12 Facts About Dolly Pentreath

Dolly Pentreath is one of the last known fluent speakers of the Cornish language.

Dolly Pentreath is often credited as the last known native speaker of Cornish, although sources support the existence of other younger speakers of the language who survived her.

Dolly Pentreath later claimed that she could not speak a word of English until the age of 20.

Dolly Pentreath lived in the parish of Paul, next to Mousehole.

Five years later, Dolly Pentreath was said to be 87 years old and at the time her hut was "poor and maintained mostly by the parish, and partly by fortune telling and gabbling Cornish".

Dolly Pentreath has passed into legend for cursing people in a long stream of fierce Cornish whenever she became angry.

Dolly Pentreath's death is seen as marking the death of Cornish as a community language.

Dolly Pentreath was said often to curse people, including calling them "kronnekyn hager du", an "ugly black toad", and was even said to have been a witch.

Dolly Pentreath was at one time thought to have been identical with a Dorothy Jeffrey or Jeffery whose burial is recorded in the Paul parish register, but this has been doubted.

Dolly Pentreath died in Mousehole and was buried at St Pol de Leon's Church in Paul, where in 1860 a monument in her honour was set into the churchyard wall by Louis Lucien Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon, and by the Vicar of Paul.

Dolly Pentreath being my grandfather, that is the reason I am so well informed; and there were eight chosen fishermen bearers to take her to her last resting place.

Dolly Pentreath stated that a Jane Barnicoate, who had died about 1857, could speak Cornish too.