The poem
Bottomless pits. There's on in Castleton, and stout upholders of our law and order one day thought its depth worth wagering on and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.
Not even a good flogging made him holler!
O gentlemen, a better way to plumb the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar, say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath, now National Trust, a place where they got tin, those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath and killed the language that they swore it in.
The dumb go down in history and disappear and not one gentleman's been brough to book:
Mes den hep tavas a-gollas y dyr
(Cornish-) 'the tongueless man gets his land took.'