language. Norman French, for example, | And what greater phonetic vagary (which or Scotch down to the time of James VI., Dryden, by the way, called fegary) in our could hardly be called patois, while I should lingua rustica than this ker for couvre ? be half inclined to name the Yankee a lingo I copy from the fly-leaves of my books rather than a dialect. It has retained a where I have noted them from time to few words now fallen into disuse in the time a few examples of pronunciation and mother country, like to tarry, to progress, phrase which will show that the Yankee fleshy, fall, and some others; it has changed often has antiquity and very respectable the meaning of some, as in freshet; and literary authority on his side. My list it has clung to what I suspect to have been might be largely increased by referring to the broad Norman pronunciation of e glossaries, but to them every one can go (which Molière puts into the mouth of his for himself, and I have gathered enough rustics) in such words as sarvant, parfect, for my purpose. vartoo, and the like. It maintains some- I will take first those cases in which thing of the French sound of a also in something like the French sound has been words like chamber, danger (though the preserved in certain single letters and latter had certainly begun to take its pres- diphthongs. And this opens a curious ent sound so early as 1636, when I find it question as to how long this Gallicism sometimes spelt dainger). But in general maintained itself in England. Sometimes it may be said that nothing can be found a divergence in pronunciation has given in it which does not still survive in some us two words with different meanings, as one or other of the English provincial dia- in genteel and jaunty, which I find coming lects. I am not speaking now of Ameri- in toward the close of the seventeenth cencanisms properly so called, that is, of tury, and wavering between genteel and words or phrases which have grown into jantee. It is usual in America to drop use here either through necessity, inven- the u in words ending in our, a very tion, or accident, such as a carry, a one proper change recommended by Howell horse affair, a prairie, to vamose. Even two centuries ago, and carried out by him these are fewer than is sometimes taken so far as his printers would allow. This for granted. But I think some fair defence and the corresponding changes in musique, may be made against the charge of vulgar- musick, and the like, which he also advoity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in cated, show that in his time the French the thought, and not in the word or the accent indicated by the superfluous letters way of pronouncing it. Modern French, (for French had once nearly as strong an the most polite of languages, is barbarously accent as Italian) had gone out of use. vulgar if compared with the Latin out of There is plenty of French accent down to which it has been corrupted, or even with the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we Italian. There is a wider gap, and one have riches and counsel', in Bishop Hall implying greater boorishness, between comet', chapelain, in Donne pictures', virministerium and métier, or sapiens and tue, presence', mortal', merit', hainous', sachant, than between druv and drove or giant, with many more, and Marston's agin and against, which last is plainly an satires are full of them. The two latter, arrant superlative. Our rustic coverlid however, are not to be relied on, as they is nearer its French original than the di- may be suspected of Chaucerizing. Herminutive coverlet, into which it has been rick writes baptime. The tendency to ignorantly corrupted in politer speech. throw the accent backward began early. I obtained from three cultivated English- But the incongruities are perplexing, and men at different times three diverse pro- perhaps mark the period of transition. In nunciations of a single word, сооситWarner's "Albion's England" we have ber, coocumber, and cucumber. Of these creator' and creature' side by side with the the first, which is Yankee also, comes modern creator and creature. Envy and nearest to the nasality of concombre. Lord e'nvying occur in Campion (1602), and yet Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the envy' survived Milton. In some cases we best society in England, and Voltaire tells have gone back again nearer to the French, his countrymen that handkerchief was as in revenue for revenue. I had been so pronounced hankercher. I find it so spelt used to hearing imbecile pronounced with in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity the accent on the first syllable, which is in the Yankee still persists in, and as there accordance with the general tendency in is always a reason for such deviations from such matters, that I was surprised to find the sound as represented by the spelling, imbec'ile in a verse of Wordsworth. The may we not suspect two sources of deriva- dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly tion, and find an ancestor for kercher in cultivated Englishman, and he declared couverture rather than in couvrechef? | for imbeceel'. In general it may be as In sumed that accent will finally settle on the prolongation of the y sound. In Walter syllable dictated by greater ease and there-de Biblesworth I find solives Englished by fore quickness of utterance. Blus'phemous, gistes. This, it is true, may have been for example, is more rapidly pronounced pronounced jeests, but the pronunciation than blasphemous, to which our Yankee justes must have preceded the present clings, following in this the usage of many spelling, which was no doubt adopted after of the older poets. American is easier the radical meaning was forgotten, as anathan American, and therefore the false logical with other words in oi. In the quantity has carried the day, though the same way after Norman-French influence true one may be found in George Herbert, had softened the lout of