PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24421, 5 October 1940, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

As has happened in these latter days to the words " peace" and " honour," " liberty," too, has fallen, or is falling, from its high state. Like the grand old name of gentleman, it is Defamed by every charlatan, And soiled by all ignoble use. Without the countless odes and songs and dramas written on the theme of liberty, the literature of the world would be reduced by half. And proportionately lessened would be the tale of human heroisms. Yet the liberty sung and extolled in past ages has been mainly of one kind only—national liberty. For this national liberty Boadicea and Joan of Arc fought, and Leonidas and Kosciusko fell. But other liberties there are, more individual than national, much more rarely mentioned, but bulking in their accumulated mass much more largely Champions of these individual liberties, widely varying in kind and incidence, were the Roman Gracchi, the French Rousseau, the English Milton, Cromwell, and Sylvia Pankhurst. When England was "discovered " by Europe in the eighteenth century, these were the liberties that earned for her the European name of " the freest country in the world." To Voltaire and Montesquieu she was therefore the most fascinating of phenomena. National liberty was to them a commonplace Many nations had it. In the socalled "free" communities of antiquity the State was free, but the State only. In England there was daily and hourly liberty for the individual man in the street. "How I love English boldness! " said Voltaire, "how I love the oeonle who can say what they think!" No mere trite cliche is it that " England fights for freedom." She is contending for the preservation of a distinctively English product of English soil and air.

In addition to these two groups of liberties, national and individual, a third liberty found its home in England—a liberty which, though widely imitated, has nowhere attracted much attention. This is the liberty of free association —the right of self-governing groups to manage their own affairs. As a peculiarly English product have grown up naturally and unconsciously the mediaeval guilds, the Inns of Court, the commercial colonies, the merchant adventurers, the Freemason lodges, the friendly societies, the trade unions and sporting associations—bodies of infinite variety of form and purpose. In one great word,, which has been adopted into every civilised language under the sun, we find an embodiment of this English spirit of free association. This is the wox*d " committee," which has found its way, with necessary terminal modifications, wherever English practice has been followed. To what accident of history, to what special quality of race, to what special morality or type of character does England owe its free associations? Let the sociologist answer According to the legists the origin seems to lie in the fact that Roman Law, with its hostility to voluntary organisations, and its abstract and absolutist theory of the State, never supplanted the Common Law of the country. Whatever be the origin of this English liberty of free association, the qualities and characteristics which gave it birth are the most striking contribution which England has made to the civilisation of the world.

'To anglicise or riot to anglicise—that is the question which at the present juncture besets the sorelyharassed 8.8. C. announcer. At no time a happy one, his lot has now moved him to the front firing line, where millions of snipers have his range taped to the fraction of an inch and are lying in wait for him. Only a poly-linguist cnuld pronounce with perfect satisfaction the torrent of new place-names that now come tumbling forth from the 8.8. C. Niagara. One would have expected that the 8.8. C. organisation, now keyed up to concert pitch, would long ere this have had an instruction class for announcers. There, whether wrongly or rightly, these would pronounce their foreign townnames in.the same way. In this, as in other things, there is strength in unity. Let the pronunciation of " Boulogne " be taken as an example. Should the announcer, staggering to his microphone „at 6 a.m. after a bomby night, oronounce Boulogne after the manner of the boulevardier of Paris, or of the tip and Bank Holiday tripper from London, or of the die-hard Englishman to whom a foreign pronunciation of a foreign town is merely swank? Or should he, lastly, adopt the good old English pronunciation based on long English tradition? Four pronunciations of the name of this wellbombed town emerge week in, week out from the 8.8. C. microphone. Two are English—" boo-lone," " boo-loin " —both given as correct in authoritative English dictionaries. Yet these, which no Boulonnais would recognise, are better than that which gives an Anglo-French hybrid sound to the French " gn." As if the French "mignon" were pronounced as " minion."

