IRISH RHYMES—ENGLISH PROVINCIALISMS—LOWLAND SCOTCH.
(Vol. vi., pp. 605, 606.)
Mr. Bede, who first called attention to a class of rhymes which he denominated "Irish," seems to take it ill that I have dealt with his observations as somewhat "hypercritical." I acknowledge the justness of his criticism; but I did, and must still, demur to the propriety of calling certain false rhymes peculiarly Irish, when I am able to produce similes from poets of celebrity, who cannot stand excused by Mr. Bede's explanation, that the rhymes in question "made music for their Irish ear." If, as he tells us, Mr. Bede was not "blind to similar imperfections in English poets," I am yet to learn why he should fix on "Swift's Irishisms," and call those errors a national peculiarity, when he finds them so freely scattered through the standard poetry of England?
Your correspondent J. H. T. suggests a new direction for inquiry on this subject when he conjectures that the pronunciation now called Irish was, "during the first half of the eighteenth century, the received pronunciation of the most correct speakers of the day;" and Mr. Bede himself suggests that provincialisms may sometimes modify the rhymes of even so correct a versifier as Tennyson. I hope some of your contributors will have "drunk so deep of the well of English undefiled" as to be competent to address themselves to this point of inquiry. I cannot pretend to do much, being but a shallow philologist; yet, since I received your last Number, I have lighted on a passage in that volume of "omnifarious information" Croker's Boswell, which will not be deemed inapplicable.
Boswell, during a sojourn at Lichfield in 1776, expressed a doubt as to the correctness of Johnson's eulogy on his townsmen, as "speaking the purest English," and instanced several provincial sounds, such as there pronounced like fear, once like woonse. On this passage are a succession of notes: Burney observes, that "David Garrick always said shupreme, shuperior." Malone's note brings the case in point to ours when he says, "This is still the vulgar pronunciation in Ireland; the pronunciation in Ireland is doubtless that which generally prevailed in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth." And Mr. Croker sums up the case thus:
"No doubt the English settlers carried over, and may have in some cases preserved, the English idiom and accent of their day. Bishop Kearny, as well as his friend Mr. Malone, thought that the most remarkable peculiarity of Irish pronunciation, as in say for sea, tay for tea, was the English mode, even down to the reign of Queen Anne; and there are rhymes in Pope, and more frequently in Dryden, that countenance that opinion. But rhymes cannot be depended upon for minute identity of sound."—Croker's Notes, A.D. 1776.
If this explanation be adopted, it will account for the examples I have been furnishing, and others which I find even among the harmonious rhymes of Spenser (he might, however, have caught the brogue in Ireland); yet am I free to own that to me popular pronunciation scarcely justifies the committing to paper such loose rhymes as ought to grate on that fineness of ear which is an essential faculty in the true poet; "here or awa'," in England or Ireland, I continue to set them down to "slip-slop composition."
It may not be inappropriate to notice, that among Swift's eccentricities, we find a propensity to "out-of-the-way rhymes." In his works are numerous examples of couplets made apparently for no other purpose but to show that no word could baffle him; and the anecdote of his long research for a rhyme for the name of his old enemy Serjent Betsworth, and of the curious accident by which he obtained it, is well known; from which we may conclude that he was on the watch for occasions of exhibiting such rhymes as rakewell and sequel, charge ye and clergy, without supposing him ignorant that he was guilty of "lèse majesté" against the laws of correct pronunciation.
When I asked Mr. Bede's decision on a palpable Cockneyism in verse, I did so merely with a view, by a "tu quoque pleasantry," to enliven a discussion, which I hope we may carry on and conclude in that good humour with which I accept his parenthetic hint, that I have made "a bull" of my Pegasus. I beg to submit to him, that, as I read the Classical Dictionary, it is from the heels of Pegasus the fount of poetic inspiration is supposed to be derived; and, further, that the brogue is not so malapropos to the heel as he imagines, for in Ireland the brogue is in use as well to cover the understanding as to tip the tongue. Could I enjoy the pleasure of Mr. Bede's company in a stroll over my native mountains, he might find that there are occasions on which he might be glad to put off