would (we already and even so late as Cowley. find woud for veut in N. F. poems), should followed the example, and then an was put into could, where it does not belong, to satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed. I meet with eyster for oyster as early as the fourteenth century. I find dystrye for destroy in the Coventry Plays, viage in Bishop Hall and Middleton the dramatist, bile in Donne and Chrononhotonthologos, line in Hall, ryall and chyse (for choice) in the Coventry Plays. Chapman's "All Fools" is the misprint of employ for imply, fairly inferring an identity of sound in the last syllable. Indeed, this pronunciation was habitual till after Pope, and Rogers tells us that the elegant Gray said naise for noise just as our rustics still do. Our cornish (which I find also in Herrick) remembers the French better than cornice does. While, clinging more closely to the Anglo-Saxon in dropping the g from the end of the present participle, the Yankee now and then pleases himself with an experiment in French nasality in words ending in n. It is not, so far as my experience goes, very common, though it may formerly have been more so. Capting, for instance, I never heard save in jest, the habitual form being kepp'n. But at any rate it is no invention of ours. In that delightful old volume, "Ane Compendious Buke of Godly and Spirituall Songs," in which I know not whether the piety itself or the simplicity of its expression be more charming, I find burding, garding, and cousing, and in the State Trials uncerting used by a gentleman. I confess that I like the n better than the ng. To come back to the matter in hand. Our "uplandish man retains the soft or thin sound of the u in some words, such as rule, truth (sometimes also pronounced truth, not trooth), while he says noo for new, and gives to view and few so indescribable a mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be called the Yankee shibboleth. Spenser writes dew (dew) which can only be pronounced with the Yankee nasality. In rule the least sound of a precedes the u. I find reule in Pecock's "Repressor." He probably pronounced it rayoole, as the old French word from which it is derived was very likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original regula. Tindal has rueler, and the Coventry Plays have preudent. As for noo, may it not claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from nouveau or neuf, the ancient sound of which may very well have been noof, as nearer novus? Beef would seem more like to have come from buffe than from boeuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon few may have caught enough from its French cousin peu to claim the benefit of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase a few (as "I licked him a few") may well appeal to un peu for sense and authority. Nay, might not lick itself turn out to be the good old word lam in an English disguise, if the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he fairly might, from the Latin lambere ? The New England ferce for fierce, and perce for pierce (sometimes heard as fairce and pairce), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of cerse and pierce in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our pairlous for perilous is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's parlous than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with English lips. Thus for joint, employ, royal, we have jynt, emply, ryle, the last differing only from rile (roil) in a find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's seie was so sounded. Shew is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like snew, thew, and even mew, are not without example. I find sew for sewed in Piers Ploughman. Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred flew from flow (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to fly because we had another preterite in fled. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains growed, blowed, for which he has good authority, and less often knowed. His sot is merely a broad sounding of sat, no more inelegant than the common got for gat, which he further degrades into gut. When he says darst, he uses a form as old as Chaucer. The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the a in such words as are, wat, pronouncing them exe, wex (shortened from aix, waix). He also says her and hed (have, had) for have and had. In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In aix for axle he certainly does. I find wex and aisches (ashes) in Pecock, and exe in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes wax with wexe and spells challenge chelenge. Chaucer wrote hendy. Dryden rhymes can with men, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his "Logonomia" cites hez for hath as peculiar to Lincolnshire. I find hayth in Collier's "Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature" under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote belcony. Our fect is only the O. F. faict. Thaim for them was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb thrash, thresh. While the New-Englander cannot be brought to say instead for instid (commonly 'stid where not the last word in a sentence), he changes the i into e in red for rid, tell for till, hender for hinder, rense for rinse. I find red in the old interlude of "Thersytes," tell in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great Duchess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single verse of the Chester Plays, "Tell the day of dome, tell the beames blow." From the word blow is formed blowrth, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright explains it as Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English. meaning "a blossom." With us a single blossom is a blow, while blowth means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes hinder with slender, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have renched for rinsed. In "Gammer Gurton " is sence for since; Marlborough's Duchess so writes it, and Donne rhymes since with Amiens and patience, Bishop Hall and Otway with pretence, Chapman with citizens, Dryden with providence. Indeed, why should not sithence take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has tell for till, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes seche for such, and our ef finds authority in the old form yeffe. E sometimes takes the place of u, as jedge, tredge, bresh. I find tredge in the interlude of "Jack Jugler," bresh in a citation by Collier from London Cries" of the middle of the seventeenth century, and resche for rush (fifteenth century) in the very valuable "Volume of Vocabularies" edited by Mr. Wright. Resce is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth's A. S. Dictionary. Golding has shet. The Yankee always shortens the u in the ending ture, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer with his mouth full of hot pudding. Nash in his "Pierce Penniless" has ventur, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has tort'rest, which can be contracted only from tortur and not from torcher. Quarles rhymes nature with creator, and Dryden with satire, which he doubtless pronounced according to its older form of satyr. Quarles has also torture and mortar. Mary Boleyn writes kreatur. I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with kiver for cover, and ta for to. The Yankee pronounces both too and to like ta (like the tou in touch) where they are not emphatic. When they are, both become tu. In old spelling, to is the common (and indeed correct) form of too, which is only to with the sense of in addition. I suspect that the sound of our too has caught something from the French tout, and it is possible that the old too too is not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the cur. feminine form of the same word (toute) as anciently pronounced, with the e not yet silenced. Gill gives a Northern origin to geaun for gown and waund for wound (vulnus). Lovelace has waund, but there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who borealized in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of geaun! And yet some delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of ge-ard for guard, and ge-url for girl. Sir Philip Sidney (credite posteri !) wrote furr for far. I would hardly have believed it had I not seen it in fac-simile. As some consolation, I find furder in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wither rhymes far with The Yankee, who omits the final d in many words, as do the Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in geound. The purist does not feel the loss of the d sensibly in lawn and yon, from the former of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in laundry), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we make of git, yit, and yis? I find yis and git in Warner's "Albion's England," yet rhyming with wit, admit, and fit in Donne, with wit in the "Revenger's Tragedy," Beaumont, and Suckling, with writ in Dryden, and latest of all with wit in Sir Hanbury Williams. Prior rhymes fitting and begetting. Worse is to come. Among others, Donne rhymes again with sin, and Quarles repeatedly with in. Ben for been, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of Sackville, "Gammer Gurton" (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and many more, though bin seems to have been the common form. Whittier's accenting the first syllable of rom'ance finds an accomplice in Drayton among others, and though manifestly wrong, is analogous with Rom'ans. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or pronunciation, which I have met with I add a few at random. Pecock writes sowdiers (sogers, soudoyers), and Chapman and Gill sodder. This absorption of the 7 is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pecock writes also biyende, and the authors of "Jack Jugler" and "Gammer Gurton" yender. The Yankee in cludes "yon" in the same category, and says "hither an' yen," for "to and fro." (Cf. German jenseits.) Pecock and plenty more have rastle. Tindal has agynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debytë, and scace. Jack Jugler" has scacely (which I have often heard, though skurce is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make great rhyme with set. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find ynd for end, which the Yankee more often makes eend, still using familiarly the old phrase "right anend for "continuously." His "stret (straight) along" in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I find in Pecock. Tindal's debyte for deputy is so perfectly Yankee that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the First Parish at Jaalam Centre. "Jack Jugler' further gives us playsent and sartayne. Dryden rhymes certain with parting, and Chapman and Ben Jonson use certain, as the Yankee always does, for certainly. The "Coventry Mysteries" have occapied, massage, nateralle, materal (material), and meracles, all excellent Yankeeisms. In the "Quatre fils, Aymon" (1504),* is vertus for virtuous. Thomas Fuller called volume vollum, I suspect, for he spells it volumne. However, per contra, Yankees habitually say colume for column. Indeed, to prove that our ancestors brought their pronunciation with them from the Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need only to cite the words scriptur, Israll, athists, and cherfulness from Governor Bradford's 66 --- History." So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellowexiles still pronounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes shet in a letter to Winthrop. Purtend (pretend) has crept like a serpent into the Paradise of Dainty Devices"; purvide, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler has a Yankee phrase, and pronunciation too, in "To which these carr'ings-on did tend." Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently tried to spell phonetically, makes sorrows into sororz. Herrick writes hollow for halloo, and perhaps pronounced it (horresco suggerens !) holla, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from hold? I find ffelaschyppe (fellowship) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to write afore, and the former feels no inelegance even in chaw and idee. 'Fore was common till after Herrick. Dryden has do's for does, and his wife spells worse wosce. A feared was once universal. Warner has ery for ever a; nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English literature. And why not illy Mr. Bartlett says it is "a word used by writers of an inferior class, who do not seem to perceive that ill is itself an Cited in Collier. (I give my authority where I do not quote from the original book.) adverb, without the termination ly," and the contrast between the rifle-crack of an quotes Dr. Messer, President of Brown Englishman's yes and no, and the wet-fuse University, as asking triumphantly, "Why drawl of the same monosyllables in the don't you say welly?" I should like to mouths of my countrymen. But I do not have had Dr. Messer answer his own ques- find the dropping of final consonants disation. It would be truer to say that it was greeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do used by people who still remembered that I believe that our literary ancestors were ill was an adjective, the shortened form of sensible of that inelegance in the fusing evil, out of which Shakespeare ventured to them together of which we are conscious. make evilly. I find illy in Warner. The How many educated men pronounce objection to illy is not an etymological the t in chestnut? how many say pentone, but simply that it is contrary to good ise for penthouse, as they should? When usage, -a very sufficient reason. Ill as a Yankee skipper says that he is "boun' an adverb was at first a vulgarism, pre- for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave cisely like the rustic's when he says, "I of the Universal Schoolmaster), he but was treated bad." May not the reason of speaks like Chaucer or an old ballad-singer, this exceptional form be looked for in that though they would have pronounced it tendency to dodge what is hard to pro- boon. This is one of the cases where the nounce, to which I have already alluded?d is surreptitious, and has been added in If the letters were distinctly uttered, as compliment to the verb bind, with which they should be, it would take too much it has nothing to do. If we consider the time to say ill-ly, well-ly, and it is to be root of the word (though of course I grant observed that we have avoided smally* and that every race has a right to do what it tally in the same way, though we add ish will with what is so peculiarly its own as to them without hesitation in smallish and its speech), the d has no more right there tallish. We have, to be sure, dully and than at the end of gone, where it is often fully, but for the one we prefer stupidly, put by children, who are our best guides and the other (though this may have come to the sources of linguistic corruption, and from eliding the y before as) is giving way the best teachers of its processes. Cromto full. The uneducated, whose utterance well, minister of Henry VIII., writes worle is slower, still make adverbs when they for world. Chapman has wan for wand, will by adding like to all manner of adjec- and lawn has rightfully displaced laund, tives. We have had big charged upon us, though with no thought, I suspect, of etybecause we use it where an Englishman mology. Rogers tells us that Lady Bawould now use great. I fully admit that thurst sent him some letters written to it were better to distinguish between them, William III. by Queen Mary, in which allowing to big a certain contemptuous she addresses him as "Dear Husban." The quality; but as for authority, I want none old form expoun', which our farmers use, better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, is more correct than the form with a barin his noble sermon "On the Return of barous d tacked on which has taken its Prayer," speaks of "Jesus, whose spirit place. Of the kind opposite to this, like was meek and gentle up to the greatness our gownd for gown, and the London cockof the biggest example.' As for our double ney's wind for wine, I find drownd for negative, I shall waste no time in quoting drown in the "Misfortunes of Arthur" instances of it, because it was once as uni- (1584), and in Swift. And, by the way, versal in English as it still is in the neo- whence came the long sound of wind which Latin languages, where it does not strike our poets still retain, and which survives us as vulgar. I am not sure that the loss in " winding a horn, a totally different of it is not to be regretted. But surely word from "winding" a kite-string? We I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or say behind and hinder (comparative), and altogether eliding certain terminal conso- yet to hinder. Shakespeare pronounced nants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut kind kind, or what becomes of his play on enunciation is one of the crowning charms that word and kin in Hamlet? Nay, did and elegancies of speech. Words so ut- he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop tered are like coins fresh from the mint, the final d as the Yankee still does? John compared with the worn and dingy drudges Lilly plays in the same way on kindred of long service, - I do not mean American and kindness. But to come to some other coins, for those look less badly the more ancient instances. Warner rhymes bounds they lose of their original ugliness. No with crowns, grounds with towns, text with one is more painfully conscious than I of sex, worst with crust, interrupts with cups; Drayton, defects with sex; Chapman, amends with cleanse; Webster, defects with checks; Ben Jonson, minds with *The word occurs in a letter of Mary Boleyn, in Golding, and Warner. |