Daniel
I think that many so called "eye" rhymes, as Howard was
saying, in older poetry and rhymes may not in fact be eye-rhymes, as
are your examples in Modern English clearly must be.
The Chaucerian rhyme of "eye" with the last syllable of "melodye"
are clearly not "eye-rhymes", but show just how much vowels in
English, particularly long vowels and dipthongs, are
prone to vary, which effects "rhymes", according to dialect and
historic period.
For example, the 'ee' (or ii) and 'ai' vowels (distinguisted in
standard English) may be pronounced identically in some dialects of
Irish English,
as the spelling, "Juno and the Paycock" (Sean O'Casey), shows well
See these examples from Swift, who was also Irish in origin:
Yet want your criticks no just cause to rail
Since knaves are ne'er obliged for what they steal.
In ready counters never pays,
But pawns her snuff-box, rings, and keys.
and many others of the same type.
Examples involving short vowels, at first sight, might be good
candidates for eye-rhymes, as this one, again from Swift:
Why, there's my landlord now, the squire, who all in money wallows,
He would not give a groat to save his father from the gallows.
However, the fact that we find the same rhyme-type in nursery rhymes,
makes the eye-rhyme explanation, unlikely, nursery rhymes being more
oral in transimission:
Goosey Goosey Gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Any phonetician can explain that the initial "W" in "wander" is prone
to influence the following vowel, so as to make it more like
'wo" (back and rounded, in BBC English)
This is why today Gander and wander are now just eye-rhymes in many
dialects.
Anthony
Le 4 oct. 08 à 19:34, Daniel Winheld a écrit :
I see- eye rhymes don't.
They got into a row when they went for a row;
When he shot his bow from the bow.
How now brown crow.
I think most of those "eye rhymes" were real, as in the love-prove-
move example I mentioned earlier. Those rhymes show up so often
that
it would be downright weird if they weren't real rhymes.
See, for example, how many times "eye" rhymes with something that
apparently sounds "ee".
Chaucer rhymed "eye" with "melody" in the Canterbury Tales around
1390.
Note how even today, "daisy", a compound noun, derived from "Dayas
eye" (eye of the day), keeps the "y" sound through it having been
shortened and destressed (it escaped the Great Vowel shift), while
the fully stressed long vowel in "eye" has undergone thatl shift to
become "ai" (in standard BBC English).
Anthony
500 years later, Blake rhymed "eye" with "symmetry" in The Tyger.
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