Help: long i and long e in old songs

Subject: long i and long e in old songs
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 11:08 PM

Who knows why we see lines like the following, that don't rhyme any more. i.e, how has English changed?

...gave me her promise true, which ne'er forgot shall be/and for bonnie Annie Laurie, I would lay me doon and die.

..to see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die
with thee again, in sweetest sympathy

A related question (I guess) is why do we hear early pronounced "er-lye," particularly in "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor"?

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: DonMeixner
Date: 26 Aug 02 - 11:41 PM

Er-lye sounds "shippy"

Lie me down an' die (dee) sounds Scots dialectic, no other reasons I am aware of.

As too the lack of consistancy with the pronounciations in the same song, my guess is its a drawing room ballad and no real folky tune. No science here just guessing.

Don

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Jim McLean
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:16 AM

Coming from the West coast of Scotland, I didn't realise I couldn't pronounce a long oo until I was in Germany where the diference in pronunciation can change the meaning as in Bruder (singular) with a long oo and plural with a short oo, an umlaut over the u. In Burns' poetry/songs the word 'poor' is usually written 'puir', mainly for non west coast speakers/readers who would pronounce 'poor' and 'puir' the same. As a child, I always thought that puir was the Scottish spelling of 'pair' which is what we normally would have said! Printing introduced quite few errors which won't go away. The small c in names like my own was originally an apostrophe to save printing Mac in front of highland names, as in M'Donald, M'Gregor etc. This in turn became a small c in wting as it was pronounced Mac. In my own family, my Grandfather and uncle spelled their names Mac while my father chose Mc so the prevelant myth that one is Irish and one is Scottish is just folk ignorance. Cheers, Jim McLean

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 06:34 AM

Linguists talk about the great vowel shift. Most of this happened centuries ago, but it is generally considered to be still changing to some extent in the 19th century when many of the broadsides were being produced. This may, of course, be completely misleading ...

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: GUEST,Scabby Doug
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 07:49 AM

Also:
There's another vowel sound (technically a diphthong) used by Scottish speakers (maybe more a West Scottish thing) that most often trips up actors approximating a Scottish accent.

in most English regions, the words "tied" and "tide" are pronounced the same.

Apart from the North-East, in most places, "tied" is approximately "taa -eed" "tide" is more like "tuh-eed", although it's more of a central vowel sound than "tuh"

The same difference is found in word pairs like sighed/side, pried/pride

it's a tricky one and I've never worked out how it arose.

The people who get it wrong, often pick one of the sounds and use it all the time. Dead giveaway.

And another thing: Gregory Peck in a movie called "Billy Two Hats" playeda Scots gunfighter in the Old West. Possibly the worst Scots Accent (apart from Scotty in Start Trek). He keeps on talking about his "goon" when he means his gun. I can only assume that no-one wanted to correct him.

Cheers

Steven

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: GUEST,T-boy
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 08:06 AM

Talking about the great vowel shift, it's still going on! Living in England, I've noticed vowel sounds changing in my own lifetime. You've only got to listen to old films or TV from 50 years ago to see what I mean.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Jim McLean
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 08:17 AM

In Scotland a mile is measure of distance. Here in London it's what comes through my letter box! Jim Mclean

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Ringer
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:47 AM

"Er-lye" and its ilk was quite common, probably throughout England, certainly from the fen country (Bensusan) to the Midlands (my Mother - born 1910 near Nottingham - used to say "shore-lye" for surely, often, to emphasise it, in combination: "shore-lee, shore-lye". It's also found in Kipling, I think, so my earlier geographical constraint is possibly over-restrictive. And in many many folk songs.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:06 AM

This is all interesting, but not definitive yet.
----------- Here's another one: did people really pronounce wind with a long i as in

O wind
if winter comes, can spring be far behind? ------------- Scabby Doug: I agree with you. I think that if a movie or play calls for Scot (or whomever), then they ought to hire a Scot. Dream on, right?

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: MMario
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:29 AM

or are they prounouncing "behind" to match "wind" /w"ih"nd.

I've heard several older recordings of "mary had a little lamb where "behind" was very close to rhyming with wind

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From:
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:00 AM

In the Western part of Scotland, particularly in the North-West, the influence from Gaelic is very evident in the vowel sounds. At least in the Gaelic they have kept the diacritics which denote the long sounds or changes of the vowel sounds. The Grave or Acute accents give that information. If you notice, Gaelic has NO double vowel words, ie wood or look. It would come out as wòd using English spelling (the actual spelling using Gaelic sounds to generate the oo sound would be wùd).

