ONOMATOPES.
’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.--POPE.
Our blunted senses can no more realize the original delicacy
of the appellative faculty, than they can attain to the keen
perfection in which they still exist in the savage.--LEPSIUS.
Whatever opinion we have of the onomatopœia theory of the origin
of language, so ably advocated by Farrar, Wedgwood, and Whitney,
and so keenly ridiculed by Max Müller and others, it is impossible
to deny that there is a natural relationship between thought and
articulate sound,--in other words that certain sounds are the
natural expression of certain sensations, and of mental states
that are analogous to those sensations. All languages contain
words which, in their very structure as composite sounds, more or
less nearly resemble in quality, as soft or harsh, the sounds they
designate. Such, in our language, are words representing animal
sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, whinny, bellow, caw, croak, hiss,
screech, etc.; words representing inarticulate human sounds, as
laugh, cough, sob, shriek, whoop, etc.; sounds representing the
collision of hard bodies, as clap, rap, tap, slap, etc.; sounds
representing the collision of softer bodies, as dab, dub, thud,
dub-a-dub; sounds representing motion through the air, as whizz,
buzz, sough, etc.; sounds representing resonance, as clang,
knell, ring, twang, etc.; and sounds representing the motion
of liquids, as clash, splash, dash, etc.[27] Even the various
degrees of intensity in sound are expressed by modifications of the
vowels,--high notes being represented by _i_, low, broad sounds
by _a_, and diminution by the change of _a_ or _o_ to _i_; while
continuance is expressed by a reduplication of syllables, as in
murmur, etc., and by the addition of _r_ and _l_, as in grab,
grapple, wrest, wrestle, crack, crackle, dab, dabble. Animals are
often named, upon the same principle, from their cries, birds
especially, as we see in whip-poor-will, cuckoo, crow, quail,
curlew, chough, owl, peewit, turtle, and many others. Again, we
find that, independently of all confusion between a word and its
associations, words having a harsh signification generally have
a rough, harsh form, while words that denote something soft and
pleasing, or sweet and tender, seem to breathe the very sensation
they describe. The various passions of men naturally find
expression in different sounds. Anger, vehemence, gentleness, etc.,
have each a language, a style of utterance, peculiar to themselves.
Love and sorrow prompt smooth, melodious expressions, while violent
emotions express themselves in words that are hurried, abrupt and
harsh.
Were further proof wanting of this connection between external
sounds and the processes of the mind, it is supplied in the
strongest form by the fact that the different languages of the
earth are stamped with marks of predominant local influences,--of
the climate, scenery, and other physical conditions amid which
they have been evolved. Rousseau, a century ago, called attention
to the fact that the languages of the rich and prodigal South,
being the daughters of passion, are poetic and musical, while
those of the North, the daughters of necessity, bear a trace of
their hard origin, and express by rude sounds rude sensations.
Who does not discern in the “soft and vowelled undersong” of the
Italian the effect of a climate altogether different from that
which has produced the stridulous, hirrient roughness of the
German, the Dutch, and the Russian tongues? What but different
geographical positions has made the language of the South-Sea
Islanders so different from the dissonant clicks of the Hottentot,
or the guttural polysyllables of the Cherokee? What other cause
has made the language of the Tlascalans, the hardy and independent
mountaineers dwelling in the high volcanic regions between Mexico
and Vera Cruz, so much rougher than the polished Tezucan, or the
popular dialect of the Aztecs, who are of the same family as the
mountaineers? It is because the vocal organs, which are formed with
exceeding delicacy, are affected by the most trifling physical
influences, that English is spoken in Devonshire, England, with
a splutter, and in Suffolk with an attenuated whine; that the
language spoken in the northern counties is harsher than that
spoken in the southern; and that in the mountainous regions we find
a harsher dialect than we hear in the plains.
