The Onomatopoeic Theory in Provincialisms. 



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 name it the "wheel- 

 bird " (aderyn y droell), and the Warwickshire peasant 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, Tawe. 



Of course, I need not say, we must be on our guard against 

 adopting the onomatopoetic theory as explaining the origin of 

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

 peculiar class of provincialisms, it gives us, as here, some 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 Mulloi t> Science of Language, pp. 345-351 ; and compare Wedge- 

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



B B 2 187 



