oldest usage. It is a pity that we have lost our accents; we can now no longer distinguish between metan (metiri) and métan (occurrere). We have often doubled our vowels to mark a difference; thus gód (bonus) has become good, that it may not be confounded with our word for Deus: it is the same with toll and tool, cock and cook, and many others.[1]
We have sometimes thought that we could improve on our forefathers' speech by yoking two of their synonyms together; when we say sledgehammer, it is like a Latinist writing malleus twice over. Now and then a good old word is sadly degraded; thus dyderian (decipere) now exists only in the slang verb diddle.[2] Further on I shall give examples of words, that are seven hundred years old, set down as mere slang in our day.
There was one favourite art of our forefathers, which we have not yet altogether lost, prone though we have
- ↑ We have not often kept the sound of the old vowel at the end of the word so faithfully as in smithy, the former smiððe.
- ↑ The Dorsetshire peasantry, as Mr. Barnes tells us, pronounce in the Old English way words that in polite speech have but one sound; thus they say heäle for sanus, and haïl for grando. We have had a sad loss in dropping the twofold sound, and odd mistakes sometimes arise. I remember at school, nearly thirty years ago, that our class was given Scott's lines:
‘Hail to thy cold and clouded beam’ &c.,
which we were to turn into Latin longs and shorts. I still recall the disgust of the master (vir plagosus) on reading one blockhead's attempt: it began with grando! Thanks to our slovenly forefathers, English is now the punster's Paradise; Hood knew this well.