The manner in which words are formed by means of the imitations
of natural sounds is illustrated by the word “cock” which is
considered by etymologists to be an abbreviated imitation of
chanticleer’s “cock-a-doodle-doo!” From the name of the animal,
which is thus derived from its cry, and then generalized and made
fruitful in derivatives, come, by allusion to the bird’s pride and
strut, the words “coquette,” “cockade,” the “cock” of a gun, to
“cock” one’s eye, to “cock” the head on one side, a “cocked” hat,
a “cock” of hay, a “cock”-swain, a “cock”-boat, the “cock” of a
balance, and so on. It is in all probability by this method more
than by any other, that words were produced in all the earlier
stages of language, while the interjectional or exclamatory
principle was, doubtless, next in importance.
It is sometimes objected to the theory of the extensive use of
onomatopœia in the formation of language, that, were it true, we
should find in the different languages of the earth a greater
identity than actually exists in the terms expressive of physical
facts. We should not find words so unlike as “bang” in English
and _pouf_ in French, employed to denote the sound of a gun; or
γρύλλοϛ in Greek, _quirquirra_ in the Basque, and _sirsor_ in
Chinese, used as names for the grasshopper. Why, if the theory
in question be true, do we find a clap of thunder called in
Sanscrit _vaǵraǵvala_, in Gaelic _tàirneanach_, in Bohemian
_hromobitz_, in Icelandic _thruma_? Why does Coleridge sing of the
nightingale’s “murmurs musical and sweet _jug-jug_,” while Tennyson
says that “_Whit, whit, whit_, in the bush beside me, chirrupt the
nightingale”?
The answer to this is, that man in naming things does not attempt
to reproduce the _identical_ sound which he hears, but artistically
to reproduce it, or rather the impression which it has made, just
as a painter often deviates from the actual colors of nature, and
paints a picture more or less ideal, to enhance the effect of his
art. The imitation is not a dull, literal echo of the sound, but an
echo of the impression produced by it on the human intelligence;
not a mere spontaneous repercussion of the perception received, but
a repercussion modified _organically_ by the configurations of the
mouth, and _ideally_ by the nature of the analogy perceived between
the sound and the object it expresses.[28] These repercussions,
moreover, have been greatly blurred by the lapse of ages,--so much
so, in many cases, as to be indistinguishable. Again, we must
remember that the impressions made by the same sounds on different
minds, and even on the same mind in different moods, will greatly
vary; and that in naming objects from other characteristics than
the sound, different characteristics are chosen by different
peoples. According to the mental constitution, the preponderance
of reason or imagination, for example, in the name-giver, or
particular experiences in connection with the object, the
designating quality which is deemed most fit to furnish the name
for it will vary. Thus it happens that in Sanscrit there is a great
variety of names for the elephant, such as the “hand-possessing”
animal, the “toothed,” the “two-tusked,” the “great-toothed,” the
“pounder,” the “roarer,” the “forest-roarer,” the “mailed,” the
“twice-drinking,” the “mountain-born,” the “vagabond,” and many
others. Thus it happens that in Arabic there are five hundred
names for the lion, two hundred for the serpent, and not less than
a thousand for the sword. The nightingale is said to have twenty
distinct articulations; and if this is true, we should expect
that in the different languages of Europe it would have different
names. The old poets all speak of the nightingale’s song as “most
melancholy,” but in modern verse we read of
“the _merry_ nightingale
That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With fast thick warble its delicious notes.”
So with thunder; the impression it makes upon hearers varies with
the varying qualities of their minds. To one man it is a dull
rumble, to another a crackling explosion, and to a third a sudden
flashing of light. As Archdeacon Farrar finely says: “What the eye
sees and the ear hears depends in no small measure on the brain and
the heart. The hieroglyphics of nature, like the inscriptions on
the swords of Vathek, vary with every eye that glances on them; her
voices, like the voice of Helen to the ambushed Greeks, take not
one tone of their own, but the tone that each hearer loves best to
hear.”[29]
Though a large part of language has been formed in the way I have
named, yet it must be admitted that few words, compared with the
whole number, bear upon their face unmistakable traces of their
origin. The explanation of this lies in the great changes which
phonetic corruption effects in language. No sooner do men coin
a word, than they instinctively and unconsciously seek to rid
it of its superfluous letters, and in other ways to economize
the time and labor expended upon its utterance; and if they are
obliged to use a new or strange word, which conveys no intrinsic
meaning to them, they try to give it a meaning by so changing it
as to remove its arbitrary character. (See “Words of Illusive
Etymology,” in Chapter on the “Curiosities of Language.”) Thus
words, in the course of ages, are rolled and rubbed out of shape,
like the pebbles which are rubbed and rounded into smoothness
by the sea waves on a shingly beach, until at last, though once
plainly imitative, they lose all trace of their sensuous origin.
