Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/523

 iiB.x.DEc.26,1914] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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quotation was really meant as a rime to the second syllable in " alZow." I wait the opinion of more competent judges on this point. If it was, is it to be understood that "due" was sounded doo ? The Nor- thern sound of ow as of oo in "soon," " boon," &c., was, of course, well known to me ; for did not Geordie Stephenson, when asked about the result of a cow straying on his proposed railway line, say it would be " vera bad for the coo " ?

If I may, I will just remark in answer to G. W. E. R. that, whatever may be the customary pronunciation of the name among relatives of the poet, my small experience requires me to say that, while I know from reading that it was at one time pronounced as Cooper, I have never heard it so sounded, but always in the bovine manner Cowper.

I hope I do not misunderstand C. C. B., but the question is, What did Walker mean by his words "too firmly fixed in its sound of cow- cumber to be altered " ? A specimen of Walker's ' Critical Pronouncing Dictionary,' sixth edition, 1808, is now before me, and he actually gives the pronunciation of " cwcum- ber " as " ko ukumbur," the Su being his mode of indicating the sound of ou in "thow" and "pond": see the table prefixed. He also refers to the Western pronunciation " coo- cumber " as " rather nearer to the ortho- graphy [i.e., cw] than cowcumber," though " still faulty in adopting the obtuse u heard in bull rather than the open u heard in Cucumis, the Latin word whence Cucumber is derived." He then finishes his note with the words I quoted previously second hand :

"It seems too firmly fixed [i.e. in 1808] in its sound of Cotwumber to be altered, and must be classed with its irregular fellow esculent asparagus, which see."

As referring to the original subject of discussion, I would ask your permission to quote his comments. He says :

" This word is vulgarly pronounced Sparrow- grass. It may be observed that such words as the vulgar do not know how to spell, and which convey no definite idea of the thing, are frequently changed by them into such wor.ls as they do know how to spell and which do convey some definite idea. The word in question is an instance of it, and the corruption of this word into sparrotr- grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry."

If, when I last wrote, I had had his original words before me, I venture to think I need not have asked : "Is not this a question of pronunciation ? "

Neither of your correspondents hints at

the double sounds of bo w and L6w, low and allow ; mow, to cut grass, and mow, the structure made with piled-up grass or corn ; row, to use oars, and row, to be abusive and noisy ; sow, to drop seeds into the ground, and sow, the pig that may root them up ; tow, the fibre used in caulking, and tow in "towel," there is distinct proof of quite another sound ; to say nothing of know, in which the o sound prevails, and knowledge, which it is distinctly recognized as correct to pronounce nolledge.

W. S. B. H.

Mr. Gladstone always pronounced Cowper as Cooper. In Scotland I have noticed that every one pronounces this name and Cupar as Cooper. THOS. WHITE.

Junior Reform Club, Liverpool.

The assertion of G. 'V. E. R. that the last Lord Cowper would have shuddered to hear the first syllable of his name made to rim? with now falls even short of the truth. My mother, who was born in 1823 and died this year, was probably the last person to remem- ber Lady Throckmorton, the beloved friend of the poet. Left motherless at her birth, my mother habitually stayed with Lady Throck- morton at Northampton when her father was away from home. She has often told me that the one offence which Lady Throck- morton could not forgive was this pronuncia- tion of Cow to rime with now. Any one who used it was described as a vulgar person, and never again admitted under Lady Throck- morton's roof. J. S.

Westminster.

" GRIM THE COURIER " (11 S. x. 468). According to Prior quoted by Britten, ' Diet, of Eng. Plant Names,' 1886, p. 234 this name was "given to the plant from its black smutty involucre." There is a reference to Parkinson, ' Paradise,' p. 300.

S. L. PETTY.

" KULTUR " (11 S. x. 331, 377, 412, 452). It may be useful, and is certainly inter- esting, to compare what Goethe said of Kultur in the passage quoted at the last reference with another utterance of his on the same subject, given by Eckermann under date 15 April, 1829:

" What seduces young people, said Goethe, is this we live in a time in which so much culture is diffused, that it has communicated itself, as it were, to the atmosphere which a young nian breathes. Poetical and philosophic thoughts live and move within him, he has sucked them in with his very breath, but he thinks they jire his o^vn

any other sound of ow than the most common i p ro p er ty, and utters them as such. " But after he one in cow or the Northern coo; but in has restored to the time what he has received from