Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image

ABOUT PLACE-NAMES.

PALMERSTON'S PROBLEM. TOPOGRAPHY OF THE POETS.

(By J.QX)

It was reported from Palmerston North a few days ago that some of the burgesses were dissatisfied with the name of their town. Their arguments were not fully set out, but it seemed that in the rush of business they begrudged the time spent in the reiteration of so many syllables, and that the "North"—implying that another Palmerston had to be reckoned with—offended their sense of dignity. Someone, desiring to do honour to the present Mayor, suggested "Nashville." I hope it was not meant seriously. All hybrid place-names made by adding "ville" to an English or Scotch surname are abominations. Is it not enough that we : suffer with Hunterville, Mauriceyille, \Vallaceville, Morrinsville,. Seddonville, and the rest? Let us hot have any other "ville." There is no • need: We Jiavo such townships as Domett, Seddon,'Ward, and if Mr. Nash deserves a city for bis monument, why ' not call' it simply "Nash"? But perhaps there are people who would like to revise the map of New Zealand, and give us "Napiervule"- ind "Nelsonville." It was a very proper sentiment, though perhaps.pushed a little too far, that made Oscar Wilde refuse to lecture at a certain town in America for no other reason than that it was called Griggsville. . • What the people who are dissatisfied with the name of Palmerston North do not see is that the. more important a town. becomes, the less its name matters.. It is only when we meet with the name but rarely that it affects in. any way our notions about the place. If New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Chicago we?e. mere villages, their names would suggest respectively English, Spanish, and French . settlers, anil aboriginal inhabitants; but to-day we seo the naihes so often, that they neither mean nor suggest anything but four big modern American cities. We say . Melbourne" every day without thinking how it sounds, and yet if Australia did not exist, and if Queen Victoria's' first. Prime Minister had had some other title, tbo name of a certain Derbyshire villago might fall freshly on our ears, and we should say " Melbourne!'/What a pretty word!" . ' ... There is a charm in unfamiliar names —a' bloom that is rubbed-off by much handling. That is. why the makers of verso have loved to use them. Addison, observing this, thought, that some of the classic poets had invented heroes 'or the purpose' of coiNnicmoriiting'iivsounding lines their death in battle.' "Glauciis and Medon and Thersilochus," he conjectured, had existed only to be knocked on the head. Milton, in' "Lycidas, fastidiously -avoiding the , trite, translates Anglesey, the River Dee, and Cam: bridge into Mona, Deva, and Camus, and instead of Land's End and St. Michael's Mount, speaks, of

"The fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount , Looks towards Namancos and BayOna s .hold."

The disadvantage of this style is that we need a Palgrave 'or other ahnotator to tell'us that Bellerium was the ancient name of Land's End, and Bellerus, a giant,.'probably invented by Milton for this occasion; also. , that our then trade with .Corunna had made Namancos and Bayona, in Spain, less .'unfamiliar, (but unfamiliar still,. . Mr. - Ahnotator) to. English, ears than they are t'o-day. .' With the Romantic i Revival (which was partly a revival of realism) there came in another way of putting topography to poetic' uses." Scott,/ with his Ettnck, Teviot, Branksome;, Coilantogle, and so forth, ' showed that'ordinary names, so long as they, are not too.' common, may adorn a verse.- But it required a more conscious word-musician, Matthew Arnold, to achieve the greatest triumph in this kind. 'In "The Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis,", his natural, though doubtless carefully studied, use of the village-, names of the Oxford country brought a new beauty into English verse. • It is possible for a reader, to be out of patience with the plaintive, almost querulous, .tone of that ..great poem—for. the two are really one—and still to cherish snch lines as— ....

"Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe."

"In Autumn, on the skirts of Bagley wood." ..

"And watch the warm green-muffled Cumner hills." "I know the wood which hides the daffodil, I know the Fyfield tree, I know what white, what purple fntillaries The grassy harvest of the river fields, Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields; , And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries."

And yet Arnold, influenced by an Oxford education and by the examples of Milton and other predecessors in elegiac and pastoral poetry, seems' to have felt himself bound to admit a superior charm in classic and Italian names.. -The Muse, he supposed, haunted "a folding of the Apennine," rather than "These English, fields, this upland dim, Those brambles pale with mist enga.rlanded." , / In his heart of hearts, he probably knew better. These are not matters for argument, but I will assert that in "Thyrsis" and "The Scholar Gipsy," the English rural stanzas are the jewel, and the classical stanzas are the foiL And treasures of sound as rare as those which Arnold drew . from the Thames Valley await their poet in . every shire. Said I, from between the wide pages of a "Gloucester, Journal"—with its news from Hartpury, Highleadon, Newent, Minsterworth,' Guitiiig Power,' Longhope, Shepscombe, . Nympsfield—"What pleases me more - than almost anything in this paper/is - the collection of charming names." ■ "Just what. I say to. myself,., replied the Critic on the Hearth, "when -1- get a Yorkshire paper."., ■' . ' Mr. E. : V. Lncas records that from the time of his first reading of Mr. Housman's "Shropshire Lad," these lines ran in his, head ■ '

■ "Clunton and Clunbury, tllungunford and Clun, ■ Are the : quietest, places ' Under the sun." ■ And ha. said, "Some da!y I will, go to Clun." He went, and if the experience was as pleasant as the narrative, he was indeed the happier'for having been there. Some viliage' s names are more curious even than that Salopian cluster. Dorset has its Toller Porcorum.

My favourite—and it is a poem in itself—is Wyke Chamuflower. It is the better for' being in Somerset

You and In patient reader, cannot hope to live long enough to see New Zealand place-names adopted into poetry. And when that does come about it will be the Reikorangis and Rangiaohias, not' the Wellingtons and Palmerstons. Most of the Maori names have poetical meanings, but they require translation, the. names themselves being poetical only to those who know the language. No name on the New Zealand map has so charmed and haunted me as a certain absence of name which I once encountered. Cycling in North Canterbury, alone 'and after midnight, I came unexpectedly upon a township. There was no-, body, about, and only here and there a candle behind drawn blinds. In the soft cloud-filtered light of the full moon 1 read the lettering on the hotel and the store, but the name ■of the village was nowhere disclosed. I can never forget the inscrutable reserve of those old-fasnioned weather-boarded gables, nor the swish oi my wheols, that only deepened the mysterious quiet of the street. My route on that nignt is a secret that will dio with me, lest some busybody should tell me the name of the place. But we were speaking of PaLmerston North. Well, why not leave the name alone? As the place grows, the "North" will gradually drop oil. Newcastle-upon-Tyne is usually just Newcastle, and lUngston-upon-Hull is known by its last syllable. If Palmerston were a, tiny and remote village, the question would be of some importance, but for the fifth town in New Zealand, which expects soijie day to be the first, its-present name, after the inevitable atrophy and shedding of the second void, will be quite good enough.

This article text was automatically generated and may include errors. View the full page to see article in its original form.
Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19100321.2.67

Bibliographic details

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 8

Word Count
1,286

ABOUT PLACE-NAMES. Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 8

ABOUT PLACE-NAMES. Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 8