FIELD OR PADDOCK?
Sir,-Could a qualified reader explain why our forefathers chose from a multitude of English synonyms words that are harsh and (to me) ugly? Personally I would prefer the smoothness of field or meadow to the staccato bark paddock, If I used them, however, I would appear effeminate. And why, instead of brooks and streams, must we bark creek? There is beauty not merely of poetic associa-
tion in the fitst two, and the ugly k in the last. Nor may I go for’a picnic in the woods lest I appear to believe in fairies. I must accept the abomination bush. We have discarded copse and spinney for the lumpy clump of trees. We take a billy can, and we see far off the sails of a scow. The farmer makes a stack or a rick, but he does not harvest much, He gathers up the rakings and there is never any gleaning. We reserve for Kashmir the beauty of vale, or replace the poetry in valley to hiccough gully. And so on. But why do we retain them?
E. H.
A.
(Te Aroha)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 33
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186FIELD OR PADDOCK? New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 33
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