Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/475

 10 s. vii. MAY is, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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now spell soond to the familiar modern sound. Similar words, noted by Sweet, are found, ground, pound, bound ; with which compare the modern German gefunden, Grund, Pfund, gebunden.

The question ought to have been put thus : How is it that the word wound has preserved the old u- sound (though lengthened) whilst other words in -ound have changed so regularly ? The answer is simply this : that the influence of the pre- ceding w (so closely allied to u) has preserved the old sound in perfect quality, though it could not preserve its short quantity. The influence of w is very remarkable in this way ; and this is why wan does not rime with ban, can, fan, man, pan, ran, &c. ; neither does wash rime with cash, dash, gash, hash, &c. ; neither does word rime with cord, ford, lord ; nor worm with form and storm ; and so on.

It follows that there never has been any (easily available) perfect rime to wound in modern times ; and the rime with sound (as referred to) is imperfect. This is clearly explained in Walker's ' Rhyming Diction- ary,' p. 711, where the words in -ound are collected (there is a still fuller list at p. 45), with the note that

"allowable rhymes are, the preterites and par- ticiples of verbs in -one, -oan, and -tw, as ton'd, moan'd, sunn'd, &c. ; consequently fund, refund, &c., and wound, a hurt, pronounced woond."

Unless this method be allowed, the word wound, as a sb., cannot be used in rime at all, except with such awkward verbal forms as swooned and festooned.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

The querist does not " remember another instance of ' ound ' being pronounced as oond." What does he say about Oundle ? Is not, as a matter of fact, the oo sound for ou older than the ow sound ?

V.H.I.L.I.C.I.V.

^Undoubtedly the correct pronunciation rimes with hound, and the usual modern one was started in ignorant pedantry as more Frenchy, and therefore genteel, just as many pronounce prestige, envelope, fracas, employee, accouchement, and mirage, as if they were French words, and ordeal as a trisyllable, imagining it to be of Romance instead of Saxon origin. The Americans, whose diction is in many cases far more correct and idiomatic than our own, com- monly, if not universally, preserve the original sound.

On the other hand, blouse should be pro- nounced " blooze," to correspond with

route and tour, if only to distinguish it from blowze ; while neither " acowstic " nor " acoostic " is right, the proper spelling, as the ' N.E.D.' points out, being " acustic." EVACUSTES A. PHIPSON.

I doubt whether any poet's rimes prove anything in this case. I know, indeed, one rime to wound as now pronounced the Salopian river-name Cound ; but the plenti- ful lack of rimes inevitably leads to the use of eye-rimes only when the word occurs at the end of a line. Of course your corre- spondent knows that in several of our dialects wound is pronounced so as to rime with sound. I never heard it otherwise pronounced, for instance, in the name " Wound-ill Spring " (Wound-heal Spring), a spring rising in the parish of Upper Broughton, Notts, which used to be credited with wonderful healing virtue. C. C. B.

In my young days the parson in the pulpit, his "clerk below, the master in the school, and all the folks made wound rime with sound. It was like the word in " I Ve wound up t' clock." THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

CAMOENS, SONNET ccm. : " FRESCAS BELVEDERES" (10 S. vii. 190, 233, 295). The following answer to the first two letters on this question was sent to me by Madame Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcellos, of 159, Rua de Cedofeita, Oporto, a well-known authority on Camoens, whose sonnets I had the pleasure of copying for her from the first edition in the British Museum a few years ago. She is preparing a critical edition of them. I have translated it from the German :

" Evidently it is a plant that is in question. A ' fountain or spring surrounded by a cool outlook " towerlet" ' would be nonsense. Storck translates 'Umstanden rings von schattigen Cypressen ' (cciv.). He was led thereto by information about the pyramidal cypress - like growth of the belveder ornamental plant. He found that in dictionaries, arid in the oldest commentator on Camoens. The dictionaries from Bluteau (1721) onwards give, beside the evidently savant Italian form, which occurs only in the sonnets, belverde also, and the later valverde. The intermediate form belver, which we require, and which was probably the popular one in the time of Camoens (as a correct translation of bel-vedere), I have not hitherto found. Belverde is a popular-etymologist's interpretation. Both are mentioned by the botanist Broteiro ('Compendio de Botaiiica/ Paris, 1788, vol. ii. pp. 330 and 351). The best attested form is belverde. It is used by Manuel Thomas in his * Insulana ' (Antwerp, 1635), iv. 109, ' dos verdes o belverde mais triumpha ' ; and by Frey Nic d'Oliveira in the ' Grandezas de Lisboa,' f. 137 verso (Lisbon, 1620). He speaks of the wealth of flowers in Lisbon, and of the use of