Mat 14. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



483 



At Tilney, All Saints, Norfolk, is an inscribed 

 font so similar to the one last mentioned that they 

 are probably the works of the same designer. 



On the cover of the font at Southacre, Norfolk, 

 is this inscription : 



" Orate p. aia. Mfi. Rici. Gotts et dni Galfridi 

 baker, Rectoris huj' [ecclie qui hoc] opus fieri feceV 



I may take the opportunity of adding two 

 pvlpit inscriptions ; one at Utterby, Lincolnshire, 

 on the sounding-board : 



" Quoties conscendo animo contimesco." 

 The other at Swarby, in the same county : 



" O God my Saviour be my sped. 

 To preach thy word, men's soulls to fed." 



C. R. M. 



IRISH RHYMES — ENGLISH PROVINCIAIilSMS — LOW- 

 LAND 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 acknowledged 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 Mk. 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 Irish- 

 isms," 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 con- 

 jectures that the pronunciation now called Irish 

 was, " during the first half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, the received pronunciation of the most cor- 

 rect speakers of the day;" and Mr. Bede himself 

 suggests that provincialisms may sometimes modify 

 the rhymes of even so correct a versifier as Tenny- 

 son. 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 re- 

 ceived your last Number, I have lighted on a pas- 

 sage in that volume of "omnifarious information" 

 Croker's Boswell, which will not be deemed in- 

 applicable. 



Boswell, during a sojourn at Lichfield in 1776, 

 expressed a doubt as to the correctness of John- 

 son's eulogy on his townsmen, as " speaking the 

 purest English," and instanced several provincial 



sounds, such as there pronounced likeyear, 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 pronun- 

 ciation in Ireland is doubtless that which generally 

 prevailed! in England in the time of Queen Eliza- 

 beth." 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 vi^ell 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 iden- 

 tity 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 Eng- 

 land 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 re- 

 search for a rhyme for the name of his old enemy 

 Serjeant 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 "lese majeste" 

 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 " tix quoqiie pleasantry," to enliven a discus- , 

 sion, which I hope we may carry on and conclude 

 in that good humour with which I accept his paren- 

 thetic 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 



