What, then, it may be asked, is the origin of the expression _Attal Sarazin_ in Cornwall? _Attal_, or _Atal_, is said to be a Cornish word, the Welsh _Adhail_, and means refuse, waste.(84) As to _Sarazin_, it is most likely another Cornish word, which by a metamorphic process, has been slightly changed in order to yield some sense intelligible to Saxon speakers. We find in Cornish _tarad_, meaning a piercer, a borer; and, in another form, _tardar_ is distinctly used, together with axe and hammer, as the name of a mining implement. The Latin _taratrum_, Gr. τέρετρον, Fr. _tarière_, all come from the same source. If from _tarad_ we form a plural, we get _taradion_. In modern Cornish we find that _d_ sinks down to _s_, which would give us _taras_,(85) and plural _tarasion_. Next, the final _l_ of _atal_ may, like several final _l_’s in the closely allied language of Brittany, have infected the initial _t_ of _tarasion_, and changed it to _th_, which _th_, again, would, in modern Cornish, sink down to _s_.(86) Thus _atal tharasion_ might have been intended for the refuse of the borings, possibly the refuse of the mines; but pronounced in Saxon fashion, it might readily have been mistaken for the Atal or refuse of the Sarasion or Saracens. POSTSCRIPT. The essay on the presence of Jews in Cornwall has given rise to much controversy; and as I republish it here without any important alterations, I feel it incumbent to say a few words in answer to the objections that have been brought forward against it. No one, I think, can read my essay without perceiving that what I question is not the presence of single Jews in Cornwall, but the migration of large numbers of Jews into the extreme West of Britain, whether at the time of the Phœnicians, or at the period of the destruction of Jerusalem, or under the Flavian princes, or even at a later time. The Rev. Dr. Bannister in a paper on “the Jews in Cornwall,” published in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 1867, does indeed represent me as having maintained “that one single Jew never set foot on Cornish soil!” But if my readers will refer to the passage thus quoted from my essay by Dr. Bannister, they will see that it was not meant in that sense. In the passage thus quoted with inverted commas,(87) I simply argued that from certain words used by Carew, on which great stress had been laid, it would not even follow “that one single Jew ever set foot on Cornish soil,” which surely is very different from saying that I maintained that no single Jew ever set foot on Cornish soil. It would indeed be the most extraordinary fact if Cornwall had never been visited by Jews. If it were so, Cornwall would stand alone, as far as such an immunity is concerned, among all the countries of Europe. But it is one thing for Jews to be scattered about in towns,(88) or even for one or two Jews to have actually worked in tin mines, and quite another to speak of