Fowey

[Edmundj]

Hello,
I thought this might be a good place to trace a verse by Quiller Couch
on English pronunciation, Fowey being pronounced to rhyme with buoy and
drawing attention to other odd words like yacht, rhyming with spot. Can anyone help please?
I had a note of it but it has gone astray.

[Logos]

Is this what you're looking for?

"To A Friend Who Sent Me a Box of Violets"
from The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q"




Nay, more than violets
These thoughts of thine, friend!
Rather thy reedy brook--
Taw's tributary--
At midnight murmuring,
Descried them, the delicate
Dark-eyed goddesses,
There by his cressy bed
Dissolved and dreaming
Dreams that distilled into dew
All the purple of night,
All the shine of a planet.

Whereat he whispered;
And they arising--

Of day's forget-me-nots
The duskier sisters--
Descended, relinquished
The orchard, the trout-pool,
Torridge and Tamar,
The Druid circles,
Sheepfolds of Dartmoor,
Granite and sandstone;
By Roughtor, Dozmare,
Down the vale of the Fowey
Moving in silence,
Brushing the nightshade
By bridges cyclopean,
By Trevenna, Treverbyn,
Lawharne and Largin,
By Glynn, Lanhydrock,
Restormel, Lostwithiel,
Dark wood, dim water, dreaming town;
Down the vale of the Fowey
To the tidal water
Washing the feet
Of fair St Winnow--
Each, in her exile
Musing the message,
Passed, as the starlit
Shadow of Ruth from the land of the Moabite.

So they came,
Valley-born, valley-nurtured--
Came to the tideway
The jetties, the anchorage,
The salt wind piping,
Snoring in Equinox,
By ships at anchor,
By quays tormented,
Storm-bitten streets;
Came to the Haven
Crying, "Ah, shelter us,
The strayed ambassadors,
Love's lost legation
On a comfortless coast!"

Nay, but a little sleep,
A little folding
Of petals to the lull
Of quiet rainfalls--
Here in my garden,
In angle sheltered
From north and east wind--
Softly shall recreate
The courage of charity,
Henceforth not to me only
Breathing the message.

Clean-breath'd Sirens!
Hencefore the mariner.


http://www.online-literature.com/quiller-couch/vigil-of-venus/18/

[Edmundj]

Thank you, but no, this is not it.
The short verse I am seeking humourously points up odd rhymes
and goes something like:-

Oh The Harbour of Fowey is a wonderful spot
...................(?)............................ .buoy
Where ...............(?)........and I sail in my yacht
...................(?)..............Harbour of Fowey

[Edmundj]

Search over, I have tracked it down myself after all,
I'll add it here, in case anyone else is interested in this piece:-

Oh the harbour of Fowey
Is a beautiful spot
And it's there I enjowey
To sail in a yot;
Or to race in a yacht
Round a mark or a buoy -
Such a beautiful spacht
Is the harbour of Fuoy!

Arthur Quiller-Couch

[antiquary]

EDIT: Oops! Pipped to the post.

[Logos]

Edmund can I ask you where you found it? or, what that poem is called?

[Edmundj]

I found it on a sheet of paper in my father's handwriting in an English Grammar book he used as a Teacher many years ago. No idea where he had copied it from. On the same sheet was this one which only has the initials of an author :-

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
to learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed not bead -
For goodness sake don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!
T.S.W