Who, without knowledge of the intermediate _diurnus_ and _giorno_,
would for a moment suspect that _jour_ could be derived from
_dies_; or would suppose, if he had not traced the etymology
of “musket,” that it is derived from the onomatope, _musso_, “I
buzz”? But, notwithstanding all this, and though in the progress of
scientific culture language becomes more and more abstract,--that
is, words having no natural connection with the thoughts are used
more and more arbitrarily to represent them, just as algebraic
signs represent mathematical relations,--still language never
loses wholly its original imitative character. It will always,
therefore, be a signal excellence of style when thought and emotion
are represented by imitative expressions,--that is, by means of
pictures or images of sensible things and events. The sound then
points to the external object or event, or some sensible property
or characteristic of it, and this, again, to the mental state or
thought which it is taken to represent. It is for this reason
that the poets, from Homer to Tennyson, abound in onomatopes,--in
words and combinations of words in which the sound is an echo
to the sense. These words are not only the most vivid, the most
passionate, and the most picturesque, but they are the only ones
which are instantly intelligible, and which possess an inherently
graphic power. The power of poetry lies largely in the fact that,
as Bunsen says, it “reproduces the original process of the mind in
which language originates. The coinage of words is the primitive
poem of humanity, and the imagery of poetry and oratory is possible
and effective only because it is a continuation of that primitive
process which is itself a reproduction of creation.”
Dyer, in his “Ruins of Rome,” thus exemplifies, in a passage quoted
with praise by Johnson, the beauty and force imparted to style by
the adaptation of the sounds to the object described:
“The pilgrim oft
At dead of night, ’mid his oraison, hears
Aghast the voice of time; disparting towers
_Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,_
_Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon_.”
Not only single words, but an entire sentence, or a series of
sentences, may resemble the sound represented; as in the following
description of the abode of Sleep, in Spenser:
“And more to lull him in his slumbers soft,
A trickling stream from high rocks tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,
Mixed with a murmuring wind much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoone:
No other noise, nor people’s troublous cries,
As still are wont t’ annoy the walléd towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies,
Wrapped in eternal silence, far from enemies.”
An intelligent writer reminds us that in reading this stanza, we
ought to humor it with a corresponding tone of voice, lowering
or deepening it, “as though we were going to bed ourselves, or
thinking of the rainy night that had lulled us.” He suggests also
that attention to the accent and pause in the last line will make
us feel the depth and distance of the scene. Another illustration
is furnished by the well known lines of Pope:
“Soft is the stream when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.”
More striking still, in some respects, is Christopher Pitt’s
translation of the corresponding passage in Vida’s “Art of Poetry”:
“When things are small the terms should still be so,
For low words please us, when the theme is low.
_But when some giant, horrible and grim,_
_Enormous in his gait, and vast in every limb,_
_Comes towering on_; the swelling words must rise
In just proportion to the monster’s size.
If some large weight his huge arms strive to shove,
The verse too labors; the thronged words scarce move.
* * * * *
But if the poem suffer from delay,
_Let the lines fly precipitate away_;
And when the viper issues from the brake,
_Be quick; with stones and brands and fire attack_
_His rising crest, and drive the serpent back_.”
The overflowing of the fourth line in this passage, the abrupt
termination of the middle of the next line, the pause at “Be
quick!” and the rapidity of the last four lines, are exceedingly
happy. The illustration of rapid motion is far superior to the
last long and sprawling line of Pope, in which the preponderance
of liquids and sibilants detains the voice too much, while it is
further impeded by the word “unbending,”--one of the most sluggish,
as Johnson truly says, in the language.
How felicitous are “the hoarse Trinacrian shore” of Milton, and his
description of the rapid motion and grating noise with which Hell’s
gates are opened!--
“On a sudden, open fly
_With impetuous recoil, and jarring sound,_
_The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate_
_Harsh thunder_, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus.”