English probably did have it but .... in the interests of "simplifying" the language, they actually made it more complicated.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:35 AM

The vowel sound in words like "behind" (rhyming more-or-less with current pronounciation of "wind") is the older form, if I remember correctly; it persists in some Northern English and Scottish dialects. It's really a bit more complicated than choosing between a long and short vowel; we were taught a "re-constructed" Middle English pronounciation in my student days, and my limited memory of it would perhaps represent the rhyme as beheind and weind, though I'm afraid I have forgotten the phonetics. Poetry has tended to retain such rhymes well after their decline in the spoken language, which does lead to confusion sometimes.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:42 AM

This also leads to other syllabification [say theat when drunk], such as strip-ed or stript for striped. Sometimes these are just needed for the rhyme or metre.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 11:59 AM

Growing up in Minnesota in the 30s and 40s, I remember hearing (and saying) "Stripe-ed". When that word was mentioned just above, I was reminded that I haven't heard that locution for a long time, at least here in Indianapolis, where I have lived for the past 40 years.

Just wait, though: Having said that, I'll hear "stripe-ed" today or tomorrow!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: MMario
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 12:07 PM

strip-ed and strip-et and stript

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: weepiper
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 01:12 PM

Scabby Doug asked why Scots has two distinct vowel qualities for 'pried' vs 'pride' and 'sighed' vs 'side' etc.... it's because the vowel crosses a morpheme boundary (oo, big words!), that is, 'sighed' is made up of two bits of meaning - 'sigh' itself plus the past tense indicator '-ed', whereas 'side' is a single morpheme. So in Scots or Scottish English you can tell the difference by the pronunciation of the word, even out of context. In my (East coast) accent it's more of a vowel length difference - 'sighed' is pronounced longer and slightly lower in the mouth than 'side'.

Leeneia's original question about lines that 'don't rhyme' anymore is to do with the Great Vowel Shift as DmcG linked to above.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Kim C
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 01:21 PM

When I was in school they talked about "approximate rhyme." Not everything is meant to exactly rhyme, every time.

Some words are rhymed with odd pronunciations because it's funny.

That being said, of course, the language does continue to change on a pretty regular basis.

I think it is the evolution of languages, plus the influence of dialects, plus an individual's perception of how a rhyme should sound.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: The Pooka
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 01:27 PM

Very very interesting indeed, shore-lee, shore-lye. Thanks.

Great Vowel Shift: sad. Brings a tear to my ee.

I still fish for stripe-ed bass though. I do. Colloqially called strippers of course. *STRIPERS*, stripers, yeh yeh that's it... (Hrmph? No, I didn't say I *catch* 'em...)

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 05:22 PM

If you use the original spellings William Douglas used in Annie Laurie (Max Welton's braes are bonnie), there is no problem. He (or whoever wrote the song) spelt the word "dee." It is correctly done in the DT. As would be expected in a song by an Englishman, the use of Scots dialect was inconsistant. Lady John Scott also used be and dee. She is the author of the third verse; in the second she used ee and dee and in the third me and dee.
Another version, that of Sharpe, 1823, uses I and die: See: Maxwelton

Now look at Contemplator: Annie Laurie
The story about Wm. Douglas of Fingal may be just a story; perhaps the words were written by Allan Cunningham.

Some modern singers increase the dialect in the song, thinking that they are making it more "authentic," e. g. Gae me her promise true instead of "Gave me her ....".

This has nothing to do with the historic "great vowel shift." That is not to say that more recent shifts in both vowels and consonants are not taking place; English is a changeable, evolving, accretive language.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 08:41 PM

Whatever might be the truth as to William Douglas' connection to Annie Laurie, it would be wrong to describe him as "an Englishman" (or to make assumptions about the authenticity or otherwise of the text based on that misapprehension); he was born in Sanquhar Castle, the eldest son of Douglas of Morton Castle. Fingland (not England, as wrongly stated in the DT file) is in Kirkcudbright!

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 09:38 PM

That's what I get for assuming the DT was right! Is the 1685 date for William Douglas also wrong? The song seems to be 19th C. parlor music to me (the last two verses are, what about the first?). Contemplator places the creation of the Maxwellton family at 1865. Do they mean 1685? There seems to be more than one error here!

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:05 PM

Douglas' verses were re-written by Lady John Scott (who is also credited with the tune) around 1834-5. The poem was not written in 1685, as so many websites have it; Anna Laurie would, so far as I can tell, have been about 3 years old at that time. There's so much nonsense and half-baked misinformation circulating that it's hard to be precise, but I'd place the poem in the early years of the 18th century; she married (somebody else) in 1709.

Subject: RE: Help: long i and long e in old songs
From: Mr Happy
Date: 27 Aug 02 - 10:09 PM

and then there's the long 'f's' as used by benny hill! et al.