The Minorcan Language, The Dialect Of Mahon, _El Mahones_, As They Call It, Is Spoken By More Than Half Of The Inhabitants Who Remained Here When The Country Was Ceded To The United States, And All Of Them, I Believe, Speak Spanish Besides.

Their children, however, are growing up in disuse of these languages, and in another generation the last traces of the majestic speech of Castile, will have been effaced from a country which the Spaniards held for more than two hundred years.

Some old customs which the Minorcans brought with them from their native country are still kept up. On the evening before Easter Sunday, about eleven o'clock, I heard the sound of a serenade in the streets. Going out, I found a party of young men, with instruments of music, grouped about the window of one of the dwellings, singing a hymn in honor of the Virgin in the Mahonese dialect. They began, as I was told, with tapping on the shutter. An answering knock within had told them that their visit was welcome, and they immediately began the serenade. If no reply had been heard they would have passed on to another dwelling. I give the hymn as it was kindly taken down for me in writing by a native of St. Augustine. I presume this is the first time that it has been put in print, but I fear the copy has several corruptions, occasioned by the unskillfulness of the copyist. The letter _e_, which I have put in italics, represents the guttural French _e_, or perhaps more nearly the sound of _u_ in the word but.

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