What can be more expressive than this representation of the sounds
of a battle in ancient times?--
“Arms on armor clashing bray’d
Horrible discord; and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged.”
How effective is the pause after the word “shook” in these lines!--
“And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.”
Discordant sounds are vividly described in this line from “Lycidas”:
“Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.”
Two of the most perfect examples of imitative harmony in our
literature are Wordsworth’s couplet,
“And see the children shouting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore,”
and Byron’s vivid description of a storm among the mountains:
“Far along
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder!”
The numerous adaptations of sound to sense in Dryden’s “Ode on St.
Cecilia’s Day” are familiar to all. The following verse, from a
song in his “King Arthur,” is less hackneyed:
“Come, if you dare, our trumpets sound;
Come, if you dare, our foes rebound;
_We come, we come, we come, we come,_
_Says the double, double, double beat of the thundering drum_.”
No modern poet has made a more frequent or a more judicious use of
onomatopœia than Tennyson. “The Bugle Song,” “The Brook,” “Tears,
Idle Tears,” and “Break, Break, Break,” will at once occur to the
poet’s admirers as masterpieces of representative art. The second
stanza of the “Bugle Song” has few equals in ancient or modern
verse:
“‘O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going;
O sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!’
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.”
What can be more perfect of its kind than the picture of the shock
of a _melée_, when the combatants
“Closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering points,
And thunder ...
And all the plain,--brand, mace, and shaft, and shield
Shock’d, _like an iron-clanging anvil banged_
_With hammers_;”
or the picture of a fleet of glass wrecked on a reef of gold, in
the lines,--
“For the fleet drew near,
_Touched, clinked, and clanked_, and vanished.”
Motion, as well as sound, has been happily imitated in
language,--of which we have signal examples in the progress of
Milton’s fiend, whose wearisome journey is portrayed by this artful
arrangement of words:
“The fiend
O’er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies;”
and in Pope’s translation of the noted passage in the “Odyssey”
describing Sisyphus:
“With many a step and many a groan,
_Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone_;
The huge round stone, _resulting with a bound,_
_Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground_.”
In reading the second line, with its frequent recurrence of the
aspirate, one seems to hear the giant pantings and groanings of
Sisyphus; and a similar feeling is experienced in reading the
following line:
“And when up ten steep slopes you’ve dragged your thighs.”
Crowe, the now forgotten author of “Lewisdon Hill,” fairly rivals
Pope in the closing line of a version of the foregoing passage in
the “Odyssey”:
“A sudden force
Turned the curst stone, and, slipping from his hold,
_Down again, down the steep rebounding, down it rolled_.”
An able literary critic,--the Rev. Robert A. Willmott,--has
thus contrasted the majestic and easy verse of Dryden with the
“mellifluence” of Pope. “‘The mellifluence of Pope,’ as Johnson
called it, has the defect of monotony. Exquisite in the sweet
rising and falling of its clauses, it seldom or never takes the ear
prisoner by a musical surprise. If Pope be the nightingale of our
verse, he displays none of the irregular and unexpected gush of
the songster. He has no variations. The tune is delicate, but not
natural. It reminds us of a bird, all over brilliant, which pipes
its one lay in a golden cage, and has forgotten the green wood
in the luxury of confinement. But Dryden’s versification has the
freedom and the freshness of the fields.... This is a great charm.
He preserved the simple, unpremeditated graces of the earlier
couplet, its confluence and monosyllabic close, while he added a
dignity and a splendor unknown before. Pope’s modulation is of the
ear; Dryden’s of the subject. He has a different tone for Iphigenia
slumbering under trees, by the fountain side; for the startled
knight, who listens to strange sounds within the glooms of the
wood; and for the courtly Beauty to whom he wafted a compliment.”
In the following lines from “Il Penseroso,” the effect combines
both sound and motion:
“Oft on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curlew sound,
Over some wide-watered shore,
_Swinging slow with sullen roar_.”
How admirably does the quick and joyous movement of the following
lines from “L’Allegro” portray the thing described!--
“Let the merry bells resound
And the jocund rebecks sound,
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the chequered shade.”
