Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1916-01-06
WHERE sHAKEspEARE's EN-.
GLJSH is STILL SPOKEN.

GLISH is STILL SPOKEN.
It IL said that when the Kentucky
mountainer begins to read ait all. he
displays so marked preference for
Shakespeare that 1t is invariably the
works of that poet that have most
frequently to be rebound in any H.
brary to which he has access. The
reason he himself gives for this pre-
dilection is that the things Shape
speare makes his characters do al
ways seem so natural"
So also must seem the things he
makes them say. Words and turns
of expression employed by Shake
speare and in the King James ver-
sion of the Bible are of such common
occurrence in the mountain speech
that it is quite possible for native
student of his own peoples peculiar
characteristics to argue, with no
small show of reason, that "the pur-
est English on earth is that of the
Kentucky mountains-howeve unpol-
ished and crude it may be grammati-
cally. Another asserts that this racy
idiom is the one real literary dialect
as yet produced in America.
Just because the mountaineers arc,
for the most part, either illiterate or
able to see few newspapers, they
have sterotyped forms OF expression.
For them the language is in the same
state OF fluidity and fiuX that it was
| for Shakespeare and his contempor.
| aries, so tk2t they are always FREQ
| &c vary AVID invent, and are often
| forced 10 feel around, as it were, rot
| ct,y for the sirht word, but for their
| own word, which, since they have q
| natur;l er.lctic instinct for verbal
shapes ard sounds, gives their speech
a remarkabla sense OF freshness ami
| stylistic distinction Moreover, the
very fact thct their vocabulary is ex-
tremely limited tends 10 foster a
fanciful and figurativc form OF ex-
| preston, as in the case of the old
preacher who, referring to the white
haired among his auditors, called
down blessing upon those "whose
heads were bloomin' for the grave"
But what at first sight appears
most corrupt or colloquial often
proves on closer acquaintance to pos
sess uneXceptionally linguistic cre-
dentials. What, for example, could
possibly have more bucolic or Boen-
tian flavor than the use of the verb
ito talk" in the sense of "to court" or
ito WOO? Yet, in king Lear" we
find Resan saying, precisely:
MY lord is dead; Edmund and I
have talked"
In Shakespeare slso we find ''hop''
for helped" form of the preterite
common in the mountains, as alse
"whup" for whipped" ''wrop" for
wrapped" "clomb" for climbed" II
mountain man becomes suddenly
bereft of his senses. it is said of hin,
that "he TUX franzy SPELL" and this
rustic pronunciation has the author
ity of no less a poet than Sir Philip
Sidney.
There is also sound logic, If not
literary authority, for "ary" and
mary" which are nothing more OF
less than contractions of '"e'er a" and
"ne'er a"-corruptions, il one chooses
but notably euphonious and conven
ient-and the forms "farder" and
"furder" for farther" and further
have exactly the same justification
from an chronological point of view
rs murder" which used to be writ
ten 'murther"; while the impersonaI
pronoun hit" is no mere cocllneyisn
for "it", but the original Anglo-sax
or form of the word.--Harper's Mag
azine.