By the Lough

[Pedro]

Funny how you can have several unconnected conversations and similar themes will be raised by the other parties. One such recent topic has been about English spelling and pronunciation. So I hope this might amuse:

 

By T

By The Lough

 

By Pedro

 

Escaped at last from Yorkshire's Brough

On the shore sat Jimmy Clough

Near outfall from the mining sough

And thought on how his life were tough.

 

Da had caught him and Davy Bough

Drinking from that other trough

And smacked him right hard and thorough

And dumped him, skint, in next borough.

 

So Jimmy had to earn some dough

And let that smarmy git from Slough,

(Here on two weeks furlough,)

Hard and fast his arse to plough.

 

Stirred from pleasant dreams of Bough

By the raucous cry of chough

Waked with tears, a sob, a cough,

And ache of last night’s tumble rough.

 

A drink to think and stop his hiccough.

 

“With all this I've had enough,

I'm done, I'm through.

Like the snake skin on yon bough

My old life I will slough

(Though some say slough)

And move elsewhere but not to Slough!”

 

And so he ups and goes .. to Loughborough.

[Merkin]

Wow!  (Or should that be wough?)

[Cole Parker]

Enuff!

[Pedro]

Thanks guys.

A bit more specially for Cole ?

 

Cole, Methought

You were a versifying sort,

Enjoying fun of rhyming sport

And puns and scansion taut.

 

But ‘enuff’ you do retort

As I with O.U.G.H.did cavort

Then maybe you were caught

By the diction fraught

 

Or were you just distraught

As no word I found or bought

That could be carefully wrought

To match with ‘hiccough','Loughborough' or 'Lough'.

 

Now where are my eardefenders to muffle those groans?

[Cole Parker]

I would have liked a pronunciation guide to go along with the original poem.  I had no idea how to pronounce most of those.

 

But I wasn't saying enuff in complain.  In jest only.

 

C

[Pedro]

On 02/08/2017 at 3:19 AM, Cole Parker said:

I would have liked a pronunciation guide to go along with the original poem.  I had no idea how to pronounce most of those.

 

But I wasn't saying enuff in complain.  In jest only.

 

C

I saw the fun in your enuff,

complaint would read in-ough!

 

I struggle with the pronunciation and I wrote it! Perhaps I ought to swap the second verse around so the rhyming scheme in each verse would be ABAB where A=B in the first and the last is ABCABC. I thought I would be stuck with 'through' then remembered I had read that slough (usually said - 'sluff' for a snakeskin) can sometimes be pronounced 'slew'. Slough, the place about 25 miles west of London, was made famous by the poet John Betjeman in a wartime poem with the lines:

"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough

It isn't fit for humans now."

'Lough' is a bit of a cheat as it is the Irish spelling of the Scots 'loch', and Loughborough (luffbruh) is another town about 120 miles NNE of London. A chough (chuff) is a bird of the crow family. I wont mention surnames except one I didn't use : Ough - apparently pronounced 'Oh!'

[Cole Parker]

Amazing how many ways those letters can be pronounced.

 

C