Huge, unwieldy bulk, implying slowness of movement, has been
happily expressed by Milton in the subjoined passages:
“O’er all the dreary coasts
So, stretched out, huge in length, the arch-fiend lay.”
“But ended foul, in many a scaly fold
_Voluminous and vast_.”
How inflated with bulky meaning are these lines from Shakespeare’s
“Troilus and Cressida”!--
“The large Achilles, on his pressed bed lolling,
From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause.”
The greatest of the Greek and Roman poets have employed those
“echoes of nature,” the onomatopes, as freely as the modern. Every
schoolboy is familiar with the words in which Virgil describes
thunder,--“_Iterum atque iterum fragor intonat ingens_,” as well
as with those in which he represents the rapid clatter of horses’
hoofs:
“_Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum_,”
and the vivid words in which Homer recalls the snapping of a sword:
Τριχθά τε καὶ τετραχθὰ διατρύφεν.
Who does not catch the hurtling of battle in the same poet’s
σκέπτετ’ ὀϊστῶν τε ῥοῖζον καὶ δοῦπον ἀκόντων,
and a murmur of ocean in
ἐξ ἀκαλαῤῥείταο βαθυῤῥόου Ὠκεανοῖο?
A similar effect is produced by his
πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης,
the first word of which was perhaps intended to represent the
roaring of the wave as it mounts on the sea-shore, and the second
the hissing sound of a receding billow.
Virgil’s description of the Cyclopses toiling at the anvil; his
picture of the Trojans laboriously hewing the foundations of a
tower on the top of Priam’s palace, and its sudden and violent
fall; Ennius’s imitation of a trumpet blast; and the imitation by
Aristophanes of the croaking of frogs,--will recur to the classic
reader as other examples of the felicitous use of this figure by
the Greek and Roman writers.
Paronomasia and alliteration owe their subtle beauty to the fact
that in using them the writer has reference to words considered as
sounds. Though an excess of either is offensive, yet, charily used,
it adds a surprising force to expression. How much is the grandeur
of the effect enhanced by the repetition of the s in the following
lines from Macbeth!--
“That shall, to all our days and nights to come,
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.”
Dr. Johnson, in speaking of imitative harmony, observes that the
desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the
sense “has produced many wild conceits and imaginary beauties.”
This is only saying that the poet, like the painter, may exaggerate
the importance of his accessories, while he gives too little heed
to his main theme. But this is no argument against the legitimate
use of any subtle or peculiar beauty in either the pictorial or
the metrical art. There are many cases where it is impossible to
use language which is specific, vivid, and appropriate, without
employing imitative words. For the choice of these words no rules
can be given; only an instinctive and exquisite taste can enable
one to decide when they may be consciously used, and when they
should be shunned. But he who can use onomatopœia with skill and
judgment,--who can call into play, on proper occasions, that swift
and subtle law of association whereby a reproduction of the sounds
at once recalls to the mind the images or circumstances with which
they are connected,--has mastered one of the greatest secrets of
the writer’s art. It was a saying of Shenstone, which experience
confirms, that harmony and melody of style have greater weight
than is generally imagined in our judgments upon writing and
writers; and, as a proof of this, he says that the lines of poetry,
the periods of prose, and even the texts of Scripture we most
frequently recollect and quote, are those which are preëminently
musical. The following magical lines, which owe their interest
to the cadence hardly less than to their imagery, illustrate
Shenstone’s remark:
YOUTH AND AGE.
“Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh, the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
Ere I was old!
Ere I was old! Ah, woful Ere!
Which tells me, Youth’s no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
’Tis known that thou and I were one;
I’ll think it but a fond conceit--
It cannot be that Thou art gone!
The vesper bell hath not yet tolled,
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on,
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,
This drooping gait, this altered size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes.
Life is but thought; so think I will,
That Youth and I are house-mates still.”
FOOTNOTES:
[27] This classification is from Farrar, who has abridged it from
Wedgwood, in Phil. Trans. II., 118.
[28] “Chapters on Language” by Rev. F. W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S.
[29] “Chapters on Language,” p. 104.