"Now All Yolye.”

The Quaint Speech of Norfolk Is.

From Our Own Correspondent.

N.I. Aug. 5.

“NOW All Yolye Dees De Bas Sullen Fer Uklen.”

In other words: “Now then every body, these are the best people for us.”

The first line is the real Norfolk Island lingo, and must have been written by an islander. It appeared last week as a heading above a list of preferred candidates for our little local Executive Council, elected every year to deal with our domestic politics, and it introduced a charming touch of that “something different” that is rapidly and regrettably diminishing on the island.

With an increasing settlement of “mainlanders” and the passing of the eldest generation of islanders, there is something being lost that can never be restored, and when it is completely gone Norfolk Island will be but one of a stereotyped list of island communities situated in the South Pacific.

If the islanders would only realise that, while they remain a race apart, living their own lives, speaking in their soft, musical voices the quaint language that is a blend of old-world English and the Tahitian of their great-grand mothers, mixing with the newcomers as little as may be, they possess a charm and picturesqueness that will bring visitors across leagues of ocean to meet and mingle with them who would scarcely cross the road to make acquaintance with the ordinary “out sider”.

As it is, for some mistaken reason, they seem ashamed to live as their fathers and mothers did and to speak the tongue that is a thousand times superior to the ugly English they learn in the State school.

If they but knew it, they should pride themselves on their unique history, the knowledge of their ancestry for 150 years back, and their place in the Pacific, and should make no attempt to model themselves upon a passing popu lation of mainlanders who have come from Heaven knows where and who, many of them, have no knowledge of their forefathers more than a gener ation or so back. There are millions of people just like them, all over the world. Nowhere are there people just like the islanders of Norfolk Island.

Let them remember it, be proud of it, and make no attempt to change.