolk, was so well fortified, that William the Conqueror, in vain besieged it, till a monk, upon condition of being made abbot, betrayed the place. The king performed the condition, but hanged the new _abbot_ as a _traitor_. P.T.W.

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