Songs and Verses :: :: University of Virginia Library

Etymology once was a wild kind of thing,
Which from any one word any other could bring:
Of the consonants then the effect was thought small,
And the vowels—the vowels were nothing at all.

Down a down, down, &c.

But that state of matters completely is changed,
And the old school of scholars now feels quite estranged:
For 'tis clear that whenever we open our jaw,
Every sound that we utter comes under some Law.

Now one of these laws has been named after Grimm,
For the Germans declare it was found out by him:
But their rivals the Danes take the Germans to task,
And proclaim as its finder the great Rasmus Rask.

Be this as it may, few have sought to explain
How it came that this law could its influence gain:
Max Müller has tried, and, perhaps, pretty well;
But I don't understand him, and therefore can't tell.

Anthropologists say, after Man had his birth,
There were two human races possessing the earth;
One gifted and graced with articulate speech,
And another that only could gabble and screech.

The Aryans could speak, and could build, and could plough,
And knew most of the arts we are practising now;
But the Dumbies that dwelt at those vile Kitchen-Middens
Weren't fit but to do their Superiors' biddings.

So an Aryan went forth to enlighten these others,
And to raise them by speech to the level of brothers;
On the Mutes of the Middens he burst with eclàt,
And attempted to teach them the syllable PA.

This PA was intended to set things a-going
For a lot of Good Words very well worth the knowing;
Such as Pater, and Πολις, and Panis, and Pasco;
But the Midden performers made rather a fiasco.

Scarce one of them all would say PA for a wonder,
But each blundered away with a different blunder:
Some feebly cried A, and some, crow-like, said KA,
While the nearest they came to was FA or was BA.

Then the Aryan propounded the syllable TA,
Which his pupils corrupted to THA and to DA:
Even KA, when they tried it, they never came nearer
Than to HA or to GA, or to something still queerer.

So slow were their senses to seize what was said,
That they never could hit the right nail on the head;
And the game of cross purposes lasted so long,
That it soon was a rule they should always go wrong.

Thus the Dumbies for ever said Father for Pater,
And Bearing and Brother for Ferens and Frater:
The Aryan cried Pecu, the Midden-man Fee,
In which Doctors and Lawyers to this day agree.

Jove's Tonitru sank into Old Saxon Thunner,
Which the High-German dunderheads changed into Donner;
From Domo came Tame, and from Domus came Timmer,
While the hissing Helvetians said Zämen and Zimmer.

From θυρα came Door, and from θυγατηρ Dochter,
Which dwindled away into Türe and Tochter;
From Hortus and Hostis came Garden and Guest,
And from χολη came Gall, which so bothers the best.

The Old Aryan Gau was the Kitchener's Koo
(Though some tribes were contented to call the beast Boo):
If your wife in her καρδια would give you a Cornu,
The Midden-man said, “In her Heart she would Horn you.”

Such a roundabout race I can only compare
To the whirligig engines we mount at a fair;
Where each rides as in fear lest his steed be forsaken,
But he ne'er overtakes, and is ne'er overtaken.

A theory seldom is free from a flaw,
But the story I've told may account for Grimm's law:
Though some others suggest, if the Bible's no fable,
That Grimm's law was what caused the confusion at Babel.

Down a down, down, &c.

December 1867.