Our patois has a Spanish or a Gascon sound, rough but sonorous, pleasant to the ear, with numerous _o’s_ and rolling _ou’s_ and _aü’s_. You pronounce the _v_ almost like _b_ (_Bit_ for Vic, _bedel_ for veau). _A_ changes to _o_, as in _Contau_, Cantal; _Morgorido_, Marguerite. _O_ changes to _ou_--_Obeiroun_, Aveyron; _Louzéro_, Lozère. French _au_, pronounced as ô, changes to _au_, pronounced as â-oo (_Nautres_, nous-aûtres; _Contau_, Cantal; _Naut-Miétchour_, Haut-midi), except when it changes to _ou_, pronounced _oo_, as in _Ourlhat_, Aurillac; _Oubergno_, Auvergne. Like all the idioms of France, the patois of our Highlands is a corruption of the Low Latin, or rustic Lingua Romana, spoken generally in Gaul at the time of the barbarian invasion and for some centuries after. Most of the frequent words of every day are still very close to their Romance origin: _Copt_, caput, head; _aigo_, aqua, water; _fau_, fagus, beech; _compono_, campana, church-bell; _semen_, semen, seed; _lün_, lumen, lamp; _camps_, campus, a field overgrown with heather, or a moor; _baco_, vacca, cow; _bedel_, vitellus, calf; _òussell_, ucellus, bird; _fromentau_, fromentalia, corn-land; _gal_, gallus, cock; _nèu_, neve, snow; _sor_, soror, a sister; _fenno_, femina, woman; _hibernar_, hibernare, and _estivar_, æstivare, spend the winter or pass the summer. Other later words and expressions are a vulgar corruption of the French: _tchiobal_, cheval; _bilatchi_, village; _biatchi_, voyage; _Toutchion_ (All Saints), Toussaint. At once antique and popular, the speech of our mountains is doubtless destined to disappear, but not without a struggle, and not, if our Félibres can help it, without having made its mark in literature. “Nautres que son lou Naut-Mietjiour, Contau, Obeiroun, o Louzèro, Porlons tobe lo lengo fiéro De los onticos Cours d’Omour.” “We others, of the High-South: Cantal, Aveyron, Lozère, we also speak the proud language of the antique Courts of Love,” says Vermenouze, mindful that his dialect is a branch of that vast and ancient Langue d’Oc which includes the Provençal and the Catalan, so recently honoured and preserved by a Mistral and a Verdaguer. VI