I was heavily into a rewatch marathon of Deadwood the other night and there, right in the Gem saloon, are a couple of men supposedly speaking Cornish. I went back and turned on captioning so I could try to figure out what they were saying (which was hilarious--all it said was "speaking gobbledy gook.")
Poor Cornish miners got shot. Had something to do with Hearst's attempts to control Deadwood. But I got distracted by the language thing so I went looking.
Guess what? They weren't speaking Cornish, they were speaking Irish/Gaelic! Thank you, IMDB, for this little factoid:
"The Cornishmen at the Gem are supposedly speaking Cornish (for which
they are made fun of). While Bullock and other characters state this,
the Cornishmen are, in fact, speaking Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge). To add to
the anachronism list, the last known monoglot Cornish speaker died in
1777, well before Deadwood 1876."
The Cornish are/were known as skilled miners and were often hired for dangerous jobs at very low pay. I wish they'd found someone to speak Cornish-English slang instead of Irish Gaelic, but I guess I can't have everything.
Ethan would have thrown something at the tv and said: bramm an gath! (But he tries to be polite, even when swearing.)