[Ads-l] "I say...Lusitani-ay"

[Jonathan Lighter]

_The Jolly Tar's Garland _(n.p., n.d), p.2, dated by ECCO to "1780?"  Lots
of long esses, capitalized nouns, and italics in this 8pp chapbook.

Oh! the French hath broke our Peace Boys,
      In the Lands of America,
But Royal George of England
      Is Governor by Sea.

JL

On Mon, Oct 2, 2006 at 10:18 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> That could be the explanation, but in Arnold's case it comes in the very
> final word of the poem. This creates, to my ear and sensibility, an
> extremely bathetic fall that I'd have thought Arnold would have eschewed.
>
> What I'm getting at, with the help of Gabby Hayes, is the possibility that
> "Californiay," "Lusitaniay," and "Asiay" (or something closer to
> monophtongal / e /) may once have been standard pronunciations.( / E / in
> both "say" and "Lusitania" seems like a plausible alternative.)
>
> My own phonology calls for / s Ei / and Lusitani / ^ /.  Pretty bathetic
> in combination.
>
> JL
>
> *Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>>* wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Charles Doyle
> Subject: Re: "I say...Lusitani-ay"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Or is it poetic license? There may have existed certain sorts of "rhyme"
> that were (by tradition) deemed poetically acceptable whether or not they
> correlated much with anybody's pronunciation.
>
> John Donne (c1600), in his "Valediction: Of Weeping," used a similar
> rhyme: "On a round ball / A workeman that hath copies by, can lay / An
> Europe, Afrique, and an Asia, / And quickly make that, which was nothing,
> all."
>
> --Charlie
> ____________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
> >Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 06:41:59 -0700
> >From: Jonathan Lighter
> >Subject: "I say...Lusitani-ay"
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> >In 1879 Matthew Arnold wrote a sonnet titled "S. S. Lusitania" concerning
> an offspring's voyage on the ship of that name (not the one torpedoed in
> 1915).
> >
> > At the conclusion of this very serious sonnet, Arnold rhymes "Lusitania"
> with "I say."
>
> > This is obviously not "eye-rhyme" and seems unlikely to me to be "slant
> rhyme." It reminds me instead of how character actors like Gabby Hayes used
> to pronounce "California" in old westerns.
> >
> > Does anyone know enough about standard mid-Victorian pronunciation
> and/or poetic practice to elucidate this "rhyme" ? Did Arnold have some
> in-between diphthong in both words ?
> >
> > JL
>
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