Here _churning_ is a mistake; we are sorry to begin with an
animadversion, but the word should be _churring_. #Churr# is an
echo-word, and though there may be examples of echo-words which have
been bettered by losing all trace of their simple spontaneous origin,
this is not one. It is like _burr, purr,_ and _whirr_; and these words
are best spelt with double R and the R should be trilled. The absurdity
of not trilling this final R is seen very plainly in _burr_, because
that word's definition is 'a rough sounding of the letter R.' This is
not represented by the pronunciation b[schwa]:. What that 'southern
English' pronunciation does indicate is the vulgarity and inconvenience
of its degradations. _Burr_ occurs in these poems:
'There the live dimness burrs with droning glees'. (23)
#Burr# is, moreover, a bad homophone and cannot neglect possible
distinctions: the Oxford Dictionary has eight entries of substantives
under _burr._
Our author also uses _whirr_:
'And the bleak garrets' crevices
Like whirring distaffs utter dread', (26)
and again of the noise of wind in ivy, on p. 54, and
'The damp gust makes the ivy whir', (48)
_whir_ rhyming here with _executioner_.
Since _churring_ (in the first quotation) would automatically preserve
its essential trill, the intruder _churning_ is the more obnoxious; and
unless the R can be trilled it would seem better for poets to use only
the inflected forms of these words, and prefer _churreth_ to _churrs_.
If _churn_ is anywhere dialectal for _churr_, it must have come from the
common mistake of substituting a familiar for an unknown word: and this
is the worst way of making homophones.