still called Picrou’s day.(75) The legend relates that St. Piran, when still in Cornwall, employed a heavy black stone as a part of his fire-place. The fire was more intense than usual, and a stream of beautiful white metal flowed out of the fire. Great was the joy of the saint, and he communicated his discovery to St. Chiwidden. They examined the stone together, and Chiwidden, who was learned in the learning of the East, soon devised a process for producing this metal in large quantities. The two saints called the Cornishmen together. They told them of their treasures, and they taught them how to dig the ore from the earth, and how, by the agency of fire, to obtain the metal. Great was the joy in Cornwall, and many days of feasting followed the announcement. Mead and metheglin, with other drinks, flowed in abundance; and vile rumor says the saints and their people were rendered equally unstable thereby. “Drunk as a Perraner” has certainly passed into a proverb from that day. It is quite clear from these accounts that the legendary discoverer of tin in Cornwall was originally a totally different character from the Irish saint, St. Kiran. If one might indulge in a conjecture, I should say that there probably was in the Celtic language a root _kar_, which in the Cymbric branch would assume the form _par_. Now _cair_ in Gaelic means to dig, to raise; and from it a substantive might be derived, meaning digger or miner. In Ireland, _Kiran_ seems to have been simply a proper name, like Smith or Baker, for there is nothing in the legends of St. Kiran that points to mining or smelting. In Cornwall, on the contrary, St. Piran, before he was engrafted on St. Kiran, was probably nothing but a personification or apotheosis of the Miner, as much as Dorus was the personification of the Dorians, and Brutus the first King of Britain. The rule, “noscitur a sociis,” may be applied to St. Piran. His friend and associate, St. Chiwidden, or St. Whitehouse, is a personification of the white-house, _i.e._ the smelting-house, without which St. Piran, the miner, would have been a very useless saint. If Chywidden, _i.e._ the smelting-house, became the St. Chywidden, why should we look in the Cornish St. Piran for anything beyond Piran, _i.e._ the miner? However, what is of importance to us for our present object is not St. Piran, but St. Chywidden, the white-house or smelting-house. We are looking all this time for the original meaning of the Jews’ houses, and the question is, how can we, starting from Chywidden, arrive at Jews’-house? I am afraid we can not do so without a jump or two; all we can do is to show that they are jumps which language herself is fond of taking, and which therefore we must not shirk, if we wish to ride straight after her.