428 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



This occult vowel-quality, it may be, accounts also for 

 certain grammatical irregularities otherwise to all appearance 

 quite arbitrary. As, for example, the varying past participle 

 in the case of verbs precisely similar in form. Thus wink, 

 winked; think, thought ; sink, sank ; dvink, drunk. And it is 

 to this characteristic quality of vowel-sounds in suggesting 

 mental impressions that " nonsense verses " maybe made to 

 appear so like sense, and also that much egregious and un- 

 conscious nonsense in rhyme passes muster as poetry. (Look 

 through some of our most popular hymn-books — and weep !) 



The fancy names of fiction strongly bear out my argument. 

 In the names of objectionable and paltry characters the short 

 vowels are freely used, often duplicated, and grouped with un- 

 couth combinations of consonants. Samuel Warren gives us 

 Tittlebat Titmouse, Huckaback, Tagrag, Messrs. Quirk, Gam- 

 mon, and Snap, &c. Dickens's novels abound with names of 

 this class : Quilj), Podsnap, Winkle, Stiggins, Chadbaml, and 

 scores of others might be cited. Meaningless though the 

 name frequently is, the ludici'ous or contemptible reference 

 cannot fail to strike the reader. 



In the Maori — a soft and euphonious tongue — as I have 

 already remarked, the long a predominates. As commonly 

 spoken by the pakeha, it possesses no beauty, but is hope- 

 lessly vulgarised. Why ? Chiefly because the short u, the 

 lowest sound in the vowel-scale (which I have never detected 

 in Maori), is freely introduced. Manga- and maunga are both 

 alike vmnga in the mouth of the pakeha. Even the full 

 sound of is degraded to the same coarse and contemptuous 

 vowel. In Captain Cruise's voyages (1823) the name of the 

 chief Hongi is uniformly written " Shungie." 



I have one more remark to add — that by a natural process 

 of gradual development we may expect the influence of these 

 qualities upon our language to become still more marked in 

 the future. The continual selection by the best poets and 

 writers of certain appropriate vocal sounds to express par- 

 ticular mental conditions, will add a traditional to an inherent 

 quality. It is so in music, where the power of association is 

 strongly marked. It is impossible, for instance, that Handel's 

 " Dead March" could have affected its first hearers with the 

 tremendous and overwhelming power that it exercises upon our 

 emotions to-day. They might fully appi'eciate its grand and 

 solemn chords, but it could not move them as it moves us, to 

 whom it comes each time laden with a new addition to its past 

 burden of sad associations. And here, as in other respects, 

 the parallel between language and nmsic will be found upon 

 examination to hold good. ? 