Yet in these 8.8. C. pronunciations no attempt is made to gallicise the pronunciation of "Cologne" in the same direction as "Boulogne." " Collone " it always is, and probably always will be. Again there is "Hamm"—if it still "is." In the mind and mouth of one announcer-*-naturally at 6 a.m.—it is associated with eggs, and he says quite frankly " Ham." To another announcer the association 'is rather with the stink of exploding bombs, and he says, more Germanlike, "Hum." The towns on the Mid-Eastern front—the Sidi Baranis and Tobruks and the Bogbogs—might well be pronounced AH Baba and Bashi-Bazook for all the man in the street knows about them. Another anglicisation appeared on Thursday last. The island of Antigua is traditionally Englished to "antig-yua." Thus the 8.8. C. But the local pronunciation is "Anteega." as who should say

There was a fair maid of Antigua Who tried all she could to be meagre She banted and scanted. And slanted and panted, And ended with double the figure.

As for the English pronunciation of the place, even the world's champion ■Limerick er would be beaten,

There was an old black of Antigua Who said to his boss, " What a pig you are! " Any reader with another rhyme at his elbow may easily complete this. To him I leave it. For the 8.8. C. pronouncer at the presen* time let all our sympathy go out. In a language which pronounce the surname " Colclough " as '' Cokely " anything is possible. Just as bad are outlandish scientific terms. A German ship was torpedoed some months ago containing a cargo of "molybdenum." The 8.8. C. announcer called it "Molly Bidem."

Apropos of a last week's Mote on the origin of the verb "to spoon," a suggestion has been passed on to this column attributing it to the Welsh custom according to which a suitor offers a cai'ved spoon to

the lady of his fancy. If she accepts the spoon, they become engaged. Quite likely. A-youth seen carrying a spoon to the house of his lady might easily be said to be going aspooning. And the youth who returns with spoon unaccepted, or who makes a practice of this spoonrjresentation, might be known as " spooney "—defined in the O.E.D. as " soft, silly, sentimental." Which calls to mind a North American Indian custom somewhat similar. A young brave who desires to mate with an Indian maiden makes his way to her wigwam carrying in his hand a lighted torch. If she accepts his suit she blows out the torch and says—of course in Chocktaw or in Sioux—" Come along in, my lad." There is something ominously symbolical in this. In some such way as this has many an innocent' man had his light put out.

According to the just published Otago " vital statistics" for the month of September—vitai in this case having to do with death as well as life —there were 140 births, 77 deaths. 73 marriages. Side by side, for purposes of comparison, are placed the corresponding figures for the previous September: 152, 94, 116. Statistics may be, and sometimes are. as gloomy as a graveyard. And there are times when we derive comfort from the suggestion of their fallibility, and clutch at the common saying that "nothing is so false as facts, except figures." Or at the words quoted by Carlyle from 'a witty statesman " that "by figures vou can Drove anything." But from these " vital" statistics there can be no escape. No statement is made showing whether or why September is a good or a bad month for marriages, births or deaths. More imDressive might be a daily average. For the broad generalities of an average may at times rise even into poetry. Tennyson found it so when b<? wrote in his " Vision of Sin ":

Every moment dies a man. Every moment one is born Ah anonymous friend "passionately devoted to the study of sanitation and mortality," carried his enthusiasm to the point of writing to the Laureate and pointing out that the poet's statistics would leave the population of the world for ever stationary. He suggested the emendation. • ■ Every moment dies a man, And one and one-sixteenth is born.

He confessed that even this emendation would not remove the inaccuracy, for the correct figure was 1.047. "But," he said, "some allowance must be made for metre."

What is true of surnames is equally true of street names. There may be a " woundy luck " in them. For one thing, while it is Nature's law to change, names may go on for ever, sticking closer than a brother, or as a schoolboy's nickname. Thus there may be a Willow terrace from which all willows have long since departed. Or an Oakleigh avenue where not even the oldest inhabitant ever saw an oak. There are Seaview roads that look only on gorsy banks. Common also are avenues that have never been avenues, or terraces that are not terraces. Nor is this all. Streets may go down with their suburbs as the city moves on and out. In Whitechapel there was once a distinguishing and embellishing White Chapel. And if the original Whitechapel district had been called by the name of an honoured English statesman his descendants might to-day raise their just objections. Referred to this column is an extract from an Alexandria paper of last war date: The question of changing the names of Gordon and Baker streets has been under consideration by the Alexandria Municipality, as it is considered that, owing to the character of the female inhabitants of those streets it is out of place that they should bear the names of such respectable British worthies, whose names are so closely connected with this country. It has therefore been decided to change the names of these streets to Rhyne and Zohra—the former being the name of the celebrated Greek lady of doubtful reputation, •and the latter the Arabic name for Venus. ■. . Civis.