The Onomatopoetic Theory in Provincialisms. 187 



common green woodpecker is here, as in some other parts of 

 England, called, from its loud shrill laugh, the " yaffingale." 

 The goat-sucker, too, is the " jar-bird," so known from its 

 jarring noise, which has made the Welsh peasant name it the 

 " wheel-bird " (aderyn y droell), and the Warwickshire the 

 " spinning-jenny." In fact, a large number of birds in every 

 language are thus called, and to this day in the cry of the 

 peacock we may plainly hear its Greek name, rawc 



Of course, we must be on our guard against adopting the 

 onomatopoetic theory as altogether explaining the origin of 

 language. Within, however, certain limits, especially with a 

 peculiar class of provincialisms, it gives us, as here, true aid.* 



Again, as an example of phrases used by our Elizabethan 

 poets, preserved only by our peasantry, though in good use in 

 America, take the word "bottom," so common throughout the 

 Forest, meaning a valley, glen, or glade. Beaumont and Fletcher 

 and Shakspeare frequently employ it. Even Milton, in Paradise 

 Regained, says 



"But cottage, herd, or sheepcote, none he saw, 

 Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove." 



(Book ii. 289.) 



In his Comus, too, we find him using the compound "bottom- 

 glade," just as the Americans speak to this day of the " bottom- 

 lands " of the Ohio, and our own peasants of Slufter Bottom, 

 and Longslade Bottom, in the New Forest. 



" Heft," too, is another similar instance of an Old-English 

 word in good use in America and to be found in the best 

 American authors, but here in England only employed by our 



* See Miiller's Science of Language, pp. 345-351 ; and compare Wedg- 

 wood, Dictionary of English Etymology, introduction, pp. 5-17. 



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