506 
Yo the Editor of the Monthly eta 
} Vox—et preterea nihil. 
STR, 
NE of the correspondents in your 
last month’s Number, sugvests a 
plan for handing down to poster ity rthe way 
in which the langvages of Europe are.at 
present pronounced, "by means of record= 
ing, in the orthography of the respecti ive 
alphabets, the sounds of the inferior ani- 
mals; “ which,” he says, “have been, are, 
aud will be the same,-in all time coming.” 
He adduces instances to shew that in the 
days of Theocritus and of Plautus the 
sheep cried ba,a, and the cuckoo tu,ftu. 
* These,” he says, “serve to point out 
that the “iyfer lor animals cried two thou- 
sand years ago eractly as they do at 
resent, and a/so serve to shew how the 
ancients sounded certain of the letters in 
their alphahet.” Now I humbly con- 
celve it to be impossible for any examn- 
ples ot this kind to prove both these 
points: they can prove only one; and I 
apprehend we express the cuckoo’ s note 
by a different orthography (the name of, 
the bird) at present. The idea however 
is wondertally ingenious and profound, 
and E-shall be proud: to contribute my 
trifling assistance m_the furtherance of it. 
How reatly such an object is wanted, Is 
well known to scholars. Mr. Gadeia 
says in his Enquirer, that the mostlearned 
man now living does not understand thé 
Latin tongue so well as a Roman milk- 
maid did; nor, with respect to its pro- 
nunciation, so well as the cows that she 
milked. ‘The following are the particu- 
lars which, after some research, and on 
consulting the best authorities, I have 
been able to collect in this view. 
To your correspondent’s expression of 
the cuckoo's note, J must (as 1 mentioned 
hefore) except. Shakspeare records it 
otherwise, in-a sone: 
The cuckoo then on every tree 
Mocks married men, for thus sings he ¢ 
“* Cuckoo, cuckoo.” .O word of fear, 
Unpleasing to 4 married ear !* 
Two notes perhaps thought to be as- 
eertained with nearly equal precision, are 
those of the cock and the dog. Both 
these I shall produce from the same 
poet, in the song of Ferdinand and Ariel, 
m the first act of the Tempest: 
Hark, hark ; bough-wauzh: the watch-dogs 
bark, 
‘Baugh. waugh. 
Hark, hark: I hear the strain: of strutting 
Chantielere 
Cre cock-a-doodle-doo 
* Cocus French, cuckold. 
Ona Plan for recording Alphabetical Sounds. 
[July i, 
T confess, however, T have scen the for- © 
mer given with some variation, on an 
authority very pespcelon in matters of 
this kind, thus: —- ~~ _ 
Bow-wow-wow-wew.— 
Whose dog art thou ?—- 
Little Tom Tinker’s dog, 
Bow-wow-wow-wow. 
From the dog, ie transition to the cat. 
is obvious. Georgé Alexander Stevens, , 
in one of his Readings, introduces. an_ 
amorous dialogue between two eats, be- 
ginning with their addressing each other 
by name_as follows: 
He. Moll-row, Moll-row. 
She, Cus well, Cur-qell. 
Shakspeare however softens the nete in 
youth, in this line: 
Vd rather be a Ritter, and cry mera. - 
Theocritus, “as your correspondent in- 
forms us, has preserved the ery of th 
shcep in his time: to which I add, that it 
is on printed record, without variation, 
among ourselves, in the farce of the Vil- 
lage Lawyer, 
“Swift has taken. some pains to catch 
the neighing of a Aorse, in his invention 
of houyhnhat : ; and (in the first chapters of 
his fourth V oyage) a shorter cry of that 
animal, in hhuun, hhuun. Job says of 
the war-home (chap. xxxix. ver.’ 25), 
“ He saith among the trumpets, Aa, ha:” 
but Iam not inclined to depend much 
on this, as I do not understand the ori 
ginal expression, to which I think our 
translators may perhaps have accommo= 
dated an interjection of our own. It is 
desirable to have the Hebrew sound in 
this place faithfully represented, that we 
may know what it is the horse really did: 
say. 
I have no written voucher for giving 
the bellowing of the cow as something ; 
like moo. 
|The cry of young pigs is on record in 
the lines which most of us pave: heard 
from our nurses: t 
This pig went to market, &c. 
I shall not repeat the whole poem, as t 
can attain the purpose with more advan- 
tage by an old “ quibble” of much simpli- 
city, on sucking pigs, rescued from obli« j 
vion in a periodical publication of I: S 
month: : by 
A fellow was toseek : 
~ Why pigs cry, week, eocek, week, 
And nothing else would repeate 
He was told,they did cry -..+ 4 ) 9- 
«¢ Week, week. week,” ‘only 
>Cause in three gocade they’re kill’d to eats - 
There is no deficiency of testimony 
- - concerning 
a 
sre 
